Genocide Studies Media FileJanuary 5-18, 2009

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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BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA/EUROPEAN UNION/INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS

"Bosnian Serbs Slam EU Parliament Move to Commemorate Srebrenica Genocide"
EU Business, 17 January 2009
"Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik on Friday branded as incorrect and uncceptable a decision by the European Parliament to proclaim July 11 a day of commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide. 'The European Parliament was not correct in this case. For us (Serbs) marking in that way only that event and giving importance to that event only is unacceptable,' Dodik was quoted by the local SRNA news agency as saying. 'An answer on how to mark overall sufferings in Bosnia-Hercegovina should have been found rather than singling out one event which is a subject of different political interpretations,' Dodik said. The Bosnian Serb leader added that he was not denying that there had been victims in Srebrenica but said Bosnia's 1992-1995 war had claimed Serb victims too, SRNA said. Members of the European Parliament on Thursday adopted a resolution on Srebrenica recognising July 11 as the 'day of commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide.' They called on the European Union's executive Commission and members countries to support the parliament's move 'all over the EU.' The resolution also called on all Balkans countries to do the same. Bosnian Serb forces overran the eastern town of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995. After the fall of the UN-protected Muslim enclave they killed around 8,000 Muslim men and boys throwing their bodies into mass graves. The Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, has been termed a genocide by the International Court of Justice and the UN war crimes tribunal, both based in The Hague. [...]"

"Two Suspects Enter Not Guilty Pleas for Srebrenica"
Reuters dispatch on AlertNet.org, 16 January 2009
"Two Bosnian Serb wartime commanders entered not guilty pleas on Friday before the Bosnian war crimes court to charges of taking part in genocide against Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in July 1995. The court indicted Momir Pelemis, 59, and Slavko Peric, 41, for their role in the detention and killing of 1,700 Bosnian Muslim men from the eastern enclave of Srebrenica, after it fell to Bosnian Serb forces commanded by General Ratko Mladic. The massacre of around 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the enclave, which was under the protection of United Nations peacekeepers, is seen as Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two. 'I am not guilty for any count of the indictment,' said Pelemis, who was arrested in November while working as a municipal inspector in the eastern town of Zvornik. Peric also entered a not guilty plea. Most of the Srebrenica Muslims were killed while trying to escape through the woods, either shot down immediately or seized and brought to warehouses or schools. They were then taken to execution sites, killed and buried in mass graves. The two men were accused of taking part in mass executions in the village of Pilica, where one of the largest mass graves was found, and at the military cooperative at Branjevo. The United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague has sentenced seven Bosnian Serbs for the Srebrenica massacre. Nine more are on trial, and Mladic, seen as the mastermind of the massacre, is on the run 13 years after he was indicted. In Bosnia, 26 Bosnian Serbs have been put on trial over Srebrenica. Eleven have been jailed, seven acquitted and eight are still being tried. [...]

CAMBODIA

"Genocide Tribunal Delves into Cambodia's Dark Past"
ABC News, 16 January 2009
"The long-awaited prosecutions of former Khmer Rouge officials accused of genocide in the 1970s are reaching a crucial stage in Cambodia. While some victims are keen to see justice done, many ordinary Cambodians would rather see the time and the money spent improving their lives. This month marks 30 years since the Khmer Rouge; the red communist Cambodians were driven from power in Cambodia. During their four-year reign well over 500,000 people died, accused of being spies for their country or for refusing to embrace the changes forced upon them by Pol Pot -- the cold-blooded leader of the movement who wanted to build an agrarian utopia free of western influence and meddling. Today tourists flock to the killing fields site in Phnom Penh and elsewhere to view piles of skulls and bones and to walk among the dusty graves. And soon they'll be able to see the Khmer Rouge accused. In December the Khmer Rouge head of state, Khieu Sampan, was in court for a procedural hearing. He's now 77 and is ailing, but maintains his innocence. He is one of five former members of the KR who are set to face trial under the extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia -- a United Nations-backed process more commonly known as the KR or genocide tribunal. It is proving to be a laborious process, running several years and more than $100 million over budget. It's been dogged funding shortfalls, internal bickering, and allegations of corruption, but within a matter of months the first trial should begin. Bruno Carette is a Paris-based film maker who has released a feature film on the genocide tribunals. He believes the role China and the US played in the region at that time needs to be addressed. He says there is little popular support for the tribunal process. 'Nowadays Cambodia is trying to join the world, they have been at war for 30 years ... with this terrible story and most of the people are very poor and living with less than $1 per day -- especially the farmers [who make up] 90 per cent of the population -- and they don't think this trial is necessary,' he said. [...]"

CHINA/TIBET

"China to Seek Holiday Marking Defeat of Tibet's Pro-independence Uprising 50 Years Ago"
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 10 January 2009
"Chinese-backed Tibetan leaders will soon set a date for what they call 'Serf Liberation Day' to mark the defeat 50 years ago of a pro-independence uprising in the Himalayan region, state media reported Sunday. A holiday to mark the 'emancipation of millions of serfs and slaves' in Tibet will be decided on during a meeting of the region's legislature starting Wednesday, Xinhua News Agency said. The entry of Chinese forces into Tibet in 1949 was followed by efforts to transform the Buddhist, feudal order into a socialist, secular society. Tibetans rebelled on March 10, 1959, to try an oust the Chinese, but the uprising ended after 20 days with the flight of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, into exile in India. A bill to decide on a holiday marking those events will be presented during the second annual session of the ninth Tibet Regional People's Congress, Xinhua said. The bill is aimed at 'reminding all the Chinese people, including Tibetans, of the landmark democratic reform initiated 50 years ago,' Pang Boyong, deputy secretary general of the Tibetan regional congress standing committee, said Saturday, according to the report. 'Since then, millions of slaves under the feudal serfdom became masters of their own,' Pang said. Calls to the Tibet regional people's congress rang unanswered and two Tibetan government officials contacted by phone Sunday in Lhasa said they were unaware of the news. Critics of Chinese rule in Tibet note the region remains one of China's poorest and say most of the benefits of economic development have gone to members of the Han Chinese majority, rather than to Tibetans. They accuse the government of enforcing policies intended to destroy the indigenous culture and language and of persecuting Tibetan Buddhists loyal to the Dalai Lama. [...]"

INDIA/UNITED KINGDOM

"The Martyrs of Amritsar"
By Andrew Buncombe
The Independent, 9 January 2009
"On a sweltering afternoon 90 years ago in April, a squad of Gurkha and Baluchi troops under the command of British officers marched into an enclosed park in the city of Amritsar and levelled their weapons. The park was densely crowded and there was only one way in and out. The officer in charge -- General Reginald Dyer, whose name will forever be cloaked in infamy -- then gave the order to fire. Within 10 minutes the soldiers had fired 1,650 rounds, and hundreds of people lay dead, dying or wounded in the city's Jallianwala Bagh. General Dyer could not have realised that the massacre, and the outraged response it triggered, marked a crucial landmark in India's struggle for independence. Yet, despite the importance of the atrocity in the freedom struggle, the people who died there have never been officially recognised by the Indian government. Until now. After a decades-long campaign by the relatives of those killed, officials have announced the dead shall be officially recognised as 'freedom fighters.' While it is unlikely any relatives will be able to claim compensation (that right was limited to spouses and daughters of those killed) the families say the decision marks the significance of what was one of the bloodiest and most shameful incidents of Britain's colonial rule in India, and the sacrifice of those killed. 'I am very happy indeed,' said Nand Lal Arora, a marketing executive whose grandfather, Faqir Chand, was among those killed on 13 April 1919. The event was portrayed in Richard Attenborough's epic Gandhi. 'My father and grandfather had gone to the park to hear the speeches. My grandfather was on the stage when the shooting started and he was killed. My father suffered a back injury. My grandfather and family did something for the country and I'm glad the government has decided to recognise it.' [...]"

IRAQ/ANFAL CAMPAIGN

"Witness to Genocide"
By Heather Pringle
Archaeology, 62: 1 (January-February 2009)
"[...] To clinch their case, prosecutors needed to put a team of highly skilled forensic archaeologists and anthropologists to work excavating some of the country's mass graves. In a desolate stretch of the Hajara Desert in Iraq's Muthanna province, Sonny Trimble crouched down, eye level with a 7,000-pound trackhoe bucket. At his signal, the operator angled it gently into the ground, shaving off a half-inch layer of sand. The two men had been at this work for nearly an hour on a sweltering April morning in 2005. With each pass of the bucket, Trimble strained to hear the sound of metal scraping against bone -- the prelude to a grave. So far, nothing. But as the bucket edged past, he spied a small tuft of black, then a swatch of brilliant orange, emerge from the ground. He stopped the trackhoe and crawled over for a closer look. Sticking out of the sand were pieces of a woman's black dress and a flaming orange sash. ... In spring 2004, Trimble received a phone call from a lawyer working in the Department of Justice, asking if he would head a major investigation of Iraq's mass graves. The enormous project would require the forensic excavation of hundreds of victims and detailed analysis of evidence in a secluded laboratory in Iraq. Crimes against humanity are usually investigated during peacetime, when researchers can exhume bodies from mass graves patiently, without fear of attack or reprisal. Iraq, however, was spiraling rapidly into civil war. Car bombings, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), ambushes, and kidnappings grabbed daily headlines around the world. A Western forensic team working for months at a mass-grave site would present a large, stationary target for insurgents. No one could guarantee the safety of the team, but Trimble, who had worked under these conditions before, understood the risk. He accepted the mission. 'I was really interested in assisting the Iraqi people,' he recalls. [...]"
[n.b. A detailed, fascinating, and very moving account of the forensic work being done in Saddam Hussein's killing fields for Kurdish civilians.]

JEWISH HOLOCAUST

"Paper Love: Inside the Holocaust Archives"
By Sarah Wildman
Slate.com, 5 January 2009 and following
"[...] The International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany, was, until late 2007, the largest unopened Holocaust archive in the world. For decades, historians have begged to get inside these doors, the source of years of diplomatic tension between the United States -- prodded by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum -- and our European allies. Toward the end of the last century and the beginning of this one, it became the locus of hopes of survivors and researchers from all over the world, partly because no one really knew what they would find there. ITS holds some 50 million records. Sheltered in several buildings—once SS barracks—across a wide campus that recalls a New England liberal-arts college, the archives are located in a small farm village with a large palace, home to the fairy-tale-sounding character Prince Wittekind of Waldeck. (His godfather, staying with the period theme, was Heinrich Himmler.) By mandate, the archives were closed to research and outsiders beginning in 1955. That's when the myths began. 'Nobody knew exactly what was inside,' Volkhard Knigge, director of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial told me in the summer of 2006, after the international commission controlling the archives finally set a timetable to open ITS at a meeting in Luxembourg. 'It became ... a place of imaginations, of fantasies.' We spoke by phone, I in Madrid, Spain, and he in Weimar, Germany. 'Nobody knows exactly whether we will find -- [for example] documents about decision making on the part of perpetrators or administrations of the crimes of the Holocaust. This archive became a kind of black box, and it invited people to create ideas about why nobody had access.' Some thought the mystery was Germany's fault, he told me; others believed that the administrators were keeping 'files hidden to let survivors die so that they cannot prove their right for financial compensation.' Because it was a European rather than a German archive, some claimed that other nations had something to hide -- perhaps proof of collaboration. Still others voiced concern that European privacy laws -- stricter in many cases than those in the United States -- would be violated if the files were opened. [...]"
[n.b. This is part one of a five-part series on the archives, all of which can be linked to through this page.]

NAZISM/FORCIBLE TRANSFER OF CHILDREN

"Stolen by the Nazis: The Tragic Tale of 12,000 Blue-Eyed Blond Children Taken By the SS to Create an Aryan Super-Race"
By Andrew Malone
The Daily Mail, 9 January 2009
"[...] Devised in 1935, the Lebensborn scheme operated on different levels to provide 'Aryan' children for Hitler's mad schemes of eugenics. As well as the stealing of blond children from families in occupied areas, another part of the scheme involved special 'breeding clinics' where pure German SS officers were told to mate with suitable German women. ... [After the war,] the children were officially classified by the Norwegian government as 'rats' and Nazi 'whore children'. Now elderly, some still get spat on in the street. The Norwegian government even tried sending 8,000 to Australia to get rid of them. As well as being locked in asylums, suicide rates among Lebensborn children were up to 20 times higher than normal for the population, while alcoholism, drug abuse and criminality were also rife. ... Campaigners are also attempting to bring the Norwegian government to court over documented evidence of drugs trials carried out on both children and mothers. Witnesses and documents say they were force-fed LSD, mescaline and other substances during experiments by the Norwegian military. The irony of all this, given what happened to the Jews, is beyond further comment. Perhaps the best known of the offspring of a Norwegian mother and a German soldier father was Anni-Frid Lyngstad, the brunette singer from the pop group Abba. She and her family fled the post-war persecution by moving to Sweden, where her secret was not known. Others were less fortunate, being beaten and raped. The post-war hatred towards the offspring of German soldiers was so great that psychologists even concluded that women who had taken part in the scheme were 'of limited talent and asocial psychopaths, some of them seriously backward'. The words 'father was a German' were indictment enough to send children from the previously occupied Scandinavian countries to mental hospitals, where many were tortured and raped. They were deemed dangerous because of their 'Nazi genes' and capable of forming a fascist fifth column. [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to Megan Lee for bringing this source to my attention.]

NETHERLANDS/INDONESIA

"Foreign Minister to Meet Relatives of Massacre Victims"
NRC Handelsblad, 13 January 2009
"Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen will meet relatives of the half-century old Rawagede massacre during his visit to Indonesia later this week, he wrote in response to questions from parliament. The Indonesian village of Rawagede was the scene of a massacre perpetrated by Dutch soldiers in 1947. The village has claimed 431 men were executed without trial. The massacre occurred during the 1945-1950 Dutch military re-occupation of what was formerly the colony of the Dutch East Indies. This lengthy 'policing' operation was in response to Indonesia's unilateral declaration of independence in August 1945, which was not acknowledged by the Dutch government of the time. In his letter, Verhagen writes that he wants to demonstrate his 'compassion and respect' and express sympathy with the relatives of those who were killed. Victims' relatives from the Javanese village, now known as Balongsari, have filed for compensation from the Dutch government. The official Dutch standpoint is, however, that the incident took place too long ago to still qualify for the payment of compensation under Dutch law. Verhagen is on a 12-day tour of Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand."
[n.b. Sounds like a classic gendercidal massacre. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

PALESTINE/ISRAEL

"'Tungsten Bombs' Leave Israel's Victims with Mystery Wounds"
By Raymond Whitaker
The Independent, 18 January 2009
"[...] The UN is not the only international body insisting that inquiries must be held as soon as possible into the tactics and weapons used by Israel. Erik Fosse, a Norwegian doctor who worked in Gaza's hospitals during the conflict, said that Israel was using so-called Dime (dense inert metal explosive) bombs designed to produce an intense explosion in a small space. The bombs are packed with tungsten powder, which has the effect of shrapnel but often dissolves in human tissue, making it difficult to discover the cause of injuries. Dr. Fosse said he had seen a number of patients with extensive injuries to their lower bodies. 'It was as if they had stepped on a mine, but there was no shrapnel in the wounds,' he said. 'Some had lost their legs. It looked as though they had been sliced off. I have been to war zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such injuries before.' However, the injuries matched photographs and descriptions in medical literature of the effects of Dime bombs. 'All the patients I saw had been hit by bombs fired from unmanned drones,' said Dr. Fosse, head of the Norwegian Aid Committee. 'The bomb hit the ground near them and exploded.' His colleague, Mads Gilbert, accused Israel of using the territory as a testing ground for a new, 'extremely nasty' type of explosive. 'This is a new generation of small explosive that detonates with extreme power and dissipates its power within a range of five to 10 metres,' he said. ... While the loudest controversy has been over accusations that white phosphorus was illegally used, other foreign doctors working in Gaza have reported injuries they cannot explain. Professor Mohammed Sayed Khalifa, a cardiac consultant from Sudan, said that two of his patients had had uncontrollable bleeding. 'One had a chest operation, and continued bleeding even after having been given large quantities of plasma,' he said. 'The other had what seemed to be a minor leg injury, but collapsed with profuse bleeding. Something was interfering with the clotting process. I have never seen such a thing before.' [...]"

"UN Says Israel 'May Have Committed War Crimes'"
Reuters dispatch in The Irish Times, 17 January 2009
"UN officials have said war crimes may have been committed during Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip. United Nations officials expressed outrage after Israeli tank fire killed two boys in a UN school today. Mr. John Ging, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, said he was concerned about possible war crimes. 'These two little boys are as innocent, indisputably, as they are dead,' Mr. Ging said as Israel's offensive entered its 4th week. 'The question now being asked is: is this and the killing of all other innocent civilians in Gaza a war crime?' UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay called for independent investigations into possible war crimes after Israel's shelling of another UN school compound killed 42 people, including women and children, earlier this month. Israel claimed the area near the compound was being used by militants to fire rockets. The sheer number of Palestinian dead in the conflict -- 1,203, of whom 410 are children -- has also led to calls by human rights groups and aid workers for Israel to face examination under international criminal law, specifically on the issue of "proportionality" in the prosecution of the war. ... Israeli army commanders admit they have seldom carried out such a full-throttle assault on an enemy. 'We've used artillery shells, tanks and helicopters for close-range assistance. I don't remember when we ever fired mortars in Gaza before,' a battalion commander told Haaretz newspaper, which described Israel as acting like a steamroller. A Palestinian rights group this week urged the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel, producing a 25-page petition alleging that Israel was using 'terrorist weapons to conduct crimes against humanity.' The ICC prosecutor in the Hague responded by saying the court had no jurisdiction to investigate in Gaza. The ICC can investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed on the territory of, or by a national of, a state. But Gaza is not a state. 'In Gaza at present, the ICC lacks such jurisdiction,' the prosecutor said in a statement. While Israel has not signed the Rome Statute that enshrined the ICC, it can still be investigated, but it would require the UN Security Council to call for such a move. Any such proposal would be likely to draw a veto from Israel's ally, the United States. [...]"

"Israel TV News Broadcasts a Gaza Father's Heartbreak"
By Jeffrey Fleishman and Batsheva Sobelman
The Los Angeles Times, 17 January 2009
"It was a voice of anguish that pierced a nation. Israeli TV broadcast a father's heartbreak Friday night when a Palestinian doctor living in Gaza made a frantic phone call to a newscaster saying an Israeli tank had shelled his home, killing three of his daughters and injuring other family members. Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish, who speaks Hebrew, worked as a gynecologist in an Israeli hospital. Even as the crossings between the Gaza Strip and Israel had largely been closed in recent months, he had traveled frequently from one place to the other. But he had remained in Gaza since the Israeli offensive began 21 days ago. He gave frequent interviews to the Israeli media on living conditions in the seaside enclave. He spoke of having tanks around his house and of passing through checkpoints; he told Israelis what it was like to be Palestinian. Minutes away from a scheduled phone interview on Israeli TV 10 with newscaster Shlomi Eldar, Aboul Aish called Eldar's cellphone, screaming and weeping in Arabic and Hebrew. The doctor's home had been struck by a shell. 'Oh God, oh my God, my daughters have been killed. They've killed my children. ... Could somebody please come to us?' Sitting at his news desk for one of Israel's main evening news broadcasts, Eldar held his phone up. For three minutes and 26 seconds, Aboul Aish's wailing was broadcast across the country. Eldar welled up. He put his head down. He looked at the camera. He looked at his phone. He made pleas for helpfor the family, but the doctor kept crying, his voice scratchy, like sand on paper, until Eldar took out his earpiece and walked off the set to try to arrange for help. The newscaster's bewildered face seemed to capture a bit of pause in a nation that has largely supported its military campaign and prefers not to question its course. News reports said there had been shooting in the area of the doctor's house before the shelling. The Israeli military had no immediate comment. [...]"
[This will likely be viewed as a defining moment in this atrocious assault. An Al-Jazeera report is available, with subtitled excerpts of the broadcast. The longer broadcast in the original Hebrew is almost unbearable to watch, but is worth seeing for the play of emotions across the announcer's face as Dr. Aboul Aish howls his grief. It is also worth witnessing Dr. Aboul Aish being verbally attacked by a group of Israelis during his subsequent press conference.]

"Israel Shells Gaza U.N. Warehouse, Hospital, Media Offices"
By Ahmed Abu Hamda and Dion Nissenbaum
McClatchy Newspapers on Yahoo! News, 15 January 2009
"[...] Israeli officials, however, later issued contradictory versions of why Israeli forces fired on the U.N. compound. An anonymous Israeli military official first told the Associated Press that Gaza militants had fired anti-tank weapons and machine guns from inside the compound. Then Israeli officials came forward to say that preliminary results showed that the militants ran for safety inside the U.N. compound after firing on Israeli forces from outside. Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency dismissed the Israeli claims as 'baseless' and challenged Israeli officials to produce evidence to support their version of events. Relations between the U.N. and Israel have been strained by Israeli attacks in Gaza that have killed United Nations staff members, students and refugees seeking refuge in temporary shelters. In the worst such incident, 43 Palestinians were killed last week when an Israeli strike hit a U.N. school where hundreds had sought safety. Then, as now, Israeli officials initially claimed that Hamas militants had fired from inside the school. After the U.N. denied that charge, Israel said that its soldiers had fired at Hamas militants who were firing mortars near the school. On Thursday, Gunness said that Israel's shifting stories raise questions about Israeli officials' veracity. 'With every flip-flop, Israel's credibility is severely undermined,' he said. Israeli forces also hit a Red Crescent hospital where more than 100 staff and patients were trapped as a blaze engulfed the administration building. 'It is unacceptable that wounded people receiving treatment in hospitals are put at risk,' said Jakob Kellenberger, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Another Israeli strike hit several high-rise buildings, including one that houses the Reuters news service's office. Reuters had given the Israeli military the location of its office before the fighting broke out last month. On Thursday, as Israeli forces moved in, Reuters staffers said they called the Israeli military to remind them where they were. Two minutes after they made the call, a shell hit their office, the Reuters staff reported. The Associated Press reported that gunfire hit its office in a separate building. [...]"
[n.b. Sometimes you just have to shake your head in disbelief.]

"UK Labour MP: 'The Reply of the Nazi'"
Politics Blog, The Guardian, 15 January 2009
"[...] Sir Gerald [Kaufman, Labour MP], who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, told MPs [in the House of Commons on 15 January]: 'My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town ... a German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians.' He said the claim that large numbers of the Palestinian victims were militants 'was the reply of the Nazi' and added: 'I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.' The Manchester Gorton MP acknowledged that Hamas was a 'deeply nasty organisation' but it was democratically elected and 'is the only game in town.' Refusing to hold talks with Hamas was a 'culpable error from which dreadful consequences have followed,' he said. Calling for an arms embargo, he said: 'It is time for our government to make clear to the Israeli government that its conduct and policies are unacceptable and to impose a total arms ban on Israel.' Sir Gerald added: 'It is time for peace -- but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is Israel's real goal but which is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals, they are fools." [...]"
[n.b. The headline provided here is my own. The full broadcast recording of Kaufman's powerful statement in the House of Commons is available here.]

"Bolivia Breaks Israel Ties, Claims Gaza 'Genocide'"
Associated Press dispatch on Yahoo! News, 14 January 2009
"President Evo Morales announced Wednesday he was breaking relations with Israel over its invasion of the Gaza Strip and said he will ask the International Criminal Court to bring genocide charges against top Israeli officials. Morales' ally Hugo Chavez of Venezuela broke ties with Israel last week. Morales told the country's diplomatic corps that the Israeli attack 'seriously threatened world peace' and he called for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Cabinet to face criminal charges. Morales chided the United Nations' 'Insecurity Council' for its 'lukewarm' response to the crisis and said the U.N. General Assembly should condemn the invasion. He also said Israeli President Shimon Peres should be stripped of his Nobel Peace Prize for failing to stop the invasion. [...]"

"Israel Accused of Gaza 'Genocide'"
AlJazeera.net, 14 January 2009
"The president of the UN General Assembly has condemned Israel's killings of Palestinians in its Gaza offensive as 'genocide.' Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann also told Al Jazeera he had never believed that the UN Security Council would be able to stop the violence in Gaza and that Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, had practically told the UN to 'mind their own business' by continuing the offensive. 'The number of victims in Gaza is increasing by the day... The situation is untenable. It's genocide,' d'Escoto said at the UN in New York. About 970 Palestinians have been killed and 4,300 injured since Israel began its Gaza offensive on December 27, which it says is to stop Palestinian fighters attacking Israel with rockets. ... 'There have been some who were under the illusion that the Security Council would do something that could help the situation,' d'Escoto said. 'I never thought so. Now we're faced with not only with a lack of compliance but with a prime minister of Israel who has practically responded to the Security Council by saying "mind your own business." It's unbelievable that a country that owes its existence to a general assembly resolution could be so disdainful of the resolutions that emanate from the UN.' D'Escoto, a former Roman Catholic priest and Nicaragua foreign minister, is known for his outspoken criticism of Israel and last year likened Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to the racist apartheid system previously used in South Africa. Gabriela Shalev, Israel's ambassador to the UN, called d'Escoto an 'Israel hater' for having hugged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president and a vocal critic of Israel. D'Escoto also said the UN had to bear some responsibility for the long-standing conflict in the Middle East as it had allowed the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, leaving the Palestinians stateless. 'You have to attack problems at their root cause and the Palestinian people have been subjected to subhuman treatment for decades and this [the Israeli offensive] is going to make matters worse.' [...]"

"The Righteous Jews of Today"
DesertPeace.org (photo gallery), 13 January 2009
[n.b. Some images, and signs, that I will have a hard time getting out of my mind. The DesertPeace blogger describes him/herself as follows: "I have been living in Jerusalem, Israel for 23 years and have dedicated all of those years to try and create an atmosphere that will lead to a just and permanent peace in this area. Israelis and Palestinians have more in common that the outsider might see ... I will attempt on this blog to show those similarities and show why I am so confident that one day we will live in peace together."]

"The Blood-Stained Monster Enters Gaza"
By Uri Avnery
Counterpunch.org, 12 January 2009
"Nearly seventy ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called 'the Red Army' held the millions of the town's inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands. Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz. This is the description that would now appear in the history books -- if the Germans had won the war. Absurd? No more than the daily descriptions in our media, which are being repeated ad nauseam: the Hamas terrorists use the inhabitants of Gaza as 'hostages' and exploit the women and children as 'human shields,' they leave us no alternative but to carry out massive bombardments, in which, to our deep sorrow, thousands of women, children and unarmed men are killed and injured. [...]"

"One Third of Those Killed Are Children, with Total Now 265"
By Toni O'Loughlin
The Irish Times, 10 January 2009
"Up to one third of the people killed in Gaza are children, who have nowhere to run for shelter, according to UN reports. As Israel's soldiers and tanks have moved from farmland at Gaza's edge into the broken-down refugee camps and towns of the territory, the child death toll has more than quadrupled. From 60 child deaths in the first eight days of aerial bombardment, the number of children who have been killed now stands at 265. Eight children were killed yesterday as the overall death toll climbed to 800 in an area that is sealed off from the world by Israel's 18-month blockade, and is just 38 miles long and eight miles wide. 'There is no safe space in the Gaza Strip, no safe haven, no bomb shelters and the borders are closed and the civilians have no place to flee,' the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a weekly report. Schools, mosques and houses, where people have been sheltering, have been hit. But Israel says Hamas is to blame and accuses the militant group of storing and mounting attacks from sites used by civilians. 'Hamas uses homes, mosques and hospitals to fire from and civilian casualties are unavoidable,' said Maj Jacob Dallal, a spokesman for the military. Israel's military also insists that the majority of deaths have been Hamas members. Yet Al-Mezan, a Palestinian human rights group, which is trying to verify the UN's casualty numbers, which come from the Palestinian ministry of health, says the military is attacking unarmed civilians. It says, for example, that on the morning before the ground invasion began, a father and his three sons were scavenging for wood for cooking and heating when they were hit by a missile. Children are also dying because rescue teams and ambulances cannot retrieve them from the wreckage. [...]"

"100 Survivors Rescued in Gaza From Ruins Blocked by Israelis"
By Craig Whitlock and Reyham Abdel Kareem
The Washington Post, 9 January 2009
"Emergency workers said they rescued 100 more trapped survivors Thursday and found between 40 and 50 corpses in a devastated residential block south of Gaza City that the Israeli military had kept off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross for four days. Relief agencies said they feared more people remained in the rubble of several shattered houses in the Zaytoun neighborhood. Red Cross officials said that they began receiving distress calls from people in the houses late Saturday but that they were blocked by the Israeli military from reaching the area until Wednesday. ... The Red Cross has accused the Israeli military of repeatedly refusing to grant permission for ambulances to go to [the neighbourhood of] Zaytoun, even though soldiers were stationed outside the damaged houses and were aware people were wounded inside. In a statement issued early Thursday, the agency called the episode 'unacceptable' and said the Israeli military had 'failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded.' ... The United Nations also pressed Israel to investigate the Red Cross allegations. John Holmes, chief of U.N. humanitarian aid programs, called the Zaytoun deaths 'a particularly outrageous incident.' 'What they found was absolutely horrifying,' he said at a news conference in New York. B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, said residents of Zaytoun who had been trapped in other houses have given similar accounts of how Israeli soldiers were aware of their plight but refused to allow rescue workers into the neighborhood. 'What these family members say consistently is that the IDF was close by,' said Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for the group, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. 'This wasn't some remote area. The soldiers certainly were about and were aware of their position.' ... Two surviving members of the Samuni family said dozens of their relatives in the area had been rounded up by the Israeli military early Sunday and ordered to stay inside a handful of houses while soldiers conducted operations door-to-door. They said some people died in the shelling, which left a gaping hole in the roof of the Samuni home. On Friday, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said it had confirmed the account of what happened to the Samuni family. Calling it 'one of the gravest incidents' in Gaza since the start of the fighting, the U.N. said Israeli soldiers had packed about 110 Palestinians into the house Sunday, then 'shelled the home repeatedly' 24 hours later. [...]"
[n.b. This is sickening stuff. The Zaytoun massacre is clearly a war crime, but might also fit the provisions of the crime against humanity of "extermination," as it has been applied under international law. Either way, it requires immediate investigation and prosecution. If the Israeli authorities are not up to the task, then investigations should be mounted and indictments issued by the International Criminal Court.]

"Gaza Under Fire"
By John Pilger
New Statesman, 8 January 2009
"[...] Mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Shlaim, Noam Chomsky, Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Uri Avnery, Ilan Pappé and Norman Finkelstein have undermined this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called Zionism. 'It seems,' wrote the Israeli historian Pappé on 2 January, 'that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as discrete events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system ... Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology -- in its most consensual and simplistic variety -- allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanise the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide].' In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of whom are children, fall within the international standard of the Genocide Convention. 'Is it an irresponsible overstatement,' asked Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and international law authority at Princeton University, 'to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalised Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not.' [...]"

"U.N. and Red Cross Add to Outcry on Gaza War"
By Ethan Bronner
The New York Times, 8 January 2009
"International aid groups lashed out at Israel on Thursday over the war in Gaza, saying that access to civilians in need is poor, relief workers are being hurt and killed, and Israel is woefully neglecting its obligations to Palestinians who are trapped, some among rotting corpses in a nightmarish landscape of deprivation. Soldiers rested on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza during the three-hour cease-fire on Wednesday. The United Nations declared a suspension of its aid operations after one of its drivers was killed and two others were wounded despite driving United Nations-flagged vehicles and coordinating their movements with the Israeli military. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called for an investigation by Israel for a second time in a week after the more than 40 deaths near a United Nations school from Israeli tank fire on Tuesday. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported finding what it called shocking scenes on Wednesday, including four emaciated children next to the bodies of their dead mothers. In a rare and sharply critical statement, it said it believed that 'the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded.' Israeli officials said that they were examining all the allegations, that they did not aim at civilians and that they were not certain that the source of fire that killed and wounded the United Nations drivers was Israeli. 'We do our utmost to avoid hitting civilians, and many times we don’t fire because we see civilians nearby,' said Maj. Avital Leibovich, chief army spokeswoman for the foreign media. 'We are holding meetings with U.N. officials to try to work out a mechanism so that their work can go forward.' She said that the army learned of the Red Cross allegations in a media report, and that the Geneva-based committee had not yet presented the evidence of what she called 'these very serious allegations' to the army. [...]"

"Israel Condemns Vatican's 'Concentration Camp' Remarks"
By Rachel Donadio
The New York Times, 8 January 2009
"Tensions rose between the Vatican and Israel on Thursday after Israel condemned a high-ranking Vatican official for comparing the Gaza Strip to 'a concentration camp.' 'Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp,' Cardinal Renato Martino, the president of the Council for Justice and Peace, said in an interview published Wednesday in an online publication. He defended his comments in the center-left daily newspaper La Repubblica on Thursday. While noting that Hamas rockets into Israel were 'certainly not sugared almonds,' he called the situation in Gaza 'horrific' and said conditions there went 'against human dignity.' Israel on Thursday harshly condemned the cardinal’s use of World War Two imagery. 'We are astounded that a spiritual dignitary would have such words, that are so far removed from truth and dignity,' said Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. He added that it was 'shocking to hear the vocabulary of Hamas propaganda coming from a member of the church.' ... The Vatican sought to downplay the cardinal's remarks. The Vatican spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, called Cardinal Martino's choice of words 'inopportune,' and said they created 'irritation and confusion' more than illumination. ... Indeed, the cardinal's remarks overshadowed an important discourse that Pope Benedict XVI delivered on Thursday, in which he called for a ceasefire in Gaza and decried 'a renewed outbreak of violence provoking immense damage and suffering for the civilian population.' 'Once again I would repeat that military options are no solution and that violence, wherever it comes from and whatever form it takes, must be firmly condemned,' he told diplomats accredited to the Vatican. [...]"

"Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction"
By Naomi Klein
The Nation, 7 January 2009
"It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa. In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on 'people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era.' The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions -- BDS for short -- was born. Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for 'the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions' and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. 'The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves. ... This international backing must stop.' Yet many still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments. [...]"

SERBIA/KOSOVO

"Milosevic's Secret Police Chief Denies Knowledge of Major Massacre in Kosovo"
By Dusan Stojanovic
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 13 January 2009
"Slobodan Milosevic's secret police chief said Tuesday he had no knowledge of a massacre by Serbian troops of ethnic Albanian civilians during the Kosovo war. Radomir Markovic testified as a witness in the trial of eight former Serbian security officers charged with ordering and carrying out the March 1999 killings in the Kosovo village of Suva Reka. Serb troops allegedly executed 48 members of one family, including infants, women and the elderly. 'If I knew about the killings, I would have done something,' said Markovic, who is serving a 40-year prison sentence for an unrelated crime. The proceedings at Belgrade Special Court are considered a test of Serbia's ability to punish those responsible for war crimes during Milosevic's tenure in the 1990s. The Suva Reka massacre took place only days after NATO launched air attacks on Serbia to force Milosevic to end his crackdown against the ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. He died of a heart attack in U.N. detention in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2006. According to the indictment against the Serb officers, the massacre victims included 14 children, two infants, a pregnant woman and a 100-year-old woman. Their bodies were later dumped in a mass grave at a police training camp near Belgrade, where they were discovered in 2001. 'I have heard about the suffering of civilians when I was already in prison in 2001,' Markovic told the court, when asked why he had no knowledge of the Kosovo massacre while occupying such a senior security position at the time. The indictment -- which does not include Markovic -- alleges that the defendants, including a former assistant commander of an elite police unit, rounded up the family, killed several men with automatic rifle fire before forcing the rest into a restaurant and throwing hand-grenades at them. [...]"

SUDAN/INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS

"Bashir 'War Crimes' Call Arrest"
BBC Online, 15 January 2009
"Sudanese Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi has been arrested after calling on President Omar al-Bashir to hand himself in to face war crimes charges. The veteran opposition leader is the most high-profile Sudanese figure to say the president should go to The Hague to face charges over Darfur. Mr. Turabi's son said he was worried for the health of his 76-year-old father. International Criminal Court (ICC) judges are deciding whether to issue an arrest warrant for Mr Bashir. The BBC's Amber Henshaw in Khartoum says tension is mounting ahead of the ICC decision. The head of national intelligence recently said foreigners in Sudan could be attacked if an arrest warrant is issued for the president. Mr. Turabi was taken from his Khartoum home just after 2300 local time (2000 GMT) on Wednesday, family members said. ... Mr. Turabi said on Monday that President Bashir should hand himself over to the ICC to save the country from possible UN sanctions. 'Politically we think he is culpable ... He should assume responsibility for whatever is happening in Darfur, displacement, burning all the villages, rapes, I mean systematic rapes, continuously, I mean on a wide scale and the killing.' He added: 'Six million of the Sudanese are now paralysed, no agriculture, no animal farming or rearing. He is responsible and we condemn him.' The ICC's chief prosecutor wants Sudan's president to be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, accusing him of supporting the Arab Janjaweed militias accused of ethnic cleansing against Darfur's black African population. Sudan says any charges would be part of a political plot against its leader. [...]"

THAILAND

"Thais 'Leave Boat People to Die'"
By Subir Bhaumik
BBC Online, 15 January 2009
"Thai soldiers are detaining illegal migrants from Bangladesh and Burma and forcing them back out to sea in boats without engines, survivors say. Survivors say their hands were tied and they were towed out to sea with little or no food or water. About 500 migrants are now recovering from acute dehydration in India's Andaman islands and the Indonesian province of Aceh. Thai officials were not immediately available for comment. But sources in the police and army confirmed to the BBC's Jonathan Head in Bangkok that asylum seekers are being pushed out to sea. They did not provide further details about the practice. Thousands of poor Burmese and Bangladeshis try to reach south-east Asian nations in search of work. Survivors rescued by Indian coast guards say hundreds of other asylum-seekers are still missing after leaving Bangladesh and Burma since the end of November. They told the BBC that they paid agents to take them to Thailand by boat so that they could have a better life. They said that the Thai authorities detained many of them in Koh Sai Daeng island. 'Thai soldiers tied up our hands and then put us in boats without engines. These were towed into the high sea by motorised boats and left to drift,' said Zaw Win, a survivor rescued by Indian coast guards off the coast of Little Andamans after drifting for 12 days. 'We were without food and water. The Thai soldiers clearly wanted us to die on the boats,' Win told the BBC by telephone from a camp where survivors are being cared for. Other survivors said that about 400 migrants were put on a huge boat by soldiers. It was equipped with only two bags of rice and two drums of drinking water. 'The food and water ran out in two days. After that we were starving for nearly 15 days before we saw a lighthouse and jumped into the sea and tried swimming ashore,' Mohammed Said told the BBC. This group of migrants was also rescued by the Indian coast guards and put into relief camps. [...]"

UGANDA/CONGO

"Uganda's Conflict Spreads to Congo, Where LRA Rebels Massacre Villagers"
By Edmund Sanders
The Los Angeles Times, 11 October 2009
"The rebels targeted churches on Christmas Day. Men were killed first, often stripped of shirts and pants, and then bound with their arms behind their backs. Rather than waste bullets, the attackers hacked victims in the back of the neck with machetes or shattered their skulls with sticks. 'It happened step by step,' said Joseph Kpayajadia, 58, a farmer who hid in the grass and saw his son being killed. 'They held everyone together in a group and then took people five or six at a time into the bush to kill. Then they came back for more.' By the time the rampage ended, 254 people were dead in nine villages in a string of attacks that lasted several days, officials in Doruma estimate. This troubled area of northeastern Congo, where regional conflicts have left 5 million people dead over 12 years, is now home base for one of Africa's longest-running and most insidious rebel movements: the Lord's Resistance Army, a fearsome group from neighboring Uganda that claims to demand strict adherence to the Ten Commandments. A surprise joint offensive last month by the armies of Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo had sought to crush the rebel militia, notorious for preying on children, in its Congo hide-out. But rather than kill the LRA's elusive leader, Joseph Kony, airstrikes against half a dozen rebel camps in the dense forests here appear to have only given new life to an old conflict, turning Uganda's civil war into a growing regional crisis. After a lull in attacks over the last two years, the rebel army -- estimated at 600 fighters -- has split into small bands, scattering in different directions and terrorizing civilian populations with the most brutal massacres by the militia since 2004. Humanitarian groups worry this pocket of northern Congo is witnessing the same type of catastrophe that northern Uganda did a decade ago. Congolese victims say the military offensive has put them in the cross hairs of a neighbor's war. ... Women and children were not spared. The father of a 4-year-old girl, lying stiffly on a filthy hospital mattress, said the attackers tried to break her neck and then threw her atop the corpses of her mother and two siblings. In nearby beds, other survivors, still shaking in pain and fear, were so traumatized that they had been unable to speak since the attack, hospital officials said. [...]"

UNITED STATES/GENOCIDE PREVENTION

"Kerry's Historic Opportunity on Genocide Policy"
By Susan Morgan and Eric Cohen
The Huffington Post, 12 January 2009
"At last, US rhetoric on genocide may mature into effective policy against genocide. What better place to begin than the confirmation hearings to be held Tuesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? The bi-partisan 'Genocide Prevention Taskforce' published its recommendations on December 8, 2008. Their 'blueprint for action' comes just in time for the 60th anniversaries of the landmark 'Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide' and the 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights.' Sixty years is a long time to wait to have a coherent and effective approach to preventing and responding to genocide -- too late for Rwanda and other 20th century genocides, but in time, still, to make a difference for Darfur. Senator John Kerry is well-positioned to take a historic step toward implementing an effective anti-genocide policy. ... As the newly named chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Kerry's first major task will be to vet President-elect Obama's nominees for Secretary of State, Senator Hillary Clinton, and UN Ambassador, Dr. Susan Rice. The Genocide Prevention Taskforce urged 'America's 44th president to demonstrate at the outset that preventing genocide and mass atrocities is a national priority.' That process can and should start in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Since Kerry's statements in 2004, the situation in Darfur has continued to be dire. Despite a UN prohibition on offensive military flights, the Government of Sudan continued to bomb villages, at least 43 times in 2008. Insecure camps warehouse over 2.5 million people. UN peacekeepers and humanitarian workers are robbed and attacked. Khartoum obstructs the deployment of the UN peacekeeping force, threatens the entire humanitarian program, and their Janjaweed militia are still armed. No meaningful peace process exists. ... In his leadership role as chairman of the committee, Senator Kerry should ensure time in the hearings for the nominees to elaborate their plans. We must know that the next administration is already working to ensure peace throughout Sudan, protection for civilians in Darfur and accountability for perpetrators of the world's worst crimes. [...]"

UNITED STATES/THE "WAR ON TERROR"

"What to Do About the Torturers?"
By David Cole
New York Review of Books, 15 January 2009
"[...] While the CIA claims to have abandoned waterboarding, the administration has refused to say what tactics CIA interrogators are still permitted to use. Its secret prisons, into which suspects are disappeared for incommunicado interrogation, remain open. The administration has never repudiated the practice of rendering suspects to third countries for interrogation by torture, and has never held anyone accountable for that practice. And several still-secret and still-governing Justice Department memoranda from 2005 reportedly authorize the CIA to continue using coercive tactics even after the McCain Amendment was passed. In March 2008, President Bush vetoed a bill that would have required the CIA to limit itself to interrogation techniques approved in the Army Field Manual. In short, the United States has never taken full responsibility for the crimes its high-level officials committed and authorized. That is unacceptable. In the long run, the best insurance against cruelty and torture becoming US policy again is a formal recognition that what we did after September 11 was wrong -- as a normative, moral, and legal matter, not just as a tactical issue. Such an acknowledgment need not take the form of a criminal prosecution; but it must take some official form. We have been willing to admit wrongdoing in the past. In 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, officially apologizing for the Japanese internment and paying reparations to the internees and their survivors. That legislation, a formal repudiation of our past acts, provides an important cultural bulwark against something similar happening again. There has been nothing of its kind with respect to torture. We cannot move forward in reforming the law effectively unless we are willing to account for what we did wrong in the past. The next administration or the next Congress should at a minimum appoint an independent, bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission to investigate and assess responsibility for the United States' adoption of coercive interrogation policies. If it is to be effective, it must have subpoena power, sufficient funding, security clearances, access to all the relevant evidence, and, most importantly, a charge to assess responsibility, not just to look forward. We may know many of the facts already, but absent a reckoning for those responsible for torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment -- our own federal government -- the healing cannot begin."

"Obama's Torture Dilemma"
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek, 14 January 2009
"The incoming Obama administration is coming under new pressure to investigate the treatment of terror detainees following a surprise public admission by a top Pentagon official that a high-profile detainee was 'tortured' at Guantánamo Bay. In an unusually candid interview, Susan J. Crawford, the convening authority for the U.S. military commissions, told the Washington Post's Bob Woodward that a number of 'enhanced' interrogation techniques used against one Guantánamo detainee -- Mohammed al-Qahtani -- 'met the legal definition of torture.' 'We tortured al-Qahtani,' Crawford told Woodward. ... Crawford's comments could force the new administration to look backward, as well. As the senior Pentagon official in charge of the military commissions, Crawford had direct access to internal files on Qahtani's treatment that have never been publicly released, including practices that she says left the Saudi detainee in a 'life-threatening condition.' 'I expect that a next step is for the Justice Department of the new administration to take a look at all of the facts and to assess any senior-level accountability for the abuse of detainees,' said Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a statement to Newsweek. (Levin recently released a report concluding that senior Bush administration officials were responsible for the abusive treatment of detainees.) Crawford's willingness to publicly use the word 'torture' could have immediate legal implications. Torture is not just a violation of international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions; it is also a federal crime prosecutable by the Justice Department. In fact, just last week, Justice put out a press release highlighting its successful prosecution of Roy M. Belfast (a.k.a. 'Chuckie Taylor'), the son of former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, for acts of torture committed under his father's regime during the 1990s. ... 'Our message to human rights violators, no matter where they are, remains the same: We will use the full reach of U.S. law, and every lawful resource at the disposal of our investigators and prosecutors, to hold you fully accountable for your crimes,' acting assistant attorney general Matthew Friedrich of the criminal division said in the press release. [...]"

"Advocates of a Special Prosecutor for Bush Seek an Answer From Obama"
By Michael Falcone
The Caucus (blog), The New York Times, 7 January 2009
"With few exceptions the transition period has been a model of presidential goodwill and cooperation. Apparently, the curious users who have been submitting questions on President-elect Barack Obama's Web site, Change.gov, didn't get the memo. In fact, the number one submission on the popular 'Open for Questions' portion of the site might seem more than a little impolitic to the current, and soon to be former, occupant of the White House. 'Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor -- ideally Patrick Fitzgerald -- to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping,' wrote Bob Fertik of New York, who runs the Web site, Democrats.com. Though the Obama team has promised to answer some of the top questions as early as this week, they have not said whether they will respond to Mr. Fertik's, which has received more than 22,000 votes since the second round of the question-and-answer feature began on Dec. 30. The site logged more than 1.5 million votes for 20,000-plus questions as of Wednesday. The second highest-ranked submission, which is about oversight of the nation's banking industry, is several thousand of votes behind the query about a special prosecutor. Mr. Fertik's question has been pushed to the top, in part, by a coalition of liberal bloggers, including a writer for the Web site, Daily Kos, who have 'endorsed' it and encouraged their readers to vote for it on Change.gov. On his own site, Mr. Fertik pointed out that during his presidential campaign Mr. Obama left the door open to a special prosecutor. 'What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued,' Mr. Obama told a Philadelphia journalist last April. But he went on to emphasize the difference between what he called 'really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity.' [...]"

ZIMBABWE

"Time to Forcefully Oust Mugabe"
By John Prendergast
The Christian Science Monitor on Yahoo! News, 16 January 2009
"[...] For a real solution in Zimbabwe, there are two credible choices: isolation or intervention. Neither is cost-free, and both are fraught with dangers. But now that the house is burning, we must take away Mugabe's key. A strategy of isolation would involve widening and deepening targeted sanctions against regime officials and building a coalition to enforce them. Beyond that, Zimbabwe's southern African neighbors could close their borders with Zimbabwe to all but refugees and humanitarian supplies, and interdict all energy and arms exports to Zimbabwe. Furthermore, the UN Security Council could refer the case of Zimbabwe to the International Criminal Court in order to investigate the systematic denial of food to people on the basis of their political affiliation as well as the widespread use of torture by the state. There are significant risks in this approach. The humanitarian crisis could deepen, pushing millions into actual starvation. Mugabe could order his militias and security services to intensify their attacks against civilian populations deemed unsupportive of the regime. His government could block access by humanitarian groups and thousands could die of cholera and other epidemics. The truth, however, is that much of this is already happening, but in slow motion. Mortality rates are creeping upward because of an explosion of untreated AIDS cases, combined with spiraling malnutrition rates. Zimbabwe already has among the lowest life expectancy rates in the world, hovering around 40 years by the UN's last count. There may be a faster solution. When the situation in Idi Amin's Uganda spiraled out of control and he began destabilizing neighbors, Tanzania intervened in 1979 and overthrew Amin's regime. When Charles Taylor's destruction of Liberia and Sierra Leone became untenable, Nigeria and other neighbors sent troops, and the US sent warships off Liberia's coast in a concerted regional push to successfully urge Taylor to resign and leave the country in 2003. When Congo's Mobutu Sese Seko's divide-and-conquer approach to government began creating security problems for neighbors, they supported rebel groups to overthrow him in 1997. As refugees, crime, and disease flow across their borders from Zimbabwe, the time has come for neighboring governments to expedite Mugabe's departure. South Africa remains the key, and the incoming Obama administration would do well to hold early talks with President Kgalema Motlanthe and ruling party leader Jacob Zuma about how this might be accomplished. [...]"
[n.b. Many readers will recognize Prendergast as "co-chair of Enough, a Center for American Progress project focused on ending genocide and crimes against humanity (www.enoughproject.org)."]

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ISSUE: FOOD SECURITY

"Billions Face Food Shortages, Study Warns"
By Ian Sample
The Guardian, 9 January 2009
"Half of the world's population could face severe food shortages by the end of the century as rising temperatures take their toll on farmers' crops, scientists have warned. Harvests of staple food crops such as rice and maize could fall by between 20% and 40% as a result of higher temperatures during the growing season in the tropics and subtropics. Warmer temperatures in the region are also expected to increase the risk of drought, cutting crop losses further, according to a new study. The worst of the food shortages are expected to hit the poor, densely inhabited regions of the equatorial belt, where demand for food is already soaring because of a rapid growth in population. A study in the US journal Science found there was a 90% chance that by the end of the century, the coolest temperatures in the tropics during the crop growing season would exceed the hottest temperatures recorded between 1900 and 2006. More temperate regions such as Europe could expect to see previous record temperatures become the norm by 2100. 'The stress on global food production from temperatures alone is going to be huge, and that doesn't take into account water supplies stressed by the higher temperatures,' said David Battisti, at the University of Washington, who led the study. Battisti and Rosamond Naylor, at Stanford University in California, combined climate models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and historical examples of the impact of heatwaves on agriculture, and found severe food shortages were likely to become more common. ... According to the study, many local populations now live on less than £1.30 a day and depend on agriculture. The need for food is due to become more urgent as populations are expected to nearly double by the end of the century. 'When all the signs point in the same direction, and in this case it's a bad direction, you pretty much know what's going to happen,' Battisti said. 'You're talking about hundreds of millions of additional people looking for food because they won't be able to find it where they find it now." [...]"

ISSUE: INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS

"'A Dangerous Luxury': The International Criminal Court's Dream of Global Justice"
By Thomas Darnstädt, Helene Zuber and Jan Puhl
DerSpiegel.com, 14 January 2009
"[...] Exasperatingly, the International Criminal Court -- an ambitious enterprise supported by 108 member states -- could fail on its first and greatest project: bringing peace to violence-torn Africa. Large parts of the world recently rose in opposition to the court once again when it announced last summer that it is seeking a warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for alleged genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. This prompted an angry response from the African Union, which asked the United Nations Security Council to make clear to the chief prosecutor where his competencies end. The Arab League was outraged that The Hague wanted to arrest a head of state. Sudan's ally China expressed 'grave concern,' and Libya and South Africa tried to block the indictment against Bashir in the Security Council. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had earlier expressed his opinion that a too-open search for justice merely compromises efforts to achieve peace. He warned the prosecutor that a warrant against Bashir would have 'a very serious negative impact on efforts to achieve peace' in Sudan. However supporters of the ICC's position point out that Bashir has repeatedly announced negotiations on Darfur while his troops continued to -- as Moreno-Ocampo put it -- 'murder, destroy villages and rape women.' Peace or justice? In faraway Germany even the respected daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung felt that it had the right recipe for combating violence in Africa. In a lead article about the struggles of politicians to broker a peace, it wrote that criminal indictments against African leaders are 'a dangerous luxury.' [...]"

"Taylor's Son Sentenced in US for Torture in Liberia"
McClatchy newspapers report in The Guardian, 9 January 2009
"Son of ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor was sentenced to 97 years in prison today in landmark torture case that grew out of a US investigation into arms trafficking in Liberia. Charles 'Chuckie' Taylor Jr was convicted in October of leading a campaign of torture against people opposed to his father's rule. Although he wasn't charged with killing any of them, his indictment alleged that he killed at least one of seven victims. Federal prosecutors had cited the murder allegation in recommending that US District Judge Cecilia Altonaga send the former Orlando, Florida, resident to prison for 147 years, stemming from his convictions on eight conspiracy, torture and firearm charges. Assistant US Attorney Caroline Heck Miller called Taylor's violent conduct a 'gross offence against the public,' urging the judge to impose consecutive sentences. His defence lawyers countered that Taylor, 31, was not convicted of murder and therefore should be imprisoned for seven to 20 years. Taylor Jr. was tapped by his father to command an anti-terrorist unit called the 'Demon Forces' that beat, burned and beheaded Liberian civilians from 1999 to 2003, the jury concluded. The Miami criminal case -- which took place at the same time the father, Charles Taylor, faced a war-crimes tribunal in the Netherlands -- marked the first US prosecution of torture committed in a foreign country. The son was charged under a 1994 law that permits the federal government to prosecute anyone suspected of carrying out torture outside the country as long as the suspect is a US citizen, legal resident or is present in this country, regardless of nationality. Federal authorities, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the FBI, said they were proud of prosecuting the landmark case because it sends a powerful message to torturers who might try to evade justice by sneaking into the United States -- as Taylor tried to do in March 2006 when he was arrested after flying from Trinidad to Miami on a false passport. [...]"

ISSUE: WITCH-HUNTS

"Woman Burned at Stake after Being Accused of Witchcraft"
By Bonnie Malkin
The Telegraph, 7 Jan 2009
"Local media reported the victim, aged between 16 to 21, had been killed after being accused of conducting an extra marital affair, spreading Aids to one of her murderers and for being a sorceress. According to witnesses the victim in the latest 'sorcery killing,' was stripped, blindfolded, gagged and tied to a pole on top of a pyre of car tyres and firewood on a garbage dump in the Mount Hagen region, The Post Courier newspaper reported. Several men then poured petrol over her and set the pyre ablaze. 'The girl was stripped naked and could not shout for assistance or resist as she was tightly strapped and her mouth gagged,' witness Jessie James, 21, said. The prevalence of crimes linked to black magic has led local media to compare the murders in the highlands to the 17th century witch trials in America. Simon Kauba, highlands police chief, said belief in witchcraft was still widespread in the region. 'I don't know the right words to describe it but it's barbaric. Can you find the best words to describe such acts that are rampant here?' he said. The Post Courier newspaper editorial condemned the killing as 'yet one more example of hysteria and superstition running rampant in parts of our country.' 'How many of our young are afraid to go home because of these sorcery beliefs and vengeance practices? Those who say she got primitive justice should pause to think, it could be you next on that truckload of burning tyres,' it said. Most reports of women being tortured and killed after being accused of witchcraft in PNG in recent years have been linked to the growing death toll on the island from Aids. Less than a hundred years ago some tribes in the rugged South Pacific island nation off the north-eastern tip of Australia had never had contact with the outside world. In 2006, a United Nations report said PNG's population of some six million people was facing an Aids catastrophe, accounting for 90 per cent of HIV infections in the Oceania region."