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 adam.jones@yale.edu. To receive the Genocide Studies Media File as a weekly digest, simply send an email to genocide_studies-subscribe@topica.com.
AUSTRALIA/CHINA
"Lawsuit Against Top CCP Official Goes to Supreme Court"
By James Burke
The Epoch Times, 2 February 2006
"An Australian resident has taken her next step in a lawsuit against a high level member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for the crimes of torture and genocide. Sydney resident and Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Yan Xie, 37, attended the first directions hearing held at Supreme Court of NSW on Wednesday February 1 for her lawsuit against Zhang Dejiang, Secretary of the CCP of Guangdong Province. Outside the court Ms. Yan told The Epoch Times there are no legal means for Falun Gong practitioners inside mainland China to end the persecution and that Chinese lawyers seeking to act on behalf of Falun Gong practitioners themselves also become victims of the persecution. 'Now we have a chance and today is the first chance ... I hope our action can let the criminals know that they will be brought to justice and help [stop] the persecution immediately,' said Ms. Yan. Addressing a press conference outside the Supreme Court was Jonathon Solomon from the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) who gave details about the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. 'Guangdong Province in China is one of the provinces where the persecution is most severe,' he said. It was in this province that Ms. Yan was sent to a forced-labour camp for over two years for her belief in Falun Gong and for her attempts to reveal the severity of the persecution. In the labour camp she and other practitioners were forced to work 16 hours per day, were tortured and were subjected to mental brainwashing. [...]"
CONGO
"Congo: Bringing Justice to The Heart Of Darkness"
By Steve Crawshaw
The Independent, 6 February 2006
"[...] There are glimmers of hope on the horizon, despite the renewed violence that continued in eastern Congo in recent weeks. National elections are due in April which could pave the way for long-term peace. The International Criminal Court has made the crimes committed in Congo the subject of its first investigation. Those who bear ultimate responsibility for the killings of Nyakunde and elsewhere may yet face justice. The mayor of Nyakunde, Jean Gaston Herambo, certainly hopes so. Scattered through the town, there are mass graves -- bodies were thrown down a well, buried in latrines, and elsewhere. Mr Herambo wants to build a monument to the dead. At the side of his house lies what appears to be a macabre memento -- a box containing 20 skulls. The violent deaths are all too clear; the skulls are marked with jagged gashes from the killers' machetes. But Mr Herambo's intentions are not macabre. He hopes this and the mass graves can yet yield valuable evidence for investigators: 'It is important that [the killers] should be judged and brought to justice so that this can't happen again.' Previously, such hopes might have seemed mere fantasy. No longer, perhaps. The ICC investigation means that everything could change. The court's chief prosecutor has said that, after two years of investigations, the first Congolese arrest warrants will probably be issued soon. [...]"
"Torment of Africa's 'Child Witches'"
By Richard Hoskins
The Sunday Times, 5 February 2006
"[...] There are estimated to be between 30,000 and 50,000 homeless children on the streets of that lawless city [Kinshasa], stealing, begging, selling anything they can find, including themselves. The true number is incalculable but this estimate is certainly conservative. Many are Aids orphans. Others are the children of Congo's desperate civil war, which has killed 4m people since the late 1990s. But a shockingly high proportion of these children, Mafu told me, are on the streets because of the mushrooming influence of the new revivalist churches. Still more children are not on the streets but are held virtual prisoner in church compounds, apparently awaiting exorcism. Congo's social affairs minister, Bernard Ndjunga, has estimated these might number as many as 50,000 too. 'If the churches say the kids have kindoki they become outcasts from their families,' Mafu told me. 'And the churches say it because it increases their own power over the people. They can also make a lot of money out of it.' The children are released to their parents only after payment of what may be substantial dues. Mafu estimated that there are hundreds of such churches around Kinshasa. Many of them have sprung up in the past three or four years. Some of the churches and the pastors who run them have become very rich indeed. [...]"
EAST TIMOR
"East Timor Report Scathing of Downer"
Australian Associated Press dispatch
in The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 February 2006
"Australia wanted East Timor to remain an Indonesian province and the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, lobbied Jakarta to delay a vote for independence, a report to the United Nations has found. East Timor's truth and reconciliation commission has been collecting evidence from thousands of witnesses for the past three years about Indonesia's takeover of the former Portuguese colony in 1975. Its final report, which says about 183,000 East Timorese died as a result of the occupation, was handed to the UN two weeks ago. The 2500-page study was published this week on the website of the US-based International Centre for Transitional Justice. The report says Australia 'contributed significantly to denying the people of Timor-Leste their right to self-determination before and during the Indonesian occupation.' In order to maintain a good relationship with Indonesia, Australia violated its obligations under international law and backed the bigger neighbour's push to take over East Timor in 1975. It also was influenced by a desire to get the most it could out of maritime boundary negotiations affecting oil and gas reserves. Australia also gave Indonesia economic and military assistance throughout the 24-year occupation and advocated on its behalf in the international community, the commission said. [...]"
HAITI
"UN's Feared Blue Helmets Blamed for Haiti Attacks"
By Reed Lindsay
The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 February 2006
"[...] More than 9000 UN troops and police have managed to stabilise nearly every part of this country, stamping out rebellions by former soldiers and pacifying the defiant Port-au-Prince slum of Bel Air, once a stronghold for armed supporters of the ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But as the country prepares for next Tuesday's election, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere remains beyond the UN's control. 'Cite Soleil is the most serious challenge of our mission,' said Juan Gabriel Valdes, a Chilean diplomat who is chief of the UN mission, known as Minustah. Two Jordanian battalions -- 1500 troops, equipped with M-16s, machine guns and more than 50 tanks -- have been unable to root out the armed groups from the warren of alleys and precarious hovels. Four peacekeepers have been killed in the outskirts of the slum in the past month. Jordanian checkpoints have sustained heavy fire of up to 1000 rounds a day, while the peacekeepers regularly fire twice that many, a UN official said. Many Cite Soleil residents blame the peacekeepers, not the armed groups, for the violence. They accuse the blue helmets of shooting wantonly from their tanks, killing innocent civilians. 'Every day the Minustah is shooting people,' said Wilner Pierre, lying on a hospital bed with a large bandage covering his lower stomach. The 35-year-old mechanic said UN troops shot him in the back while he was walking down the main avenue in Cite Soleil. [...]"
INDONESIA/PAPUA
"Minister Admits Troops Tortured, Raped Papuans"
By Mark Forbes
The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 February 2006
"Some Indonesian soldiers had raped and tortured Papuans, the Defence Minister, Juwono Sudarsono, has conceded, but he claimed the Australian Government had been 'persuaded' that a boatload of 43 Papuan asylum seekers should be returned. Mr. Sudarsono said Indonesian leaders had 'persuaded the Prime Minister of Australia that they should be returned to us as soon as possible, that there will be no repression or reprisal against these 43 citizens of Indonesia. But it's very difficult because once it's in the hands of the immigration officers in Australia, the law must operate on the ground there,' he said. Claims of systematic human rights abuses to repress independence sentiments in Papua were unfair, he said. 'I grant that there have been incidents of some brutality and torture and rape involving some of our troops, but there has been a tendency to blanket all of this into a notion that all of these efforts are systematic and institutional.' The 43 Papuans, who included independence activists, arrived in northern Australia last month after a five-day voyage. They said they had been persecuted in Papua and would be killed if they returned. Indonesia's Foreign Minister, Hassan Wirayuda, said the group had no legitimate claim to be refugees. The Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has said the asylum seekers would not be harmed and urged their speedy return. Australian immigration officials have determined the 43 asylum seekers potentially had genuine refugee claims and are processing their cases."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
IRAN
"Iran as Bad as Nazis: Merkel"
By Peter Conradi
The Sunday Times, 5 February 2006
"The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, compared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Adolf Hitler yesterday as Tehran vowed to resume the enrichment of uranium which could be used to make nuclear weapons. Amid growing fears that the Iranians are intent on acquiring an 'Islamic bomb,' Merkel warned that the world must not repeat the mistakes it made in appeasing the Nazis. 'Looking back to German history in the early 1930s when National Socialism was on the rise, there were many outside Germany who said, "It's only rhetoric -- don't get excited,"' Merkel told an international security conference in Munich. 'There were times when people could have reacted differently and, in my view, Germany is obliged to do something at the early stages,' she added. 'We want to, we must prevent Iran from developing its nuclear programme.' Merkel issued a blunt warning to Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be 'wiped off the map.' 'Iran has blatantly crossed the red line,' she said. 'I say it as a German chancellor. A president who questions Israel's right to exist, a president who denies the Holocaust cannot expect to receive any tolerance from Germany.[ [...]"
"Faces of Death"
By Jonathan V. Last
The Weekly Standard, 3 February 2006
"[...] Joseph Akrami, an exiled Iranian filmmaker, has recently produced a documentary about human-rights abuse in Iran called A Few Simple Shots, which makes plain this point. Many scenes in A Few Simple Shots are worrisome, but familiar: photos of dozens of street executions; testimony from former political prisoners who endured terrible torture. One woman, Roya, recalls seeing the scarred back of her cell mate, a young girl. Her skin was pink and shriveled from the base of her skull to her lower back, as if she had been set on fire. The girl had been flogged for 12 continuous hours. In Iranian prisons, floggings are a matter of course. Another former prisoner, Hojat, recalls how his torturers sometimes beat him with cables; other times they used the fan belt from a car engine, so as to better split the skin. ... In Iran, however, torture and abasement are not just a province of the secret police. They are also a matter of public policy. Consider the November 2005 hanging of two Iranian men for the crime of homosexuality. As Human Rights Watch explains, 'Iranian law punishes all penetrative sexual acts between adult men with the death penalty. Nonpenetrative sexual acts between men are punished with lashes until the fourth offense, when they are punished with death.' If you can imagine, these poor souls got off easy. In July 2005, two teenage sexual offenders were also put to death, but before their execution, they were given 228 lashes -- just for good measure. ... This is the face of the Iranian regime that so hungers for a nuclear bomb. We would do well not to forget it."
IRAQ
"Sunnis Accuse Shiites in Mass Killings"
By Borzou Daragahi
The Los Angeles Times, 5 February 2005 [Registration Required]
"A recent surge in killings with sectarian overtones has left at least two dozen Iraqis dead, angering the country's Sunni Arab minority as negotiations to draw them into a future government continue. On Saturday, authorities identified two groups of corpses as those of young Sunni Arab men dumped in separate locations in a poor neighborhood of northwestern Baghdad. The men had recently been detained by Iraqi security forces, and all the bodies bore signs of torture, Sunni Arab political and religious leaders said. 'They are raiding homes and mosques and making random arrests,' said Harith Obeidi, a leader of a Sunni group that is part of negotiations to form a new government. 'The people are in government cars and wearing the government uniforms. They arrest people and beat them during the raids, and after two days we find them killed on the road or at the morgue.' Sunni political officials allege that since May at least 1,600 Sunni Arabs have disappeared after such raids without any accounting for their whereabouts. ... The two most recent batches of corpses were identified as those of men arrested in raids on two mosques, one Jan. 30 in Baghdad and another Thursday near Taji, north of the capital, Sunni leaders said. [...]"
[n.b. The arrests are not "random"; they are targetd on the basis of communal affiliation, and are ruthlessly gender-selective of adult Sunni males.]
JAPAN/KOREA
"Foreign Minister Taro Aso's Dirty Secret"
By Christopher Reed
Counterpunch.com, 2 February 2006
"Japan's 'top priority' in new talks with North Korea opening Saturday, February 4, in Beijing, will be the case of 15 of its citizens abducted to Pyongyang between 1977-83. But absent from Tokyo's agenda will be another unresolved disgrace: decades of enforced removal to Japan for work-slavery of a million Koreans -- including 12,000 laborers compelled to work under grotesque conditions in coal mines owned by a firm still run by the family of Japan's foreign minister, Taro Aso. The kidnappings of Japanese men and women to teach their language at North Korean spy schools could eventually total 70, it is suspected. The outrage, constantly covered by the Japanese media, continues to upset people and is an international scandal by any standards. The older, but incomparably worse mistreatment of Koreans over three decades, is hardly mentioned in Japan, and the foreign minister's connection remains taboo. Yet in other countries such an episode would be regarded as intolerable in such an important government official. The Korean pit workers were systematically underpaid, overworked, underfed and confined in penury. They suffered chronic ill-health, frequent death from insanitary conditions or work accidents, were under 24-hour watch by brutal secret police, yet still managed to escape out of desperation. Only with Japan's 1945 defeat in war were they finally released, to be sent home uncompensated. Neither they nor their surviving families have since received a penny in personal reparations, despite pleas from both Koreas. [...]"
JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Iranian Paper to Run Holocaust Cartoons"
By Robert Tait, Declan Walsh, and Owen Bowcott
The Guardian, 7 February 2006
"Muslim protesters infuriated by cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad raised the diplomatic stakes last night as Iran's best-selling newspaper announced it would retaliate by running images satirising the Holocaust. The decision by the rightwing Hamshari daily to launch an international competition to find the most suitable caricatures came as demonstrators hurled firebombs and stones at the Danish embassy in Tehran and the Iranian government imposed a formal trade ban on Danish imports. Last night mobs were attempting to storm the Danish compound. ... Hamshari is owned by Tehran city council and its plan follows a string of anti-Zionist statements by Iran's hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has dismissed the killing of 6 million Jews by the Nazis in the second world war as a 'myth' and called for Israel to be 'wiped off the map.' Farid Mortazavi, the paper's graphics editor, said the cartoons would be published to test the argument of western newspapers which have cited freedom of expression in printing the prophet Muhammad images. 'The western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let's see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons,' Mr. Mortazavi said. [...]"
RUSSIA/CHECHNYA
"Russian Journalist Convicted for Chechnya Articles"
By Oliver Bullough
Reuters dispatch on Reuters.co.uk, 3 February 2006
"A Russian journalist was convicted of provoking racial hatred on Friday for publishing articles by Chechen rebel leaders calling for an end to the Chechen war. Stanislav Dmitrievsky, head of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society and editor of the Pravozashchita publication, received a two-year suspended sentence in the case. The case has been described by media activists as a test for freedom of speech in the country, and human rights groups called the guilty verdict a blow to the development of civil society. In 2004, Dmitrievsky published statements by Chechen rebel leaders Aslan Maskhadov and Akhmed Zakayev calling on Russians not to re-elect President Vladimir Putin and appealing for the war to be recognised as genocide. Dmitrievsky, who read a poem by a dissident Soviet poet to close his final statement, said the ruling was politically motivated and that he would appeal the verdict by the court in Nizhny Novgorod, a court on the Volga river east of Moscow. '(It shows) the negative characteristics of Putin's regime and its politics in the North Caucasus,' the Regnum news agency quoted him as saying. The verdict came amid concern over the future of independent non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Russia, following a law that was approved by Putin last month that introduced strict curbs on foreign financing and organisations' independence. [...]"
RWANDA
"Prosecutors Seek to Set Aside Acquittal"
By Sukhdev Chhatbar
Sapa-AP dispatch in Independent Online (South Africa), 6 February 2006
"Prosecutors asked a United Nations tribunal to overturn the acquittal of two Rwandan officials and order a retrial on charges related to the 1994 genocide. James Steward, senior attorney for the prosecution, said the trial chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda erred when it acquitted former Transport Minister Andre Ntagerura and Emmanuel Bagambiki, a civilian official in a south-western Cyangugu Province. The suspects were accused of genocide and crimes against humanity related to the 100-day slaughter in which more than half a million members of the Tutsi ethnic minority and Hutu majority were slaughtered. The tribunal said prosecutors failed to prove that Ntagerura was criminally responsible for killings. They also did not prove beyond doubt that Bagambiki directed the killers in Cyangugu. Steward argued in the appeals chamber on Monday that the trial chamber failed to consider testimony from seven witnesses 'who were accomplices of the two accused.' The tribunal has convicted 23 people and acquitted three since it was set up in 1994. Trials of 28 suspects are in progress, while and 15 others are awaiting trial."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
"Elections to Delay Nation-Wide Start of Gacaca Trials"
Hirondelle News Agency dispatch on AllAfrica.com, 1 February 2006
"The nation-wide start of the trial phase in Rwanda's semi-traditional genocide courts that was due to start in February has been postponed by at least two months, a senior official told Hirondelle news agency on Tuesday. 'It is difficult to hold such a big operation at the same time as grass-roots elections,' Gacaca spokesperson Innocent Musafiri said. Starting February 3, Rwanda will hold a series of elections for local government leaders. The elections will run through to the beginning of March. 'After the elections, we will be nearing the genocide commemoration week, that too isn't a suitable time to start genocide trials at such a wide level,' said Musafiri. He said that while no date had been set, the trials would not begin before the end of the annual April 7 genocide anniversary. Gacaca courts were set up over three years ago to speed up genocide trials and reconciliation. Since the first trial in March 2005, 4000 judgments have been delivered by the courts. Some observers say the nation-wide start of Gacaca trials could even be delayed further until a proposed new law on the structure of the courts is enacted by parliament."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
"Genocidaire Hiding in Britain"
By Ignatius Mugabo and Felly Kimenyi
The New Times (Kigali) on AllAfrica.com, 1 February 2006
"A Rwandan suspected to be one of the main perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide has been discovered in the small British town of Bedford, where he lives peacefully with his family. Charles Munyaneza, who lives under false identity as Charles 'Muneza' has been tracked down by the British media after evading justice for years. According to a report in The Sunday Times of January 29, Munyaneza, 47, is accused of helping to organise the massacre of Tutsis in former Gikongoro and Butare in the current southern province in 1994. He fled to South Africa after the fall of the genocidal regime and entered Britain in 1999 where he sought asylum as a refugee. In 2002, Munyaneza was granted refugee status by the British Home Office and allowed unlimited stay in the United Kingdom. Little did they know they had welcomed a suspected mass killer to their country. His neighbours in Bedford's Putnoe District had no idea about his past, according to media reports. Munyaneza, whose alleged associate, Lieutenant Colonel Aloys Simba, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in the Genocide last December by the UN tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, is alleged to have urged Hutus to kill Tutsis saying 'all of you, men, women and girls, must take part. I don't want to see a single Tutsi alive on this hill.' The ICTR has stopped issuing indictments so it can wind up its work in 2008, but has requested Britain to prosecute Munyaneza on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. [...]"
SERBIA
"Belgrade Reveals Its Army Hid Mladic"
Reuters dispatch in The Age (Melbourne), 3 February 2006
"Serb officers helped top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic hide on army premises until mid-2002, then let him get away, the official Serbia-Montenegro Defence Council says. It said a group of former Bosnian Serb army and former Yugoslav army officers then took over the task of hiding Mladic, who is wanted on two counts of genocide in the 1992-95 Bosnia war by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. The Military Intelligence Agency is now investigating to find out who was involved and if any officers are still in touch with the former Bosnian Serb army commander, accused of orchestrating the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8000 Muslims, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II. Belgrade is anxious to show the UN, the European Union and major powers that it is now conducting a proper manhunt for Mladic, a step the West says it has failed to take so far. Capturing Mladic or persuading him to surrender is key to the country's hopes of joining the EU and NATO and attracting greater foreign investment. The statement said a military intelligence report covering the period from 1997 until the present 'has determined beyond doubt that Ratko Mladic left the military compounds he had occasionally used for hiding until his retirement on June 1, 2002.' That was when Yugoslavia passed a law on co-operation with the Hague tribunal. The official Tanjug news agency quoted the defence council as saying Bosnian Serb army and Yugoslav army veterans then took over hiding Mladic. [...]"
SUDAN/DARFUR
"World Averts Eyes from Darfur Region"
By Brian Szabelski
BGNews.com, 6 February 2006
"There are many stories of conflict occurring in the world at the moment. From the battles in Iraq to the search for terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan to the nuclear standoff with Iran, there seems to be plenty of friction between peoples all over the globe. Lost in this world of media, though, is a story that is by far worse than any of these, a humanitarian crisis that seems to be unheard of in US media circles; the genocide and war occurring in the African region of Darfur. In this region of western Sudan, a government-supported Arab militia, the Janjaweed, have been attacking, killing, raping and looting non-Arabs in the region and their villages. Never heard of it at all, you say? Don't be surprised. Only Yahoo News and the BBC seem to be closely covering the story, and finding info on both pages requires doing a little searching. Truthfully, the last update on Darfur I remember seeing was a brief 30-second story on Fox News with an old file video clip. That was three months ago. Since then? Nothing. This leaves me to ask one question: Why, in the age of 24-hour news, is this story being abandoned by everyone? [...]"
"Darfur: New Attacks in Chad Documented"
Human Rights Watch press release, 5 February 2005
"Militias based in Darfur are launching cross-border raids on villages in Chad on an almost daily basis, killing civilians, burning villages, and stealing cattle in a pattern of attacks that show signs of ethnic bias, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch researchers documented numerous cross-border attacks on Chadian villages along the border between Adré, Adé, and Modoyna in eastern Chad since early December 2005. Most of the attacks were by Sudanese and Chadian militiamen from Darfur, some with apparent Sudanese government backing, including helicopter gunship support. Tens of thousands of people are now displaced internally within Chad by the violence. Most of the victims are from the Dajo and Masalit ethnic groups, which live on both sides of the international border. Chadian Arabs living in the same area appear to enjoy immunity from attack, although some have left their homes and taken refuge in Sudan, apparently for fear of reprisals. Human Rights Watch also documented a new influx into Chad of refugees from Darfur, people already displaced by attacks in Darfur in 2003 who had been living in the Mornei and Misterei camps in West Darfur. Many of these people said that they fled to Chad to escape continuing attacks on the camp residents by the Sudanese government-sponsored Janjaweed militia. 'You may have thought the terrible situation in Darfur couldn't get worse, but it has,' said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of the Africa division at Human Rights Watch. 'Sudan's policy of arming militias and letting them loose is spilling over the border, and civilians have no protection from their attacks, in Darfur or in Chad.' [...]"
"Security Council Agrees to Send Troops to Darfur"
By Joel Brinkley
The New York Times, 4 February 2006 [Registration Required]
"The United Nations Security Council, acknowledging the failure of the current strategy for ending the carnage in Darfur, Sudan, agreed Friday to deploy thousands of peacekeepers to the troubled province. The United States, which holds the Council presidency this month, offered the motion, and it was approved unanimously. Officials acknowledge that winning council approval was probably the least difficult step. The Sudanese government opposes United Nations troops in Darfur, and United Nations officials say it will not be easy to persuade member nations to contribute troops for the new Darfur force. The United States has no intention of sending American combat troops, officials said. Assuming those and other challenges are overcome, the first United Nations troops are not likely to arrive in Darfur for almost a year. ... The violent and chaotic situation in Darfur poses significant risks that troops would be drawn into firefights with Sudanese government troops and Darfur rebels. But under the plan, said Kristen Silverberg, another assistant secretary of state, United Nations troops would be better armed than the African Union troops patrolling Darfur now. They would also be given new rules of engagement that would allow them to 'protect civilians and enforce the cease-fire.' [...]"
"Darfur 'Serious' But Not Genocide"
Agence France-Presse dispatch in Northern Territory News, 4 February 2006
"The United States has backed away from describing the current violence in Sudan's Darfur region as genocide, calling it very serious but mostly a series of small attacks by different parties. In September 2004, Washington had accused Sudan's government and its militia allies of genocide in the now three-year-old conflict with Darfur rebels that has left up to 300,000 people dead and 2.4 million homeless. But Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, briefing reporters on moves to bolster security in Darfur, said the current situation 'is very different than it was. It's not as systematic. It is a very serious situation and it's a series of small attacks and incidents,' Ms Frazer said, adding that all parties were involved. 'It is not the government directing the militia attacking civilians.' But Ms Frazer would not respond to a direct question on whether the bloodshed in Darfur still constituted genocide, as then-US secretary of state Colin Powell alleged 17 months ago. 'The United States has said that genocide has occurred in Sudan, and we continue to be concerned about the security environment in Darfur,' Ms Frazer said. Washington was virtually alone in declaring genocide in Darfur. The United Nations has not used the term, which could trigger obligations under international conventions, including the possible use of force to stop it. [...]"
[n.b. That breeze you feel is from the furious backpedalling.]
"Thousands Flee Mounting Violence in South Darfur"
ChristianAid press release, 2 February 2006
"Christian Aid partners, the Sudan Development Association (SUDO) and the Sudanese Council of Churches (SCC), have abandoned their schools and health centres in the camps in Mershing in south Darfur, following a series of attacks by armed militias. Thousands of people have been displaced following these attacks. SUDO and SCC are providing blankets, sleeping mats and jerry cans and are also ensuring that people have access to water and sanitation facilities to prevent the outbreak of disease. This recent series of attacks started on the 23 January 2006 when gunmen on camels attacked and looted Shaway Malmul camp. In the following days, there were further attacks in four more camps outside of Mershing. These attacks have caused terror amongst the displaced people living in the camps. African Union (AU) patrols visited Mershing twice following the attacks and promised to send forces at 5pm on 25 January 2006. When the forces did not arrive the people fled. An estimated 55,000 people, leaving most of their belongings behind, are making their way to Manawashi town, south of Mershing, to escape the attacks. In the chaos, families have been divided and it is believed that 210 children are unaccounted for. The conditions for those travelling to Manawashi are desperate. They are exposed to soaring heat in the day and cold weather at night. They have no cooking materials, little food and few sources of water. ACT-Caritas have reported that 38 women have suffered miscarriages and 13 children have died in the past week. [...]"
"President Again Ignores Darfur Genocide in 'State of the Union'"
Africa Action press release, 1 February 2006
"Africa Action today condemned the failure of President Bush to mention the Darfur genocide in his 'State of the Union' address for the second year, even as his Administration acknowledges that this crime against humanity continues in western Sudan. In a speech that stressed the need for the U.S. to engage with the world, to reject 'isolationism' and to confront 'tyranny' and 'evil', Africa Action emphasized that the failure of the President to comment on the Darfur genocide and to identify a plan to stop it contradicts these themes and reveals an unacceptable lack of commitment to new action on this crisis. As the U.S. assumes the rotating presidency of the United Nations (UN) Security Council today, pressure is building for the U.S. to introduce a new resolution on Darfur that would respond to the urgent need for an expanded security presence on the ground by (1) 're-hatting' the existing African Union operation as a UN mission with a robust mandate to protect civilians and humanitarian operations, and (2) authorizing a UN peacekeeping force to be deployed to the region as soon as possible. Thousands of people will participate in a National Call-In Day to the U.S. mission to the UN today, urging such action in the Security Council this month. Salih Booker, Executive Director of Africa Action, said today, 'The President's abandonment of Darfur in his "State of the Union" agenda belies his stated commitment to ending "tyranny" and promoting "compassion" in the world. Mr. Bush's passing reference to "a refugee fleeing genocide" debases this crime against humanity, and his failure to offer a plan to address it is absolutely unacceptable. The U.S. must lead the UN Security Council this month to authorize a robust international peacekeeping mission to augment the African Union’s efforts in Darfur.' [...]"
UGANDA
"Interview: Justice in Uganda"
By Stephen Opio
Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 7 February 2006
"[Senior ICC official Phakiso Mochockoko tells IWPR about his hopes of bringing to justice those responsible for atrocities in Uganda.] The ICC has only just begun its work. It is in the early stages of its history and operations. I would hope that the Ugandan people first try to understand what the court is, what it's doing, what it can do and what it cannot do. Now that the court’s office is functional in Uganda, I would encourage people to go to this office to seek information and clarity about its operation. I hope the court and the people of Uganda can work together to end impunity and to make sure that those responsible for the atrocities in Uganda are brought to justice in the interest of peace and reconciliation."
UNITED KINGDOM
"New Drive to Deport Ex-SS Men and Auschwitz Guards"
By Sophie Goodchild
The Independent, 5 February 2006
"Hundreds of alleged Nazi war criminals living in Britain face deportation under tough new immigration laws. An eight-strong team from Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch is examining files containing the names of more than 200 suspects understood to be in hiding or living under false names. They include at least 75 Auschwitz guards and former members of the 14th Waffen-SS Galician division, which has been blamed for atrocities. Officers from the Metro-politan Police are expected to meet Home Office ministers next month to discuss their inquiry, launched after evidence was uncovered by an amateur historian. Police were handed a list of names, most from the Ukrainian-manned unit. Six thousand of them were allowed to settle as contract labour in Britain at the end of the war and many emigrated, mostly to North America. Historians say it is unlikely any of these men, now in their 80s, will be prosecuted because of a lack of evidence. Only one man, Anthony Sawoniuk, has been prosecuted here for Nazi war crimes. He was sentenced to life in 1999 and died in prison last year, aged 84."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
"UK Considers Curbing Citizens' Right to Arrest Alleged War Criminals"
By Vikram Dodd
The Guardian, 3 February 2006
"The government is considering weakening laws designed to capture alleged war criminals and torturers who enter Britain, after pressure from the Israeli government, the Guardian has learned. The changes would bar individuals from seeking international warrants for the arrest of people suspected of serious human rights abuses. The government has confirmed that Israeli officials have lobbied for changes in the law, which has kept some of their military officials away from Britain in case there should be an attempt to arrest them. The proposals follow Israeli anger after an attempt was made to arrest one of their senior retired generals, Doron Almog, at Heathrow last September. He was tipped off that police were waiting to arrest him for alleged war crimes in Gaza. He stayed on the El Al plane and flew back to Israel. The warrant was issued by Bow Street magistrates, central London, after an application from lawyers representing Palestinians who say they suffered because of the Israeli general's alleged illegal orders. Ministers are said to believe the law is too unpredictable and can risk jeopardising international relations. The warrant naming General Almog for war crimes is believed to be the first of its kind issued in Britain against an Israeli national over conduct in the Palestinian conflict. A British official confirmed that ministers were examining stopping private individuals applying to magistrates for prosecutions over war crimes, genocide and torture, which in turn leads to international arrest warrants being granted. [...]"
ISSUE: CULTURAL GENOCIDE
"Cultural Genocide"
By Steven Poole
The Guardian, 4 February 2006
The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War by Robert Bevan (Reaktion, £19.95)
"The Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas; the Nazis razed synagogues; Serb shelling destroyed Sarajevo's National Library; al-Qaida flew into the World Trade Center. As Bevan's fascinating, melancholy book shows, symbolic buildings have long been targeted in and out of war as a particular kind of mnemonic violence against those to whom they are special. The argument sometimes widens almost too far: the very non-specificity of Bomber Command's wanton combustion of whole city centres is different from, say, the pinpoint spite of Hitler's orders to blow up the Eiffel Tower and other Paris landmarks. But both constitute, argues Bevan, a form of 'urbicide.' Is it callous to spare a thought for buildings at a time when people are being killed? No, Bevan argues persuasively: the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, for example, has stated that the deliberate targeting of buildings (such as mosques) can be an index of genocidal intent. Bevan's final suggestion that 'cultural genocide' should be defined as a separate crime in itself, however, seems an unwarranted terminological inflation."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the review.]
ISSUE: THE ENVIRONMENT
"Displaced Gypsies at Risk from Lead in Kosovo Camps"
By Nicholas Wood
The New York Times, 5 February 2006
"[...] Roma rights groups say that up to 31 Roma have been killed by diseases brought on by lead poisoning, a problem that grew acute for them six and half years ago. That was when the United Nations mission that controls this province set up three refugee camps in the north part of the city for Roma who were displaced when ethnic Albanians took their homes across town at the end of the Kosovo war in 1999. The death toll is especially large for a local Roma community of just 570 people, and no one disputes the main source of pollution. All three refugee camps lie within 200 yards of three huge mounds of industrial waste, the byproduct of a lead smelting factory that operated from the 1920's until 2000. Health specialists say children are particularly vulnerable to this kind of pollution. Soon after the Roma moved in, the United Nations realized that they were living on contaminated land. Several reports by the United Nations mission and the World Health Organization dating to 2000 recommended their immediate removal. But the Roma remained in their wooden huts, built by aid agencies, and in a hodgepodge of metal and particle board shacks that they had put up themselves. Now the mission is planning to move families from all three camps to refurbished army barracks, where it says they will be safe. 'The W.H.O. considers this the worst environmental disaster for children in the whole of Europe,' said Gerry McWeeney, an environmental epidemiologist for the World Health Organization in Mitrovica and the author of a 2004 report on the effects of the poisoning. 'There are around 100,000 to 130,000 people affected by this,' she said. [...]"
ISSUE: GENOCIDE AND WAR
"Ultimate Choice"
By Malcolm Bull
London Review of Books, 9 February 2006
"[...] Genocide may be more difficult than it looks, but that does not mean that it is wrong. There are good arguments for it, the strongest of which come from just-war theory. If you accept that wars fought as a last resort by legitimate authority with the sole intention of responding to unprovoked aggression with proportionate force are justifiable, then there are circumstances in which you may find yourself supporting genocide. If your adversary is unshakeably committed to a total war involving every member of the population in a struggle that brooks no surrender (and in the modern period most states have been committed, at least rhetorically, to just such an undertaking), then it follows that the war must continue until all the enemy are either dead or incapacitated. If they insist on fighting, you have to keep on killing them, and if they all keep on fighting, you will end up having to kill the lot. It is not only in cases of total war, however, that the just war is potentially genocidal. The doctrine of double effect, which allows for civilian casualties incurred as a result of striking legitimate military targets, is also a potential route to genocide in the age of mass destruction. An aerial bombardment or a tactical nuclear strike may be directed at military targets, but nevertheless cause immense destruction, including, coincidentally, the annihilation of entire social groups that happen to get in the way. And then there is what Michael Walzer and John Rawls both call a 'supreme emergency,' when direct attacks on civilian targets are required in circumstances of dire military necessity. Since, in the nuclear age, 'supreme emergency has become a permanent condition,' this means that it is legitimate to possess strategic nuclear weapons and threaten to use them against civilian populations, committing who knows how many forms of genocide in the process. [...]"
[n.b. A review article based on Michael Mann's and Mark Levene's recent books.]
ISSUE: GENOCIDE STUDIES
"Le mot de génocide est ambigu, je préfère la notion de crime de masse"
Interview with Jacques Sémelin by Arnaud Vaulerin
Libération (France), 4 February 2006
"[...] Q. Vous vous demandez même si on doit encore employer ce mot [génocide]. A. Oui. J'ai d'ailleurs été sur le point de l'abandonner. Ainsi, des collègues allemands ont banni ce mot de leurs travaux. Mais résout-on vraiment une question en s'interdisant l'emploi d'un terme? C'est comme le mot terrorisme, d'ailleurs, que de nombreux Etats emploient à travers le monde pour stigmatiser leurs ennemis politiques. Tout en ayant à l'esprit ces manipulations, il est important que le chercheur s'interroge sur les différentes manières de définir une «pratique terroriste», ou un «processus génocidaire». Selon moi, le génocide caractérise un processus spécifique de destruction qui vise à l'éradication totale d'une collectivité. A cet égard, il existe une différence importante entre génocide et nettoyage ethnique. Dans un nettoyage ethnique, on tue les gens en partie, mais on leur dit: par ici la sortie. Dans un génocide, on ferme toutes les portes. C'est l'approche que je préconise. [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to René Lemarchand for supplying this link.]
ISSUE: HOLOCAUST DENIAL
"You, Too, Can Deny the Holocaust"
By Bradley Burston
Haaretz.com, 3 February 2006
"[...] At this point, more than 60 years after the last of the extermination camps was freed, the horror of the Holocaust has so receded from the collective memory that the words Soup Nazi can elicit gales of sitcom laughter. As the shock wears off, the spin-offs multiply: grammar nazi, fashion nazi, feminazi. And as the spin-offs gain currency, the term nazi can stretch to fit any annoyance. At this point, we can apply it to any vaguely persnickety individual we don't much care for. If anyone can be a nazi, perhaps the real Nazis were no worse than the rest of us. To be fair, if we Jews can't keep ourselves from comparing our enemies to the Nazis, we have, if nothing else, two good excuses. One is our tradition. The many sections of our liturgy that inform us that They're Out to Get Us. We drink it in, if not with mothers' milk, then with Passover wine. ... The second reason, of course, is that there actually are men who rise up against us, generation after generation, in order to destroy us. And the generation time is growing shorter and shorter. Only 15 years separate Saddam Hussein's declared Gulf War goal of incinerating Israel, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent suggestion that the Jewish state be wiped off the map. All the while, the holy men of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Jihad have been preaching our elimination. And yet. The Jewish People owe it to the victims of the Holocaust and the survivors still with us, to resist the impulse to liken current threats -- as dangerous as and potentially cataclysmic as they may be -- to an event of biblical magnitude in the long history of the Jews. The most insidious form of Holocaust denial, after all, reduces the annihilation of six million people to just one more rhetorical argument over current issues. All we can offer the victims and the survivors, is to honor their memory by reminding ourselves and others of the incomparable uniqueness of their unknowable hell. [...]"
ISSUE: NUCLEARISM
"Storm Clouds Over Iran"
By Richard Falk
The Nation, 13 February 2006
"A dangerous escalation of tensions in the Middle East could produce a devastating new war there if diplomatic steps are not taken to head it off. The United States and Israel, with the cooperation of some European countries, have been stoking a climate of fear to justify a military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. At the very least, they seem determined to refer the matter of Iran's nuclear program to the United Nations Security Council as a step toward imposing sanctions. ... There are also wider issues at stake. Should the Middle East, or for that matter the world, regard as normal a system of nuclear apartheid -- in which a select group of nations are entitled to such weapons while others seeking to acquire them are treated as 'rogue states'? What these multiple incendiary trends suggest, above all, is the practical wisdom of seeking multilateral nuclear disarmament -- the only course that has any prospect of halting proliferation. So long as sovereign states are the main actors and conflict among them persists, it is disastrous folly to suppose that some will agree to live forever beneath a nuclear sword of Damocles without trying to obtain such weapons themselves. The Iran confrontation is best regarded as one more wakeup call for the nuclear weapons states."
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Genocide Studies Media File
January 25-31, 2006
A compendium of news stories, features, and human rights reports pertaining to genocide and crimes against humanity. Compiled by Adam Jones. Please send links and feedback to adam.jones@yale.edu. To receive the Genocide Studies Media File as a weekly digest, simply send an email to genocide_studies-subscribe@topica.com.
AFRICA
"Five Million People Face Daily Terror in
Northern Uganda, DRC, Burundi: UN Must Act"
Oxfam Press Release, 27 January 2006
"As a high-level United Nations Security Council meeting today debates solutions to crises in Africa's Great Lakes region, its first step must be to stop the deluge of weapons and protect civilians from attacks by armed groups, said international agency Oxfam. Conflicts raging across the Great Lakes Region, particularly in northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have lead to millions of deaths and caused almost five million people to flee across borders or become displaced inside their countries. Oxfam said that controlling the spread of weapons and stopping attacks on civilians and aid workers by armed groups was key to bringing peace. A 2003 UN arms embargo has failed to stop weapons reaching armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where fighting earlier this week caused thousands of refugees to flee. Every day, one thousand people die as a direct result of the conflict. It is estimated that thirty thousand people have died since the beginning of this year due to conflicts in the DRC and Northern Uganda alone. Oxfam also strongly criticized the UN Security Council for failing to take any effective action to stop the war in northern Uganda that has now entered its twentieth gruesome year. 'The region is awash with weapons and people are paying with their lives,' said Oxfam's Policy Advisor Greg Puley. 'From Burundi to northern Uganda, communities have become the battleground on which conflicts are fought. The UN Security Council must ensure that the Ugandan and DRC governments protect their own people from being slaughtered.' [...]"
CAMBODIA
"Former Cambodian Leaders to Face Trial"
By Seth Mydans
The New York Times, 23 January 2006 [Registration Required]
"Twenty-seven years after the Khmer Rouge leadership was driven from power, some of its top figures may soon be put on trial for causing the deaths of nearly one-fourth of the Cambodian population. Under an agreement between the United Nations and the government here, a special authority is preparing a courtroom and hiring staff and technical experts. In February, the head of a United Nations administrative team is expected to arrive and set up shop. Both Cambodia and the United Nations are selecting judges and prosecutors for an international tribunal. Diplomats and analysts who have been skeptical during nearly a decade of negotiations and delays now expect to see some measure of judicial accounting for the 1.7 million people who lost their lives from 1975 to 1979. ... There are still, as always, possibilities for delay, and nobody is rushing to take the plastic slipcovers off the 540 blue chairs in the hearing room. At one point, for example, an infestation of termites in the roof of the National Assembly building caused months of delay in the approval of a trial format. But most of the $56.3 million budget has now been secured and sometime soon the clock is expected to start ticking on a three-stage time frame: a year for investigations, a year for the trial and a year for appeals. The tribunal will target a small pool of senior figures and not seek to indict the many thousands of people involved in carrying out the Khmer Rouge's policies of forced hardships and summary executions. [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to Ursula Duba for this link.]
CONGO
"UN Steps Up Peace Efforts in Congo Ahead of April Vote"
By Blake Lambert
The Christian Science Monitor, 30 January 2006
"Once criticized by the Congolese people and Western governments for its passivity, the world's largest United Nations peacekeeping operation has redefined itself as an aggressive and determined force. The UN mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo, known by its French acronym MONUC, has in recent months stepped up efforts to tame the country's lawless eastern region ahead of the first free presidential and parliamentary elections in more than 40 years, scheduled for April 29. Yet, despite six years of peacekeeping efforts from MONUC, UN spokespeople and analysts say the dozens of local and foreign militias based or lurking in the resource-rich but isolated east still endanger civilians and the electoral process. The UN's 17,000 troops are now out across Congo's east to track down and, at times, kill the militiamen. A major offensive last month in the North Kivu region left nearly 90 gunmen dead. However, those stepped-up efforts often carry a human cost: Eight UN soldiers from Guatemala recently died in combat, allegedly in an ambush by the notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, in Garamba Park near the Congo-Sudan border. [...]"
EAST TIMOR/UNITED STATES
"Report: U.S. Arms Helped Indonesia Attack East Timor"
By Colum Lynch
The Washington Post, 25 January 2006 [Registration Required]
"U.S. political and military support for Indonesia was vital to its ability to invade East Timor in December 1975 and to sustain a brutal 24-year occupation that cost the lives of at least 100,000 people, parts of a Timorese inquiry made public Tuesday show. East Timor's Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation contended that the Ford administration 'turned a blind eye' to the Indonesian invasion even though it knew that U.S.-supplied arms would be used to carry it out. The report called on the United States, France, Britain and other military backers of Indonesia to pay reparations to victims of Indonesian oppression. ... The commission was created in 2001 by the United Nations and East Timor to provide a comprehensive account of abuses during Indonesia's occupation, which ended in 1999. East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao delivered it last week to Secretary General Kofi Annan. 'The Commission finds that the United States of America failed to support the right of the East Timorese people to self-determination, and that its political and military support were fundamental to the Indonesian invasion and occupation,' the report said. 'The support of the United States was given out of a strategically-motivated desire to maintain a good relationship with Indonesia, whose anti-communist regime was seen as an essential bastion against the spread of communism.' The national archive gave the commission National Security Council documents showing that U.S. officials were aware of Indonesian plans to invade East Timor a year before the invasion and did not discourage it. Other documents showed that U.S. officials had evidence that Indonesia had used U.S. naval vessels in support of air bombardment during its invasion of East Timor, but decided to remain silent about it. [...]"
INDONESIA/PAPUA
"Papua Likened to East Timor"
By Tom Allard
The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 January 2006
"The Indonesian military is using the same tactics of terror in West Papua that were employed during its bloody reign in East Timor, and Australia should step in to mediate a peace settlement, warns separatist Herman Wainggai. Mr. Wainggai, the leader of the 43 asylum-seekers who arrived in Australia two weeks ago, said ongoing abuses by the Indonesian military, often in cahoots with militias, were terrifying the indigenous community. 'It's the same as with East Timor,' he told the Herald yesterday from Christmas Island, where the asylum-seekers are being processed by immigration officials. 'They have created militias and jihadis in West Papua. The people, and especially activists for independence, are very scared.' The military and police regularly raided campuses and villages searching for independence sympathisers, while Indonesia's intelligence network kept constant tabs on their activities, Mr. Wainggai said. Jailed twice for his political activism, Mr Wainggai said he had no faith in the promise by the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, that, if they returned home, the Papuans would face no reprisals. Many such promises had been made in the past, he said, and bitter experience meant they could not be accepted at face value. 'We don't trust Indonesia,' he said. 'If I was sent back to Indonesia, I would die. The Government and the military treats West Papuans like animals. They have killed us like animals.' [...]"
[n.b. See also "Issue: The Environment," below.]
JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"UN Marks the Holocaust"
By Daniel Trotta
Reuters dispatch in the Herald Sun (Australia), 29 January 2006
"Survivors commemorated the Holocaust at the United Nations yesterday with harrowing accounts and pleas to halt acts of genocide such as those in Darfur in Sudan. The ceremony marked the first of what is to become an annual UN event and took place in the General Assembly hall, where 191 world governments daily debate current atrocities that experts compare to the Holocaust. The 60th anniversary of the Holocaust was commemorated last year. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and others denounced as bigots those who deny the Holocaust. Separate from the ceremony, Iran issued a statement accusing Israel of manipulating genocide for political purposes. Holocaust survivors and experts stressed the importance of never forgetting that Germany systematically killed six million Jews and millions of others including Poles, homosexuals, Russians and Gypsies during World War II. 'If you, the leaders of the world, remember -- and teach others to remember -- the Holocaust and atrocities like Darfur, Biafra and Kosovo will have no place on the face of the earth,' said Roman Kent, chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust. [...]"
"Arab Holocaust Centre Reaches Out"
By Rob Winder
BBC Online, 28 January 2006
"Khaled Mahameed admits his museum, in Nazareth in northern Israel, is small. But he believes it is unique. According to Mr. Mahameed, it is the first and only Arab run centre for promoting the study of the Holocaust. The museum contains a collection of just 60 photographs depicting the genocide with Arabic captions explaining the scenes. The pictures were purchased from Yad Vashem -- the Israeli national Holocaust memorial. Mr. Mahameed firmly believes that it is only by understanding the truth about how the state of Israel was created that Arabs can fully understand Jews and ultimately resolve the conflict between them. Many Arabs believe that Israel uses sympathy for Jewish suffering during the Holocaust to gain support from the West, Mr. Mahameed says. Arab leaders, he says, think that by giving credence to the Holocaust they are legitimising Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. 'But when Palestinians learn about the Holocaust they will understand the Jewish people better and can begin to develop a shared history,' says Mr. Mahameed enthusiastically. [...]"
"Iran Says UN Is Manipulated in Holocaust Observance"
Bloomberg.com, 27 January 2006
"Iran said the United Nations was being 'manipulated for political purposes' in its first official observance today of the memory of the Holocaust. The UN's 191 member governments agreed on Nov. 1 to make Jan. 27 the annual 'International Day of Commemoration in Memory of Victims of the Holocaust.' The decision was taken by consensus in the General Assembly, which means Iran didn't formally object or call for a vote on the resolution. Iran's mission to the UN explained its position on the measure in a note to the president of the General Assembly that was released today. While condemning genocide as a crime against humanity, the statement said 'rendering political judgments on such events and closing the door to any scientific scrutiny' would impede efforts to prevent future atrocities. 'Regrettably, the Zionist regime has routinely attempted to exploit the sufferings of the Jewish people in the past as a cover for its crimes being perpetrated today against Palestinians in the occupied territories, including massacre,' the statement said. 'The international community should take strong action against such atrocities of the Zionist regime and not allow it to manipulate humanitarian sentiments.' ... Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the UN, said the interest of Iran's 'lunatic' regime in genocide stemmed from a desire to 'learn how it was perpetrated so it can carry out the next holocaust.' He said Iran's statement was 'just another example of why the UN and especially the Security Council should urgently address the nuclear quest of Iran, because having weapons of mass destruction in the hands of this extremist regime would be a threat not just to Israel but to the whole international community.' [...]"
"'British Schindler' Remembers War"
BBC Online, 25 January 2006
"A man dubbed the 'British Schindler' for his work saving Jewish children is to speak at a Holocaust memorial event. Sir Nicholas Winton was 29 when he smuggled 669 boys and girls, destined for concentration camps, out of Czechoslovakia in 1939. He kept quiet about his work for 50 years until his wife found a scrapbook. The 96-year-old of Maidenhead, Berks, will be joined at the Reading Town Hall event on Wednesday by Vera Gissing, who was just 11 when he saved her. Ms. Gissing, also of Berkshire, is now an author, lecturer and literary translator. She has co-written a biography and film about Sir Nicholas, who began his mission before the outbreak of war when he was invited to help refugees in Czechoslovakia. After realising the danger that the imminent Nazi invasion posed, he worked to find British families willing to put up £50 to rescue the children and look after them until they were 17. Sir Nicholas was just 29 at the time His efforts have been likened to the work of the world famous 'saviour' of Jewish prisoners Oskar Schindler. [...]"
PALESTINE/ISRAEL
"Suicide Voters: How Hamas Dooms Palestine"
By Christopher Hitchens
Slate.com, 30 January 2006
"[...] Hamas says that it wants an Islamic state all the way from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. It publishes and promulgates the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Why not assume that it is at least partly serious about all this? For years, the PLO leadership has been at least officially committed to a two-state solution and has at least officially made a distinction between Judaism and Zionism. It has also renounced the disgusting tactic of suicide murder. The emergence of a party that considers all of these evolutions as betrayals may have to do with something more than the provision of welfare. I am uncomfortably reminded of the tripe talked by many liberals and leftists about the Khomeini revolution in Iran in 1979, where it was said that religion was merely the form that protest against the corrupt and repressive shah happened to take, and that the mullahs could be contained. ... It's agonizing to watch the Palestinians choose a leadership that is openly aligned with the moribund and vicious dictatorships in Iran and Syria. The time when the PLO called for a democratic secular state seems a very long while ago. But just look at the primeval propaganda of Hamas, which speaks of a land that is holy to one god and dedicated only to his fanatical supporters. Where has one heard that evil rubbish before? [...]"
"The Palestinians' Democratic Choice Must Be Respected"
By Jonathan Steele
The Guardian, 27 January 2006
"[...] If Europe, weak though its power may currently be, wants to have an independent role in the Middle East, clearly different from the manipulative US approach, it is vital to go on funding the PA [Palestinian Authority] regardless of the Hamas presence in government. Nor should the EU fall back on the cynical hope that Hamas will be as corrupt as Fatah, and so lose support. You cannot use European taxpayers' money to strengthen Palestinian institutions while privately wanting reforms to fail. Hamas should be encouraged in aiming to be more honest than its predecessors. Above all, Europe should not get hung up on the wrong issues, like armed resistance and the 'war on terror.' Murdering a Palestinian politician by a long-range attack that is bound also to kill innocent civilians is morally and legally no better than a suicide bomb on a bus. Hamas's refusal to give formal recognition of Israel's right to exist should also not be seen by Europe as an urgent problem. History and international politics do not march in tidy simultaneous steps. For decades Israel refused even to recognise the existence of the Palestinian people, just as Turkey did not recognise the Kurds. Until 15 years ago Palestinians had to be smuggled to international summits as part of Jordan's delegation. It is less than that since the Israeli government accepted the goal of a Palestinian state. Hamas may eventually disarm itself and recognise Israel. That will be the end of the process of establishing a just modus vivendi for Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. It cannot be the first step. Today's priority is to accept that Palestinians have spoken freely. They deserve respect and support."
RWANDA
"'Ex-Kigali Ngali Prefect Supervised Ntarama Killings'"
By James Munyaneza
The New Times (Kigali) on AllAfrica.com, 30 January 2006
"Former prefect of former Kigali Ngali province, Francois Karera, supervised the slaughter of thousands of Tutsi refugees at Ntarama Church in Bugesera in the present-day Southern Province, the UN court trying the 1994 Genocide suspects heard on Friday. A protected witness code-named BML, told the court that Karera ordered the church killings on the 15th of April, 1994, a day after he had visited the refugees and promised them security. 'I was hiding in a nearby ditch when a four-bus convoy full of Interahamwe and soldiers arrived along with Karera. He immediately instructed the killers that he did not want to see any Tutsi at the place alive, and then fired the first shot towards the church,' the witness told the court session, presided over by the tribunal president, Erik Mose, a Norwegian. He said the attackers used rifles, clubs, machetes and other traditional weapons to annihilate the refugees. 'I noticed him very well as he gave the directive to kill in a loud voice. He feared nobody.' The witness, whose identity was concealed for security reasons, also said that after the attackers had hacked many people to death in the church courtyard, they sent the temple ablaze to kill those inside. 'Many people had fled inside the church. They hurled grenades at the church and wiped out all that were inside. I heard a lot of screaming; the killers were on the loose after Karera's instructions.' [...]"
"Evidence 'Proves' Belgian Priest Guilty of Genocide"
Expatica.com, 30 January 2006
"Rwandan President Paul Kagame has said he has 'information and pieces of evidence' that 'appear to prove' Belgian priest Guy Theunis was involved in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Theunis was transferred to Belgium last year after spending two months in jail in Rwanda after he was accused of being an accomplice to the 1994 mass killings. 'I am no judge. But the information and pieces of evidence that I have been able to look at appear to prove his guilt,' Kagame told [the] newspaper Jeune Afrique/L'intelligent. White Friar Theunis, 60, lived in Rwanda from 1970 to 1994. He was arrested on 6 September 2005 at the international airport of Kigali when he was traveling to Belgium. He was subsequently the first foreigner to be brought before a Rwandan village court, or 'gacaca', set up to investigate the genocide that killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994. Theunis denies the charges that he was guilty of inciting genocide through republishing articles from the extremist publication 'Kangura' in his 'Dialogue' magazine, of which he was editor-in-chief from 1989-94. [...]"
"Gacaca Trials to End This Year"
By Edwin Musoni
The New Times (Kigali) on AllAfrica.com, 25 January 2006
"Trials for genocide suspects by the traditional Gacaca communal courts will end in 2006, officials from the National Service for Gacaca Jurisdictions have said. Charles Munyaneza, a top official at the Gacaca Secretariat, said all was set to ensure that the proceedings end this year 'regardless of whatever comes around.' But the certainty of the schedule is dependent on whether parliament expedites debate on the amendment of the Gacaca law. Cases numbering 4162 have already been tried. The Executive Secretary of the National Service for Gacaca Jurisdictions, Domitille Mukantaganzwa, said the speedy approval of the law would make the trials not to go beyond 31st December this year. She, however, said that national reforms including local elections, territorial demarcations, could push the target to the first quarter of 2007."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
SERBIA/KOSOVO
"Serbia Admits Mladic Family Talks"
BBC Online, 30 January 2006
"Serbia and Montenegro Defence Minister Zoran Stankovic has admitted holding secret talks with relatives of fugitive war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic. But Mr. Stankovic denied that his ministry was in talks for the surrender of the former Bosnian Serb general. He said he did not know where Mr Mladic was hiding and insisted he was not being protected by the military. The Serbian authorities have been blamed for the failure to capture Mr Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. The UN's High Representative in Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, who steps down this week, has said the continued freedom of the two men wanted over the Srebrenica massacre is an obstacle to peace in Bosnia. However, he noted that the Serb authorities had now begun to co-operate with the international war crimes tribunal at The Hague. [...]"
"Albanian Gandhi Dies"
By Amitabh Pal
The Progressive, 24 January 2006
"[...] The [Kosovar] Albanian response in the face of repression was quite remarkable. 'Without resort to violence -- which all among them then viewed as a suicidal option -- they had organized and maintained a free or liberated zone such as revolutionaries and reformers of the past, worldwide, had long dreamed,' Stephen Schwartz writes. 'Unfortunately, these fine points of political science were largely ignored by the rest of the globe.' Two separate and parallel societies were set up in Kosovo. This endeavor extended from education and health to the sports and the cultural realm. Rugova said that nonviolence was 'a necessity and a choice.' 'The practice of nonviolence in this situation corresponds to an aspect of our character, to a tradition of patience and prudence in the face of all domination,' he stated. 'By means of this active resistance based on nonviolence and solidarity, we "found" ourselves.' ... The Rugova saga is a mixed one. Due to several slip-ups and the lack of international support, he was not able to realize the full potential of his nonviolent strategy, nor was he able to reach out to his adversaries in a Gandhi-like manner. The fact, however, that he managed to sustain a nonviolent campaign for years in extremely difficult circumstances is by itself no mean achievement. Even with all his flaws of personality and tactics, the Rugova path was surely preferable to that of most other leaders in the Balkans, past and present. For this, Rugova's embrace, no matter how half-hearted, of the Gandhian approach needs to be praised. The 'Gandhi of the Balkans' showed that a program of peaceful civil disobedience can be put into practice even in very challenging situations. He deserves to be globally recognized."
SUDAN/DARFUR
"Plan to End Darfur Violence Is Failing, Officials Say"
By Joel Brinkley
The New York Times, 28 January 2006 [Registration Required]
"The broad strategy for ending the carnage in Darfur, Sudan, devised over the last two years by the United States, the United Nations and the European Union, is collapsing as the violence and chaos in the region seem to grow with every passing week, United Nations and Bush administration officials say. After three years of bloodshed that has already claimed more than 200,000 lives, officials say they are struggling to devise an effective new strategy. 'We're working very closely with our partners to see if we can turn this around,' said a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly. But the obstacles and complications are multiplying. Peace talks have nearly halted after government and Darfur-rebel negotiators, in the latest round, showed an unwillingness to seriously discuss anything except sharing Sudan's oil wealth. A growing military conflict on the Sudan-Chad border in Darfur is further endangering hundreds of thousands of refugees living in camps there. One of the Sudanese president's latest positions, articulated in a published interview this month, is that the government-backed militias known to be behind most of the violence are actually a fictitious creation of the media and the United States Congress. 'The looming threat of complete lawlessness and anarchy draws nearer,' Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, lamented earlier this month as he urged Western nations to do more. The international response has been so ineffectual that 'people on the ground are just laughing,' said Jan Pronk, the chief United Nations envoy in Sudan. [...]"
"UN Prepares to Send Peace-Keeping Force to Darfur"
By Ewen MacAskill
The Guardian, 27 January 2006
"The UN is preparing to intervene in the Darfur crisis in Sudan after admitting that an African Union mission has failed to curb the violence that has seen two million people displaced and thousands killed. With violence increasing over the past few months, Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, said the replacing of the AU force with a UN one is 'now inevitable.' The UN plans to put in a bigger, better-financed force with a mandate not just to monitor events as the AU had been doing but to fire back at and hunt down those responsible for the ethnic cleansing. Mr. Annan said he wished efforts to resolve the crisis had borne fruit. 'Alas, the opposite is true. People in many parts of Darfur continue to be killed, raped and driven from their homes by the thousand. The number displaced has now reached two million, while three million [half the total population of Darfur] are dependent on international relief for food and other basics. Many parts of Darfur are becoming too dangerous for relief workers to reach.' [...]"
"British MP's Implore UN on Darfur"
By Patrick Bigabo & Agencies
The New Times (Kigali) on AllAfrica.com, 27 January 2006
"Members of the British House of Commons' International Development Committee have demanded their government to push the United Nations to sanction the Sudan government for failure to rein in the Janjaweed militia in the Darfur region, that have persistently butchered thousands of innocent civilians in the area. The MP's say inaction by the UN may lead to 'another Rwanda' (genocide). 'African Union peacekeeping forces monitoring an uneasy ceasefire in Darfur are overstretched,' the MPs said, adding the AU peacekeepers should be given a full UN mandate and massive additional resources. The MPs further said that the current peacekeeping strategy has failed and there is need for a bigger and stronger force to be established in Darfur. 'If the militias were to turn on the Darfur camps, there is nothing on the ground to save the refugees. There are millions of people at risk and a very small although effective force there to protect them,' BBC quoted one of the parliamentarians as saying. [...]"
"Jewish Organizations Plan a Big Push Against Genocide in Darfur"
By Marc Perelman
Forward.com, 27 January 2006
"Jolted by the tepid response to the genocide in Darfur, Jewish communal organizations are mobilizing at an unprecedented level for an issue that might appear tangential to Jewish concerns. National and local Jewish organizations are gearing up for a rally to be held April 30 in Washington under the aegis of the Save Darfur Coalition, which brings together more than 150 faith-based and human rights groups and in which Jewish organizations figure prominently. Organizers also intend to deliver a million handwritten and electronic postcards to the White House at the time of the rally, demanding a more effective American response and American support for a stronger multinational force to protect civilians in the war-stricken region. 'Darfur hit a heartstring in the Jewish community,' said Steve Gutow, executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. The council is a body that coordinates 13 national and 122 local Jewish agencies on issues of social justice, among other concerns. 'It shows that when we say "never again," we mean it. ... It is one of those moments when everybody seems to be saying the same thing and we see an extraordinary force coming about.' The Bush administration in 2004 applied the term 'genocide' to the repressive actions conducted by the Sudanese government and its henchmen against the population of Darfur. The United Nations passed a series of resolutions, and the African Union introduced troops into the area. Even so, according to diplomats and relief groups, the situation on the ground has worsened. [...]"
"Rebels Battling for Darfur Town"
BBC Online, 26 January 2006
"Fighting is continuing in Sudan's war-torn Darfur province, where rebels are trying to take a government-held town, the UN says. The clashes have prompted aid agencies to pull out of the area around Golo. The US has condemned the rebel attacks. One of the Sudanese aid workers being evacuated was killed on Wednesday when a UN helicopter crashed. More than two million people have been forced from their homes and at least 180,000 have died in the conflict. 'Fighting is still continuing with heavy weapons' in the West Darfur town of Golo, said UN spokeswoman Radhia Achouri. She urged all sides to cease hostilities. The town has changed hands several times during the conflict. Some 100 aid workers -- including 15 survivors of the helicopter crash -- have now left the area. There are also clashes in South Darfur, near Shearia. Without aid workers in the region, details on casualties are sketchy but almost 30 soldiers and policemen were reportedly killed on Wednesday. The BBC's Jonah Fisher in Khartoum says the international community has changed tack. The government used to be generally blamed for the violence but now the US has condemned the rebels for launching their twin offensives. [...]"
TURKEY
"The Novelist Walks"
By Hugh Eakin
Slate.com, 24 January 2006
"[...] In the end, Turkey's greatest writer has offended both Turkish hard-liners and German conservatives for failing to make his allegiances clear. But it is arguably Pamuk's mixed message -- that Turkey desperately wants and needs Europe even as it thumbs its nose at fundamental European notions of justice and truth -- that will prove most accurate in hindsight. Under the current regime, Turkey has become both more democratic and more comfortable with its Muslim heritage; during Ramadan last fall, the major public debate was about whether Muslims could break the fast with sex. But the changes have happened too quickly, and under too much pressure from Brussels, for Turkish society to be really at ease with it all. And the most painful part of that transition, as postwar Europe itself has shown, may be coming to terms with history. There is surely some irony in that fact that you can now be prosecuted in Europe for denying a genocide and prosecuted in Turkey for asserting that a genocide took place. For a country that has long created fictions out of its own past, it is all the more fitting then, that it is a novelist who starts the dialogue about what really happened."
UGANDA
"There is Genocide in Acholi: Is This Statement Fact Or Fiction?"
By Joel Ohuma
The Monitor (Kampala) on AllAfrica.com, 23 January 2006
"[...] There is nowhere where the Convention states that, for it to be deemed genocide, it must occur in such a dramatic cold-blooded fashion (Rwanda and Darfur), or the long slow killing of the Jews in Nazi Germany. In other words the Convention leaves open the interpretation of genocide based on what is actually taking place on the ground. It could be a slow collective death or quick massive killings. The key is in the numbers. For northern Uganda, in the words of the Convention, it is; 'the deliberate inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,' that carries resonance. It is this definition that Olara Otunnu uses as a measure against the facts he so eloquently presents regarding the killings in northern Uganda. He poses two key moral questions which challenge us to look at the facts more closely: do the weekly killings of 1,000 people in the government created and enforced camps, amount to genocide as defined by the Geneva Convention? Do the conditions in the camps, militarily enforced as they are by government forces, amount to 'the deliberate inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring its physical destruction in whole or in part'? His answer, based on the facts -- he elaborates this at great length in his lecture at the Sydney Peace Prize and on KFM radio in a discussion with General David Tinyefuza early this month -- is an unequivocal yes. The facts Otunnu gives are not his, but are those presented by international humanitarian organisations operating on the ground in northern Uganda, such as the UN, which last year announced that at a minimum, 1,000 people are dying in those camps every week. Would Lemkin accept Otunnu's charge based on the merits of the case and facts on the ground? With 50,000 dying each year under the government's watch according to UN figures, there is little doubt he would. [...]"
UNITED STATES
"Military Abuse Prosecutions Often Draw Mild Punishments"
By Nicholas Riccardi
Baltimore Sun, 25 January 2006
"Soldiers prosecuted for abusing or killing detainees rarely have paid a heavy price, an indication of the difficulties the U.S. military has had sorting out right from wrong during the war on terrorism, human rights groups and military attorneys say. A report to be released next week by Human Rights First has found that service members were disciplined in 12 of the 33 cases in which detainees' deaths were ruled homicides. Often that punishment was relatively mild, as was the case for Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. Charged with murder in the death of an Iraqi general during an interrogation session, Welshofer was convicted last week of lesser offenses. On Monday, a jury of six Army officers at Fort Carson, Colo., ruled that instead of going to prison and being forced from the military, Welshofer would receive a formal reprimand, forfeit $6,000 of his salary and spend 60 days restricted to his home, office and church. It was the latest in a growing list of setbacks for military prosecutors. Last year, a jury acquitted a Navy SEAL in the beating an Iraqi detainee who later died in CIA custody. And of 15 soldiers serving in Afghanistan whom the Army has disciplined for abuse at a jail where two detainees died, three were acquitted and none has received more than five months in prison. There is no complete independent tracking of military abuse prosecutions. But observers say the stiffest sentence appears to have gone to Spc. Charles A. Graner Jr., who was convicted of torturing detainees at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He is serving 10 years in a military prison. 'It's telling that the person who got the most time was the one all over television,' said Jumana Musa, an official with Amnesty International. 'The less in the news, the lighter the sentence seems to be.' [...]"
"US Accused of Using Gangster Tactics over Terror Suspects"
By Nicholas Watt
The Guardian, 25 January 2006
"Europe's human rights watchdog accused Washington yesterday of using 'gangster tactics' by flying in terrorist suspects to countries where they would face torture, and criticised European countries who appear to have done nothing to intervene. 'If a country resorts to the tactics of gangsters I say no,' Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, said at the Council of Europe's winter session in Strasbourg. 'There are different elements that allow me to say that governments were aware of what was happening.' Mr. Marty, who is investigating allegations of 'extraordinary rendition,' estimated that more than 100 people have been flown to prisons in third countries where they may have been tortured. 'There is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of "relocation" or "outsourcing of torture,"' Mr Marty told the 46-nation council. 'Individuals have been abducted, deprived of their liberty and transported to different destinations in Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered degrading treatment and torture. It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware.' [...]"
[n.b. "NKVD tactics" would be another way of putting it.]
ISSUE: COLONIALISM
"Jewish Lawyer Rules On French History"
By Brett Kline
JewishTimes.com, 31 January 2006
"The French government has tapped the son of famous Nazi-hunters to help decide the fate of a contentious law that seeks to interpret the country's colonial history. Arno Klarsfeld, 39, seems to attract attention in France with everything he does, including when he took Israeli citizenship and served two years in the border police during the recent intifada. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy asked Klarsfeld to issue what amounts to an official opinion on the rewriting of part of a 2005 law, known as the "Feb. 23 Law," which basically states that there were positive aspects to France's colonial empire. Klarsfeld presented his recommendations to Sarkozy in late January, arguing that the law should stress both positive and negative aspects of colonization. The law has proved hugely controversial with French historians, most of whom are considered leftists. They say politicians should not make laws concerning the public's view of history, and that the last word on history should be left to historians only. ... Klarsfeld says he agrees that there were positive aspects of colonization, such as French efforts to build infrastructure and roads, hospitals and schools, which are all mentioned in the Feb. 23 Law. However, the text neglects the well-known negative aspects such as slavery, racial injustice, economic exploitation. [...]"
"France's 'Positive' Colonialism Law To Be Struck Down"
Agence France-Presse dispatch on The Tocqueville Connection, 26 January 2006
"A bitter row over a French law that recognises the 'positive role' of colonialism appeared to be close to resolution Thursday after President Jacques Chirac asked for the controversial clause to be struck off the statute books. The president accepted advice from a parliamentary committee to resort to a rarely-used constitutional procedure in order to remove the offending article -- which appears in a government bill passed a year ago providing financial compensation to repatriated colonials. The clause is to be referred to the country's constitutional council -- a nine-member body that decides on the constitutionality of laws -- on the grounds that it is outside the competence of the legislature. Article Four of law 2005-158 states that 'scholastic programmes recognise in particular the positive role of the French overseas presence, especially in north Africa, and accord to history and to the sacrifices of army soldiers from these territories the eminent place that they deserve.' At Chirac's request, the constitutional council is expected to rule that school texts are fixed by government regulation not by law, and that the clause is therefore unsustainable. The device provides the government with a get-out from a highly embarrassing episode, which further damaged relations with the country's black and Arab populations just as the country was reeling from last November's rioting in high-immigration suburbs. [...]"
ISSUE: THE ENVIRONMENT
"New York Urges U.S. Inquiry in Mining Company's Indonesia Payment"
By Raymond Bonner and Jane Perlez
The New York Times, 28 January 2006 [Registration Required]
"[...] With gold prices recently surging to a 25-year high of more than $550 an ounce, Freeport said that its profits had more than doubled last quarter and that it would pay the Indonesian government some $1 billion in taxes for 2005. At the same time, by Freeport's own estimates, its mining operations will generate some six billion tons of waste in Papua before they are through, much of it dumped directly into what was once a pristine river system. Its waste disposal method, the company says, has been approved by provincial authorities. 'I saw where they had demolished a mountain forever, and instead left an ugly lake,' Mr. Rais said in an interview of a visit he made to the mine. 'I felt humiliated as a son of Indonesia.' In Parliament, members of two separate committees said they would ask Freeport executives to answer questions about the company's payments to the military, its tax payments and the environmental damage around the mine site. A member of the environment committee, Alvin Lie, said his panel would hold hearings in February to look at the environmental consequences of the gold mine on one of the world's most diverse ecosystems. [...]"
[n.b. Read those phrases carefully: "six billion tons of waste ... much of it dumped directly into what was once a pristine river system ... [in] one of the world's most diverse ecosystems." What more potent symbol could there be of market logic run amok? Not that state socialists would have done any differently; but surely this constitutes ecocide.]
ISSUE: HOLOCAUST DENIAL/ANTI-SEMITISM
"UN Chief Denounces Holocaust Denial"
The Australian, 27 January 2006
"UN chief Kofi Annan today denounced those who denied the Holocaust, as the world body marked the 61st anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. 'Remembering is a necessary rebuke to those who say the Holocaust never happened or has been exaggerated,' Mr Annan said. 'Holocaust denial is the work of bigots. We must reject their false claims whenever, wherever and by whomever they are made.' He also urged the world to remain vigilant. 'Remembering is also a safeguard for the future,' he said. 'The abyss reached in the Nazi death camps started with hatred, prejudice and anti-Semitism. Recalling these origins can remind us to be ever on the lookout for warning signs. The United Nations was founded as a reaction to the horrors of the Second World War. Even so, the international community has too often failed to stand up to mass atrocities. Let us pledge ourselves to even greater efforts to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity.' [...]"
"We Want to Step Out of the Shoah Shadow, But We Run Into Obstacles"
By Jonathan Freedland
The Guardian, 26 January 2006
"[...] No matter how much time seeks to heal this wound, there are those determined to reopen it. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran may be too ignorant to realise what effect it has when he strives again and again to question the veracity of the death of 6 million Jews at the hands of the Nazis. He has, in the six short months since his election, variously called for Israel to be wiped off the map, branded the Holocaust a myth, suggested a Tehran conference for the world's Holocaust deniers and, most recently, told Europe to brace itself to take in millions of Jewish refugees from Israel. Coming from a man apparently bent on building a nuclear bomb, how does he expect all that to sound to Jewish ears, except like a warning of a terrible calamity to come, one with the most painful historical echoes? The rest of the world may look at Jews and see a well-established, secure community, and they may look at Israel and see an armed occupier and regional superpower. But when a man like Ahmadinejad starts talking, Jews and Israelis look in the mirror and see something very different: that famous image of a frightened child, his arms in the air, cowering from Nazi guns. It may sound like a form of collective madness, but remember: the gas chambers were in operation only 60 years ago. If the Jewish psyche is still wounded, that should hardly be a surprise. [...]"
ISSUE: LEMKIN'S LEGACY
"'Lemkin's House', About Genocide's Ability to Endure, Gets NYC Run"
By Robert Simonson
Playbill.com, 23 January 2006
"Lemkin's House, a play by Catherine Filloux about the man who coined the word 'genocide,' and his anguish over its toleration in the modern world, will be presented Off-Off-Broadway at the 78th Street Theatre Lab Feb. 3-26. Jean Randich directs a cast which includes John Daggett, Christopher Edwards, Laura Flanagan, Christopher McHale and Constance Winston. Lemkin was a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent. In 1933 he was appointed to a legal council of the League of Nations conference on international criminal law in Madrid. Lemkin, who lost many relatives in the Holocaust, wrote and spoke often about human barbarity and in 1944 published 'Axis Rule in Occupied Europe,' which included the definition of the new word 'genocide.' ('Genos' is Greek for family, tribe or race, and 'cide' is Latin for killing.) His concept was accepted by the world as an offense against international law and was one of the legal bases of the Nuremberg Trials. Lemkin continued to campaign for laws against genocide after the war. He achieved success in 1951 at the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Lemkin was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1951 and 1952, but did not win. He died in 1958. In Lemkin's House, the title character is tormented in the afterlife by the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides, and the international commununity's failure to stop them."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch. Tickets for "Lemkin's House" are a very reasonable $15. Phone (212) 868-4444 or order through www.SmartTix.com. As an aside, I only read Playbill for the articles.]
ISSUE: WAR AND PEACE
"What 'Peace Epidemic'?"
By Fred Kaplan
Slate.com, 25 January 2006
"At the end of last year, the Human Security Centre, a research wing of the University of British Columbia, released a 158-page report concluding that, contrary to widespread perceptions, the world is more peaceful now than at any time in the past half-century. The end of the Cold War, it seems, brought on not an upsurge of chaos and bloodshed -- as many had expected -- but, instead, a dramatic decline. The Human Security Report 2005, as the study is called, is fascinating and important. But are its most startling conclusions valid? Are we indeed living through -- as Slate's Timothy Noah put it in a celebration of the report -- a 'peace epidemic'? ... The events of 2003-06 -- the war in Iraq and a possible civil war in the works, the slackening of dictatorship (but possibly the resurgence of ethnic conflict) in Lebanon and Ukraine, tensions rising with Iran, continued fighting in various hotspots of Africa -- seem more discouraging than hopeful. The best thing that can be said about these conflicts, whether raging or brewing, is they could go either way."
AFRICA
"Five Million People Face Daily Terror in
Northern Uganda, DRC, Burundi: UN Must Act"
Oxfam Press Release, 27 January 2006
"As a high-level United Nations Security Council meeting today debates solutions to crises in Africa's Great Lakes region, its first step must be to stop the deluge of weapons and protect civilians from attacks by armed groups, said international agency Oxfam. Conflicts raging across the Great Lakes Region, particularly in northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have lead to millions of deaths and caused almost five million people to flee across borders or become displaced inside their countries. Oxfam said that controlling the spread of weapons and stopping attacks on civilians and aid workers by armed groups was key to bringing peace. A 2003 UN arms embargo has failed to stop weapons reaching armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where fighting earlier this week caused thousands of refugees to flee. Every day, one thousand people die as a direct result of the conflict. It is estimated that thirty thousand people have died since the beginning of this year due to conflicts in the DRC and Northern Uganda alone. Oxfam also strongly criticized the UN Security Council for failing to take any effective action to stop the war in northern Uganda that has now entered its twentieth gruesome year. 'The region is awash with weapons and people are paying with their lives,' said Oxfam's Policy Advisor Greg Puley. 'From Burundi to northern Uganda, communities have become the battleground on which conflicts are fought. The UN Security Council must ensure that the Ugandan and DRC governments protect their own people from being slaughtered.' [...]"
CAMBODIA
"Former Cambodian Leaders to Face Trial"
By Seth Mydans
The New York Times, 23 January 2006 [Registration Required]
"Twenty-seven years after the Khmer Rouge leadership was driven from power, some of its top figures may soon be put on trial for causing the deaths of nearly one-fourth of the Cambodian population. Under an agreement between the United Nations and the government here, a special authority is preparing a courtroom and hiring staff and technical experts. In February, the head of a United Nations administrative team is expected to arrive and set up shop. Both Cambodia and the United Nations are selecting judges and prosecutors for an international tribunal. Diplomats and analysts who have been skeptical during nearly a decade of negotiations and delays now expect to see some measure of judicial accounting for the 1.7 million people who lost their lives from 1975 to 1979. ... There are still, as always, possibilities for delay, and nobody is rushing to take the plastic slipcovers off the 540 blue chairs in the hearing room. At one point, for example, an infestation of termites in the roof of the National Assembly building caused months of delay in the approval of a trial format. But most of the $56.3 million budget has now been secured and sometime soon the clock is expected to start ticking on a three-stage time frame: a year for investigations, a year for the trial and a year for appeals. The tribunal will target a small pool of senior figures and not seek to indict the many thousands of people involved in carrying out the Khmer Rouge's policies of forced hardships and summary executions. [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to Ursula Duba for this link.]
CONGO
"UN Steps Up Peace Efforts in Congo Ahead of April Vote"
By Blake Lambert
The Christian Science Monitor, 30 January 2006
"Once criticized by the Congolese people and Western governments for its passivity, the world's largest United Nations peacekeeping operation has redefined itself as an aggressive and determined force. The UN mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo, known by its French acronym MONUC, has in recent months stepped up efforts to tame the country's lawless eastern region ahead of the first free presidential and parliamentary elections in more than 40 years, scheduled for April 29. Yet, despite six years of peacekeeping efforts from MONUC, UN spokespeople and analysts say the dozens of local and foreign militias based or lurking in the resource-rich but isolated east still endanger civilians and the electoral process. The UN's 17,000 troops are now out across Congo's east to track down and, at times, kill the militiamen. A major offensive last month in the North Kivu region left nearly 90 gunmen dead. However, those stepped-up efforts often carry a human cost: Eight UN soldiers from Guatemala recently died in combat, allegedly in an ambush by the notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, in Garamba Park near the Congo-Sudan border. [...]"
EAST TIMOR/UNITED STATES
"Report: U.S. Arms Helped Indonesia Attack East Timor"
By Colum Lynch
The Washington Post, 25 January 2006 [Registration Required]
"U.S. political and military support for Indonesia was vital to its ability to invade East Timor in December 1975 and to sustain a brutal 24-year occupation that cost the lives of at least 100,000 people, parts of a Timorese inquiry made public Tuesday show. East Timor's Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation contended that the Ford administration 'turned a blind eye' to the Indonesian invasion even though it knew that U.S.-supplied arms would be used to carry it out. The report called on the United States, France, Britain and other military backers of Indonesia to pay reparations to victims of Indonesian oppression. ... The commission was created in 2001 by the United Nations and East Timor to provide a comprehensive account of abuses during Indonesia's occupation, which ended in 1999. East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao delivered it last week to Secretary General Kofi Annan. 'The Commission finds that the United States of America failed to support the right of the East Timorese people to self-determination, and that its political and military support were fundamental to the Indonesian invasion and occupation,' the report said. 'The support of the United States was given out of a strategically-motivated desire to maintain a good relationship with Indonesia, whose anti-communist regime was seen as an essential bastion against the spread of communism.' The national archive gave the commission National Security Council documents showing that U.S. officials were aware of Indonesian plans to invade East Timor a year before the invasion and did not discourage it. Other documents showed that U.S. officials had evidence that Indonesia had used U.S. naval vessels in support of air bombardment during its invasion of East Timor, but decided to remain silent about it. [...]"
INDONESIA/PAPUA
"Papua Likened to East Timor"
By Tom Allard
The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 January 2006
"The Indonesian military is using the same tactics of terror in West Papua that were employed during its bloody reign in East Timor, and Australia should step in to mediate a peace settlement, warns separatist Herman Wainggai. Mr. Wainggai, the leader of the 43 asylum-seekers who arrived in Australia two weeks ago, said ongoing abuses by the Indonesian military, often in cahoots with militias, were terrifying the indigenous community. 'It's the same as with East Timor,' he told the Herald yesterday from Christmas Island, where the asylum-seekers are being processed by immigration officials. 'They have created militias and jihadis in West Papua. The people, and especially activists for independence, are very scared.' The military and police regularly raided campuses and villages searching for independence sympathisers, while Indonesia's intelligence network kept constant tabs on their activities, Mr. Wainggai said. Jailed twice for his political activism, Mr Wainggai said he had no faith in the promise by the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, that, if they returned home, the Papuans would face no reprisals. Many such promises had been made in the past, he said, and bitter experience meant they could not be accepted at face value. 'We don't trust Indonesia,' he said. 'If I was sent back to Indonesia, I would die. The Government and the military treats West Papuans like animals. They have killed us like animals.' [...]"
[n.b. See also "Issue: The Environment," below.]
JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"UN Marks the Holocaust"
By Daniel Trotta
Reuters dispatch in the Herald Sun (Australia), 29 January 2006
"Survivors commemorated the Holocaust at the United Nations yesterday with harrowing accounts and pleas to halt acts of genocide such as those in Darfur in Sudan. The ceremony marked the first of what is to become an annual UN event and took place in the General Assembly hall, where 191 world governments daily debate current atrocities that experts compare to the Holocaust. The 60th anniversary of the Holocaust was commemorated last year. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and others denounced as bigots those who deny the Holocaust. Separate from the ceremony, Iran issued a statement accusing Israel of manipulating genocide for political purposes. Holocaust survivors and experts stressed the importance of never forgetting that Germany systematically killed six million Jews and millions of others including Poles, homosexuals, Russians and Gypsies during World War II. 'If you, the leaders of the world, remember -- and teach others to remember -- the Holocaust and atrocities like Darfur, Biafra and Kosovo will have no place on the face of the earth,' said Roman Kent, chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust. [...]"
"Arab Holocaust Centre Reaches Out"
By Rob Winder
BBC Online, 28 January 2006
"Khaled Mahameed admits his museum, in Nazareth in northern Israel, is small. But he believes it is unique. According to Mr. Mahameed, it is the first and only Arab run centre for promoting the study of the Holocaust. The museum contains a collection of just 60 photographs depicting the genocide with Arabic captions explaining the scenes. The pictures were purchased from Yad Vashem -- the Israeli national Holocaust memorial. Mr. Mahameed firmly believes that it is only by understanding the truth about how the state of Israel was created that Arabs can fully understand Jews and ultimately resolve the conflict between them. Many Arabs believe that Israel uses sympathy for Jewish suffering during the Holocaust to gain support from the West, Mr. Mahameed says. Arab leaders, he says, think that by giving credence to the Holocaust they are legitimising Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. 'But when Palestinians learn about the Holocaust they will understand the Jewish people better and can begin to develop a shared history,' says Mr. Mahameed enthusiastically. [...]"
"Iran Says UN Is Manipulated in Holocaust Observance"
Bloomberg.com, 27 January 2006
"Iran said the United Nations was being 'manipulated for political purposes' in its first official observance today of the memory of the Holocaust. The UN's 191 member governments agreed on Nov. 1 to make Jan. 27 the annual 'International Day of Commemoration in Memory of Victims of the Holocaust.' The decision was taken by consensus in the General Assembly, which means Iran didn't formally object or call for a vote on the resolution. Iran's mission to the UN explained its position on the measure in a note to the president of the General Assembly that was released today. While condemning genocide as a crime against humanity, the statement said 'rendering political judgments on such events and closing the door to any scientific scrutiny' would impede efforts to prevent future atrocities. 'Regrettably, the Zionist regime has routinely attempted to exploit the sufferings of the Jewish people in the past as a cover for its crimes being perpetrated today against Palestinians in the occupied territories, including massacre,' the statement said. 'The international community should take strong action against such atrocities of the Zionist regime and not allow it to manipulate humanitarian sentiments.' ... Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the UN, said the interest of Iran's 'lunatic' regime in genocide stemmed from a desire to 'learn how it was perpetrated so it can carry out the next holocaust.' He said Iran's statement was 'just another example of why the UN and especially the Security Council should urgently address the nuclear quest of Iran, because having weapons of mass destruction in the hands of this extremist regime would be a threat not just to Israel but to the whole international community.' [...]"
"'British Schindler' Remembers War"
BBC Online, 25 January 2006
"A man dubbed the 'British Schindler' for his work saving Jewish children is to speak at a Holocaust memorial event. Sir Nicholas Winton was 29 when he smuggled 669 boys and girls, destined for concentration camps, out of Czechoslovakia in 1939. He kept quiet about his work for 50 years until his wife found a scrapbook. The 96-year-old of Maidenhead, Berks, will be joined at the Reading Town Hall event on Wednesday by Vera Gissing, who was just 11 when he saved her. Ms. Gissing, also of Berkshire, is now an author, lecturer and literary translator. She has co-written a biography and film about Sir Nicholas, who began his mission before the outbreak of war when he was invited to help refugees in Czechoslovakia. After realising the danger that the imminent Nazi invasion posed, he worked to find British families willing to put up £50 to rescue the children and look after them until they were 17. Sir Nicholas was just 29 at the time His efforts have been likened to the work of the world famous 'saviour' of Jewish prisoners Oskar Schindler. [...]"
PALESTINE/ISRAEL
"Suicide Voters: How Hamas Dooms Palestine"
By Christopher Hitchens
Slate.com, 30 January 2006
"[...] Hamas says that it wants an Islamic state all the way from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. It publishes and promulgates the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Why not assume that it is at least partly serious about all this? For years, the PLO leadership has been at least officially committed to a two-state solution and has at least officially made a distinction between Judaism and Zionism. It has also renounced the disgusting tactic of suicide murder. The emergence of a party that considers all of these evolutions as betrayals may have to do with something more than the provision of welfare. I am uncomfortably reminded of the tripe talked by many liberals and leftists about the Khomeini revolution in Iran in 1979, where it was said that religion was merely the form that protest against the corrupt and repressive shah happened to take, and that the mullahs could be contained. ... It's agonizing to watch the Palestinians choose a leadership that is openly aligned with the moribund and vicious dictatorships in Iran and Syria. The time when the PLO called for a democratic secular state seems a very long while ago. But just look at the primeval propaganda of Hamas, which speaks of a land that is holy to one god and dedicated only to his fanatical supporters. Where has one heard that evil rubbish before? [...]"
"The Palestinians' Democratic Choice Must Be Respected"
By Jonathan Steele
The Guardian, 27 January 2006
"[...] If Europe, weak though its power may currently be, wants to have an independent role in the Middle East, clearly different from the manipulative US approach, it is vital to go on funding the PA [Palestinian Authority] regardless of the Hamas presence in government. Nor should the EU fall back on the cynical hope that Hamas will be as corrupt as Fatah, and so lose support. You cannot use European taxpayers' money to strengthen Palestinian institutions while privately wanting reforms to fail. Hamas should be encouraged in aiming to be more honest than its predecessors. Above all, Europe should not get hung up on the wrong issues, like armed resistance and the 'war on terror.' Murdering a Palestinian politician by a long-range attack that is bound also to kill innocent civilians is morally and legally no better than a suicide bomb on a bus. Hamas's refusal to give formal recognition of Israel's right to exist should also not be seen by Europe as an urgent problem. History and international politics do not march in tidy simultaneous steps. For decades Israel refused even to recognise the existence of the Palestinian people, just as Turkey did not recognise the Kurds. Until 15 years ago Palestinians had to be smuggled to international summits as part of Jordan's delegation. It is less than that since the Israeli government accepted the goal of a Palestinian state. Hamas may eventually disarm itself and recognise Israel. That will be the end of the process of establishing a just modus vivendi for Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. It cannot be the first step. Today's priority is to accept that Palestinians have spoken freely. They deserve respect and support."
RWANDA
"'Ex-Kigali Ngali Prefect Supervised Ntarama Killings'"
By James Munyaneza
The New Times (Kigali) on AllAfrica.com, 30 January 2006
"Former prefect of former Kigali Ngali province, Francois Karera, supervised the slaughter of thousands of Tutsi refugees at Ntarama Church in Bugesera in the present-day Southern Province, the UN court trying the 1994 Genocide suspects heard on Friday. A protected witness code-named BML, told the court that Karera ordered the church killings on the 15th of April, 1994, a day after he had visited the refugees and promised them security. 'I was hiding in a nearby ditch when a four-bus convoy full of Interahamwe and soldiers arrived along with Karera. He immediately instructed the killers that he did not want to see any Tutsi at the place alive, and then fired the first shot towards the church,' the witness told the court session, presided over by the tribunal president, Erik Mose, a Norwegian. He said the attackers used rifles, clubs, machetes and other traditional weapons to annihilate the refugees. 'I noticed him very well as he gave the directive to kill in a loud voice. He feared nobody.' The witness, whose identity was concealed for security reasons, also said that after the attackers had hacked many people to death in the church courtyard, they sent the temple ablaze to kill those inside. 'Many people had fled inside the church. They hurled grenades at the church and wiped out all that were inside. I heard a lot of screaming; the killers were on the loose after Karera's instructions.' [...]"
"Evidence 'Proves' Belgian Priest Guilty of Genocide"
Expatica.com, 30 January 2006
"Rwandan President Paul Kagame has said he has 'information and pieces of evidence' that 'appear to prove' Belgian priest Guy Theunis was involved in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Theunis was transferred to Belgium last year after spending two months in jail in Rwanda after he was accused of being an accomplice to the 1994 mass killings. 'I am no judge. But the information and pieces of evidence that I have been able to look at appear to prove his guilt,' Kagame told [the] newspaper Jeune Afrique/L'intelligent. White Friar Theunis, 60, lived in Rwanda from 1970 to 1994. He was arrested on 6 September 2005 at the international airport of Kigali when he was traveling to Belgium. He was subsequently the first foreigner to be brought before a Rwandan village court, or 'gacaca', set up to investigate the genocide that killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994. Theunis denies the charges that he was guilty of inciting genocide through republishing articles from the extremist publication 'Kangura' in his 'Dialogue' magazine, of which he was editor-in-chief from 1989-94. [...]"
"Gacaca Trials to End This Year"
By Edwin Musoni
The New Times (Kigali) on AllAfrica.com, 25 January 2006
"Trials for genocide suspects by the traditional Gacaca communal courts will end in 2006, officials from the National Service for Gacaca Jurisdictions have said. Charles Munyaneza, a top official at the Gacaca Secretariat, said all was set to ensure that the proceedings end this year 'regardless of whatever comes around.' But the certainty of the schedule is dependent on whether parliament expedites debate on the amendment of the Gacaca law. Cases numbering 4162 have already been tried. The Executive Secretary of the National Service for Gacaca Jurisdictions, Domitille Mukantaganzwa, said the speedy approval of the law would make the trials not to go beyond 31st December this year. She, however, said that national reforms including local elections, territorial demarcations, could push the target to the first quarter of 2007."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
SERBIA/KOSOVO
"Serbia Admits Mladic Family Talks"
BBC Online, 30 January 2006
"Serbia and Montenegro Defence Minister Zoran Stankovic has admitted holding secret talks with relatives of fugitive war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic. But Mr. Stankovic denied that his ministry was in talks for the surrender of the former Bosnian Serb general. He said he did not know where Mr Mladic was hiding and insisted he was not being protected by the military. The Serbian authorities have been blamed for the failure to capture Mr Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. The UN's High Representative in Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, who steps down this week, has said the continued freedom of the two men wanted over the Srebrenica massacre is an obstacle to peace in Bosnia. However, he noted that the Serb authorities had now begun to co-operate with the international war crimes tribunal at The Hague. [...]"
"Albanian Gandhi Dies"
By Amitabh Pal
The Progressive, 24 January 2006
"[...] The [Kosovar] Albanian response in the face of repression was quite remarkable. 'Without resort to violence -- which all among them then viewed as a suicidal option -- they had organized and maintained a free or liberated zone such as revolutionaries and reformers of the past, worldwide, had long dreamed,' Stephen Schwartz writes. 'Unfortunately, these fine points of political science were largely ignored by the rest of the globe.' Two separate and parallel societies were set up in Kosovo. This endeavor extended from education and health to the sports and the cultural realm. Rugova said that nonviolence was 'a necessity and a choice.' 'The practice of nonviolence in this situation corresponds to an aspect of our character, to a tradition of patience and prudence in the face of all domination,' he stated. 'By means of this active resistance based on nonviolence and solidarity, we "found" ourselves.' ... The Rugova saga is a mixed one. Due to several slip-ups and the lack of international support, he was not able to realize the full potential of his nonviolent strategy, nor was he able to reach out to his adversaries in a Gandhi-like manner. The fact, however, that he managed to sustain a nonviolent campaign for years in extremely difficult circumstances is by itself no mean achievement. Even with all his flaws of personality and tactics, the Rugova path was surely preferable to that of most other leaders in the Balkans, past and present. For this, Rugova's embrace, no matter how half-hearted, of the Gandhian approach needs to be praised. The 'Gandhi of the Balkans' showed that a program of peaceful civil disobedience can be put into practice even in very challenging situations. He deserves to be globally recognized."
SUDAN/DARFUR
"Plan to End Darfur Violence Is Failing, Officials Say"
By Joel Brinkley
The New York Times, 28 January 2006 [Registration Required]
"The broad strategy for ending the carnage in Darfur, Sudan, devised over the last two years by the United States, the United Nations and the European Union, is collapsing as the violence and chaos in the region seem to grow with every passing week, United Nations and Bush administration officials say. After three years of bloodshed that has already claimed more than 200,000 lives, officials say they are struggling to devise an effective new strategy. 'We're working very closely with our partners to see if we can turn this around,' said a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly. But the obstacles and complications are multiplying. Peace talks have nearly halted after government and Darfur-rebel negotiators, in the latest round, showed an unwillingness to seriously discuss anything except sharing Sudan's oil wealth. A growing military conflict on the Sudan-Chad border in Darfur is further endangering hundreds of thousands of refugees living in camps there. One of the Sudanese president's latest positions, articulated in a published interview this month, is that the government-backed militias known to be behind most of the violence are actually a fictitious creation of the media and the United States Congress. 'The looming threat of complete lawlessness and anarchy draws nearer,' Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, lamented earlier this month as he urged Western nations to do more. The international response has been so ineffectual that 'people on the ground are just laughing,' said Jan Pronk, the chief United Nations envoy in Sudan. [...]"
"UN Prepares to Send Peace-Keeping Force to Darfur"
By Ewen MacAskill
The Guardian, 27 January 2006
"The UN is preparing to intervene in the Darfur crisis in Sudan after admitting that an African Union mission has failed to curb the violence that has seen two million people displaced and thousands killed. With violence increasing over the past few months, Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, said the replacing of the AU force with a UN one is 'now inevitable.' The UN plans to put in a bigger, better-financed force with a mandate not just to monitor events as the AU had been doing but to fire back at and hunt down those responsible for the ethnic cleansing. Mr. Annan said he wished efforts to resolve the crisis had borne fruit. 'Alas, the opposite is true. People in many parts of Darfur continue to be killed, raped and driven from their homes by the thousand. The number displaced has now reached two million, while three million [half the total population of Darfur] are dependent on international relief for food and other basics. Many parts of Darfur are becoming too dangerous for relief workers to reach.' [...]"
"British MP's Implore UN on Darfur"
By Patrick Bigabo & Agencies
The New Times (Kigali) on AllAfrica.com, 27 January 2006
"Members of the British House of Commons' International Development Committee have demanded their government to push the United Nations to sanction the Sudan government for failure to rein in the Janjaweed militia in the Darfur region, that have persistently butchered thousands of innocent civilians in the area. The MP's say inaction by the UN may lead to 'another Rwanda' (genocide). 'African Union peacekeeping forces monitoring an uneasy ceasefire in Darfur are overstretched,' the MPs said, adding the AU peacekeepers should be given a full UN mandate and massive additional resources. The MPs further said that the current peacekeeping strategy has failed and there is need for a bigger and stronger force to be established in Darfur. 'If the militias were to turn on the Darfur camps, there is nothing on the ground to save the refugees. There are millions of people at risk and a very small although effective force there to protect them,' BBC quoted one of the parliamentarians as saying. [...]"
"Jewish Organizations Plan a Big Push Against Genocide in Darfur"
By Marc Perelman
Forward.com, 27 January 2006
"Jolted by the tepid response to the genocide in Darfur, Jewish communal organizations are mobilizing at an unprecedented level for an issue that might appear tangential to Jewish concerns. National and local Jewish organizations are gearing up for a rally to be held April 30 in Washington under the aegis of the Save Darfur Coalition, which brings together more than 150 faith-based and human rights groups and in which Jewish organizations figure prominently. Organizers also intend to deliver a million handwritten and electronic postcards to the White House at the time of the rally, demanding a more effective American response and American support for a stronger multinational force to protect civilians in the war-stricken region. 'Darfur hit a heartstring in the Jewish community,' said Steve Gutow, executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. The council is a body that coordinates 13 national and 122 local Jewish agencies on issues of social justice, among other concerns. 'It shows that when we say "never again," we mean it. ... It is one of those moments when everybody seems to be saying the same thing and we see an extraordinary force coming about.' The Bush administration in 2004 applied the term 'genocide' to the repressive actions conducted by the Sudanese government and its henchmen against the population of Darfur. The United Nations passed a series of resolutions, and the African Union introduced troops into the area. Even so, according to diplomats and relief groups, the situation on the ground has worsened. [...]"
"Rebels Battling for Darfur Town"
BBC Online, 26 January 2006
"Fighting is continuing in Sudan's war-torn Darfur province, where rebels are trying to take a government-held town, the UN says. The clashes have prompted aid agencies to pull out of the area around Golo. The US has condemned the rebel attacks. One of the Sudanese aid workers being evacuated was killed on Wednesday when a UN helicopter crashed. More than two million people have been forced from their homes and at least 180,000 have died in the conflict. 'Fighting is still continuing with heavy weapons' in the West Darfur town of Golo, said UN spokeswoman Radhia Achouri. She urged all sides to cease hostilities. The town has changed hands several times during the conflict. Some 100 aid workers -- including 15 survivors of the helicopter crash -- have now left the area. There are also clashes in South Darfur, near Shearia. Without aid workers in the region, details on casualties are sketchy but almost 30 soldiers and policemen were reportedly killed on Wednesday. The BBC's Jonah Fisher in Khartoum says the international community has changed tack. The government used to be generally blamed for the violence but now the US has condemned the rebels for launching their twin offensives. [...]"
TURKEY
"The Novelist Walks"
By Hugh Eakin
Slate.com, 24 January 2006
"[...] In the end, Turkey's greatest writer has offended both Turkish hard-liners and German conservatives for failing to make his allegiances clear. But it is arguably Pamuk's mixed message -- that Turkey desperately wants and needs Europe even as it thumbs its nose at fundamental European notions of justice and truth -- that will prove most accurate in hindsight. Under the current regime, Turkey has become both more democratic and more comfortable with its Muslim heritage; during Ramadan last fall, the major public debate was about whether Muslims could break the fast with sex. But the changes have happened too quickly, and under too much pressure from Brussels, for Turkish society to be really at ease with it all. And the most painful part of that transition, as postwar Europe itself has shown, may be coming to terms with history. There is surely some irony in that fact that you can now be prosecuted in Europe for denying a genocide and prosecuted in Turkey for asserting that a genocide took place. For a country that has long created fictions out of its own past, it is all the more fitting then, that it is a novelist who starts the dialogue about what really happened."
UGANDA
"There is Genocide in Acholi: Is This Statement Fact Or Fiction?"
By Joel Ohuma
The Monitor (Kampala) on AllAfrica.com, 23 January 2006
"[...] There is nowhere where the Convention states that, for it to be deemed genocide, it must occur in such a dramatic cold-blooded fashion (Rwanda and Darfur), or the long slow killing of the Jews in Nazi Germany. In other words the Convention leaves open the interpretation of genocide based on what is actually taking place on the ground. It could be a slow collective death or quick massive killings. The key is in the numbers. For northern Uganda, in the words of the Convention, it is; 'the deliberate inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,' that carries resonance. It is this definition that Olara Otunnu uses as a measure against the facts he so eloquently presents regarding the killings in northern Uganda. He poses two key moral questions which challenge us to look at the facts more closely: do the weekly killings of 1,000 people in the government created and enforced camps, amount to genocide as defined by the Geneva Convention? Do the conditions in the camps, militarily enforced as they are by government forces, amount to 'the deliberate inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring its physical destruction in whole or in part'? His answer, based on the facts -- he elaborates this at great length in his lecture at the Sydney Peace Prize and on KFM radio in a discussion with General David Tinyefuza early this month -- is an unequivocal yes. The facts Otunnu gives are not his, but are those presented by international humanitarian organisations operating on the ground in northern Uganda, such as the UN, which last year announced that at a minimum, 1,000 people are dying in those camps every week. Would Lemkin accept Otunnu's charge based on the merits of the case and facts on the ground? With 50,000 dying each year under the government's watch according to UN figures, there is little doubt he would. [...]"
UNITED STATES
"Military Abuse Prosecutions Often Draw Mild Punishments"
By Nicholas Riccardi
Baltimore Sun, 25 January 2006
"Soldiers prosecuted for abusing or killing detainees rarely have paid a heavy price, an indication of the difficulties the U.S. military has had sorting out right from wrong during the war on terrorism, human rights groups and military attorneys say. A report to be released next week by Human Rights First has found that service members were disciplined in 12 of the 33 cases in which detainees' deaths were ruled homicides. Often that punishment was relatively mild, as was the case for Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. Charged with murder in the death of an Iraqi general during an interrogation session, Welshofer was convicted last week of lesser offenses. On Monday, a jury of six Army officers at Fort Carson, Colo., ruled that instead of going to prison and being forced from the military, Welshofer would receive a formal reprimand, forfeit $6,000 of his salary and spend 60 days restricted to his home, office and church. It was the latest in a growing list of setbacks for military prosecutors. Last year, a jury acquitted a Navy SEAL in the beating an Iraqi detainee who later died in CIA custody. And of 15 soldiers serving in Afghanistan whom the Army has disciplined for abuse at a jail where two detainees died, three were acquitted and none has received more than five months in prison. There is no complete independent tracking of military abuse prosecutions. But observers say the stiffest sentence appears to have gone to Spc. Charles A. Graner Jr., who was convicted of torturing detainees at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He is serving 10 years in a military prison. 'It's telling that the person who got the most time was the one all over television,' said Jumana Musa, an official with Amnesty International. 'The less in the news, the lighter the sentence seems to be.' [...]"
"US Accused of Using Gangster Tactics over Terror Suspects"
By Nicholas Watt
The Guardian, 25 January 2006
"Europe's human rights watchdog accused Washington yesterday of using 'gangster tactics' by flying in terrorist suspects to countries where they would face torture, and criticised European countries who appear to have done nothing to intervene. 'If a country resorts to the tactics of gangsters I say no,' Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, said at the Council of Europe's winter session in Strasbourg. 'There are different elements that allow me to say that governments were aware of what was happening.' Mr. Marty, who is investigating allegations of 'extraordinary rendition,' estimated that more than 100 people have been flown to prisons in third countries where they may have been tortured. 'There is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of "relocation" or "outsourcing of torture,"' Mr Marty told the 46-nation council. 'Individuals have been abducted, deprived of their liberty and transported to different destinations in Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered degrading treatment and torture. It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware.' [...]"
[n.b. "NKVD tactics" would be another way of putting it.]
ISSUE: COLONIALISM
"Jewish Lawyer Rules On French History"
By Brett Kline
JewishTimes.com, 31 January 2006
"The French government has tapped the son of famous Nazi-hunters to help decide the fate of a contentious law that seeks to interpret the country's colonial history. Arno Klarsfeld, 39, seems to attract attention in France with everything he does, including when he took Israeli citizenship and served two years in the border police during the recent intifada. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy asked Klarsfeld to issue what amounts to an official opinion on the rewriting of part of a 2005 law, known as the "Feb. 23 Law," which basically states that there were positive aspects to France's colonial empire. Klarsfeld presented his recommendations to Sarkozy in late January, arguing that the law should stress both positive and negative aspects of colonization. The law has proved hugely controversial with French historians, most of whom are considered leftists. They say politicians should not make laws concerning the public's view of history, and that the last word on history should be left to historians only. ... Klarsfeld says he agrees that there were positive aspects of colonization, such as French efforts to build infrastructure and roads, hospitals and schools, which are all mentioned in the Feb. 23 Law. However, the text neglects the well-known negative aspects such as slavery, racial injustice, economic exploitation. [...]"
"France's 'Positive' Colonialism Law To Be Struck Down"
Agence France-Presse dispatch on The Tocqueville Connection, 26 January 2006
"A bitter row over a French law that recognises the 'positive role' of colonialism appeared to be close to resolution Thursday after President Jacques Chirac asked for the controversial clause to be struck off the statute books. The president accepted advice from a parliamentary committee to resort to a rarely-used constitutional procedure in order to remove the offending article -- which appears in a government bill passed a year ago providing financial compensation to repatriated colonials. The clause is to be referred to the country's constitutional council -- a nine-member body that decides on the constitutionality of laws -- on the grounds that it is outside the competence of the legislature. Article Four of law 2005-158 states that 'scholastic programmes recognise in particular the positive role of the French overseas presence, especially in north Africa, and accord to history and to the sacrifices of army soldiers from these territories the eminent place that they deserve.' At Chirac's request, the constitutional council is expected to rule that school texts are fixed by government regulation not by law, and that the clause is therefore unsustainable. The device provides the government with a get-out from a highly embarrassing episode, which further damaged relations with the country's black and Arab populations just as the country was reeling from last November's rioting in high-immigration suburbs. [...]"
ISSUE: THE ENVIRONMENT
"New York Urges U.S. Inquiry in Mining Company's Indonesia Payment"
By Raymond Bonner and Jane Perlez
The New York Times, 28 January 2006 [Registration Required]
"[...] With gold prices recently surging to a 25-year high of more than $550 an ounce, Freeport said that its profits had more than doubled last quarter and that it would pay the Indonesian government some $1 billion in taxes for 2005. At the same time, by Freeport's own estimates, its mining operations will generate some six billion tons of waste in Papua before they are through, much of it dumped directly into what was once a pristine river system. Its waste disposal method, the company says, has been approved by provincial authorities. 'I saw where they had demolished a mountain forever, and instead left an ugly lake,' Mr. Rais said in an interview of a visit he made to the mine. 'I felt humiliated as a son of Indonesia.' In Parliament, members of two separate committees said they would ask Freeport executives to answer questions about the company's payments to the military, its tax payments and the environmental damage around the mine site. A member of the environment committee, Alvin Lie, said his panel would hold hearings in February to look at the environmental consequences of the gold mine on one of the world's most diverse ecosystems. [...]"
[n.b. Read those phrases carefully: "six billion tons of waste ... much of it dumped directly into what was once a pristine river system ... [in] one of the world's most diverse ecosystems." What more potent symbol could there be of market logic run amok? Not that state socialists would have done any differently; but surely this constitutes ecocide.]
ISSUE: HOLOCAUST DENIAL/ANTI-SEMITISM
"UN Chief Denounces Holocaust Denial"
The Australian, 27 January 2006
"UN chief Kofi Annan today denounced those who denied the Holocaust, as the world body marked the 61st anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. 'Remembering is a necessary rebuke to those who say the Holocaust never happened or has been exaggerated,' Mr Annan said. 'Holocaust denial is the work of bigots. We must reject their false claims whenever, wherever and by whomever they are made.' He also urged the world to remain vigilant. 'Remembering is also a safeguard for the future,' he said. 'The abyss reached in the Nazi death camps started with hatred, prejudice and anti-Semitism. Recalling these origins can remind us to be ever on the lookout for warning signs. The United Nations was founded as a reaction to the horrors of the Second World War. Even so, the international community has too often failed to stand up to mass atrocities. Let us pledge ourselves to even greater efforts to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity.' [...]"
"We Want to Step Out of the Shoah Shadow, But We Run Into Obstacles"
By Jonathan Freedland
The Guardian, 26 January 2006
"[...] No matter how much time seeks to heal this wound, there are those determined to reopen it. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran may be too ignorant to realise what effect it has when he strives again and again to question the veracity of the death of 6 million Jews at the hands of the Nazis. He has, in the six short months since his election, variously called for Israel to be wiped off the map, branded the Holocaust a myth, suggested a Tehran conference for the world's Holocaust deniers and, most recently, told Europe to brace itself to take in millions of Jewish refugees from Israel. Coming from a man apparently bent on building a nuclear bomb, how does he expect all that to sound to Jewish ears, except like a warning of a terrible calamity to come, one with the most painful historical echoes? The rest of the world may look at Jews and see a well-established, secure community, and they may look at Israel and see an armed occupier and regional superpower. But when a man like Ahmadinejad starts talking, Jews and Israelis look in the mirror and see something very different: that famous image of a frightened child, his arms in the air, cowering from Nazi guns. It may sound like a form of collective madness, but remember: the gas chambers were in operation only 60 years ago. If the Jewish psyche is still wounded, that should hardly be a surprise. [...]"
ISSUE: LEMKIN'S LEGACY
"'Lemkin's House', About Genocide's Ability to Endure, Gets NYC Run"
By Robert Simonson
Playbill.com, 23 January 2006
"Lemkin's House, a play by Catherine Filloux about the man who coined the word 'genocide,' and his anguish over its toleration in the modern world, will be presented Off-Off-Broadway at the 78th Street Theatre Lab Feb. 3-26. Jean Randich directs a cast which includes John Daggett, Christopher Edwards, Laura Flanagan, Christopher McHale and Constance Winston. Lemkin was a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent. In 1933 he was appointed to a legal council of the League of Nations conference on international criminal law in Madrid. Lemkin, who lost many relatives in the Holocaust, wrote and spoke often about human barbarity and in 1944 published 'Axis Rule in Occupied Europe,' which included the definition of the new word 'genocide.' ('Genos' is Greek for family, tribe or race, and 'cide' is Latin for killing.) His concept was accepted by the world as an offense against international law and was one of the legal bases of the Nuremberg Trials. Lemkin continued to campaign for laws against genocide after the war. He achieved success in 1951 at the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Lemkin was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1951 and 1952, but did not win. He died in 1958. In Lemkin's House, the title character is tormented in the afterlife by the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides, and the international commununity's failure to stop them."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch. Tickets for "Lemkin's House" are a very reasonable $15. Phone (212) 868-4444 or order through www.SmartTix.com. As an aside, I only read Playbill for the articles.]
ISSUE: WAR AND PEACE
"What 'Peace Epidemic'?"
By Fred Kaplan
Slate.com, 25 January 2006
"At the end of last year, the Human Security Centre, a research wing of the University of British Columbia, released a 158-page report concluding that, contrary to widespread perceptions, the world is more peaceful now than at any time in the past half-century. The end of the Cold War, it seems, brought on not an upsurge of chaos and bloodshed -- as many had expected -- but, instead, a dramatic decline. The Human Security Report 2005, as the study is called, is fascinating and important. But are its most startling conclusions valid? Are we indeed living through -- as Slate's Timothy Noah put it in a celebration of the report -- a 'peace epidemic'? ... The events of 2003-06 -- the war in Iraq and a possible civil war in the works, the slackening of dictatorship (but possibly the resurgence of ethnic conflict) in Lebanon and Ukraine, tensions rising with Iran, continued fighting in various hotspots of Africa -- seem more discouraging than hopeful. The best thing that can be said about these conflicts, whether raging or brewing, is they could go either way."
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