Genocide Studies Media FileSeptember 14-20, 2006

A compendium of news stories, features, and human rights reports pertaining to genocide and crimes against humanity. Compiled by Adam Jones. Please send links and feedback to adamj_jones@hotmail.com.

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ARGENTINA

"Argentine Investigator Gets Life"
By Mayra Pertossi
Associated Press dispatch on Syracuse.com, 19 September 2006
"A former police investigator was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday in connection with the disappearance of six people during Argentina's so-called 'Dirty War' against political dissent. The conviction of Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz, 77, was the second of its kind since Argentina's Supreme Court in June 2005 annulled a pair of 1980s amnesty laws blocking prosecution of crimes dating to during the nation's 1976-83 dictatorship. ... Etchecolatz was described by prosecutors as a former top collaborator of Ramon Camps, the late Buenos Aires province police chief who was allied with the military when the dictatorship began with a 1976 coup. Nearly 13,000 people are officially listed killed or missing as a result of what prosecutors described as the dictatorship's systematic crackdown on dissent, known as the 'Dirty War.' Human rights groups say the toll is closer to 30,000. Authorities say dissidents, labor leaders, intellectuals and other opponents of the regime were illegally detained and never heard from again. Many were reported to have been tortured and then executed. ... On Aug. 4, former police officer Julio Simon was sentenced to 25 years in prison for human rights abuses in connection with the 1978 disappearance of a married couple during Argentina's military dictatorship. ... Etchecolatz is among dozens of former police and state security agents facing prosecution after amnesty laws were overturned last year."

BANGLADESHI GENOCIDE

"Australian Lawfirm Brings Bangladesh Genocide Issue in the United Nations"
By Raymond Solaiman & Associates
News from Bangladesh, 16 September 2006
"A communication was initiated on 7 September 2006 from our office with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Judicial Committee to examine the failure of the states namely Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and USA to prosecute the persons responsible for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, conspiracy against peace, conspiracy to wage war on unarmed civilians at the time of 1971 in former East Pakistan. The Communication claims that the above mentioned state parties are in a breach of Articles 6 & 7 of Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Article 6 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Articles 4, 5, 6 & 8 of Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the whole of Convention on the non-applicability of statutory limitations to war crimes and crimes against humanity. ... It is now up to the committee to examine the admissibility of the communication. ... If this proceeding is successful, the most likely outcome would be, all respective state parties would have to take all necessary actions including adopting Genocide conventions into their own domestic law and prosecute the persons responsible for war crimes and genocide during 1971. If they do it, it will be marked as a black incident in history. However, it will be possible to use the term war criminals for those alleged persons under international law and nations around the world would use their own immigration law to restrict those people's international movement. It will also be possible that those responsible persons would never qualify to stand for public representations. [...]"

CAMBODIAN GENOCIDE

"Survivor Gently Adds Voices to Cambodia's Dark Tale"
By Seth Mydans
The New York Times, 16 September 2006 [Registration Required]
"Youk Chhang knelt among the coconut palms behind an isolated Buddhist temple and began asking, very gently, how a man named Sous Thy had become part of the killing machine of the Khmer Rouge. Mr. Sous Thy, then a weathered farmer of 45, squatted beside him in this quiet, private place 10 years ago, revealing bit by bit the secrets he had kept for the past quarter century. Yes, he said, he had taken part in the killings, when 1.7 million Cambodians lost their lives from 1975 to 1979. He had been recruited as a teenager, knowing nothing but the rice fields around him, and had lived in terror every day that he himself would be killed. Mr. Youk Chhang listened quietly, taking notes, passing no judgment. He had been one of the victims of the Khmer Rouge, a half-starved boy who lost more family members than he wants to remember. ... Mr. Youk Chhang, who is now 45, heads the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a private organization that over the past decade has collected a trove of 600,000 pages of documents, 6,000 photographs and 200 documentary films recording the Khmer Rouge rule. ... Since his meeting with Mr. Sous Thy in a village not far from Phnom Penh, Mr. Youk Chhang has studied the stories of more former Khmer Rouge cadres than perhaps anybody else. And he has concluded that people like Mr. Sous Thy and people like himself could quite easily have changed places. 'They are us, and we are them,' he said in an interview in his small office in Phnom Penh where photographs of victims and killers hang on the walls. 'They are the evil side of us. Crimes are committed by human beings, by people just like me.' [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to Ursula Daba for contributing this item.]

GERMANY

"In a Blow to Merkel's Christian Democrats, Far-Right Party Wins Seats in an East German State"
By Mark Landler
The New York Times, 18 September 2006 [Registration Required]
"A far-right party made further inroads in Germany's economically fragile east on Sunday, winning seats in a state election in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, a lonely land of farms and fishing villages that is the home constituency of Chancellor Angela Merkel. The National Democratic Party, which openly espouses xenophobic and neo-Nazi views, was projected to win slightly more than 7 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results. That was less than analysts here had feared, but enough to clear the threshold of 5 percent for seats in the state legislature. Extreme-right parties will now be represented in three of Germany's six eastern states -- a trend that worries officials and underlines the divide between the country's eastern and western halves. Far-right parties have negligible support in more-prosperous western Germany. 'This shows the extreme right is a stable and growing force in the east, but it is not an earthquake,' said Hajo Funke, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin. 'It's not a danger for our democracy.' [...]"

IRAN/JEWISH HOLOCAUST

"Cartoons Mocking Holocaust Prove a Flop with Iranians"
By Angus McDowall
The Independent, 14 September 2006
"An exhibition of cartoons about the Holocaust, some suggesting it was fabricated or exaggerated, has been a flop in Tehran. It drew audiences of fewer than 300 a day in its first week and now, three weeks after sparking international furore when it opened, attracts just 50 people a day. Most of those approached in central Tehran said they had not heard of the exhibition and insisted the slaughter of six million Jews by the Nazis was a historical fact. 'I'm sure the Holocaust was true -- I've heard all about it from newspapers and television,' said a housewife from a religious family. 'I don't know why some say it didn't happen.' Shahram Rezaei, an Iranian cartoonist, drew Nazi soldiers laying a paper chain in a mass grave, implying that they were faking the deaths of Jews. Some depictions drew heavily upon anti-Semitic stereotypes. Others accepted the Holocaust happened, but said it was being used to justify Western brutality in the Middle East. An entry by Alessandro Gatto, an Italian, showed an Arab looking forlornly from behind prison bars, which morphed into the stripes of a concentration camp jacket. Others focused on the suffering of Palestinians. Thousands of foreigners have visited the exhibition's website at www.irancartoon.com, some of them engaging in angry debate. A conference on the Holocaust is planned in Tehran for October. [...]"

IRAQ

"Saddam Judge is Replaced"
Associated Press dispatch in The Guardian, 19 September 2006
"The chief judge in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial has been replaced amid complaints from Shiite and Kurdish officials that he was too soft on the former Iraqi leader, a move that could raise accusations of government interference in the highly sensitive case. ... Hussein al-Duri, an aide to the prime minister, said one reason for al-Amiri's dismissal was the judge's comments last week in a court session, in which he told Saddam 'You were not a dictator.' ... The change could revive complaints that the government is interfering in the tribunal trying Saddam and his regime members to ensure a quick guilty verdict. In the current trial, Saddam faces a possible death penalty if convicted on genocide charges over the Anfal military offensive against Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s. [...]"

"Inside Baghdad: Last Battle of a Stricken City"
By Peter Beaumont
The Observer, 17 September 2006
"Karima Mohammed's men were taken on 5 September. Her husband Saleh Ahmed Mahmoud, 50, and 17-year-old son, Ghazan Saleh Ahmed, were seized by men wearing the uniform of the Iraqi police near the filling station in Zafaraniya in southern Baghdad. The day after they disappeared, her husband's brother received a threatening phone call. He would not tell Karima what the caller said, only that it was 'sectarian' in nature. Since then she has heard nothing. Karima now fears the worst. It would be hard not to -- between Wednesday and Friday more than 130 bodies were found, dumped on the dusty streets, the fetid rubbish tips, and floating in the sewers and rivers of the capital. Yesterday morning there were a further 47 corpses. Those killed by sectarian violence now far outnumber Iraqis being killed by suicide car bombs and insurgent attacks -- more than 50 have died that way in the city in the past 72 hours. Karima is a Sunni and her misfortune is to live in a largely Shia area -- a stronghold of the Jaish al-Mahdi, the militia of the firebrand preacher Moqtada al-Sadr, a group implicated in the campaign of attacks against Sunni families across Baghdad. In Zafaraniya, bombs have been thrown at Sunni houses. A Sunni mosque has come under attack. People, like Karima's husband and son, have simply disappeared. [...]"
[n.b. There can be little doubt that this is one of the most sustained and systematic campaigns of "gendercide" in the post-World War II era.]

"'You Were Not a Dictator,' Judge Tells Hussein During Genocide Trial"
By Sudarsan Raghavan
The Washington Post, 15 September 2006 [Registration Required]
"The judge in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial told the toppled Iraqi leader on Thursday that he wasn't 'a dictator,' one day after prosecutors accused the judge of bias and demanded his resignation. Judge Abdullah al-Amiri made the comment shortly after the court heard emotional testimony from a Kurdish farmer who said Hussein told him to 'shut up and get out' when he begged the Iraqi president to spare the lives of his wife and seven young children, who were taken into custody in 1988. Hussein challenged the farmer's testimony, asking, 'Why did he try to see Saddam Hussein [if] Saddam Hussein was a dictator and was against the Kurdish people?' according to the Associated Press. Amiri said from the bench: 'You are not a dictator. You were not a dictator. However, the people or the individuals and officials surrounding you created a dictator. It was not you in particular. It happens all over the world.' 'Thank you,' Hussein replied. On Wednesday, prosecutors called for Amiri's resignation, saying he had allowed 'defendants to go too far, with unacceptable expressions and words' and had 'allowed the defendants to treat the chamber as a political forum,' according to a pool report. [...]"

ISRAEL/LEBANON

"Israel's Cluster Bomb Use 'Outrageous': U.N."
By Alistair Lyon
Reuters dispatch on MyWay.com, 19 September 2006
"Israel dropped at least 350,000 cluster bomblets on south Lebanon in its war with Hizbollah guerrillas, mostly when the conflict was all but over, leaving a deadly legacy for civilians, a U.N. official said on Tuesday. 'The outrageous fact is that nearly all of these munitions were fired in the last three to four days of the war,' David Shearer, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, told a news conference in Beirut. 'Outrageous because by that stage the conflict had been largely resolved in the form of (U.N. Security Council) Resolution 1701,' he said. ... Shearer said Israel had not explained why it fired so many cluster bombs across the south as the war drew to a close. Nor had it responded to a U.N. request for the map coordinates of the cluster bomb strikes to hasten clearance efforts. U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland has called Israel 'completely immoral' for using them in residential areas. The United Nations has so far identified 516 cluster bomb strike locations and says 30 to 40 percent of the bomblets they scattered over the south failed to explode at the time. ... Shearer said cluster bombs had killed or wounded an average of three people a day since the war ended, with 15 killed, including a child, and 83 wounded, of whom 23 are children. ... 'We know these (cluster) munitions have a failure rate and it seems to me extraordinary that they were fired off in the last hours of the war into areas where civilian populations were known to be going,' Shearer said. 'For a humanitarian person, it defies belief that this would happen.'"

"Deadly Harvest: The Lebanese Fields Sown with Cluster Bombs"
By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent (on Truthout.org), 18 September 2006
"The war in Lebanon has not ended. Every day, some of the million bomblets which were fired by Israeli artillery during the last three days of the conflict kill four people in southern Lebanon and wound many more. The casualty figures will rise sharply in the next month as villagers begin the harvest, picking olives from trees whose leaves and branches hide bombs that explode at the smallest movement. Lebanon's farmers are caught in a deadly dilemma: to risk the harvest, or to leave the produce on which they depend to rot in the fields. In a coma in a hospital bed in Nabatiyeh lies Hussein Ali Ahmad, a 70-year-old man from the village of Yohmor. He was pruning an orange tree outside his house last week when he dislodged a bomblet; it exploded, sending pieces of shrapnel into his brain, lungs and kidneys. ... At least 83 people have been killed by cluster munitions since the ceasefire, according to independent monitors. ... Why did the Israeli army do it? The number of cluster bombs fired must have been greater than 1.2 million because, in addition to those fired in rockets, many more were fired in 155mm artillery shells. One Israeli gunner said he had been told to 'flood' the area at which they were firing but was given no specific targets. M. Gras, who personally defuses 160 to 180 bomblets a day, says this is the first time he seen cluster bombs used against heavily populated villages. [...]"

"Hezbollah Accused of War Crimes"
BBC Online, 14 September 2006
"Amnesty International has accused Hezbollah of acts amounting to war crimes in the conflict with Israel. The group said Hezbollah deliberately targeted civilians with rockets in the 34-day war -- a 'serious violation of international humanitarian law.' An earlier Amnesty report accused Israel of committing war crimes by deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure in Lebanon. Amnesty again urged a UN inquiry into violations by both sides. The latest Amnesty report said: 'Hezbollah's rocket attacks on northern Israel amounted to deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects, as well as indiscriminate attacks, both war crimes under international law.' It said Hezbollah had fired nearly 4,000 rockets into northern Israel, killing 43 civilians and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee. It noted that although Hezbollah had said its policy was not to target civilians, its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said the policy was changed in reprisal for Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilian areas. [...]"
[n.b. See the complete text of the Amnesty report.]

NAZISM/JEWISH HOLOCAUST

"Her Secret Past as a Nazi Guard:
S.F. Immigrant Married Holocaust Survivor, Attended Synagogue"
By Demian Bulwa
San Francisco Chronicle, 20 September 2006
"Those who knew San Francisco's Elfriede Rinkel never found it remarkable that the German immigrant would marry a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, or attend synagogue with him, or plan to be buried next to him at a cemetery run by a Chevra Kadisha, a Jewish burial society that performs ritual purification. On Tuesday, though, came a jarring twist: The U.S. Justice Department said the 84-year-old Rinkel had been deported to Germany, nearly half a century after she emigrated to the United States, because she had been a guard at a Nazi concentration camp in World War II where an estimated 90,000 people, many of them Jews, were exterminated. 'I think it may have been a type of atonement for her,' her attorney, Alison Dixon, said of Elfriede's marriage to Fred Rinkel, who died two years ago. 'My understanding is that she has also contributed to Jewish charities.' Dixon said Rinkel never told her husband that she had spent nearly a year as a guard at the Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany, the only major Nazi camp for women. ... The Justice Department alleged that Rinkel had used attack dogs to march emaciated inmates to slave-labor sites. More than 130,000 women from dozens of countries -- Jews, Gypsies and others -- were brought to Ravensbruck during its six years of existence. More than two-thirds of them died of malnourishment, in medical experiments and in a gas chamber, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. [...]"

"Translating a WWII Monster"
By Victor Greto
The News Journal, 17 September 2006
"Paul Harker had to keep reminding himself -- the old man sitting across the dining room table was a monster. Eighty-year-old Rolf Otto Schiller did not look like one, and his banter about the weather diverted Harker from the task at hand -- compiling the memoirs of a former Nazi SS legal affairs officer. After the pleasantries, Schiller's demeanor would change. 'Where did we leave off?' he would ask. 'When I ordered the liquidation of the Bialystok ghetto?' In the book, Schiller admits helping to implement the 'Final Solution' by ordering the deaths of Jews, gypsies, Communists, homosexuals and other 'enemies of the Third Reich' -- and killing many of them himself. Accused by a Polish war tribunal of helping to slaughter more than 150,000 people, Schiller was convicted in 1947 for causing the deaths of 2,711. He served 30 years in Grudziadz prison in Poland. Schiller -- who died in 2004 -- called himself a criminal, says Harker, 39, a Newport writer who corresponded with him for years. But Schiller argued that his actions were legal, based on Nazi laws, including 'Directive 19,' the official administrative designation for a death sentence. ... It took nearly seven years from the time they first corresponded, but Harker recently published Schiller's memoir, 'Directive 19: The Memoirs of SS Sturmbannführer [storm unit leader] Rolf Otto Schiller' (Outskirts Press, $24.95). None of the money goes to Schiller's estate; $3 of each sale goes to the upkeep of Allied and German military cemeteries. 'His story is a story that needs to be told in light of the Holocaust denials that are going on,' Harker says. [...]"

"This Historian Was a German Nationalist Who Distorted History"
By David Cesarani
The Guardian, 15 September 2006
"Joachim Fest, who died this week, was a conservative historian who played a leading role in shaping the new German nationalism and cultivating the sense of victimhood among Germans that lies at its core. So it was puzzling to find him the subject of the Guardian's leader column [n.b. included in last week's Media File]. ... Fest never pursued a purely academic agenda: he was interested in shaping public discourse in Germany. His history writing was distorted by his nationalism and his hostility to socialism. In July 1986, Fest, as an editor on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, published an article by the historian Ernst Nolte arguing that it was time to end the 'demonisation' of the Third Reich. Nolte maintained that Auschwitz was only a reaction 'to the acts of annihilation that took place during the Russian revolution.' The Nazis' exterminatory war against the Jews was merely a 'German copy' of earlier genocides during a century typified by mass slaughter. Fest then weighed in with an article supporting Nolte and went even further. Without any evidence he asserted that Hitler's genocidal policies were rooted in a deep German-Austrian fear of atrocities overwhelming them from 'the east.' He argued that there was anyway little difference between the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis or the Soviets. The victims were 'here a race, there a class.' ... Far from being praiseworthy, Fest's history writing has had a malign influence on German national identity."

"Gunter Grass: I Needed Time to Reveal My Waffen-SS Past"
By Giles Tremlett
The Guardian, 13 September 2006
"Gunter Grass, the Nobel laureate whose confessions of SS membership during the second world war have shocked his native Germany, has denied lying about his past and claimed he simply needed time to tell his own story. In an interview in Spain's El País newspaper, Grass replied to his critics while admitting he would probably have been involved in war crimes had he been a bit older and joined the notorious Waffen-SS earlier. 'I was young, and I wanted to leave home. In my heart, it was something I agreed with,' he said, explaining how he joined up as a 17-year-old in the dying stages of the war. 'I considered the Waffen-SS to be an elite unit,' he added. 'If I had been born three or four years earlier I would, surely, have seen myself caught up in those crimes.' He kept this episode of his life, which he has now included in an autobiography, to himself for more than six decades because of a growing sense of shame. 'What was published later about the Waffen-SS, about all its crimes, was something I was not aware of until much later,' he explained. 'My sense of shame grew over time ... which is largely why this unique episode in my life was something that I kept to myself.' He denied, however, actively hiding his past. 'I've always admitted my involvement as a young man in the [Nazi] system,' he said. 'That has never been a secret.' [...]"

RWANDAN GENOCIDE

"Ex-Minister's Genocide Acquittal"
BBC Online, 20 September 2006
"A former Rwandan government minister has been acquitted on charges relating to the 1994 genocide, by the United Nations tribunal in Tanzania. Judges ordered the immediate release of ex-Education Minister Andre Rwamakuba. Prosecutors had accused him of hacking members of the Tutsi minority to death during the 1994 massacre, in which some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died. He is the fifth suspect to be acquitted by the Arusha tribunal; 26 other suspects have been convicted. Judge Charles Michael Byron said there was insufficient evidence that Andre Rwamakuba distributed machetes and participated in the 100-day massacre. He was accused of ordering the hacking of Tutsis to death in Gikomero township near the capital and at a university hospital in the south. He denied the charges and boycotted his trial. Mr Rwamakuba, who is 56 years old, told AP news agency after the ruling that he was happy and trying to determine what to do with his life."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

"Rwanda's Genocide Still Has Power to Haunt Lives"
Chicago Tribune on RedOrbit.com, 19 September 2006
"Jeanette Uwimana was eight months pregnant when Rwanda's genocide began in 1994. Desperate to save her six children, she fled to a hill above her home in Butare. The killers found her anyway. First, they put a bullet in the head of her 15-year-old daughter, ending a dispute among the armed men over who should rape her first. Then they slaughtered the girl's terrified young brothers with clubs and machetes as their mother struggled to respond to their screams. Finally, they gathered Uwimana and a few other women and girls who had taken refuge on the hill and took them to a nearby militia roadblock. There, for two weeks, the pretty 32-year-old was raped on the roadside by nearly every militiaman who passed. When her back broke, she was thrown in the bushes and left for dead. 'I became lifeless and they threw me aside,' she remembers quietly. When soldiers from an invading Tutsi liberation army found her three days later, 'I was practically dead,' she said. ... With its genocide now a dozen years in the past, Rwanda is struggling to move on. Its government urges reconciliation among victims and perpetrators. International trials for the architects of the genocide are nearing an end in neighboring Tanzania, and hundreds of thousands of other genocide perpetrators have been released from Rwanda's prisons to face community judgment at home. But for many -- particularly rape victims, orphans and mothers raising children of rape -- the genocide remains a daily part of life, impossible to escape. [...]"

"Rwanda Musician Faces Genocide Charges"
Reuters dispatch on CNN.com, 18 September 2006
"A U.N. court trying the masterminds of the 1994 Rwandan genocide on Monday began to hear a case against a former sports ministry official whose popular songs were said to have encouraged the killings. Simon Bikindi, a musician and former official in Rwanda's Ministry of Youth and Sports, was arrested in the Netherlands in 2001. He faces six counts of genocide to which he has pleaded not guilty. 'He was the singer whose popular songs were supposed to have encouraged people to commit genocide,' Timothy Gallimore, spokesman for Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), told Reuters. 'We haven't had anyone in his category before. You have to also understand that he is part of the association with the media. The issue of using the media for incitement is related to his case,' Gallimore said. In its indictment, ICTR said that Bikindi also agreed or collaborated with, among others, former President Juvenal Habyarimana, to give military training to Hutu Interahamwe militia and to spread anti-Tutsi propaganda. He is accused of helping recruit Interahamwe militias in late 1993 and early 1994 and for collaborating with among others, Habyarimana, to launch privately owned Radio Mille Collines, which was used to spread anti-Tutsi messages, and often played Bikindi's music. ICTR added that Bikindi would compose and record music, and have Habyarimana vet it to see if it fit the government's policies before it was released. [...]"

"Rwandan Leader Firm on Hutu Extremists"
By Donna Bryson
Associated Press dispatch on ABCNews.com, 17 September 2006
"Hutu extremists accused of masterminding the Rwandan genocide and then fleeing to Congo cannot expect forgiveness, Rwanda's president said in an interview Sunday. The extremists have been accused of fomenting instability in eastern Congo for years. There had been hopes of quelling the threat before the recent elections in Congo but the Hutu groups remain entrenched in eastern Congo. Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who led the Tutsi rebels who ended the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, said he would work with the new Congolese government to contain the Hutu extremists. But he said he could not envision offering them amnesty, as the Congolese have done for some of their own rebel groups in an effort to bring peace to the country. 'There are no grounds whatsoever to say these people ... should be given any amnesty,' Kagame told The Associated Press in an interview. He said these groups masterminded the genocide and had shown no remorse, so they must be either brought to justice or militarily defeated. ... Rwanda has invaded Congo twice since 1996 with the stated aim of hunting down the Hutu extremists who fled there. Rwanda's second invasion, in 1998, launched Africa into a war that drew in the armies of six nations. The conflict split Western Europe-sized Congo, and caused the deaths of an estimated 3.2 million people in Rwanda-controlled east Congo, primarily through famine and disease. [...]"

"Rwanda: Jean Mpambara's Acquittal Enrages Residents"
By Paul Ntambara
The New Times (Kigali) (on AllAfrica.com), 16 September 2006
"Residents of the former Rukara commune have expressed disappointment over the acquittal of the former burgomaster of the commune, Jean Mpambara by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha. Various people who talked to The New Times expressed shock over his release. Jean de Dieu Byirigiro, a member of the killing mobs at the time of the Genocide who has since confessed his role said that the ICTR's decision is unfortunate and lacks facts on the ground. 'The court's judgement is not only bad for justice and rule of law especially to the survivors of genocide but also a disappointment to the truth. I know very well that he participated in the killing of people from his commune. I remember Mpambara vividly well; he brought with him grenades to one Gachumbtsi. We offloaded them and kept them until late in the evening when they were used to kill people who had camped in Karubanda church,' Byirigiro disclosed. Byirigiro who also testified against Mpambara in Arusha, noted that it was puzzling how Mpambara could be allowed to walk away scot-free, yet there is authenticated evidence implicating him in the killings. 'Mpambara encouraged us to commit genocide. People easily believed him given his status as a leader in the area. After carrying out the killings, he would buy us beer and meat which we feasted on,' Byirigiro further revealed, adding that those who testified against Mpambara are being taunted by his relatives. 'His relatives have confronted me saying that my testimonies have yielded no fruit. That I betrayed a fellow Hutu,' he pointed out. [...]"

SUDAN/DARFUR

"Decision for Darfur Peacekeepers"
BBC Online, 20 September 2006
"President Omar al-Bashir has reiterated his opposition to any United Nations force being deployed in Darfur saying it was part of a 'Zionist plot.' But Sudan's leader said he would allow African Union troops to stay on and may accept 'non-African' advisers. AU leaders, including Mr Bashir, are to meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York to decide on the future of its Darfur force. More than two million people have been displaced in the three-year rebellion. The UN Security Council passed a resolution last month calling for the deployment of up to 20,000 UN peacekeepers to replace the 7,000-strong AU force whose mandate expires at the end of the month. The UN wants to send a full international peacekeeping operation to end what some governments, including the United States, have called genocide perpetrated by the Sudanese army and its associated militias. President Bashir, who is part of the AU security council, said he 'totally rejected' the UN taking over peacekeeping in Darfur, although his government is split with African members from the SPLM and SLA backing the plan. [...]"

"Sorry George Clooney, But the Last Thing Darfur Needs is Western Troops"
By Jonathan Steele
The Guardian, 19 September 2006
"An air of unreality, if not cant, surrounds the latest upsurge of calls for UN troops to go into Sudan's western region of Darfur. The actor George Clooney takes to the stage at the UN security council, pleading for action. Tony Blair seizes on the issue to write letters to fellow EU leaders. In cities around the world protesters hold a 'global day for Darfur' to warn of looming genocide. Is it really possible that western governments, in spite of being burned by their interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, would use force against another Muslim state? ... In most wars, governments spin and the media (at least sometimes) seek the truth. Darfur reversed the trend: the media spun while governments were more sophisticated. In spite of efforts to describe the killing in Darfur as genocide, neither the UN nor the EU went along with this description. It was not because of moral myopia, but because they understood the difference between a brutal civil war and a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. Darfur is not Rwanda. Only the US accepted the genocide description, though this seemed a concession to domestic lobbies rather than a matter of conviction. Washington never followed through with the forcible intervention in Darfur that international law requires once a finding of genocide is made. [...]"

"As Peace Mission Nears End, War in Sudan Intensifies"
By Craig Timberg
The Washington Post, 18 September 2006 [Registration Required]
"[...] Speaking on condition of anonymity, the African Union officers muttered angrily about their failure to enforce calm while expressing greater fears. They used the words 'genocide' and 'Rwanda' to describe what they expect will follow their departure. Outside analysts also say that the African Union, while ineffective at peacekeeping, is serving as vital eyes and ears for the outside world at a time when the Sudanese government is making it more difficult for aid groups and journalists to operate here. With the African Union gone, they say, the last buffer will be lost against a bloodier assault in Darfur. 'All predictions are that without witnesses, the slaughter will begin,' said Eric Reeves, a Smith College professor who has closely monitored the Darfur conflict, speaking from Northampton, Mass. 'As long as the A.U. stays in, they are powerless but they are witnesses.' The African Union pullout would come shortly before the end of the rainy season, when flooded dirt roads typically dry out, allowing full-scale military maneuvering to resume after many weeks of limited mobility for both sides. John Prendergast, an Africa analyst for the International Crisis Group, said the United States and the United Nations have allowed the Sudanese government to outmaneuver them diplomatically. He acknowledged that the United Nations would have trouble deploying troops over the objections of the government but said tougher actions would persuade officials to allow the peacekeepers. [...]"

"President May Withdraw Deadline for African Union Peacekeepers to Leave"
By Jonathan Steele
The Guardian, 18 September 2006
"Sudan is expected to withdraw its deadline for African Union peacekeepers to leave the war-torn western region of Darfur at the end of this month, when AU foreign ministers discuss the mounting crisis in New York today, according to senior officials in Khartoum. Sudanese president Omar al Bashir's ultimatum for an AU troop pull-out threatened to leave the huge area with no international monitors and provoke a major escalation of a three-year war which has already left a quarter of a million people dead. ... Led by the United States, the UN security council has called for international forces to replace the AU troops with better equipment and a stronger mandate. Although the resolution says the troops require the consent of Sudan's government, President Bush hinted at the weekend that they should go in regardless. 'What you'll hear is, well, the government of Sudan must invite the United Nations in for us to act. Well, there are other alternatives, like passing a UN resolution saying we're coming in with a UN force in order to save lives,' he said. [...]"

"Little Support for Refugees on Streets of London"
By Paul Lewis
The Guardian, 18 September 2006
"Seventeen-year-old Mousa Abkar fled his scorched village in Darfur to a safe haven in Barnsley, hidden for 21 days alone in the hull of a container ship. The rest of his family had been killed or lost following an attack by the Janjaweed militia last year. Yesterday his struggle in the face of adversity remained solitary in one sense, as he set out on a fresh leg of his journey in exile -- a brisk walk from the Sudanese embassy in London to Downing Street. For support was sparse for Mousa and his fellow refugees during the global day for Darfur march in London. Hundreds of Sudanese refugees took part -- all wearing smart blue berets in a symbolic call for UN peacekeepers to be allowed into the region to halt the genocide which, they say, will be inevitable if the African Union's 7,000 outgoing troops are not replaced. But take away the dark faces and glazed eyes of those who have recently fled the violence, and yesterday's protest -- coordinated with dozens of demonstrations around the world -- was reduced to a trickle. It seemed the endorsement of George Clooney and Tony Blair had failed to persuade more than a few Britons to give up their Sunday afternoon to march against 'the first genocide of the 21st century.' As demonstrators marched through central London to join religious leaders gathered in Whitehall to pray for an end to the conflict, some passers-by grimaced at the sight of closed roads. [...]"

"Protesters Around World Plead: Intervene in Darfur"
CNN.com, 17 September 2006
"Tens of thousands of demonstrators in cities around the world on Sunday demanded action to stop the killing in Darfur, Sudan. 'We are all here because everybody is fed up in watching no action on Darfur, while we have been watching rolling genocide,' former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told CNN from New York's Central Park. Organizers there said they were expecting tens of thousands of people. In addition to the United States, the 'Global Day for Action on Darfur' also took place in Canada and across Europe, Africa and Asia. Protesters gathered in London outside Prime Minister Tony Blair's residence, and in Rwanda and Cambodia, led by survivors of genocides there. The message: The United Nations should send peacekeepers into western Sudan, with or without its capital, Khartoum's, approval. This month, the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution for such a force to replace the African Union troops already there but said the force wouldn't be deployed until Sudan could be persuaded to accept it. To demonstrate support for the U.N.'s mandate, hundreds of demonstrators wore berets made from blue cloth, the material of the uniforms worn by U.N. peacekeepers. T-shirts read 'Stop Genocide' and 'Never Again.' 'The international community has really not done enough,' Albright said. 'So today is a day where there are people all over the world putting their voices together to say that Sudan has a last chance to be on the right side of this. Or forever be on the wrong side,' Albright said. [...]"

"In Pictures: Darfur Rallies"
BBC Online, 17 September 2006

"Bush Hints at Use of Force in Darfur"
By Steve Bloomfield
The Independent, 17 September 2006
"Diplomatic pressure on Sudan to allow 20,000 UN peacekeepers into the Darfur region was mounting last night, with President George Bush threatening to ignore Khartoum's refusal to allow the force in. Mr. Bush suggested that the world body would simply send troops 'in order to save lives.' Britain also upped the rhetoric, promising a 'carrot and stick' approach to solving the three-year crisis, which has seen about 300,000 black Africans killed and 2.5 million displaced. But Sudan remained defiant, with the President, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, yesterday rejecting UN peacekeepers under any circumstances. 'We have met with [UN Secretary General] Kofi Annan and ... clarified in detail that we reject the decision of the Security Council,' he said at the Non-Aligned summit in Havana. Writing in today's Independent on Sunday, the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, calls for 'concerted international action to bring a change of mind and actions from the government of Sudan' -- although he stopped short of suggesting a UN force should go in without Sudan's approval. The Conservatives called on Britain and the UN to 'hit them [Sudan's leaders] where it matters: their money.' The Tory international development spokesman, Andrew Mitchell, said: 'Freeze their Swiss bank accounts and ... let them know that if they step outside Sudan they will be packed off to The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity.' [...]"

"Have We the Will to Use Force to Save the People of Darfur?"
By Mary Riddell
The Observer, 17 September 2006
"[...] There is now the spectre of a reprise of Rwanda and of death on such an extravagant scale that the world cannot stand by. The point of armed intervention is not here yet, but it might be. Once, only all-out ethnic cleansing obliged the international community to act. Now the semantics of genocide have been superseded. A year ago today, the UN pledged to act against regimes that failed to protect their citizens. That does not necessarily imply a Chapter Seven resolution and military action, but it does lower the gold standard of intervention. Darfur is the test case. Invasion is the final, and unloveliest, resort. The janjaweed has grown from 500 to 200,000 in two decades and occupying armies have no recent record of securing peace. But, at the least, Bashir must know that, in extremis, the world would not offer imprimaturs to a bloodbath. Once, the Prime Minister would have been the first evangelist for such a mission. No doubt he secretly still is. Those close to Downing Street do not rule out the need for armed force if catastrophe hits Darfur. But how, Blair must wonder privately, could Britain muster more troops? How could Nato, when it can barely scratch together a back-up force in Afghanistan? Would the US conceivably weigh in, as it did when Europe -- and UN peacekeepers -- failed to stop genocide in the Balkans? And how would he ever sell a war against a Muslim regime to an Arab League that detests his foreign policy? [...]"

"Dallaire Says Canada Should Take Leadership Role to Aid, Heal Darfur"
Canadian Press dispatch in The Brandon Sun, 17 September 2006
"Canada must mobilize money and troops, and lead an international effort to end the violence in Darfur, Senator Romeo Dallaire said Sunday at a rally to protest the bloodshed in the Sudanese region. Dallaire, who as a Canadian general, led the ill-fated United Nations mission to Rwanda, said Darfur could turn into another Rwanda if action isn't taken soon. 'Darfur is tasting, smelling, looking in every way, shape or form, like a repetition on a similar scale of what happened in Rwanda 12 years ago,' he said. 'We are going to witness again, with blood on our hands, the destruction of human beings who are exactly like us.' He said the government should send money, troops, equipment and humanitarian aid to the region as part of an emergency relief plan. Equally important, Dallaire said Canada should use its position 'as a leading middle power in the world' to encourage talks between Sudan's government and the African Union, which has been providing peacekeepers to the troubled country. Rally organizer Justin Trudeau, son of the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau, also called on Ottawa to act, saying Darfur is at a tipping point. ... 'Canada has coasted a long time on its reputation as peacekeeper,' said Trudeau to a large crowd of mostly youths. 'But now we need to follow up with a commitment to protect.' [...]"

"Darfur: Waiting for the Slaughter"
By Paul Vallely
The Independent, 16 September 2006
"[...] An end is in sight for the Darfur camps -- where at least 300,000 black African farmers have been slaughtered by the Khartoum government and its Arab proxies, the Janjaweed militia, whose name means 'devils on horseback.' One of those who died was Rasha's husband, Adam. It could be an end so terrifying, it defies the imagination. The fear is that the rest of Adam Ibrahim Adam's family -- and many of the two million people of the Fur, Massaleit or Zaghawa tribes in the camps -- may soon perish too. The 7,000 troops of the African Union, who have been desperately trying to protect the camps, have been told by Khartoum they must leave Darfur at the end of this month when their mandate runs out. Sudan has defied a UN resolution that mandated an improved 20,000-strong blue-hatted UN force to take over. Instead, it is sending 10,000 of its own troops to the region for what human rights observers fear will be a brutal 'final solution.' In a situation already described by the UN as the 'world's worst humanitarian disaster' the genocide so long denied by the Arab government in Khartoum may be about to happen. 'We're on the brink of a massive catastrophe,' said one senior Western diplomat yesterday. 'If there is no Plan B for Darfur, all-out genocide is highly likely,' said James Smith, chief executive of the Aegis Trust, which is co-ordinating a worldwide protest that will take place in 32 countries tomorrow. [...]"

"Darfur 'Regional Security Threat'"
BBC Online, 16 September 2006
"The head of the UN refugee agency says the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region could have a devastating impact on the peace and security of the region. In a BBC interview, Antonio Guterres described Darfur as the 'epicentre of a major earthquake.' Earlier UK PM Tony Blair urged Sudan's government to stop military action in the area and allow in a UN force. The remarks come ahead of a day of action on Sunday to raise awareness of the region's plight. In 2003, ethnic violence erupted between pro-government Arab militia and black Africans -- who make up the majority of the region's population. Since then, tens of thousands of people have died and as many as two million have been displaced. Mr. Guterres said instability resulting from the Darfur conflict was spreading into Sudan's neighbours, Chad and the Central African Republic. 'I would say you must look at Darfur not only in itself, but as the epicentre of a major earthquake in the area that can have a devastating impact not only on peace and security but also terrible humanitarian consequences,' he told the BBC. [...]"

"Clooney Warns of 'Holocaust' in Sudan"
ITV News, 15 September 2006
"Hollywood actor George Clooney has called for a United Nations peacekeeping force to be sent to crisis-torn Sudan. Clooney urged UN countries to act more forcefully in the Darfur region where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or made homeless. At a meeting hosted by US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, Clooney and human rights activist Elie Wiesel called the humanitarian crisis in the region 'genocide' and warned that Darfur could become another Rwanda. The urged the UN to send in peacekeeping forces to the region with or without the Sudanese government's permission. Clooney said: 'In the time that we are here today, more women and children will die violently in the Darfur region than in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel or Lebanon.' He urged the UN to take concrete action soon, since the mandate of the African Union force that is currently on the ground there will expire at the end of this month. 'So after September 30th, you won't need the UN,' he said. 'You will simply need men with shovels and bleached white linen and headstones. In many ways it's unfair but it is nevertheless true that this genocide will be on your watch. How you deal with it will be your legacy -- your Rwanda, your Cambodia, your Auschwitz. We were brought up to believe that the UN was formed to ensure that the Holocaust could never happen again."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

"A Grim Calculation"
By Tony Dokoupil
Newsweek, 14 September 2006
"Sociologist John Hagan completed his book 'Justice in the Balkans,' a critical look at the Hague Tribunal and war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, just as violence erupted in Sudan's western province of Darfur in 2003. Now more than three years later, the Northwestern University professor has turned to correcting historical errors in real time. His study, coauthored with University of Wisconsin professor Alberto Palloni and to be published tomorrow in the journal Science, provides the first rigorous estimate of the death toll in Darfur. The two scientists found that 200,000 to 400,000 people have died since violence began, rather than the tens of thousands widely reported in the media. ... To arrive at their tally, Hagan and Palloni drew on a wide range of previous studies and surveys performed in West Darfur. These include the World Health Organization's survey of people in displacement camps, pulled together in 2004 with the cooperation of the Sudanese Ministry of Health, surveys from Médecins Sans Frontières and other studies by the U.S. State Department and the United Nations. The scientists estimate that 1 million people have been displaced in West Darfur alone. [...]"
[n.b. Most of this story is an interview with Hagan.]

TURKEY/ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

"Turkey, a Touchy Critic, Plans to Put a Novel on Trial"
By Susanne Fowler
The New York Times, 15 September 2006 [Registration Required]
"'If there is a thief in a novel,' said Elif Shafak recently, 'it doesn't make the novelist a thief.' Yet, Ms. Shafak is due in court here on Sept. 21 to defend herself against charges that she insulted 'Turkishness' because a character in her latest novel, 'The Bastard of Istanbul,' refers to the deaths of Armenians in 1915 as genocide. Ms. Shafak, a Turkish citizen who was born in Strasbourg, France, is being sued under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, the same law that ensnared Turkey's best-known contemporary author, Orhan Pamuk, in 2005. She is scheduled to give birth to her first child the week of the trial. A conviction carries a possible penalty of up to three years in jail. The plaintiffs are vocal nationalists who she says oppose the government's efforts to gain admission for Turkey, the only member of NATO with a largely Muslim population, into the European Union. 'I believe they want to derail the E.U. process because that would change many things in the structure of the state and the fabric of Turkish society,' Ms. Shafak, an assistant professor of Near Eastern studies at the University of Arizona, said in an interview. 'They would rather have an insular, enclosed, xenophobic society than an open society.' [...]"

UGANDA

"Uganda: Nation in Crisis Thanks to Divisive Regime"
Olara A. Otunnu
AllAfrica.com, 19 September 2006
"The government of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have agreed to end two decades of hostilities in the northern part of the country. This is good news. But, only serious international pressure can ensure that the Juba talks progress into a definite peace. The regime of Youweri Museveni has invested massively in a campaign of deception and disinformation, aimed at concealing a methodical and comprehensive genocide in northern Uganda, conceived and conducted by the government. A carefully scripted narrative is being promoted, according to which the catastrophe in northern Uganda begins with the LRA and will end with their demise. ... The LRA has been responsible for atrocities, including massacres, maiming and the abduction of some 25,000 children, for which its leadership must be held fully accountable. However, the LRA factor has been cynically manipulated to divert attention from and conceal the unfolding genocide. ... Over the last 20 years, a population of almost 2 million, from Acoli, Lango and Teso regions, have been forced by the government into concentration camps, defined by disease and death, humiliation and despair, overcrowding and malnutrition, and appalling sanitation. It must be stressed that the majority did not flee their homes to seek refuge in government 'safe havens.' These populations were uprooted from their homes and lands by the government, in operations marked by systematic bombing, burning, and killing. Today 95% of the Acoli population is in these camps. [...]"

"Uganda Peace Hinges on Amnesty for Brutality"
By Jeffrey Gettleman
The New York Times, 15 September 2006 [Registration Required]
"[...] The victims of this war are so desperate to put the nightmarish days behind them that they want to forgive, just as much as they want to forget. Typical is Christa Labol, whose ears and lips were cut off by bayonet-wielding prepubescent soldiers she now says she would welcome home. 'Only God can judge,' Mrs. Labol said through a mouth that is always open. Of course, the rebels are not out of the bush yet. Many still hide in a remote, lawless corner of northern Congo. Some people wonder if Mr. Kony, who has told his troops he is possessed by spirits, will ever give up. Mr. Kony has said he will but only if he is not prosecuted. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Mr. Kony and four of his commanders. Ugandan government officials have said they will ensure that the rebels get amnesty if they surrender. But the rebels have said the amnesty must come first. It is an impasse that possibly only the international court can break, but the court, established in 1998, has not indicated what it will do. 'We've never had such a situation,' said Claudia Perdomo, a court spokeswoman. The Acholi people have their own solution. It is the mataput -- the word means drinking a bitter root from a common cup -- and it is a traditional reconciliation ceremony. Peace is more important than punishment, Acholi elders say, and they would rather have Mr. Kony return to Gulu for a mataput than rot in some European prison. Although the fighting may be over, it seems a new battle has begun: tradition versus modernity. [...]"

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ISSUE: ANTI-SEMITISM

"Yale Creates Center To Study Anti-Semitism"
By John Christofferson
Associated Press dispatch in The Hartford Courant, 19 September 2006
"Citing growing anti-Semitism around the world, Yale University said today it has created the first university-based center in North America dedicated to the study of anti-Semitism. The Yale Initiative for Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism will provide a forum for scholars to research contemporary causes of anti-Semitism and ways to combat it, said Charles Small, the center's director. The center plans to offer courses, conferences and seminars, but it is too soon to say whether there will be a degree program, he said. 'Anti-Semitism has re-emerged internationally in a manner that many leading scholars and policymakers take seriously,' Small said. 'Because of this, there is a need to establish a high-caliber, interdisciplinary, nonpartisan, scholarly institute, so that students and faculty can engage these issues fully.' In a report last year, New York-based Human Rights First said racist and anti-Semitic violence was up dramatically in much of Europe. In Britain, for instance, anti-Semitic personal assaults doubled in 2004 over the previous year, said the organization, formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. [...]"

ISSUE: CAPITALISM/STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE

"On India's Despairing Farms, a Plague of Suicide"
By Somini Sengupta
The New York Times, 19 September 2006 [Registration Required]
"Here in the center of India, on a gray Wednesday morning, a cotton farmer swallowed a bottle of pesticide and fell dead at the threshold of his small mud house. The farmer, Anil Kondba Shende, 31, left behind a wife and two small sons, debts that his family knew about only vaguely and a soggy, ruined 3.5-acre patch of cotton plants that had been his only source of income. Whether it was debt, shame or some other privation that drove Mr. Shende to kill himself rests with him alone. But his death was by no means an isolated one, and in it lay an alarming reminder of the crisis facing the Indian farmer. Across the country in desperate pockets like this one, 17,107 farmers committed suicide in 2003, the most recent year for which government figures are available. Anecdotal reports suggest that the high rates are continuing. ... Changes brought on by 15 years of economic reforms have opened Indian farmers to global competition and given them access to expensive and promising biotechnology, but not necessarily opened the way to higher prices, bank loans, irrigation or insurance against pests and rain. ... Frustration is building in India with American multinational companies peddling costly, genetically modified seeds. They have made deep inroads in rural India -- a vast and alluring market -- bringing new opportunities but also new risks as Indian farmers pile up debt. ... 'The suicides are an extreme manifestation of some deep-seated problems which are now plaguing our agriculture,' said M. S. Swaminathan, the geneticist who was the scientific leader of India's Green Revolution 40 years ago and is now chairman of the National Commission on Farmers. 'They are climatic. They are economic. They are social.' [...]"

ISSUE: MIGRATION

"Immigrant Deaths on U.S.-Mexican Border Double"
Reuters dispatch in The Toronto Star, 15 September 2006
"The number of illegal immigrants dying while trying to cross the Mexican border to enter the United States has almost doubled since the late-1990s, according to the report by the investigative arm of Congress. Most died in Arizona because increased border security in urban areas in California and Texas forced immigrants to take the dangerous route across the state's desert, according to the General Accounting Office, or GAO. The number of deaths reached 472 last year, compared with 241 deaths in 1999, the study showed, and there was a sharp increase in the number of women and children dying, probably because it is becoming harder for men to cross and bring their families later. 'They are still a small number, but (I guess) more often people are bringing their families because they're planning to stay,' Laurie Ekstrand, director for Homeland Security and Justice at GAO, said Friday. 'It's becoming harder to come and go.' The Tucson, Arizona, section of the border, where immigrants spend days walking through the hot desert and risk dehydration, accounted for nearly half of all deaths recorded along the border in 2005. 'Many migrants suffer severe dehydration and heat exhaustion as a result of attempting to cross the desert where temperatures can exceed (46C) in the summer,' the report said. The GAO study analyzed data compiled from the Border Patrol's Border Safety Initiative, the National Center for Health Statistics and state registries of deaths on the border between 1985 and 2005. While immigrant deaths almost doubled in the 10-year period, there was no corresponding doubling of illegal immigrant entries, the report said."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

ISSUE: THE "WAR ON TERROR"

"The Prisoners Speak"
By Jonathan Raban
The New York Review of Books, issue of 6 October 2006
"Most moviegoers whom I've watched leaving the cinema after seeing 'The Road to Guantánamo' have been wordless and whey-faced, numbed, as I was, by the film's distressingly vivid recreation of brutal interrogations in the American detention camp on Cuba's south coast (sequences that were filmed on location in—of all places—Iran). It takes a while to realize that one has witnessed something more than a shocking indictment of the peculiar institution of Guantánamo Bay. Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross's drama-documentary, a deliberately confusing medley of fact (interviews, news footage) and fictional devices (lavishly filmed reenactments), also has the great merit of exposing the special fog of 'asymmetric' as opposed to conventional warfare. Grueling as it is to watch, and it's the most protracted ninety-minute movie I've ever seen, it is packed with sly insights into Bush's 'long war,' hitherto known as the global war on terror. [...]"

"Canada, US Blamed for Sending Innocent Man to Torturers"
By Ian Austen
The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 September 2006
"A commission of inquiry has cleared a Canadian computer engineer of any links to terrorism and blamed Canada and the US for deporting him to Syria, where he was jailed and tortured. The commission's report, published on Monday, was the result of a 2½-year inquiry that represented one of the first public investigations into mistakes made as part of the US's program of secretly spiriting suspects to foreign countries for interrogation and torture. The report said US officials had acted on inaccurate information from Canadian investigators that Maher Arar was a dangerous radical and that he and his wife, a university economist, should be placed on an al-Qaeda watchlist. US authorities seized Mr. Arar after he landed in New York on his way home from a holiday in Tunisia. The US flew him in a government aircraft to Jordan, then transported him to Syria. 'I am able to say categorically there is no evidence to indicate Mr. Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada,' said the commission's head, Justice Dennis O'Connor. The report's findings could reverberate heavily through the leadership of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which handled the initial intelligence on Mr Arar. The US Government refused to co-operate in the inquiry. [...]"

"President's Incitements to Commit Genocide"
By Liaquat Ali Khan
Baltimore Chronicle, 19 September 2006
"On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, President George Walker Bush delivered an illegal speech and may have committed an international crime, that is, the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide of a religious group. Determined to rally disbelieving Americans behind a failed Iraqi war, the President drifted into calling for open-ended violence against Muslims. Says the President: 'The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century, and the calling of our generation.' The President identifies 'this enemy' as Muslim extremists. The 9/11 speech is one among many through which the President has engaged, and continues to engage, in direct and public incitements to commit violence and other crimes against Muslims as a religious group. ... The incitement to genocide is a verbal attempt to exhort, persuade, encourage, and provoke the audience and troops to killing members of the target group. Part of the incitement is to dehumanize the target group, showing through words that the target group is subhuman, a threat, dangerous, and worthless. The President paints the target religious group as 'dangerous enemies,' one that is 'driven by a perverted vision of Islam,' that espouses 'hateful ideology,' that 'will not leave us alone,' that 'will follow us,' and one that will use 'the weapons of mass destruction.' These descriptions of the target group cause fear, anger, and arousal, urging the audience and troops to do something, including killings. Since the group is defined in a broad manner, the incitement to kill provides no specifics. It cultivates combat and preemption through any means necessary, including physical elimination of the group. [...]"
[n.b. The author is "a professor of law at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas."]

"U.S. War Prisons Legal Vacuum for 14,000"
By Patrick Quinn
Associated Press dispatch on Truthout.org, 16 September 2006
"In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law. Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. Supreme Court. But the bitterest words come from inside the system, the size of several major U.S. penitentiaries. 'It was hard to believe I'd get out,' Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi told The Associated Press after his release -- without charge -- last month. 'I lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I was living in hell.' Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in Iraq. Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were 'mistakes,' U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross. ... Human rights groups count dozens of detainee deaths for which no one has been punished or that were never explained. The secret prisons -- unknown in number and location -- remain available for future detainees. The new manual banning torture doesn't cover CIA interrogators. And thousands of people still languish in a limbo, deprived of one of common law's oldest rights, habeas corpus, the right to know why you are imprisoned. [...]"