Genocide Studies Media FileJanuary 5-21, 2008

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/IRAN

"Bush's Iran/Argentina Terror Frame-Up"
By Gareth Porter
The Nation, 18 January 2008
"Although nukes and Iraq have been the main focus of the Bush Administration's pressure campaign against Iran, US officials also seek to tar Iran as the world's leading sponsor of terrorism. And Team Bush's latest tactic is to play up a thirteen-year-old accusation that Iran was responsible for the notorious Buenos Aires bombing that destroyed the city's Jewish Community Center, known as AMIA, killing eighty-six and injuring 300, in 1994. Unnamed senior Administration officials told the Wall Street Journal January 15 that the bombing in Argentina 'serves as a model for how Tehran has used its overseas embassies and relationship with foreign militant groups, in particular Hezbollah, to strike at its enemies.' This propaganda campaign depends heavily on a decision last November by the General Assembly of Interpol, which voted to put five former Iranian officials and a Hezbollah leader on the international police organization's 'red list' for allegedly having planned the July 1994 bombing. But the Wall Street Journal reports that it was pressure from the Bush Administration, along with Israeli and Argentine diplomats, that secured the Interpol vote. In fact, the Bush Administration's manipulation of the Argentine bombing case is perfectly in line with its long practice of using distorting and manufactured evidence to build a case against its geopolitical enemies. After spending several months interviewing officials at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires familiar with the Argentine investigation, the head of the FBI team that assisted it and the most knowledgeable independent Argentine investigator of the case, I found that no real evidence has ever been found to implicate Iran in the bombing. Based on these interviews and the documentary record of the investigation, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the case against Iran over the AMIA bombing has been driven from the beginning by US enmity toward Iran, not by a desire to find the real perpetrators. [...]"

AUSTRALIA

"Australia's 'Stolen' Children Get Apology But No Cash"
By Barbara McMahon
The Observer, 13 January 2008
"As one of Australia's 'stolen generation', John Moriarty was only four when he was taken away from his mother: loaded on to an army truck and sent thousands of kilometres away from his home in the Gulf of Carpentaria to be raised in a series of bleak institutions. He was given a birth date -- April Fool's Day -- forbidden to speak his Yanyuwa language and did not see his mother again for 10 years. 'I was stripped of my nurturing, loving bush family, my culture and my connections to land that stretch back through my ancestors for thousands of generations,' he said. Now, 65 years after he was snatched, the Australian government is preparing to make what many believe is a long-overdue national apology to Moriarty and thousands of indigenous children forcibly removed from their parents. Australia's new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says it will acknowledge the pain suffered by the stolen children and their families. But satisfaction that an acknowledgment is at last in the offing is being overshadowed by a row over whether the victims should also receive financial compensation. Activists want a A$1bn (£443m) fund to be established, saying an apology without recompense would be a hollow gesture. ... Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin has been consulting indigenous leaders over the wording of the apology but the government is refusing to consider a compensation fund. Aboriginal lawyer Michael Mansfield is one of a number of activists pressing for a reparation scheme. He says the A$1bn figure is based on a scheme set up by the Tasmanian state government for an estimated 150 claimants. About A$5m (£2.2m) has been set aside and each claimant is expected to receive between A$40,000 (£18,00) and A$100,000 (£45,500). [...]"

CAMBODIA/DARFUR

"Cambodian Officials Claim US Actress Broke into Genocide Museum"
DPA dispatch on EarthTimes.org, 21 January 2008
"Cambodian police and officials said Monday that the show of force to stop American actress Mia Farrow from staging an anti-China rally at a former Khmer Rouge prison was only increased after she had earlier staged a night-time break-in. Farrow and supporters from local German-funded organization Center for Social Development (CSD) were stopped from burning a symbolic torch at the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum Sunday when the museum was shuttered and up to 200 police roped off access. 'The problem Sunday was made worse after the actress and a group of supporters forced their way into the museum after closing time Saturday and started taking pictures,' Toul Sleng Museum director Chey Sopheara said by telephone. 'They shoved a guard and tried to force a gate. They entered through the guard's entrance and then behaved in a very rude way and made a big problem for our staff,' he alleged. Police confirmed they had received a report of a disturbance at the former torture centre featuring Farrow Saturday night and had stepped up security in light of her group's behavior. Farrow's global Dream For Darfur rally aims to bring attention to China's economic support of Sudan ahead of the August Beijing Olympics, but Cambodia banned the rally, saying it involved the country in foreign politics and did not respect Khmer Rouge victims. Up to 16,000 people were tortured or murdered at the former high school which the Khmer Rouge converted into a notorious torture machine. Up to 2 million Cambodians died during its 1975-79 regime. Sopheara said Farrow and her supporters had toured the centre without incident Saturday morning in the company of journalists, but had returned by themselves after closing time and forced entry. [...]"

"Cambodian Police Block Farrow's Darfur Rally"
Reuters dispatch on MSNBC.com, 20 January 2008
"Cambodian police barred Hollywood actress Mia Farrow and other activists from laying flowers at a 'Killing Fields' museum on Sunday, as part of a campaign to end atrocities in Sudan's Darfur. Some 100 baton-wielding police blocked Farrow, who fronts the Dream for Darfur pressure group, and her fellow activists from entering the compound at Tuol Sleng, the Phnom Penh high school that became Pol Pot's main torture center. 'Darfur has nothing to do with Cambodia. Go protest in Darfur,' Phnom Penh police chief Touch Naruth told reporters after the brief stand-off ended without incident. The group, which had planned to light a symbolic Olympic torch in the compound, has held similar events in Chad, Rwanda, Armenia, Germany and Bosnia as part of a campaign to persuade China to push Khartoum into ending the violence in Darfur. The group, which included a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, were due to hold a press conference later in the day. Beijing is hosting the 2008 Olympic Games and human rights groups have targeted China in the hope of using the spotlight thrown on the country to influence Chinese foreign policy. China, a major investor in Sudan's oil industry, has been accused of breaching international rules and fanning bloodshed by selling Sudan weapons that have been diverted to Darfur. International experts estimate 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million others have been driven from their homes in years of fighting. The Sudanese authorities put the death toll at 9,000 and say the West has exaggerated the conflict. Farrow said in an earlier interview that Phnom Penh was putting the interests of Beijing, one of its biggest donors, above the memories of the estimated 1.7 million victims of Pol Pot's 1975-79 reign of terror. [...]"

CONGO

"Fighting in Congo Rekindles Ethnic Hatreds"
By Lydia Polgreen
The New York Times, 10 January 2008 [Registration Required]
"[...] The recent clashes in eastern Congo between the army and the troops of the dissident general have exacted a grievous toll on a region ravaged by a decade of war. Around 400,000 people have been forced to flee their homes, thousands of women have been raped and hundreds of children have been press-ganged into militias, the United Nations says, raising alarm among diplomats the world over. But the fighting is also rekindling the kind of ethnic hatred that previously dragged this region into the most deadly conflict since World War II. It began with the Rwandan genocide, in which Hutu extremists killed 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu in 1994. Many of the genocide's perpetrators fled into Congo, igniting regional conflicts that were fueled by the plunder of Congo’s minerals, lasted for nearly a decade and killed, by some estimates, as many as four million people through violence, disease and hunger. Now a new wave of anti-Tutsi sentiment is sweeping Congo, driven by deep anger over the renegade Tutsi general. Many see his rebellion as a proxy for Rwanda, to the east, whose army occupied vast parts of Congo during the most devastating chapter of the regional war and plundered millions of dollars' worth of minerals from the country, according to many analysts, diplomats and human rights workers. The current battle is in many ways a throwback to the earliest and most difficult questions at the heart of the Congo war, and also a reflection of longstanding hostilities toward Tutsi, who are widely viewed here as being more Rwandan than Congolese. Many Congolese Tutsi see themselves as members of an especially vulnerable minority, one that has already suffered through genocide and whose position in Congo has always been precarious. But many other Congolese see Tutsi, many of whom have been in Congo for generations, as foreign interlopers with outsize economic and political influence. [...]"

GERMANY/HOLOCAUST DENIAL

"Holocaust Revisionist's Lawyer Jailed
PressTV.com, 15 January 2008
"A German court has sentenced the former lawyer of Ernst Zundel to three and a half years in prison for denying the Holocaust herself. In addition to 3 1/2 years in prison, Sylvia Stolz has also been banned by the court from practicing law for five years. During the trial of the Holocaust revisionist scholar, Ernst Zundel, Stolz called the Holocaust 'the biggest lie in world history.' Stolz has reportedly read a newspaper article to the court about the appearance of world renowned Israeli artist, Gilad Atzmon in Bochum. In a public statement, Atzmon is quoted as having said that the written history of the Second World War and the Holocaust are a 'complete forgery, initiated by Americans and Zionists.' Stolz represented 67-year-old Zundel in his first trial in Germany and was banned from the court for allegedly trying to sabotage the proceedings. Zundel's second trial ended in February, 2007 with his conviction for denying the Holocaust and was sentenced to the maximum five years in prison."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

GUATEMALA/SPAIN

"Spanish Judge Shelves Guatemalan Genocide Probe"
Agence France-Press dispatch on Yahoo!Xtra News, 17 January 2008
"A Spanish judge probing genocide over 36 years of civil war that left some 200,000 people dead or 'disappeared' in Guatemala shelved his quest Wednesday, a court official told AFP. Santiago Pedraz was handed the dossier after an October 2005 Spanish constitutional court decision authorising the country to investigate crimes against humanity wherever they took place. But, fresh from Alvaro Colom being sworn in as Guatemala's new president on Monday, Pedraz has admitted total frustration in his epic inquiry following 'the refusal of the Guatemalan authorities to cooperate.' The court source said Pedraz had made repeated attempts to secure information through 'letters rogatory,' which are legal letters of request used where specific treaties are not in force. 'Not one of them received a reply,' he added. While the judge has given up on that line of inquiry, he has nevertheless refused to rule out future developments in the case, should 'victims or witnesses' come forward. To that end, he has asked media in seven countries (Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the United States) to publicise his search for information. Arrest warrants for seven suspects will also remain in force, the court specified. 'Guatemala is committing, as a state, a violation of its obligation, fulfilled by all civilised countries, to signal and punish genocidal acts,' it added. Once part of the Mayan empire, Guatemala was ruled by Spain from 1524 until its independence in 1821. In 1996, a peace accord ended a generation of fighting between government troops, leftist rebels and right-wing vigilante groups. Many victims of the civil war, the majority of whom died or disappeared during the military regimes from 1978 to 1986, were indigenous people. [...]"
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch. I like: "Once part of the Mayan empire, Guatemala ..." That's roughly like saying, "Once part of the Roman empire, Great Britain ..."]

INDONESIA

"On Deathbed, Suharto Avoids Answering for Crimes"
By Seth Mydans
The New York Times, 18 January 2008 [Registration Required]
"Gilang was one of the last victims of former President Suharto's harsh 32-year rule, a young activist who disappeared here on the day the former president was forced from power 10 years ago and whose body was found six days later, shot, stabbed and disemboweled. As with many of Mr. Suharto's victims, his killers have never been identified or brought to justice, escaping prosecution much as Mr. Suharto himself has done over the past decade. Now, on what appears to be his deathbed, it seems Mr. Suharto will end his life -- like Pol Pot in Cambodia -- without having to answer for crimes on a monumental scale that include severe human rights abuses and prodigious corruption. For the past two weeks Mr. Suharto, 86, has struggled for life in a Jakarta hospital with what doctors say is multiple organ failure. Along with a stream of medical reports about his condition, a debate has emerged over whether to honor him as a statesman or to pursue him as a criminal even after his death. The day of Gilang's disappearance, May 21, 1998, marked the end of a regime in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed in purges, massacres, assassinations, kidnappings and civil wars. It was a regime that has been compared with a Mafia empire in which Mr. Suharto, as president, enriched himself, his family and his friends and is accused of stealing at least $15 billion in state funds. It ended when Mr. Suharto's power was undermined by a devastating economic collapse, widespread rioting, student demonstrations and finally rejection by his own military and cabinet ministers. Now in the capital, Jakarta, the mood seems to be one of forgiveness and amnesia. A parade of politicians, religious figures, pop stars and three foreign leaders has paid hushed visits to his bedside as if he were already lying in state. A number of public figures have joined a call for an end to investigations and prosecutions against him, describing them as unseemly. [...]"

IRAQ

"Right-Wingers Can't Cover Up Iraq's Death Toll Catastrophe"
By John Tirman
AlterNet.org, 21 January 2008
"[...] A new mortality survey ... appeared earlier this month in the New England Journal of Medicine. Conducted by the Iraqi Ministry of Health, it found 151,000 deaths by violence as of June 2006, about the same period as the Lancet article. Newspaper coverage duly noted that their estimate was only one-quarter that of the Lancet. But a little digging would have revealed much more: the total deaths attributable to the war, non-violent as well as violent, was about 400,000 for that period, now 19 months ago. If the same trends continued, that total today would be more than 600,000. The deaths-by-violence in that latter survey remained the same from year-to-year, however, which is not plausible -- all observers agree that violent deaths were rising sharply in 2005 and 2006. The discrepancy is found in how the survey was conducted: interviewers identified themselves as employees of the Ministry of Health, then under the control of Shiite cleric Moktada al Sadr. Those interviewed, therefore, would be wary of saying a brother or son or husband had been killed by violence, fearing retribution. And, indeed, there are non-violent categories in the survey that suggest just such equivocation: 'Unintentional injuries' would equal about 40 percent of the death-by-violence toll, for example. Road accidents were ten times their pre-war totals-if someone is run off a highway by a U.S. convoy, is that a 'non-violent' death? The researchers, to their credit, acknowledge that their estimate is likely too low due to several factors. They did not go into dangerous neighborhoods, which made up 11 percent of the sample, and could not accurately estimate the death toll in those, which would of course have been high. Still, the survey is revealing on the non-violent mortality, too: deaths by kidney failure, cancer, diabetes, and others rose by several times, signaling the near-collapse of the health care system. The MoH survey is the fifth trying to measure mortality during the war, and there is significant congruence among all. (The Lancet estimate is not actually the highest; that belongs to the private British polling firm, Opinion Research Business, which found that as of August 2007, 1.2 million Iraqis were dead due to the war.) But all the surveys point to one thing: a colossal amount of killing and dying has been going on, far more than numbers used in most discussions of the issue in the fleeting instances when concern for Iraqis appears. [...]"

"Ceremony Mourns Victims of Iraq's 'Anfal' Genocide"
By Shamal Aqrawi
Reuters dispatch, 14 January 2008
"A genocidal campaign under Saddam Hussein against Iraq's Kurds must never be forgotten, officials said on Monday at a ceremony for 371 victims, whose grieving relatives demanded those responsible be put to death. Up to 180,000 people may have been killed as chemical gas was used, villages were razed and thousands of Kurds were forced into camps during the 1988 Anfal, or 'Spoils of War,' campaign. Kurdish and Iraqi political leaders gathered for the solemn ceremony as 371 flag-draped coffins were laid out in neat rows in a large commercial warehouse in Arbil in semi-autonomous Kurdistan in Iraq's north. The wooden coffins contained the remains of Kurds found in four mass graves near the northern cities of Mosul, Dahuk and Sulaimaniya and the southern city of Samawa since 2004. All have since been identified and will be reburied in a cemetery in Sulaimaniya on Wednesday. ... Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majeed, former Defence Minister Sultan Hashem and former army commander Hussein Rashid Muhammad have been convicted of genocide over the Anfal campaign and remain in U.S. military custody awaiting execution. Majeed, widely known as 'Chemical Ali,' has also gone on trial for his role in crushing a Shi'ite rebellion in southern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. Majeed, Hashem and Muhammad are being held while officials squabble over who has authority to transfer them for execution despite an appeals court upholding the death sentence last September and ordering that it be carried out within 30 days. The U.S. military has said it will not hand them over until the Iraqi government resolves the dispute. [...]"

"How the New England Journal of Medicine Undercounted Iraqi Civilian Deaths"
By Andrew Cockburn
Counterpunch.org, 12-13 January 2008
"[...] As the authors themselves admit, they did not visit a significant proportion of the original designated clusters: 'Of the 1086 originally selected clusters, 115 (10.6%) were not visited because of problems with security,' meaning they were inconveniently situated in Anbar province, Baghdad, and two other areas that were dangerous to visit (especially for Iraqi government employees from a Shia-controlled ministry.) While such reluctance is understandable -- one of those involved was indeed killed during the survey -- it also meant that areas with very high death tolls were excluded from the survey. To fill the gap, the surveyors reached for the numbers advanced by the Iraqi Body Count, (IBC) a U.K. based entity that relies entirely on newspaper reports of Iraqi deaths to compile their figures. Due to IBC's policy of posting minimum and maximum figures, currently standing at 80,419 and 87,834, their numbers carry a misleading air of scientific precision. As the group itself readily concedes, the estimate must be incomplete, since it omits deaths that do not make it into the papers, a number that is likely to be high in a society as violently chaotic as today's Baghdad, and higher still outside Baghdad where it is even harder for journalists to operate. Nevertheless, the NEJM study happily adopted a formula in which they compared the ratio between their figures from a province they did visit to the IBC number for that province, and then used that ratio to adjust their own figures for places they did not dare go. [...]"

"W.H.O. Says Iraq Civilian Death Toll Higher Than Cited"
By Lawrence K. Altman and Richard A. Oppel Jr.
The New York Times, 10 January 2008 [Registration Required]
"The World Health Organization on Wednesday waded into the controversial subject of Iraqi civilian deaths, publishing a study that estimated that the number of deaths from the start of the war through June 2006 was at least twice as high as the oft-cited Iraq Body Count. The study is the latest in a long series of attempts to come up with realistic numbers of civilian deaths. The numbers are politically fraught, and researchers' work has been further complicated by problems in collecting data while working in a war zone. The estimates have varied widely. The Iraq Body Count, a nongovernmental group based in Britain that bases its numbers on news media accounts, put the number of civilians dead at 47,668 during the same period of time as the World Health Organization study, the W.H.O. report said. President Bush in the past used a number that was similar to one put forward at the time by the Iraq Body Count. But another study, by Johns Hopkins, which has come under criticism for its methodology, cited an estimate of about 600,000 dead between the war’s start, in March 2003, and July 2006. The World Health Organization said its study, based on interviews with families, indicated with a 95 percent degree of statistical certainty that between 104,000 and 223,000 civilians had died. It based its estimate of 151,000 deaths on that range. Those figures made violence the leading cause of adult male deaths in Iraq and one of the leading causes of death for the population as a whole, the health organization research team reported online in the New England Journal of Medicine. More than half the violent deaths occurred in Baghdad. While the new study appears to have the broadest scope to date, increasing its reliability, well known limitations of such efforts in war areas make it unlikely to resolve debate about the extent of the killing in Iraq. [...]"

"Who Is Killing the Women of Basra?"
By Yifat Susskind
CommonDreams.org, 10 January 2008
"In Basra, Iraq's second largest city, 2008 was ushered in with an announcement of the 2007 death toll of women targeted by Islamist militias. City officials reported on December 31 that 133 women were killed and mutilated last year, their bodies dumped in trash bins with notes warning others against 'violating Islamic teachings ...' But ambulance drivers who are hired to troll the city streets in the early mornings to collect the bodies confirm what most residents believe: the actual numbers are much higher. The killers' leaflets are not very original. They usually accuse the women of being prostitutes or adulterers. But those murdered are more likely to be doctors, professors, or journalists. We know this because activists from the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) have taken on the gruesome task of visiting city morgues to try and determine the scale and pattern of the killings. According to OWFI, most of the women who have been murdered 'are PhD holders, professionals, activists, and office workers.' Their crime is not 'promiscuity,' but rather opposition to the transformation of Iraq into an Islamist state. That bloody transition has been the main political trend under US occupation. It's no secret who is killing the women of Basra. Shiite political forces empowered by the US invasion have been terrorizing women there since 2003. Within weeks of the invasion, these groups established 'Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice' squads, which many Iraqis refer to simply as 'misery gangs.' They began by patrolling the streets, harassing and sometimes beating women who did not dress or behave to their liking. Coalition forces did nothing to stop them, and soon the militias escalated their violence to torturing and assassinating anyone who they saw as an obstacle to turning Iraq into an Islamist state. [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to Peter Prontzos for bringing this source to my attention.]

JEWISH HOLOCAUST

"The Hunt for Doctor Death"
By Rory Carroll and Uki Goni
The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 January 2008
"It was 1945 and Europe was a crime scene. The most destructive war in history had left a miasma of ruined cities, refugees and occupation armies, but there was worse than that. The Nazi extermination camps had been discovered and little-known place names were becoming sickeningly famous: Auschwitz, Birkenau, Belzec, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Sobibor, Treblinka. It was time for a reckoning. The Nuremberg trials sent Hitler's senior henchmen to the gallows or long stretches in prison. But others escaped. Quietly, middle- and low-ranking war criminals slipped the Nuremberg net and subsequent efforts to catch them. They obtained false papers, packed their bags and vanished across the Atlantic to a safe haven: South America. Legends followed them: stories of U-boats packed with Nazi gold docking on the coast of Patagonia. Novels and films imagined a shadowy Fourth Reich of mosquitoes, swastikas and eugenic laboratories in the Amazon jungle and the Andean foothills. The reality was more prosaic but still sinister. Hundreds, possibly thousands, had escaped through the 'ratline' and found sanctuary. As the decades passed, a handful were caught. Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust, was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Argentina in 1960. Klaus Barbie, the 'Butcher of Lyons,' was extradited from Bolivia in 1983. Erich Priebke, a Waffen SS captain, was extradited from Argentina in 1995. The story petered out. The fugitives were octogenarians, nonagenarians and, for the most part, dead. When the 20th century ended so, it seemed, did the hunt for Nazis. Not quite. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre recently made a bombshell announcement. The hunt was back on. The Jewish human rights group revealed that it was launching one final drive to locate the remaining genocide collaborators hiding in South America: Operation Last Chance. [...]"

"How Movies Have Portrayed the Holocaust" (movie review)
By Moira Macdonald
The Seattle Times, 18 January 2008
"If a filmmaker depicts unspeakable atrocities of history on screen, are those atrocities by necessity diminished and lessened? Should filmmakers not even try to depict the Holocaust, as their efforts couldn't possibly measure up to its true horror? Is this chapter of history far beyond any traditional narrative form? These are some of the questions examined by Daniel Anker's documentary 'Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust,' a critical and thoughtful look at the way the film industry has depicted the World War II genocide. Working with a relatively small number of films (narrator Gene Hackman notes that most World War II movies focused on the war in the Pacific and the spirit of American teamwork there), Anker provides a careful and engrossing history. We see early newsreel footage of Nazi book-burning, accompanied by a jovial voice-over that seems to take this no more seriously than a college prank. In the early 1930s, Hollywood was careful not to offend Nazi Germany. Though there was some early resistance to Hitler, including Hollywood's Anti-Nazi League (we see a brief clip of Melvyn Douglas reading a statement from the group, with Myrna Loy seated next to him), many others were simply afraid to speak out. Even by 1939, we're told, half the cast of the anti-Nazi film 'Confessions of a Nazi Spy' refused to have their names in the film's credits. Film historians in 'Imaginary Witness' tell us that of the few films that dared to confront Nazi Germany, many were 'written in code' -- few used the word 'Jew,' and many marketing campaigns downplayed war content. Sidney Lumet speaks movingly of his own shock at finally hearing the word 'Jew' spoken on screen -- in Charles Chaplin's independently financed, daring 1940 satire of Hitler, 'The Great Dictator.' [...]"

"Bush: US Should Have Bombed Auschwitz"
By Aaron Heller
Associated Press dispatch on Yahoo! News, 11 January 2008
"President Bush had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of Israel's Holocaust memorial Friday and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing, the memorial's chairman said. Bush emerged from a tour of the Yad Vashem memorial calling it a "sobering reminder" that evil must be resisted, and praising victims for not losing their faith. Wearing a yarmulke, Bush placed a red-white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps. He also lit a torch memorializing the victims. Bush was visibly moved as he toured the site, said Yad Vashem's chairman, Avner Shalev. 'Twice, I saw tears well up in his eyes,' Shalev said. At one point, Bush viewed aerial photos of the Auschwitz camp taken during the war by U.S. forces and called Rice over to discuss why the American government had decided against bombing the site, Shalev said. 'We were talking about the often-discussed "Could the United States have done more by bombing the train tracks?"' Rice told reporters later aboard Air Force One. 'And so we were just talking about the various explanations that had been given about why that might not have been done.' The Allies had detailed reports about Auschwitz during the war from Polish partisans and escaped prisoners. But they chose not to bomb the camp, the rail lines leading to it, or any of the other Nazi death camps, preferring instead to focus all resources on the broader military effort, a decision that became the subject of intense controversy years later. Between 1.1 million and 1.5 million people were killed at the camp. 'We should have bombed it,' Bush said, according to Shalev. [...]"

PALESTINE/ISRAEL

"Israeli Blockade Paralyzes Gaza Life"
By Ibrahim Barzak
Associated Press dispatch on Yahoo! News, 21 January 2008
"Israel refused to reopen crossings or allow crucial fuel supplies into Gaza on Monday, holding firm in its campaign to keep Palestinian rocket fire at bay despite warnings from the U.N. that vital food aid could be suspended within days. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Gaza's residents can 'walk, without gas for their cars,' suggesting that he would not lift the chokehold any time soon. Israel and Gaza's Hamas government were locked in a public relations battle over the depth of the hardship. An angry Hamas TV announcer shouted that 'we are being killed, we are starving!' and Palestinian leaders pleaded for national unity, while Israel accused Hamas of fabricating a crisis to gain world sympathy. Gaza's power plant shut down late Sunday, plunging Gaza City into darkness, and gas stations and many bakeries stopped operating. Health officials warned that hospital generators were running out of fuel. 'We have the choice to either cut electricity on babies in the maternity ward or heart surgery patients or stop operating rooms,' said Health Ministry official Moaiya Hassanain. International food aid may be suspended by the week's end if the closures continue, a U.N. aid agency spokesman said Monday, because of a shortage of fuel and plastic bags used to pack food. Most Gaza residents rely on food aid. ... Olmert said he would not allow a humanitarian crisis to unfold, but also warned that Gaza's 1.5 million residents won't be able to live a 'pleasant and comfortable life' as long as southern Israel comes under rocket attack from Gaza. 'As far as I'm concerned Gaza residents will walk, without gas for their cars, because they have a murderous, terrorist regime that doesn't let people in southern Israel live in peace,' Olmert told legislators from his Kadima Party. [...]"
[n.b. How does Olmert's justification differ from that of the Palestinian suicide bomber, who believes that Israeli civilians should not "be able to live a 'pleasant and comfortable life'" so long as Israel occupies Palestinian territory? Does the Israeli strategy result in fewer civilian casualties?]

POLAND/JEWISH HOLOCAUST

"A Scholar's Legal Peril in Poland:
Princeton Historian Could Face Criminal Charges Over Book"
By Craig Whitlock
The Washington Post, 18 January 2008 [Registration Required]
"Polish prosecutors are considering taking the unusual step of filing criminal charges against an Ivy League professor for allegedly 'slandering the Polish nation' in a book that describes how Poles victimized Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in the aftermath of World War II. Jan T. Gross, a Princeton University historian and native Polish Jew, has raised hackles here with the publication of 'Fear,' an account of Poland's chaotic postwar years in which Jews who barely survived the brutal Nazi occupation under the Germans often went on to suffer further abuse at the hands of their Polish neighbors. The book was first published in 2006 in the United States, where reviewers found it praiseworthy. Gross's work, however, generated bitter feelings among many Poles who accused him of using inflammatory language and unfairly stereotyping the entire population as anti-Semitic. When the Polish-language edition of his book was released here last Friday, prosecutors wasted no time in announcing that he was under investigation. A spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office in Krakow, which is handling the case, said a decision was expected this week on whether to press charges against Gross or summon him for questioning. The law in question was adopted in 2006, around the time that 'Fear' was published in English; Gross and some other historians say it was partly a response to the book. The measure prohibits anyone from asserting that 'the Polish nation' was complicit in crimes or atrocities committed by Nazis or communists. The maximum penalty is three years' imprisonment. The threat of legal action has not deterred Gross so far. He arrived in Warsaw on Monday for a nationwide tour to promote his book, which has already sold out in some stores. In an interview, he said he doubts prosecutors will charge him. [...]"

RWANDA

"'Genocide' Teachers Suspended"
News24.com, 21 January 2008
"About 50 Rwandan teachers, suspected of disseminating 'genocide ideology,' have been suspended from working, local human rights league Liprodhor has reported. 'According to official sources, the Minister of Education Jeanne d'Arc Mujawamariya last week suspended 50 or so head teachers, teachers and curriculum developers accused of facilitating the "ideology of genocide" in their establishments,' Liprodhor indicated on its website. Perpetrated by Hutu extremists, the April-July 1994 genocide saw 800,000 lives lost -- according to the United Nations -- primarily minority Tutsis. Almost 15 years later, anti-Tutsi messages stemming from the education system were still being unearthed. 'Tutsis are snakes, we're sick of them and we will kill them,' reads a copybook taken from Mataba secondary school in Province du Nord. Mujawamariya and her Secretary of State Joseph Murekeraho had been interrogated by a parliamentary commission, which found that an ideology of genocide remained strong in 84 out of 637 Rwandan secondary schools. A 400-page report from the commission compiled copies of anonymous manuscripts seized from numerous schools in the country. Gaseke Secondary School, about 30km from Kigali, circulated 10 Hutu commandments that had been published before the genocide by the extremist newspaper Kangura. 'Never commit adultery with a Tutsi woman. Never become friends with a Tutsi,' states doctrine from Gaseke school. The parliamentary committee was not satisfied with Mujawamariya and Murekeraho's explanations and had decided to question them again at a later date, not yet announced."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

SERBIA/KOSOVO

"Kosovo is Key as Hardliner Wins First Leg of Serb Poll"
By Ian Traynor
The Guardian, 21 January 2008
"According to exit polls and early results last night in Belgrade, Nikolic took more than 39% of the vote to Tadic's 35% in a crucial ballot that could determine whether Serbia turns east, into Russia's offered embrace, or west, towards European integration. Neither contender, however, scored an outright victory, requiring an absolute majority of the vote. The other seven candidates were eliminated from the race, leaving Nikolic and Tadic to contest a run-off on February 3. Nikolic, an extreme nationalist who fought as a paramilitary in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and served under the late president Slobodan Milosevic, could yet be beaten, since many of the votes last night, on a high turnout of more than 60%, were cast for pro-western democrats. His support, however, is more easily mobilised and he could well secure victory in two weeks. A win for Nikolic and the Radicals, whose party leader, Vojislav Seselj, is currently being tried for war crimes at the tribunal in The Hague, would be viewed as a disaster in western Europe and a severe setback to EU policy in the Balkans. In an attempt to boost Tadic's chances, Brussels announced last week that it was opening talks on visa-free travel to Europe for Serbs. Several EU countries also want to sign a pre-membership deal with Belgrade before the end of the month in order to help Tadic to a second-round victory. But some EU states are strongly opposed to this, demanding that key Serbian war crimes suspects be arrested and extradited to The Hague as a condition for the EU deal. [...]"

SUDAN/DARFUR

"Sudan Appoints Darfur War Crimes Suspect to Senior Job"
Associated Press dispatch in The Globe and Mail, 21 January 2008
"The Sudanese government confirmed Monday it had named a suspected militia chief accused of atrocities in Darfur to a senior official position. Musa Hilal, the suspected overlord of the janjaweed militias blamed for the worst atrocities against civilians in Darfur, was named adviser to Sudan's Ministry of Federal Affairs last week, Sudanese media reported. Government officials initially denied the appointment, made by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, but the minister confirmed the nomination on Monday. 'The appointment is already effective,' Federal Affairs Minister Abdelbasit Sabderat told The Associated Press by telephone. 'Mr. Hilal will be handling tribal affairs throughout the Sudan,' he said, insisting Darfur would not be the advisor's only focus. The ministry manages the central government's relations with the outlying provinces in Africa's largest country. Mr. Hilal is the leader of the Mahamid, a clan belonging to the powerful Rezeigat tribe of nomad Arabs in Darfur. He is accused of having led the proxy-militia raised by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum to fight Darfur's ethnic African rebels. Over 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million been chased to refugee camps -- largely ethnic Africans -- since the fighting began in 2003. The UN Security Council imposed travel and financial sanctions against Mr. Hilal and three others in April, 2006, for his role in what U.S. President George W. Bush has called a 'genocide.' Mr. Hilal has denied any wrongdoing, stating in a 2004 video interview with the New York-based Human Rights Watch that he always acted on orders and under Khartoum's control. [...]"

"Attack Seen as Setback for the U.N. in Darfur"
By Colum Lynch
MSNBC.com, 13 January 2008
"A U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force faced the first major challenge to its authority in Darfur, Sudan, this week, enduring more than 10 minutes of hostile fire from Sudanese forces without responding with a single shot. The assault Tuesday evening against a clearly marked supply convoy of more than 20 trucks and armored personnel vehicles left a Sudanese driver critically wounded and prompted a formal protest from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. It also gave the U.N.-backed force a humiliating defeat during the critical first weeks of its mission in Darfur. The United Nations' chief peacekeeping official, Jean-Marie Guehenno, vowed to 'repel' future attacks against U.N. and African Union personnel. But other U.N. officials said the force's Nigerian commander, Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, lacks the firepower to respond forcefully to a larger and better-equipped Sudanese military. The incident marked a setback to U.S.-backed efforts to end nearly five years of violence in Darfur through the deployment of more than 26,000 peacekeepers, mostly Africans. The mission replaced 7,000 African Union peacekeepers who had largely retreated to their barracks amid armed attacks. So far the new force has about 9,000 peacekeepers, most of whom are African Union troops who simply replaced their green berets with blue U.N. berets. The United States, the United Nations and other key powers had reason to believe an attack such as Tuesday's was coming. In September, an armed group assaulted an African Union base, killing 10 soldiers near the town of Haskanita. Since then, U.N. leaders have warned of the risk of failure from entering the Darfur conflict without adequate resources to repel an attack. But requests for vital equipment -- including 24 transport and attack helicopters -- have gone unanswered. [...]"

"Sudan Admits Attacking UN/AU Darfur Peacekeepers"
By Andrew Heavens
Reuters dispatch, 10 January 2008
"Sudan admitted on Thursday that its troops had opened fire on a joint U.N./African Union peacekeeping convoy in Darfur, contradicting an earlier denial by its ambassador to the United Nations. The attack underlines the dangerous task facing the joint peacekeeping force, which took over from a beleaguered African Union contingent this month. United Nations officials have repeatedly accused Khartoum of obstructing the roll-out of the force. A spokesman for the Sudanese armed forces said the attack was the result of a 'shared mistake.' He said the U.N./AU Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) had failed to ask for permission to pass through the area, Sudan's state news agency SUNA reported. The U.N. has insisted it did tell the Sudanese army about the convoy's route in advance. The Sudanese armed forces spokesman said the UNAMID convoy should also not have been travelling at night. ... Sudanese soldiers fired light weapons and rocket-propelled grenades at the UNAMID supply convoy for up to 12 minutes as it headed for the west Darfur town of Tine late on Monday, the United Nations said. U.N. officers on the ground told Reuters soon after the attack that they assumed the Sudanese soldiers had mistaken the peacekeepers for rebels, who have been increasingly active in the region in recent weeks. [...]"

TURKEY/ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

"Turkish Min[ister] Wants Police Role In Journalist Murder Probed"
Agence France-Presse dispatch on Nasdaq.com, 21 January 2008
"Turkey's justice minister has called for a 'serious' investigation of allegations that security forces were involved in the murder last year of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. 'Certain members of the security forces are said to be linked to this murder,' Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin said in an interview published Monday in the daily Sabah. 'Every allegation must be considered a tip-off and seriously investigated,' he said. Thousands marked the first anniversary of Dink's assassination on Saturday with protesters accusing the authorities of ignoring the alleged protection the suspected gunman and his associates received from the police. 'If what they (the police) did was a crime, they must be definitely punished,' the minister said. Dink's murder prompted fresh calls for the elimination of the 'deep state' -- a term used to describe security forces acting outside the law to preserve what they consider Turkey's best interests. Lawyers for Dink's family say the police withheld and destroyed evidence to cover up the murder, including footage from a bank security camera in downtown Istanbul near where Dink was gunned down on Jan. 19, 2007. The charge sheet says police received intelligence as early as 2006 of a plot to kill Dink organized in the northern city of Trabzon, home of self-confessed gunman Ogun Samast, 17, and most of his 18 alleged accomplices currently on trial. A taped telephone conversation between a policeman and a suspect shortly after the killing suggests the officer knew of the plot in advance. The tape, leaked to the media last year, includes degrading comments about Dink. Dink campaigned for reconciliation between Turks and Armenians, but nationalists hated him for insisting the World War I massacres of Armenians under Ottoman rule was an act of genocide -- a label Ankara fiercely rejects. [...]"

UKRAINE/NAZI HOLOCAUST

"Genocide's Ghosts"
By Vivienne Walt
Time.com, 16 January 2008
"[...] In 2002 Patrick Desbois, a Catholic priest from Paris, visited Rava-Ruska for the first time, intrigued by tales he had heard from his grandfather as a boy. The older man had been a prisoner of war in the town in the early 1940s, and had told young Patrick that horrors had occurred there. When Desbois arrived in Rava-Ruska -- a town of about 8,000 a few miles from the border with Poland -- to learn what had happened, 'it was like a black hole,' he says. 'There was nothing in the books.' Desbois says the then mayor declined to divulge details. But when the priest returned a year later, the deputy mayor, Yaroslav Nadiak, led him to the forest of Borowe outside the town and revealed what Rava-Ruska's townsfolk had long known: that some 1,500 Jews had been shot and hastily buried in a mass grave there in November 1943. 'He told me: "Patrick, I could take you to a hundred villages like this,"' says Desbois. 'And I said: "OK. Let's go."' In fact, the number was far higher than that, and Desbois admits he had little idea of the huge task he had set himself when he began his full-time research in 2004. In 15 trips to Ukraine, the 52-year-old priest has since located more than 750 killing sites, some of which contain several mass graves, and he now suspects there may be another 1,800 graves scattered across the country. Ukraine's graves -- many of them just depressions in the ground, suggesting the weight of hundreds of bodies -- were neglected through decades of Soviet rule. Now, with many of the Holocaust's witnesses in their 70s and 80s, Desbois feels he is running out of time. 'In five years,' he says, 'there will be no more witnesses.' [...]"
[n.b. Another galvanizing profile of an extraordinary man. The New York Times published its own piece on Desbois last October.]

UNITED KINGDOM/JEWISH HOLOCAUST

"Buttons Depict Holocaust Victims"
BBC Online, 21 January 2008
"An art installation using more than six million buttons to symbolise the victims of the Holocaust has been unveiled at a London shopping centre. The work by Leeds-based artist, Antonia Stowe, depicts the industrial scale of the genocide which saw millions of Jews killed during World War II. Entitled "6 Million +", it also commemorates those killed in recent genocides in the Balkans and Africa. It is being displayed at Brent Cross in north London until 1 February. Opening the exhibition on Monday, the Mayor of Barnet Maureen Braun, said it was 'an extremely moving and visual way of appreciating the full horror of what happened during the Holocaust.' 'I invite residents to reflect with me on the horrors of the last century and look forward with hope for the future,' she said."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

UNITED STATES/ATLANTIC SLAVERY

"New Jersey's Apology for Slavery"
By Bonnie Goldstein
Slate.com, 8 January 2008
"In November, New Jersey Assemblymen William Payne and Craig Stanley introduced a resolution mandating that the state apologize formally for its role in the Atlantic slave trade. (See below and the following four pages [for scans of the declaration].) Expressing 'New Jersey's profound regret,' the declaration's text relates that New Jersey at one time 'had one of the largest populations of captive Africans in the northern colonies.' Although New Jersey prohibited the importation of slaves after 1786, it 'was the last northern state to emancipate its slaves,' waiting until 1846 to abolish the practice. The declaration extends 'solemn regrets to those who were enslaved and the descendants of those slaves, who were deprived of life, human dignity, and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens of the United States.' On Jan. 7, the resolution cleared New Jersey's Assembly and state Senate in near-unanimous floor votes. Virginia, Maryland, Alabama, and North Carolina have already expressed official remorse for past support of slavery."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

UNITED STATES/CANADA/THE "WAR ON TERROR"

"Torture Manual Wrongly Includes Allies: Bernier"
CTV.ca, 19 January 2008
"Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has distanced his department from one of its training manuals that lists the United States and Guantanamo Bay as places of torture. 'I regret the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual used in the department's torture awareness training,' he said in a statement released Saturday. 'It contains a list that wrongly includes some of our closest allies. I have directed that the manual be reviewed and rewritten. The manual is neither a policy document nor a statement of policy. As such, it does not convey the Government's views or positions.' ... Canadian Maher Arar was tortured in Syria after being 'renditioned' there by the United States in 2002. Canadian William Sampson was imprisoned and tortured in Saudi Arabia. Foreign Affairs used the manual as part of its torture awareness training. The department mistakenly released the document to lawyers involved in a lawsuit centred on alleged abuse of detainees in Afghanistan."

"Canada Places U.S., Israel on Torture Watch List"
Reuters dispatch in The New York Times, 17 January 2008 [Registration Required]
"Canada's foreign ministry has put the United States and Israel on a watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured and also classifies some U.S. interrogation techniques as torture, according to a document obtained by Reuters on Thursday. The revelation is likely to embarrass the minority Conservative government, which is a staunch ally of both the United States and Israel. Both nations denied they allowed torture in their jails. The document -- part of a training course on torture awareness given to diplomats -- mentions the U.S. jail at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where a Canadian man is being held. The man, Omar Khadr, is the only Canadian in Guantanamo. His defenders said the document made a mockery of Ottawa's claims that Khadr was not being mistreated. Under 'definition of torture' the document lists U.S. interrogation techniques such as forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and blindfolding prisoners. 'The United States does not permit, tolerate, or condone torture under any circumstances,' said a spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in Ottawa. A spokesman for Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier tried to distance Ottawa from the document. 'The training manual is not a policy document and does not reflect the views or policies of this government,' he said. The government mistakenly provided the document to Amnesty International Canada as part of a court case the rights organization has launched against Ottawa over the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan. Amnesty Secretary-General Alex Neve told Reuters his group had very clear evidence of abuse in U.S. and Israeli jails. 'It's therefore reassuring and refreshing to see that ... both of those countries have been listed and that foreign policy considerations didn't trump the human rights concern and keep them off the list,' he said. [...]"

UNITED STATES/INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

"Apaches Rise to Defend Homelands from Homeland Security"
By Brenda Norrell
U.N. Observer and International Report, 8 January 2008
"Apache land owners on the Rio Grande told Homeland Security to halt the seizure of their lands for the US/Mexico border wall, during a national media conference call Monday. It was the same day that a 30-day notice from Homeland Security expired with the threat of land seizures by eminent domain to build the US/Mexico border wall. 'There are two kinds of people in this world, those who build walls and those who build bridges,' said Enrique Madrid, Jumano Apache community member, land owner in Redford and archaeological steward for the Texas Historical Commission. 'The wall in South Texas is militarization,' Madrid said of the planned escalation of militarization with Border Patrol and soldiers. 'They will be armed and shoot to kill.' It was in Redford that a U.S. Marine shot and killed 18-year-old Esequiel Hernandez, herding his sheep near his home in 1997. 'We had hoped he would be the last United States citizen and the last Native American to be killed by troops,' Madrid said. Dr. Eloisa Garcia Tamez, Lipan Apache professor living in the Lower Rio Grande, described how US officials attempted to pressure her into allowing them onto her private land to survey for the US/Mexico border wall. When Tamez refused, she was told that she would be taken to court and her lands seized by eminent domain. 'I have told them that it is not for sale and they cannot come onto my land.' Tamez is among the land owners where the Department of Homeland Security plans to erect 70 miles of intermittent, double-layered fencing in the Rio Grande Valley. Tamez said the United States government wants access to all of her land, which is on both sides of a levee. 'Then they will decide where to build the wall. It could be over my house.' Tamez said that she may only have three acres, but it is all she has. [...]"

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ISSUE: BLOOD FEUDS

"Blood Feuds Trap 1,200 Albanian Youths at Home"
By Nicola Smith
The Sunday Times, 20 January 2008
"In the bleak village of Mali i Jushit in northwest Albania, a teenager's crowded family home has become his prison. Mojo Muriqi has been confined to his sparse living quarters for nearly four years. If he ventures into the potholed street beyond his front door, he could be killed. Mojo is despondent about his future. At 19, he should be socialising in the historic near-by city of Shkodra and planning for student life and a career. Instead he spends his time playing cards or indoor football, sometimes doing the 'women's work' of cleaning. Despite Albania's macho culture, it is the women in this family who work the fields and pay the household bills. Mojo, who with 60 other male relatives is compelled to remain in a compound of family homes, is a victim of the ancient tradition of blood feuds. In 2003 Mojo's uncle killed a young man from the Mirashe family, who live in a village two miles away. It was a senseless murder that took place when the two argued while tending their sheep. Although the perpetrator is in jail, members of his extended family face a death sentence. The blood-feud code requires that the victim's family take revenge on any of the killer's male relatives. The sole proviso is that the boundaries of family homes must not be breached. ... While emigration seems the only escape route for him and his 20-year-old cousin Resmi, the feud is more like a game for the younger children. Six-year-old Xhevahir should have started school this year but instead he merely plays with the other boys in the household. The prospect of letting their sons attend school fills the mothers with terror. Aid organisations helping the families say that in recent years the rule that children are safe from revenge killings has been broken. [...]"

ISSUE: FOOD SECURITY/INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION

"Europe Takes Africa's Fish, and Migrants Follow"
By Sharon Lafraniere
The New York Times, 14 January 2008 [Registration Required]
"[...] A vast flotilla of industrial trawlers from the European Union, China, Russia and elsewhere, together with an abundance of local boats, have so thoroughly scoured northwest Africa's ocean floor that major fish populations are collapsing. That has crippled coastal economies and added to the surge of illegal migrants who brave the high seas in wooden pirogues hoping to reach Europe. While reasons for immigration are as varied as fish species, Europe's lure has clearly intensified as northwest Africa's fish population has dwindled. Last year roughly 31,000 Africans tried to reach the Canary Islands, a prime transit point to Europe, in more than 900 boats. About 6,000 died or disappeared, according to one estimate cited by the United Nations. ... Overfishing is hardly limited to African waters. Worldwide, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 75 percent of fish stocks are overfished or fished to their maximum. But in a poor region like northwest Africa, the consequences are particularly stark. Fish are the main source of protein for much of the region, but some species are now so scarce that the poor can no longer afford them, said Pierre Failler, senior research fellow for the British Center for Economics and Management of Aquatic Resources. The coastal stock of bottom-dwelling fish is just a quarter of what it was 25 years ago, studies show. Already, scientists say, the sea's ecological balance has shifted as species lower on the food chain replace some above them. ... In a region where at least 200,000 people depend on the sea for their livelihoods, local investments in fishing industries are drying up with the fish stocks. [...]"

ISSUE: GENOCIDE PREVENTION/INTERVENTION

"Intervention, Hailed as a Concept, Is Shunned in Practice"
By Warren Hoge
The New York Times, 20 January 2008
"Three years after the United Nations adopted a groundbreaking resolution to help it intervene to stop genocide, even longtime supporters of the rule acknowledge that it has not helped the organization end the violence in Darfur. The General Assembly resolution, approved in 2005, held nations responsible for shielding their citizens from mass atrocities and established the right of international forces to step in if nations did not fulfill this new 'responsibility to protect.' ... The United Nations has tried to take the lead in Darfur, the crisis-ridden region in western Sudan. But it has been stymied by the failure of major member states to fulfill promises to support action and by the intransigence of the Sudanese government. Sudan begrudgingly agreed last year to permit United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur but only as part of a joint mission with the African Union, whose own 7,000-member force had proved inadequate. Since then, the government has thrown up so many bureaucratic and operational roadblocks that the force that took over on Jan. 1 is only a third of its planned strength of 26,000, and Sudanese authorities are still blocking United Nations’ efforts to include specialized non-African troops considered essential to making the mission effective. In addition, countries with advanced militaries have not come forward to answer United Nations appeals for the sophisticated aviation and logistics assistance that the force needs. Darfur, in short, has shown that there is a great difference between gaining acceptance for a working theory and making the theory work. [...]"