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
"'Dirty War' Defendant's Family Detained"
Associated Press dispatch on MSNBC.com, 14 December 2007
"Police have detained the wife and two children of a former coast guard officer who died in custody while facing a dictatorship-era human rights trial, hours after an autopsy found cyanide in the man's blood, a judge said Friday. Hector Febres, 66, who was accused of kidnapping and torturing dissidents during the past military dictatorship, died in his cell at a navy brig Monday, four days before an expected verdict in his high-profile trial. Autopsy results showed Febres had cyanide in his bloodstream at the time of his death. Federal Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado said that she had ordered the detention of two officers in charge of the navy brig, in addition to the family members. The judge's office did not explain the reason for the detentions, which came hours after the release of autopsy results. Authorities said they had not immediately determined if Febres poisoned himself. Febres, who was facing life in prison on charges related to the disappearance and torture of four people during the dictatorship's 'Dirty War' crackdown on dissent, was the first suspect tried for abuse at the notorious Navy Mechanics' School, the largest prison camp of the 1976-1983 junta. During his trial, Argentine prosecutors characterized Febres as a fierce torturer. His defense team insisted he was innocent. Jailers found Febres dead in his cell before breakfast on Monday. [...]"
"Argentina's New President Fernandez Pledges to Speed Up Genocide Trials"
Associated Press dispatch in The New Zealand Herald, 12 December 2007
"Cristina Fernandez was sworn in yesterday as Argentina's first elected female President, completing a rare husband-wife transfer of power as she promised to keep the nation's economic recovery moving forward. Fernandez, whose husband is credited with leading Argentina out of its 2001-2002 economic meltdown, vowed to deepen the centre-left economic programmes of outgoing President Nestor Kirchner, create jobs and reduce high poverty levels. During her hour-long inaugural speech, Fernandez's voice rose in anger as she demanded that dozens of slow-moving court investigations of human rights abuses of the 1976-83 dictatorship be speeded up. 'I expect that in the four years of my term, trials that have been delayed more than 30 years will be concluded. We must try to punish those who were responsible for the greatest genocide in modern Argentine history,' she said. Nearly 13,000 people are officially listed as missing or dead. Fernandez's main challenge will be to prolong an economic recovery that has seen annual growth rates above 8 per cent in recent years."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA/INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS
"Bosnian War General Jailed for 33 Years"
By Alexandra Hudson
The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 December 2007
"The United Nations tribunal in The Hague has sentenced a former Bosnian Serb general to 33 years in jail for ordering the deadly shelling of Sarajevo and terrorising its civilians during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. Judges yesterday found Dragomir Milosevic guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity that include responsibility for terror, murder and indiscriminate attacks on civilians by troops of his Sarajevo Romanija Corps unit of the Bosnian Serb Army. 'The evidence presents an horrific tale of the encirclement and entrapment of a city and its bombardment,' Judge Patrick Robinson said. Milosevic became commander of the corps in August 1994, taking over from Stanislav Galic, a former Bosnian Serb general already sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the siege. Judge Robinson said modified air bombs, highly inaccurate weapons, were first used under Milosevic's command. 'Each time a modified air bomb was launched, the accused was playing with the lives of the citizens of Sarajevo.' Prosecutors had demanded life imprisonment for the 65-year-old. Sarajevo's plight became synonymous with the Bosnian war, with television images of sniper and shell fire raining down on the city's mainly Muslim population from the steep surrounding hills broadcast around the world. In one infamous attack, in August 1995, 43 people were killed and 75 wounded when a mortar shell hit people queuing for bread at the city market. ... Research by the Sarajevo-based Investigation-Documentation Centre has found about 14,000 people were killed in the Sarajevo area during the war. Of these, more than 10,000 -- mostly Muslims -- were killed in the Muslim-held part of Sarajevo. [...]"
CHINA/JAPAN/NANJING MASSACRE
"In Japan, Denial over Nanjing Still Holds Sway after 70 Years"
By Takehiko Kambayashi
The Christian Science Monitor, 14 December 2007
"[...] During the Rape of Nanjing, as the event is generally known, 300,000 people were killed, 20,000 women raped, and the city ravaged, say Chinese authorities. But 70 years after Japanese soldiers took the then-Chinese capital on Dec. 13, 1937, battles over everything from numbers of casualties to the extent of the brutality in the six weeks after the Japanese marched in remain a point of contention. Japan has not, in its neighbors' eyes, fully addressed past wrongs -- the result, say some experts, of a postwar lack of examination of the emperor's wartime role; an often-disdainful attitude toward Korea and China, which Japan occupied; and a lack of broad public awareness of wartime history. In March, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied the military's involvement in wartime sexual slavery, triggering an international uproar. In June, some 100 lawmakers of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said that the number of those killed by Japanese troops during the Nanjing Massacre was closer to 20,000. Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 war criminals are memorialized with the rest of Japan's war dead, infuriated China and Korea, as have textbooks that experts say whitewash atrocities. A vocal minority continues to go further in Japan. 'I'm sure that there were absolutely no Japanese soldiers' assaults on Chinese civilians,' says Masaru Naya, a former senior officer, at the Yasukuni meeting. Heidayu Kondo, a captain of the infantry regiment, said it was calm in the city, as did Tomeji Kita, an 89-year-old former infantry corporal. Countering that view can be challenging. Akinori Fukuda is a leader of the Association of No More Nanjings, a Tokyo-based civic group that invited two Chinese victims to speak earlier this month and showed the not-yet-released independent film 'Closed Memories' at the event, in which some Japanese soldiers acknowledge atrocities. He notes the lack of interest. 'No media came here to report,' he says. 'There were no TV cameras.' [...]"
"As Victims Still Mourn, China Marks 70 Years since Rape of Nanking"
By Tim Johnson
Yahoo! News, 12 December 2007
"Seven decades after Japanese soldiers poured through the old city walls of Nanjing, launching a six-week killing spree known as the Nanjing Massacre, the memories are still raw for Zhang Xiuhong. 'I really hate the Japanese,' Zhang said, dissolving into tears. 'I have repeated this thousands of times. I really, really hate them.' Now 81, Zhang was only 11 during the infamous Japanese rampage, a seizure so violent that it's also known as the Rape of Nanking, the city's former name. For Zhang, that's an accurate description, for she, too, was raped. China this week marks the 70th anniversary of the massacre, reopening the Memorial Hall to the Victims after a two-year $33 million face-lift. But China treads a fine line as it promotes condemnation of the massacre while trying to protect trade and diplomatic relations with Japan, which are on the mend after years of severe stress. When the renovated memorial is unveiled Thursday, no senior leader of the central government is likely to attend. News coverage in China will be muted. Chinese officials say they've rebuilt the memorial not to evoke bitterness and anti-Japanese sentiment but to honor history and help forge a path to lasting peace. ... This year's anniversary coincides with renewed global interest in the Nanjing Massacre. About 10 movies and documentaries -- produced in Germany, the United States, Japan and China -- are being filmed, in post-production or already in cinemas. How the new focus on Japan's wartime atrocities will play out is of keen interest in Tokyo and Beijing. Anti-Japanese riots erupted in several Chinese cities in 2005, chilling relations. Many in Japan saw the hand of China's ruling Communist leaders behind the riots, seeking to promote their own legitimacy with nationalism. [...]"
"Giving Testimony on the Horror That Was Nanking" (movie review)
By Stephen Holden
The New York Times, 12 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"'Nanking' is a swift, incisive documentary about one of the lesser-known horrors of the 20th century: the 1937 Japanese invasion of the Chinese city now called Nanjing, where more than 200,000 civilians and prisoners of war were slaughtered in a matter of weeks. The capital of the Republic of China at the start of World War II and the headquarters of the Chiang Kai-shek government, this attractive, cosmopolitan city of parks and thoroughfares was largely destroyed in what is known as the rape of Nanking. Though some Japanese scholars dispute the statistics determined after the war by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, it is widely agreed that during the occupation in 1937 and 1938, more than 20,000 rapes were also committed by the rampaging Japanese Army. In its concentrated savagery, the catastrophe was comparable to the even more numerous mass murders in Rwanda in 1994. The film, directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, has the format of a mixed-media theater piece. Interwoven with rare, vintage news clips of the city's bombing, invasion and occupation are readings by actors from journals and letters kept by the few Westerners who remained in the city during the siege. Additional grisly firsthand recollections by now elderly Chinese survivors and Japanese soldiers tell a story that has become painfully familiar in the age of information overload: a collective fever of blood lust can lead to a kind of mass insanity in which the rules of civilized behavior are suspended. ... What makes the film bearable is the knowledge that a few people did what they could to hold the line against humanity's worst instincts. The voices in 'Nanking' speak for the persistence of good in times and places where a moral crevice opens to reveal a vision of hell on earth."
"Nanking" (movie review)
By Michelle Orange
The Village Voice, 11 December 2007
"December 13 marks the 70th anniversary of the Japanese invasion of Nanking, at that time the capital of China, and the atrocities that followed; Iris Chang chronicled these events (200,000 murders and more than 20,000 rapes within the first six weeks of the occupation) in The Rape of Nanking. Chang's 2005 suicide at the age of 36 spurred businessman Ted Leonsis to fund the production of Nanking, Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman's documentary on the subject. Focusing on a group of foreigners living in Nanking at the time of the invasion who formed a 'Safety Zone' for the Chinese too poor to flee the city, Guttentag and Sturman intersperse readings by actors (including Woody Harrelson and Mariel Hemingway) of letters from the time with wrenching testimonials from Chinese survivors and archival footage. Most of the foreigners were Christian missionaries, with the notable exception of John Rabe, a German and Hitler devotee: 'There's a question of morality here,' he wrote, explaining his decision to stay put, 'and so far I haven't been able to sidestep it.' When a Nazi's ethical core is pricked, attention should be paid. But it wasn't, the film reminds us, and one can't help but think of current corollaries and the documentaries to come: While the footage and survivors of Nanking are gray and decaying, its unbearable story is not something out of the past; the evil and ignorance it describes are alive and thriving today."
CUBA/SPAIN/GENOCIDE TRIBUNALS
"Spanish Court Rejects Lawsuit against Fidel Castro"
Antara News dispatch, 14 December 2007
"Spain's top anti-terrorism court Thursday rejected a complaint filed by Cuban dissidents against Cuban President Fidel Castro and former tourism minister Osmani Cienfuegos for genocide, terrorism and torture. The same complaint had earlier been rejected several times, the National Court said. The Committee of Help to Dissent 2506 accused Castro and Cienfuegos of crimes against humanity. The complaint was based on the deaths of nine participants in the US-fuelled Bay of Pigs invasion attempt in 1961. The nine were caught and died of suffocation inside a lorry transporting them to a prison in Havana. The dissidents accused Cienfuegos, who was also travelling on the lorry, and Castro of responsibility for the prisoners' fate. In 2005, the National Court rejected a similar complaint against Castro, Cienfuegos, Castro`s brother Raul and diplomat Carlos Amat. The case did not contain evidence of a genocide, a state could not be charged with terrorism, and the alleged torture could only be classified as degrading treatment, judge Ismael Moreno argued at the time. The dissidents refiled the complaint in the hope that Castro`s illness and partial incapacity to carry out his tasks would strip him of judicial immunity as head of state. The court, however, considered that Castro remained the Cuban head of state. The Spanish judiciary regards itself as competent to judge human-rights violations committed in other countries. The best-known such cases include the unsuccessful attempt by judge Baltasar Garzon to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, DPA reported."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
GERMANY/HOLOCAUST DENIAL
"Udo Voigt, Neo-Nazi, Questions Auschwitz Toll"
The Telegraph, 11 December 2007
"The leader of a far-Right party in Germany was facing a parliamentary inquiry last night after he questioned the number of Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis. Udo Voigt, the head of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), also demanded the return of land lost after the Second World War. 'Six million cannot be right. At most, 340,000 people could have died in Auschwitz,' he said in an interview with Iranian journalists. 'The Jews always say: "Even if one Jew died that is a crime." But of course it makes a difference whether one has to pay for six million people or for 340,000.' Conservative estimates put the number of dead at the camp at more than a million people. The comments will fuel a debate among German politicians about the funding of extremist parties with public money. The German constitution stipulates that all parties are to be treated equally. Sebastian Edathy, the head of the national parliament's internal affairs commission, said he would file a complaint against Mr. Voigt. The NDP, which the federal government has tried to ban, holds seats in regional parliaments in the eastern states of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania."
GREECE/HOLOCAUST DENIAL
"Greek Historian Convicted over Book Denying the Holocaust"
Associated Press dispatch in Haaretz.com, 13 December 2007
"A far-right Greek historian was sentenced to 14 months in prison Thursday for inciting racial hatred with a book that denies the Holocaust took place, court officials said. Historian Costas Plevris appealed his sentence and was not taken into custody. A three-member panel of judges voted 2-1 to find Plevris guilty of inciting violence and racial hatred. The court cleared three other defendants of similar charges: the publisher, the editor and a journalist at a small right-wing magazine that published extracts from the book. Greek Jewish community leaders had testified that Plevris' book The Jews: The whole truth has led to an increase in attacks on Jewish monuments in the country. Plevris protested to the court that his right to free speech had been violated. It was the first trial in Greece on the recently introduced incitement charges. An estimated 60,000 Greek Jews, most of the country's prewar Jewish population, were killed by the Nazis during World War II."
[n.b. this is the complete text of the dispatch.]
INDIA
"Religions in Conflict: India's State of War"
By Andrew Buncombe
The Independent, 7 December 2007
"[...] It has long been alleged that [Chief Minister Narendra] Modi and senior members of the BJP state government did nothing to prevent the violence that broke out in the spring of 2002. It was soon after the fire on board the Sabarmarti Express which broke out while the train was stopped at the city of Godhra. It was alleged that a Muslim mob deliberately started the fire after they got involved in an altercation with Hindus, but at least one government inquiry has concluded it was caused by a cooking-fire accident on board the train. In all, 58 pilgrims were killed -- among them 20 children -- and the train was gutted. The backlash began soon afterwards. In more than 150 towns and almost 1,000 villages, violence broke out, overwhelmingly as Hindus attacked Muslim communities. While there are also some reports of Muslims attacking Hindus, few dispute that most victims were members of the minority community that make up 10 per cent of the state's population. The official death toll said 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed, though a number of rights groups estimate the toll to have been double that. In the aftermath of the attacks the BJP government was widely condemned for not acting to prevent the killings. The Indian Supreme Court likened Mr Modi to a 'modern-day Nero' while the US government refused him a visa on the grounds that he had 'violated religious freedom.' A report by Human Rights Watch said state officials were involved. 'What happened was not a spontaneous uprising, it was a carefully orchestrated attack against Muslims," it said. "The attacks were planned in advance and organised with extensive participation of the police and state government officials.' Last month, the allegations got more serious. An undercover investigation in the news magazine Tehelka said Mr Modi explicitly approved of the 'pogrom' and helped to protect perpetrators. Using hidden video cameras, a reporter from the magazine filmed people allegedly involved in the planning and carrying-out of the killings. It quoted Haresh Batt, at the time the leader of a fundamentalist Hindu organisation, as saying: '[Modi] had given us three days to do whatever we could. He said he would not give us time after that. He said that openly. After three days he asked us to stop and everything came to a halt.' [...]"
IRAQ/VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
"Freedom Lost"
By Mark Lattimer
The Guardian, 13 December 2007
"They lie in the Sulaimaniyah hospital morgue in Iraqi Kurdistan, set out on white-tiled slabs. A few have been shot or strangled, some beaten to death, but most have been burned. One girl, a lock of hair falling across her half-closed eyes, could almost be on the point of falling asleep. Burns have stretched the skin on another young woman's face into a fixed look of surprise. These women are not casualties of battle. In fact, the cause of death is generally recorded as 'accidental,' although their bodies often lie unclaimed by their families. 'It is getting worse, especially the burnings,' says Khanim Rahim Latif, the manager of Asuda, an Iraqi organisation based in Kurdistan that works to combat violence against women. 'Just here in Sulaimaniyah, there were 400 cases of the burning of women last year.' Lack of electricity means that every house has a plentiful supply of oil, and she accepts that some cases may be accidents. But the nature and scale of the injuries suggest that most were deliberate, she says, handing me the morgue photographs of one young woman after another. Many of the bodies bear the unmistakable signs of having been subjected to intense heat. ... Even under Saddam, women in Iraq -- including in semi-autonomous Kurdistan -- were widely recognised as among the most liberated in the Middle East. They held important positions in business, education and the public sector, and their rights were protected by a statutory family law that was the envy of women's activists in neighbouring countries. But since the 2003 invasion, advances that took 50 years to establish are crumbling away. In much of the country, women can only now move around with a male escort. Rape is committed habitually by all the main armed groups, including those linked to the government. Women are being murdered throughout Iraq in unprecedented numbers. [...]"
"Basra's Murderous Militias Tell Christian Women to Cover Up or Face Death"
By Ali Hamdani and James Hider
The Times, 8 December 2007
"[...] In the past five months more than 40 women have been murdered and their bodies dumped in the street by militiamen, according to the Basra police chief. Major-General Abdul-Jalil Khalaf said that some of them had been killed alone, others gunned down with their children. One unveiled mother was murdered together with her children aged 6 and 11. The British Army will formally hand Basra over to Iraqi control in less than two weeks, claiming that it had done all it could to stabilise the southern port city during four years in charge. Yet as a tentative stability returns to Baghdad, where even alcohol shops are starting to reopen, Britain appears to be leaving Basra ever more firmly in the hands of lawless gangs and strict morality police. Messages are scrawled in graffiti warning women not to venture out without observing Islamic dress codes. 'Whoever disobeys will be punished. God is our witness that we have conveyed this message,' says one scrawled in red paint on a wall. A huge advert for mobile phones, featuring a mother and child, has been defaced to blot out the uncovered woman's head with the slogan 'No, no, to unveiled women' sprayed below. At the university, Sunni students complain of being harassed by Shia militias. Ahmed, a 19-year-old Sunni freshman, was told that he had to grow a beard but keep his hair short to adhere to Islamic norms. He said that boys and girls who try to sit next to each other will be told to stay apart and given a lecture on Islamic virtue. Self-appointed morality police, similar to the Bassiji who haunt students across the border in Iran, also grab people's mobile phones and scroll through them looking for 'immoral' video clips, music or pictures, Ahmed said. [...]"
"Refugees Caught Between Deportation and Death Threats"
By Ali al-Fadhily
IPSNews.net, 6 December 2007
"Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis driven out of their country by violence are now faced with detention abroad, or a homecoming to death threats. More than two million Iraqis, in a population of about 25 million, have taken refuge in many countries. Only a few have won official status as refugees. Most refugees in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and many other countries stay on as illegal residents, facing threats of deportation and imprisonment. 'To deport an Iraqi refugee is to issue a death warrant,' Ali Jassim, an Iraqi journalist recently deported from Lebanon told IPS in Baghdad. 'The Lebanese authorities are applying regular migration rules to Iraqis, meaning that most Iraqis in Lebanon will be deported.' The Human Rights Watch report titled 'Rot Here or Die There: Bleak Choices for Iraqi Refugees in Lebanon' released Dec. 4 says Lebanese authorities are arresting Iraqi refugees who have no valid visas, and detaining them indefinitely to coerce them to return to Iraq. 'Iraqi refugees in Lebanon live in constant fear of arrest,' Bill Frelick, refugee policy director for Human Rights Watch told reporters. 'Refugees who are arrested face the prospect of rotting in jail indefinitely unless they agree to return to Iraq and face the dangers there.' There are at least 40,000 Iraqi refugees in Lebanon, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Complaints of mistreatment by Lebanese authorities pushed many Iraqis to flee Lebanon for Syria earlier, but this is no longer possible. As of Oct. 1, the Syrian government requires Iraqis to obtain visas. The Iraqi refugees already in Syria are struggling. The World Food Programme (WFP) reported Dec. 4 that about a third of Iraqis in Syria are skipping one meal a day in order to feed their children. WFP officials said nearly 60 percent of Iraqi refugees reported purchasing cheaper, less nutritious food in the face of a dramatic increase in food prices. [...]"
[n.b. Link to the full text of the Human Rights Watch report referred to here, "Rot Here or Die There."]
JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Schindler Typist Adds Her Postscript"
By Peter Beaumont
The Observer, 9 December 2007
"In a moving postscript to the story of 'Schindler's list', as told by author Thomas Keneally and later by the film director Steven Spielberg, Mimi Reinhardt, now aged 92, the woman who typed the famous list that saved hundreds of Polish Jews from extermination in the Second World War, has emigrated to Israel and told her story after years of living quietly in New York. Her arrival in Tel Aviv last week, announced by the Jewish Agency that encourages immigration to Israel, has seen Reinhardt lionised by the Israeli media and attaining an instant celebrity that has bewildered her, according to her son Sacha, but which she says the flamboyant Oskar Schindler himself would have thoroughly enjoyed. ... 'I had been picked up in Krakow [where Schindler's factory was] for being a Jew and sent to Plaszow concentration camp, commanded by the notorious SS officer Amon Goeth. Schindler hired people from the camp to work in his factory. Speaking perfect German, and being able to write shorthand, had already proved her salvation in the slave labour battalions. My mother had insisted that I learn something useful, so I learnt to type. In the camp there were not so many people who spoke German and could do shorthand and type, so I was put into the administrative barracks. When the Germans came with Schindler's list of the workers that he wanted to take to Sudetenland [western Czechoslovakia] it was given to me to note and type up.' That list was the group who came to be known as Schindler's Jews, 1,300 or so individuals that at first perhaps for financial motives, but later for increasingly humanitarian reasons, Schindler would defend with his often aggressive charm against the SS, sheltering them first in his enamel wares factory in Krakow, then, as the Russian front advanced, in a factory in Sudetenland making bullets. It was at this moment that Schindler and his Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern, who had helped to motivate Schindler, prepared the 'list' of essential workers -- all of them Jews -- for relocation to his new factory. 'I was given the list to type up,' recalled Reinhardt last week. 'And when I typed it up I put my name and the name of two friends on it to make up the quota.' In doing so amid the accelerated extermination of Poland's Jews that was under way in 1944, she almost certainly saved all their lives. [...]"
MEXICO
"Mexico to Exhume More Than 4,000 Human Remains"
Associated Press dispatch on CNN.com, 6 December 2007
"Authorities in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez said Wednesday that they plan to exhume the remains of more than 4,000 unidentified people buried in common graves and take DNA samples in an attempt to identify them. Rene Medrano, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general's office, said the bodies were being exhumed because state attorney general Patricia Gonzalez 'wants to bring order and clarity to past police practices.' Officials did not provide more exact reasons for the exhumations, which they called part of a statewide project that includes at least 180 exhumations in another city. Authorities said the project was not directly related to the cases of 360 women killed over the past 14 years in Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million across from El Paso, Texas. Victims' relatives have long demanded that independent investigators take part in the probes, saying efforts by state officials have been tainted by inept officers. Chihuahua state investigators have been accused of losing or contaminating evidence and of other missteps that botched cases. Authorities' lack of progress in solving the cases of the Ciudad Juarez women prompted international outrage, as news of the killings made headlines around the world. Authorities have arrested and prosecuted a number of suspects over the years, but family members of some Juarez victims say authorities have yet to bring the true culprits to justice. Federal authorities intervened in 2003, promising to solve 14 rape-strangulation cases involving teenagers and women in Ciudad Juarez. The federal attorney general's office recently closed those investigations, however, without getting to the bottom of what happened. A team of 30 people, including forensic anthropologists and dental specialists, are already exhuming remains from cemeteries in Ciudad Juarez, Medrano said. The team will exhume unidentified bodies that were buried in common graves between 1991 and 2005, Medrano said. They will extract DNA samples and build a database. The remains then will be tagged and reburied in individual graves, he said. Officials estimate more than 4,000 unidentified bodies were buried in common graves in Ciudad Juarez alone over the 14-year period. The program first started three months ago in Chihuahua City where authorities exhumed 180 sets of remains. One already has been identified, Medrano said."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch. It will be very interesting to see the gender breakdown of those exhumed bodies. I am willing to bet (ghoulishly) that over 90 percent of them, possibly over 95 percent, will be male, not female. Perhaps this will help to place the global controversy over female rape-murder victims in perspective. For my own attempt to do so, see "The Murdered Men of Ciudad Juárez."]
NIGERIA/WITCH-HUNTS
"Children Are Targets of Nigerian Witch Hunt"
By Tracy McVeigh
The Guardian, 9 December 2007
"[...] Behind the smartly painted doors pastors make a living by 'deliverances' -- exorcisms -- for people beset by witchcraft, something seen to cause anything from divorce, disease, accidents or job losses. With so many churches it's a competitive market, but by local standards a lucrative one. But an exploitative situation has now grown into something much more sinister as preachers are turning their attentions to children -- naming them as witches. In a maddened state of terror, parents and whole villages turn on the child. They are burnt, poisoned, slashed, chained to trees, buried alive or simply beaten and chased off into the bush. Some parents scrape together sums needed to pay for a deliverance -- sometimes as much as three or four months' salary for the average working man -- although the pastor will explain that the witch might return and a second deliverance will be needed. Even if the parent wants to keep the child, their neighbours may attack it in the street. This is not just a few cases. This is becoming commonplace. In Esit Eket, up a nameless, puddled-and-potholed path is a concrete shack stuffed to its fetid rafters with roughly made bunk beds. Here, three to a bed like battery chickens, sleep victims of the besuited Christian pastors and their hours-long, late-night services. Ostracised and abandoned, these are the children a whole community believes fervently are witches. Sam Ikpe-Itauma is one of the few people in this area who does not believe what the evangelical 'prophets' are preaching. He opened his house to a few homeless waifs he came across, and now he tries his best to look after 131. 'The neighbours were not happy with me and tell me "you are supporting witches." This project was an accident, I saw children being abandoned and it was very worrying. I started with three children, then every day it increased up to 15, so we had to open this new place,' he says. 'For every maybe five children we see on the streets, we believe one has been killed, although it could be more as neighbours turn a blind eye when a witch child disappears.' [...]"
PALESTINE/ISRAEL
"Strangling Gaza"
By César Chelala
CommonDreams.org, 15 December 2007
"It could, rightfully, be a cause of shame to the world. But the world, besieged by violence and injustice, hardly notices it. The people of Gaza, 1.4 million of them, are slowly and purposely being deprived of basic foods and medicines by the so called civilized countries in the West and there is hardly a protest. And all this happens because the people in Gaza want to be free and independent. Never mind that in the process children and innocent civilians are killed or families dispossessed. Dr. Mona Elfarra, a Palestinian physician and human rights activist, thus describes a situation in her personal blog, 'I don't know exactly what was going on inside the little heads of the kids who were preparatory school children, of Al Buriege boy's preparatory school. But the two tiny bodies were shot, with many bullets, as I was told by my colleagues at the emergency room at the Al Aqsa hospital ... On November 10, the dreams of two tiny kids has stopped forever.' ... Most of the basic goods in Gaza are imported. Because of border closures, there is limited delivery of those goods, in particular sugar and wheat flour, which represent 80 percent of the caloric intake of Palestinians. The majority of the population depends on food aid from international organizations. At the same time, the flow of exports leaving Gaza has practically stopped, while the commercial and humanitarian goods allowed to come in continues to decline. The Gaza Strip is practically sealed off from the outside world. Approximately 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day. It is estimated that 70 percent of the potential workforce is out of work or without pay. The Gaza Strip is not receiving tax monies owed to by Israel, which amounts to almost half of its budget. Also critical is the public health and medical situation of the inhabitants of the Strip. The World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that the public health system is facing an unprecedented crisis. UNICEF reports that children are living in an environment of extreme violence, insecurity and fear. Shelling and sonic bombs [sic] have increased children’s signs of distress and exhaustion. [...]"
"Sealed Off by Israel, Gaza Reduced to Beggary"
By Scott Wilson
MSNBC.com, 15 December 2007
"[...] The Israeli government is increasingly restricting the import into the Gaza Strip of batteries, anesthesia drugs, antibiotics, tobacco, coffee, gasoline, diesel fuel and other basic items, including chocolate and compressed air to make soft drinks. This punishing seal has reduced Gaza, a territory of almost 1.5 million people, to beggar status, unable to maintain an effective public health system, administer public schools or preserve the traditional pleasures of everyday life by the sea. 'Essentially, it's the ordinary people, caught up in the conflict, paying the price for this political failure,' said John Ging, director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, which serves the majority refugee population. 'The humanitarian situation is atrocious, and it is easy to understand why -- 1.2 million Gazans now relying on U.N. food aid, 80,000 people who have lost jobs and the dignity of work. And the list goes on.' ... For Gazans, caught between Israel's concrete gun towers and the Mediterranean, the sense of crisis is pervasive as they struggle to keep their homes intact, buy essential food from a shrinking and increasingly expensive stock, and educate their children. 'I hold every man, woman and child in Israel responsible for this,' said Geraldine Shawa, 64, the Chicago-born director of the Atfaluna Society. A tall, imposing woman who has lived in Gaza for 36 years, Shawa has watched the fortunes of her pupils squeezed in recent months by what she calls Israel's practice of collective punishment. Israeli military officials said last week that 2,000 rockets had been launched from Gaza toward Israel this year, killing two Israelis, wounding many others and instilling fear across the southern region. Since the U.S.-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Md., last month, Israeli airstrikes and ground forces have killed 26 Hamas gunmen, the Islamic organization says, as well as at least four Palestinian civilians. [...]"
"The Grim Reality in Gaza"
By Mohammed Omer
New Statesman, 10 December 2007
"Traffic in the Gaza Strip slowed to a trickle last week, and this week medical centres have scaled back treatment in the medicines and sustenance-destitute Strip. 'Israel's decision is a death penalty: our reserve of fuel is almost zero and it may very likely run out by the end of today,' said Khaled Radi, Ministry of Health spokesman for the dismissed Hamas government. Radi spoke in reference to the 30 November Israeli Supreme Court decision to allow further fuel cutbacks, severe reductions which are crippling Gaza’s residents in all aspects of life. Prior to that ruling, as early as October Israel decided to begin limiting fuel, with Gaza soon after enduring serious cuts of over 50% of fuel needs, a dire statistic confirmed by the UN body OCHA. ... Shortages of fuel have greatly affected the public transportation system, leaving students from universities in Gaza City delayed for hours standing in wait for transportation back to Khan Younies and Rafah in the south. The fuel cuts in turn impede water access: with diesel-run pumps unable to function, leaving over 77,000 without fresh drinking water, according to Gaza’s water utility. Oxfam International has warned that soon 225,000 Gazans could suffer from inadequate water supplies, raising concerns for public health. Ambulances and clinics suffer too, a fact reiterated by Khaled Radi, who related how fuel shortages have already brought some ambulances to a standstill: 'This has affected the mobility of ambulances which are especially vital during on-going Israeli air strikes such as that of this morning.' He added that shortages further threatened to close essential clinics, which rely on back-up generators during the frequent electricity shortages in the Strip. Two first aid health centres have already been forced to suspend treatment during electricity cuts. Those that remain open suffer from want of medical supplies, with 91 of 416 essential medicines depleted, according to the WHO. [...]"
PERU
"Ex-President Stands Trial in Edgy Peru"
By Simon Romero
The New York Times, 10 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"The Supreme Court in Peru will start its trial of former President Alberto K. Fujimori on Monday, making him the country's first former head of state to be tried on human rights violations, including murder and kidnapping. Preparations for the trial have already stirred considerable unease as Peruvians grapple with revelations of the counterinsurgency methods used by Mr. Fujimori's government during his 10-year presidency, from 1990 to 2000, to combat two rebel groups, Shining Path and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. 'I want him to be judged severely because he ordered to kill,' said Raida Condor, 65, who lost her son Armando in a massacre of nine students and a professor from La Cantuta University in 1992. 'For 15 years, I have searched for justice and to know why my son died the way he died.' The 10 victims were abducted in July 1992; their incinerated bodies were found a year later on a hillside outside Lima, Peru’s capital. Mr. Fujimori, 69, faces charges related to those killings and another massacre, of 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, at a barbecue in the Barrios Altos area of Lima in November 1991. The former president faces 30 years in prison if he is convicted. Those killings and others took place during a harrowing time of guerrilla attacks in the heart of Lima. Mr. Fujimori ultimately subdued the insurgencies, capturing Abimael Guzmán, the supreme leader of the Maoist-inspired Shining Path, in 1992, and defeating Túpac Amaru after its seizure of the Japanese ambassador’s residence in 1997. But the costs were staggering: nearly 70,000 people died in Peru’s long internal war, from 1980 to 2000, a government-appointed commission determined in 2003. And Mr. Fujimori allowed his intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, to create a spy apparatus infamous for its corruption, opaque finances and reports of extrajudicial killings. Both men fled the country and have been extradited to face trial. [...]"
"Peru Ambivalent As Ex-Leader Faces Trial for Massacres"
By Monte Reel and Lucien Chauvin
The Washington Post, 10 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"When Alberto Fujimori was president of Peru in the 1990s, his authoritarian methods forced the country to debate how far a leader should go in the pursuit of terrorists. Now, as he faces a trial that could send him to prison for life, the debate for many here has shifted: How far should Peru go in pursuit of Fujimori? An awkward sort of ambivalence is defining the trial even before it starts on Monday. Although a majority of Peruvians say they believe Fujimori is guilty of human rights abuses and corruption, he remains near the top of the list of the country's most admired political figures. According to a survey conducted recently by the University of Lima, he is more popular than Alan Garcia, whom Peruvians returned to the presidency last year. Nearly 55 percent said they view Fujimori's 1990-2000 presidency favorably. Even Fujimori's political legacy survives. His daughter last year received more votes than any other candidate for Congress, where she is part of a minority bloc of his followers known as Fujimoristas. ... Much of Fujimori's popularity while president rested on his liberal dispersal of public aid, his taming of inflation and his backing of an aggressive battle against the Shining Path, a Maoist revolutionary group that for years terrorized wide swaths of the countryside and killed thousands. But in targeting the group, he also targeted students, journalists and others whose main offense was criticizing his methods. He shut down Congress, purged the judiciary and suspended the constitution -- measures that were supported by much of the public at the time. [...]"
RWANDA
"Academic Jailed for 19 Years for Rwanda Genocide Role"
Agence France-Presse dispatch on Yahoo! News, 15 December 2007
"A former university teacher was given a 19-year prison sentence this week for her role in the murder of a colleague's wife during the Rwanda genocide, a witness at the trial told AFP Saturday. Marie-Therese Kampire, who taught politics at Rwanda's National University, was found guilty on Thursday by a traditional 'gacaca' court, Elisabeth Mukajambo, a trials observer with a local human rights group, said. Kampire was found guilty of complicity in the murder of the wife of Pierre Claver Gasana, a professor of physics, who was also killed during the 1994 slaughter by extremists of Rwanda's Hutu majority of minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Rwanda's main university saw numerous staff and students murdered during the genocide, often by or at the instigation of colleagues. Gacaca courts were set up to try most of those accused of participation in the genocide which killed an estimated 800,000 people. Judges are elected from within the community to sit on nine-member panels in gacaca sessions to hear and record testimonies from community members who saw and witnessed what happened during the genocide. They then preside over trials of genocide suspects in their own villages. Most of the judges at Huye, which heard Kampire's case, teach at the university."
"Genocide Survivors 'Unhappy'"
SA dispatch on News24.com, 13 December 2007
"Rwandan officials are interfering in the trial of the country's 1994 genocide suspects and even intimidating witnesses, the country's main genocide survivors' group says. The Ibuka group of genocide survivors criticised 'the grave interference by officials of the national government in the jurisdiction of the gacacas (traditional courts) conducting the trials.' Judges were elected from within the community to sit on nine-member panels in gacaca sessions to hear and record testimonies from community members who saw and witnessed what happened during the genocide. They then presided over trials of genocide suspects in their own villages. Ibuka, which meant 'Remember' in the local language, said official interference was aimed at shielding 'intellectuals, the rich or officials being sought over their role in the genocide.' It said: 'There have been acts of intimidation against witnesses and some have even been incarcerated.' The Rwandan genocide saw the slaughter of 800 000 minority Tutsis by the Hutu majority. The UN estimates some 800 000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus were killed at this time. Rwandan Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama immediately rejected the allegations, telling Radio Rwanda that the gacaca courts had achieved formidable results 'which all Rwandans should rejoice in.' He said: 'Those who say otherwise are people who are never satisfied.'"
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
"Rwanda: Approximately a Million People Have Appeared Before Gacaca Courts"
Hirondelle News Agency dispatch on AllAfrica.com, 12 December 2007
"Around a million people accused of have [sic passim] played a part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda have appeared, up to date, before the semi-traditional gacaca courts, announced Wednesday in Kigali the executive secretary of the National Service of Gacaca Courts, Domitille Mukantaganzwa. Mrs. Mukantaganzwa specified during a press conference on this total of accused having appeared, more than 800 000 were tried. 'We are really satisfied,' estimated Mukantaganzwa, explaining that the initial number of suspects which was 818 564 increased because of additional information revealed during trials before the gacaca courts. To the question of knowing if the gacaca trials will end by 31 December as planned, she answered that the essence of the work was done. 'Many courts finished a while ago the trials which they were to try, those which have the greatest number of cases have not yet tried and have fifteen,' indicated Mukantaganzwa. 'Stress is not necessary. They were forecasts, if we note (at the end of the year) that we still need time, we will continue,' she indicated. Mrs. Mukantaganzwa also strongly refuted the allegations by Ibuka, the main organization of survivors, according to which the gacaca courts disappointed survivors [see story below]. 'It is a great astonishment for us,' she declared; criticizing Ibuka of 'generalizing.' Inspired by the traditional assemblies during which wise men from the village settled disagreements sitting on the grass (gacaca, in Rwandan language), the gacaca courts are charged with trying the majority of the alleged authors of the 1994 genocide. They are not presided by professional magistrates but by people with integrity chosen from among the community. They can sentence up to life in prison."
"Rwanda: Genocide Studies Start February"
Rwanda News Agency dispatch on AllAfrica.com, 11 December 2007
"The world's first dedicated research and postgraduate teaching resource for Genocide prevention is to open at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, it was announced on Tuesday. The study program will be open to undergraduates and postgraduates studying all aspects of human rights and conflict prevention, running both teaching seminars and giving access to primary research resources for doctorate and masters students, the centre said in a statement. Craig Cowbrough from the Centre told RNA separately that it is expected the new centre will be operational by the end of February next year. The centre exists as a permanent memorial to victims of the genocide; more than 258,000 people are buried on the site. The centrepiece of the new study facility will be a hi-tech documentation centre with detailed histories of more than 38,000 victims and survivors of the 1994 Genocide -- that left over a million lives massacred. The British campaign organization Aegis Trust, which funds and manages the Kigali memorial Centre, is investing in the major refurbishments and the IT infrastructure within the documentation centre. The resource will also be used to help develop a programme to improve the way the genocide is taught on the school curriculum within Rwanda. According to centre, it is hoped more than 15,000 young Rwandese will pass through the educational programme every year. The Memorial Centre is currently looking for academic partners in the fields of genocide prevention and human rights to help develop the resource."
"No Hero at Home, Hotel Rwanda Protagonist is a Critic in Exile"
By Elizabeth Sullivan
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) (on CommonDreams.org), 9 December 2007
"Paul Rusesabagina may be a hero, the real-life Hotel Rwanda operator who saved an estimated 1,200 lives by bartering words, cash and courage to save family, friends, neighbors and co-workers. Yet the nonfictional subject of the 2004 movie cannot go back again. The son of a Hutu father and a Tutsi mother -- considered a Hutu by Rwandan standards -- could have died for standing up to the radical 1994 Hutus who were butchering Tutsis and the Hutus who supported them. He saved hundreds in his Mille Collines hotel. Instead, he says he is persona non grata in today's 'democratic' Rwanda, with its Tutsi-dominated government. The 53-year-old has lived in exile in Brussels since 1996. His sons and nieces attend U.S. schools. When Stuart Muszynski of the Cleveland-area charity Project Love was in long-distance discussions with Rusesabagina about the group's Humanitarian of the Year award this year, Muszynski says he unexpectedly got an e-mail from the Rwandan government. It said Rusesabagina wasn't a hero and didn't deserve the award. Rusesabagina came to Cleveland anyway, and Muszynski presented the award to him Thursday night at a ceremony in Aurora. Why is the hero of Hotel Rwanda not considered a hero in Rwanda? His detractors accuse him of not saving as many people as he claimed, of taking money from the hotel guests he saved, of other supposed misdemeanors and exaggerations. But Rusesabagina told a group of Plain Dealer editors and reporters Thursday that such sniping didn't start until he began publicly criticizing Rwandan President Paul Kagame for his Tutsi rebel background and for allegedly suppressing Hutu opponents. [...]"
SERBIA/KOSOVO
"EU Summit Gambles on Huge Kosovo Mission"
By Ian Traynor
The Guardian, 15 December 2007
"European leaders yesterday agreed to send up to 1,800 police, judges, and administrators to Kosovo in its biggest foreign policy gamble, aimed at nurturing the breakaway Balkan province towards full statehood. Despite persistent divisions within the EU over how to react to Kosovo's secession from Serbia, now expected in February, a summit of EU presidents and prime ministers decided to launch Europe's biggest nation-building operation, telling union foreign ministers to work out the details after the new year. Gordon Brown, making his first visit to Brussels as prime minister, indicated the mission would be deployed -- probably in February. 'The EU mission is very much part of the next stage,' he said. Senior European government officials said the EU was responding to strong pressure from Washington, which has signalled that it will wait until February before recognising an independent Kosovo, but no longer. Balkan experts at the US state department are drafting Kosovo's declaration of independence, to be proclaimed by the ethnic Albanian leaders of Kosovo in early February after Serbia elects a new president, the sources said. 'The Kosovans and the Serbs no longer want to live together,' said Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. 'Our goal is that Europe does not explode.' A summit statement said the scope for any further negotiations between the Serbian and Kosovan leaderships was exhausted following two rounds of talks lasting almost two years. The statement called for a rapid resolution of Kosovo's status, and also sought to compensate Serbia by promising Belgrade a faster track to EU membership. [...]"
"Kosovo Deserves Its Independence"
By Anthony Lloyd
The Times, 12 December 2007
"[...] The argument of the critics of Kosovan independence rests on two bogus tenets of denial. First, they state that Serbia was not responsible for the widescale massacre of Albanian civilians between 1998 and 1999, and propose instead that Serb security forces were somehow tricked into killing thousands of innocents by the provocation of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Secondly, they advance the theory that the 800,000 Albanian refugees who fled their homes during Nato's 79-day air campaign did so as they were frightened of the bombing rather than Serb military units. Were these claims true then the fundamental case for Kosovo's independence, in the spotlight since the expiry on Monday of a UN deadline for Pristina and Belgrade to reach agreement on the province's future status, would be fatally flawed. But they are untrue. I know this not as an assumption, but as a fact. I have many memories of Kosovo acquired during the time I spent reporting there between 1998 and 2000. Among the images of mass graves, burnt villages and swelling bodies that spring to mind is one of particular significance. In the fields outside the town of Istinic in southwestern Kosovo one summer day I watched some 40,000 Kosovans corralled together by rings of Serb police. ... After a day or two the Serb police pushed them back into the hinterland, driving them with stinging switches and robotic threats broadcast from tannoys mounted on the sides of armoured personnel carriers. These people had not fled from fear of Nato bombing. The first Nato bomb was seven months away from falling. This was the summer of 1998. The world little cared for Kosovo then and in a dry run for their larger purge operations a year later the Serbs were already driving thousands of people from their homes. The memory is pertinent to Kosovo's case for independence now as it revealed the absolute complicity of the Serbian authorities in human rights abuses in Kosovo and proved them then, as later, a cruel and unjust power from which the oppressed Kosovo Albanian majority thoroughly deserved to be independent. [...]"
"EU-US Showdown with Russia over Kosovo"
By Harry de Quetteville and Bruno Waterfield
The Telegraph, 11 December 2007
"A Cold War-style stand-off over the future of Kosovo loomed last night as the European Union looked ready to join the United States in defying Russia and Serbia over independence for the breakaway Balkan province. As EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels headed for 'unity' in backing Kosovo's independence, Russia gave warning that such a move would spark 'a chain reaction' of instability across the Balkans and beyond. 'Those making such plans must think very carefully about the consequences,' said Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said that the diplomatic war of words could eventually lead to real fighting. Asked if Nato's 16,000 troops in Kosovo would need reinforcements if the situation deteriorated, he replied: 'The short answer is yes.' Until the meeting yesterday a group of five EU countries had shared Russian reservations about backing independence in Kosovo, fearing that it might foster breakaway hopes among their own minority communities. But Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain have come under intense pressure to drop their objections in favour of a common EU position over Kosovo. 'We will move to unity today,' said Luis Amado, the Portuguese foreign minister, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency. In fact Cyprus, a divided island in search of its own diplomatic settlement for more than 30 years, remains opposed to independence for Kosovo. Erato Kozakou Markoullis, the Cypriot foreign minister, warned against the EU 'breaking international law.' Nonetheless, Kosovar Albanian leaders in Pristina, the province's capital, are sure to interpret the Brussels meeting as a signal of strong EU backing. They have promised to co-ordinate any declaration of independence with the EU and America. [...]"
"U.N. Fears Serbs Will Disrupt a Free Kosovo"
By Nicholas Wood
The New York Times, 10 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"As Kosovo moves closer to declaring its independence, fears are rising that Serbia and Serbs in Kosovo's north could take steps to try to disrupt the province’s shaky economy and scare off countries ready to recognize it as a sovereign state. Senior United Nations officials say they are particularly worried that the Serbian government will direct Kosovo's Serbs to disrupt most of the province's power supply and assert partial control of the north by having Serb police officers break away from the province's police force. Such moves could further inflame tensions between the province's ethnic Albanians and Serbs, possibly leading to violence. Kosovo, which has a majority of ethnic Albanians, has been trying to break away from Serbia, but Serbia has vehemently fought to keep the province. Negotiations between Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leaders and Serbia over the province's fate have gone nowhere, and the United Nations -- which administers Kosovo and is trying to broker an agreement -- has said the talks should not drag past Monday. The United Nations is then expected to begin deliberations about its next possible step. Western diplomats in Brussels and Pristina suggest the United Nations will invite the European Union to replace the United Nations mission in the province, and leave it to individual countries to decide if they should recognize Kosovo as an independent nation. Aid agencies, including the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, have already drawn up contingency plans for an exodus of 5,000 to 100,000 refugees, many of which they expect will be ethnic Serbs. [...]"
SOMALIA
"Mogadishu Sliding Back into Anarchy"
By Xan Rice
The Guardian, 8 December 2007
"Women and children injured by stray bullets and mortars during fighting in the Somali capital Mogadishu are being turned back at military checkpoints as they try to reach hospitals, the United Nations children's agency said yesterday. Describing the humanitarian situation in the city as the worst since 1991 -- the last time Somalia had an effective government -- Unicef's representative for the country said the restrictions meant 'people are being left behind in the streets to die.' The roadblocks are manned by government and Ethiopian troops, who are battling to contain a growing insurgency. 'The lack of respect for basic humanitarian principles from all sides is horrific,' said Christian Balslev-Olesen. 'It's violence, harassment ... terror against the civilian population.' The conflict has already forced 600,000 people, more than half Mogadishu's population, to flee the city since February. More than a third of those fled in the past five weeks as fighting escalated. Hopes of a ceasefire are dim. Somalia's transitional government has made little effort to reach out to political opponents or the guerrilla fighters, who in turn have vowed to fight until the Ethiopian occupation ends. The insurgency is broad-based, comprising remnants of the Somali Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC), chased out of Mogadishu by Ethiopian forces last December, as well as militias controlled by warlords opposed to the government. Ethiopia and the United States, which backed the move to oust the SCIC citing alleged links to al-Qaida, say a large international peacekeeping mission is the answer. But no countries appear willing to add to the 1,600 Ugandan peacekeepers confined to a small area of Mogadishu. The abuses by government forces and the insurgents fit the pattern of impunity that has plagued Somalia for 16 years, and UN officials and diplomats admit they have little leverage over either party. Ethiopia, however, should be a different matter. [...]"
[n.b. I'm sure glad the Americans and Ethiopians toppled those nasty moderate Islamists. I know Somalis are, too.]
SUDAN/DARFUR
"Spielberg Appeals to Chinese President for Darfur Intervention"
Hollywood.com, 14 December 2007
"Hollywood director Steven Spielberg has appealed to Chinese President Hu Jintao to use his nation's influence in Sudan to put a stop to the genocide in the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan. In a Nov. 15 letter to Hu -- Spielberg's second missive this year -- released on Thursday, the filmmaker remarks the nearly five-year conflict in the African nation has deteriorated since his last correspondence. He writes, 'So I write to you now with a renewed sense of urgency in the hope that China will redouble its efforts to pressure Sudan to join in a fair peace agreement and, at last, bring an end to the genocide. China's economic, military and diplomatic ties to the government of Sudan continue to provide you with the influence and the obligation to press for change. Without China's insistence, I fear Sudan will simply "wait out the clock." I believe the decisive hour for Darfur is now. The world needs China to lead here. So many lives are at stake.' Spielberg -- who is the artistic director for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing -- came under criticism earlier this year from actress/activist Mia Farrow for not using his involvement with the global event to speak out about the humanitarian crisis. The armed conflict between the Arab-dominated militia group the Janjaweed and African rebels has resulted in 200,000 casualties and 2.5 million being forced from their homes since it began in 2003."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
"Sudanese Peace Deal Back on Track"
BBC Online, 12 December 2007
"Sudan's southern former rebels have said they will rejoin a national unity government in an apparent end to the two-month political crisis. The Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) withdrew from the government in October, jeopardising a peace deal. But the SPLM agreed to end its boycott after its leader Salva Kiir met Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir. They agreed funding for a census and a timetable to pull out troops either side of Sudan's north-south border. They have also announced that the government will move to the southern capital, Juba, every three months. Officials said this would be an important symbolic gesture to help develop key ties between the power-sharing partners. But there was no deal on the demarcation of the disputed oil-rich Abyei region after the two-hour meeting between the leaders. ... A timetable will now be worked out for the redeployment of northern troops from the south, especially from Unity and Upper Nile states. There will be more transparency on issues of oil management and marketing plus funding to pave the way for a census in 2011, when the south could decide to split from the north, has also been assured. However, the final border demarcation was not resolved -- which means the division of oil wealth cannot be completed. [...]"
"Delay, Obstruction and Darfur"
The New York Times (editorial), 10 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"The world's leaders say they care desperately about Darfur's suffering, until they get distracted. It took years of international hand-wringing before the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution to send in 26,000 peacekeepers to replace a current force of 7,000, to try to halt the killing. With the deployment now set for Jan. 1, major countries are ignoring the U.N.'s appeals for essential aircraft, and Sudan's government -- which unleashed the genocide -- is again reneging on its promises to cooperate. Khartoum is now refusing to accept some non-African peacekeeping units -- including a Thai infantry battalion and a Nepalese special forces unit -- in what is intended to be a joint United Nations-African Union force. It is also trying to limit the peacekeepers' use of helicopters, refusing to provide land for a peacekeeping base and insisting on other untenable restrictions, including advance notice of all troop movements. Khartoum never seems to run out of ways to demonstrate its contempt for the United Nations. ... Sudan has showed time and again that it does not care about the suffering in Darfur. Without a lot more international pressure, Sudan will continue to obstruct the peacekeeping mission and spread ever more suffering and mayhem. China, one of Sudan's major trading partners, and the Arab League must bring on that pressure. And the U.N. and other envoys must work full time for the resumption of peace talks. The credibility of the Security Council is on the line. So are the lives of 2.5 million Darfuris."
"An Impotent West Jerks Its Knee and Leaves Darfur Hurting More"
By Simon Jenkins
The Times, 9 December 2007
"Three years have passed since the British government, in the form of Jack Straw, declared states of affairs in both Darfur and Zimbabwe 'unacceptable.' A year later in the case of Darfur this was upgraded to 'completely unacceptable.' A feelgood Global Day for Darfur was declared, helped on its way by George Clooney and Elton John. Needless to say, the government accepted what was unacceptable -- and has done so ever since. Today Gordon Brown has decided to stay in bed rather than go to the European Union's Africa summit in Lisbon, thus avoiding the improbable risk of having to smile at Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe or Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese dictator. He has also avoided the recollection that, once upon a time, the word 'unacceptable' from a British prime minister would have had boots quaking across Africa. Today all Brown can do at a summit is put his thumbs in his ears, stick out his tongue and say 'Boo.' While diplomats concentrate on being beastly to Mugabe, carnage continues in Darfur and spreads into adjacent Chad. It makes a mockery of the new 'liberal interventionism' declared his greatest achievement by Tony Blair, and since endorsed by Brown. In Rwanda in 1994, western powers could at least argue that the massacre took them by surprise. No such excuse is available in Darfur. The horror has been unfolding in full view of the world for three years. The interventionists have hollered and abused and seized microphones and achieved nothing. The Sudan government's Arab Janjaweed irregulars, aided by air support, have continued with killings. This has been in response to a separatist rebellion similar to that which was partially successful in southern Sudan, resolved in 2002. In Darfur some 300,000 people have been massacred, 2m driven into exile and 4m left dependent on western aid in a network of more than 60 refugee camps. [...]"
SWEDEN/ASSYRIAN GENOCIDE
"Assyrian Professor Dies From Stab Wound"
CollectifVan.org, 15 December 2007
"Dr. Fuat Deniz, a renowned lecturer and Ph.D researcher in the field of sociology at Örebro University, was pronounced dead today by Örebro University Hospital; Dr. Deniz was stabbed in the neck by an unknown assailant on Tuesday. The murder of a teacher during day time and in his own workplace has shocked the community in Örebro, a mid size Swedish town. There are no witnesses to the stabbing and no suspect yet. Police are working to secure forensic evidence, survey the victim's daily routine and his circle of acquaintances. Sweden's equivalent to the FBI, the Swedish security police (SÄPO), have announced they are looking into this case because the attack could have a political motive. SÄPO noted that Mr. Fuat Deniz dedicated much of his research to Assyrian identity and the Turkish genocide of Assyrians. His masters thesis, A Minority's Odyssey: the Assyrian Example, was praised for its way of describing developments in social identities among Assyrians. The Swedish research and university minister, Lars Leijonborg, participated in the commemoration ceremony held in Örebro on Thursday, expressing his sorrow for the loss of a promising teacher and researcher. 'Dr. Fuat Deniz and his family came to our country to escape violence and assaults. It is a terrible tragedy that this has happened to him. He was not only a national hero for Assyrians but a role model for many in our society,' said the minister with tearful eyes. ... Dr. Fuat was to participate in an international conference on Assyrian identity and the Turkish Assyrian genocide at the University of Leiden in Holland on Friday 14 December. [...]"
[n.b. The English text appears below the French. Thanks to Stephen Feinstein for bringing this shocking news to my attention.]
UNITED STATES/THE "WAR ON TERROR"
"CIA Photos 'Show UK Guantanamo Detainee Was Tortured'"
By Robert Verkaik
The Independent, 10 December 2007
"Lawyers for a British resident who the US government refuses to release from Guantanamo Bay have identified the existence of photographs taken by CIA agents that they say show their client suffered horrific injuries under torture. The photographic evidence will be vital to clear Binyam Mohammed, 27, who the Americans want to bring before a Military Commission on charges of terrorism, say his lawyers. ... In a letter sent to the Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Britain is urged to ask the US to stop the CIA destroying the pictures. Clive Stafford-Smith, the legal director of Reprieve representing Mr Mohammed, said that he also knows the identity of the agents who were present when his client was allegedly beaten and tortured. Writing to Mr Miliband, he said: 'Given the opportunity, we can prove that the evidence was the fruit of torture. Indeed, we can prove that a photographic record was made of this by the CIA. Through diligent investigation we know when the CIA took pictures of Mr Mohammed's brutalised genitalia, we know the identity of the CIA agents who were present including the person who took the pictures (we know both their false identities and their true names), and we know what those pictures show.' ... Last week it emerged that the CIA destroyed hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the torture of detainees held by the US. Binyam Mohammed was born in Ethiopia but was given leave to remain in the UK after seeking asylum in 1994. Seven years later, he travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan where the Americans allege that he underwent training in firearms and explosives. In 2002, he was arrested by Pakistani immigration officials at Karachi airport on his way back to the UK. He says he was then taken to Morocco and tortured for 18 months, including having his penis slashed, before being sent to Guantanamo, where he still remains. [...]"
[n.b. Ain't freedom grand?]
"Supporters of Evil"
Once Upon a Time (blog), 9 December 2007
"[...] I do not want to be misunderstood on this point, so let me state it as plainly as I can. The time is long since past for every minimally decent American to take a stand: either you are on the side of civilization and humanity, and the irreplaceable, supreme value of an individual human life -- or you are on the side of evil, brutality, torture, sadism, genocidal war, and endless death. The Democrats and the Republicans both stand for Empire, and for the endless horrors already inflicted -- and the endless horrors that still lie in our future. If the Democrats do not repeal the Military Commissions Act or at least try to do so, and if you still support them in the 2008 elections, then you are on the side of all these horrors as well. If the Democrats do not repeal the Military Commissions Act -- and they will not -- and you support them in 2008, you are supporting evil. To that extent, you are evil yourself. ... If you choose to support evil and to embody evil yourself, I suggest you follow the vile example of the current administration: do so without apology, and brazenly revel in the evil you choose to inflict on the world. It is far more contemptible -- and, to speak personally, it is sickening beyond my capacity to describe accurately, in significant part because of the complex psychological dishonesties that are required -- to enable evil, while claiming you represent the 'moral' and 'practical' choice. These are the justifications used by those who made possible the cruelest and most unspeakably horrifying regimes in history, as Mayer's witness and many others attest. Withdraw your support entirely from those who perpetrate and make excuses for evil. If the refusal to support such people were widespread enough, we still might have a chance. I regard it as the very slightest of chances, one that will almost certainly be destroyed by another significant terrorist attack in the United States -- but it is the only one we have. [...]"
"Chasing Rummy: Michael Ratner Tries to Make Europe Too Hot for the Former Defense Secretary"
By Chris Thompson
The Village Voice, 4 December 2007
"Michael Ratner had it tough last week. In addition to his regular duties -- law professor at Columbia and Yale, defending Guantánamo detainees, prepping for his WBAI talk show -- there was the gig on Keith Olbermann's show. Then there was the quickie Columbia seminar on international human rights later that night, which meant he would miss dinner with his daughter. 'That's the one that really hurts,' he says. 'It's one thing to the next; I don't know that I'm a lawyer anymore.' All the frenzy has distracted him from what may be the most ambitious project he has ever undertaken: hounding Donald Rumsfeld for the rest of his natural life. For months, Ratner and his colleagues at the left-wing law group Center for Constitutional Rights had been working with French lawyers, preparing a prosecutorial brief against the former secretary of defense. They waited until October, when Rumsfeld was scheduled to be in Paris for a round-table discussion on international relations sponsored by Foreign Policy magazine. On the day Rumsfeld arrived, the lawyers walked into a Parisian court and formally charged him with ordering torture at Guantánamo Bay, a violation of the 1984 Convention Against Torture. When the round-table was finished, Ratner and his colleagues later noted in a press release, Rumsfeld ducked out of the building and 'left through a door connecting to the U.S. embassy to avoid journalists and human rights attorneys outside.' Ratner had already filed a criminal complaint in Germany a year earlier, and he plans to hit Rumsfeld with yet another one in a Spanish court this February. The odds of Rumsfeld being convicted of anything are slim -- but that's not really the point. If a criminal investigation is under way, Rumsfeld could be dragged into court to answer questions as long as he stays in France or Germany or Spain. The only way to avoid this embarrassment is to stay out of those countries indefinitely. [...]"
[n.b. Just seen, so posted late.]
ISSUE: GENOCIDE AND WAR
"Genocide and the Crime of War"
Elected Swineherd (blog), 7 December 2007
"[...] Genocide scholars (and I shall deal with this lot in a later post) spend a great deal of time focused on the 5 million European Jews that died at the hands of the Nazis. What one never hears discussed is the OTHER 5 million German citizens who were sent to their deaths by the German government. I speak, of course, of the German army; conscripted, forced by their own government to endure conditions that, imposed in any other setting than war, would be considered the height of cruelty -- Starvation, exposure to extreme heat and cold, the mental torment of repeated bombardments; the mercy of death, when it came (as it did to 30% of these unfortunates) tended not to be surgical or methodical in nature. A bullet in the back of the head or a dose of VX sounds like a walk in the park compared to being shot in the guts and left to writhe for a few hours, being crushed to death by the tank treads, burned alive by a flamethrower, or being literally dismembered by a high-explosive artillery shell. Of course, Germany was not alone, in World War II, or throughout history, in sending its citizens to a certain (and certainly horrific) death. ... As Leon Trotsky wrote: 'An army cannot be built without reprisals. Masses of men cannot be led to death unless the command has the death penalty in its arsenal. So long as those malicious tailless apes that are so proud of their technical achievements -- the animals that we call men -- will build armies and wage wars, the command will always be obliged to place the soldiers between the possible death in the front and the inevitable one in the rear.' ... Most countries still maintain it is their sovereign right to impress men into service (the dubious service of killing and being killed) at their whim; I should propose that the root of all war crimes, and in fact the crime against humanity that is war itself is the notion that any State has the sovereign right to make war, either against it's own citizens, or the citizens of other States. [...]"
ISSUE: AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES
"Subsidies' Harvest of Misery"
By Jimmy Carter
The Washington Post (on CommonDreams.org), 12 December 2007
"[...] It is embarrassing to note that, from 1995 to 2005, the richest 10 percent of [US] cotton growers received more than 80 percent of total subsidies. The wealthiest 1 percent of American cotton farmers continues to receive over 25 percent of payouts for cotton, while more than half of America's cotton farmers receive no subsidies at all. American farmers are not dependent on the global market because they are guaranteed a minimum selling price by the federal government. American producers of cotton received more than $18 billion in subsidies between 1999 and 2005, while market value of the cotton was $23 billion. That's a subsidy of 86 percent! The Carter Center works primarily among the world's poorest people, including those in West Africa whose scant livelihood depends on cotton production. For instance, in 2002 Burkina Faso received 57 percent of its total export revenue from cotton, while Benin depended on cotton exports for more than 75 percent of its national export revenue. Overproduction in the United States leads to the dumping of U.S. cotton on global markets, which drives prices down. In recent years, cotton exported from the United States has been sold 61 percent below its cost of production. Fragile African economies that depend on agricultural exports, especially cotton, are sometimes devastated by these practices. A 2002 report by Oxfam International estimates that in 2001 sub-Saharan Africa lost $302 million as a direct result of U.S. cotton subsidies, with two-thirds of the loss sustained in eight countries — Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Central African Republic, Chad and Togo. Compared with American humanitarian assistance, the subsidies to U.S. cotton farmers amount to more than the U.S. Agency for International Development’s total annual budget for all of sub-Saharan Africa. [...]"
ISSUE: MATERNAL MORTALITY
"Mothers Betrayed"
By Sarah Brown
New Statesman, 6 December 2007
"[...] Tragically, 20 years after the Global Safe Motherhood Initiative, seven years after the UN Millennium Summit, no progress has been made. If anything, the figures are worse. Of 211 million pregnancies worldwide in 2005, eight million women experienced life-threatening complications during pregnancy or childbirth. Those with access to skilled care and services tended to survive. But 536,000 died, the vast majority in developing countries, 80 per cent of them totally avoidable. Millions more have continuing health difficulties following obstetric complications, making life after childbirth difficult and painful. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of mothers dying in childbirth is around one in 50: up to 100,000 women die each year, and hundreds of thousands of babies and older children are left without a mother. ... What makes the lack of any progress on maternal mortality so depressing and frustrating is that, on other Millennium Development Goals, some progress -- albeit slowly -- is being made and things are beginning to improve. Millions more children are surviving infancy, receiving vaccinations and going to primary school than were in 2000, their life chances transformed by better health care and education. Even in the uphill struggle against Aids, great progress is being made. In Uganda, HIV infection has fallen from 16 per cent to 5 per cent in the past decade. Yet we know that for hundreds of thousands of children each year, the improvements we make to their life chances through better edu cation and health care are cancelled out by the loss of their mother. For every mother who dies in childbirth, the life chances of a new baby -- as well as its brothers and sisters -- can be damaged beyond repair. [...]"
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