Sudan / South Sudan

"South Sudan has seen an increase in violence since its vote to secede from the North in January." (Gallo/Getty)

Deadly Clashes in South Sudan
Al Jazeera English, March 19, 2011
"Heavy fighting between rebels and the south Sudanese army in the oil-producing states of Unity and Upper Nile, has left at least 70 people dead, according to an army spokesman. At least 30 soldiers and 11 rebels died in clashes that broke out on Thursday morning in Mayom county, in Unity state, Philip Aguer, a spokesman for the south's Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), said. 'The fighting was very heavy, but the rebels are now being pursued,' Aguer said, who added that 34 SPLA soldiers were also wounded. ... Aguer said the fighting began after the breakdown of talks aimed at persuading the rebels, who totalled 'several hundred well-armed men,' to join the southern army. In neighbouring Upper Nile state, clashes between the army and a separate rebel group, which Aguer said was responsible for a bloody raid on the state capital Malakal last Saturday, killed 25 rebels and four SPLA soldiers. ... UN officials confirmed that heavy clashes had taken place, but they were unable to verify the casualty figures. South Sudan has seen a surge in bloody clashes between rebel groups and the army since a largely peaceful January referendum on independence, in which southerners voted almost unanimously to form their own nation. Unity and Upper Nile states are close to the south's border with the north -- its former civil war enemy who the southern government has repeatedly accused of supplying arms and providing bases for rebels. The leaders of north and south tentatively agreed on Thursday to resume talks aimed at resolving a host of outstanding issues before the international community recognises an independent south in July.

Czech Republic / Lidice Massacre / Porrajmos (Roma Genocide)

A Czech Town Memorializes Oft-Forgotten Victims
By Jacy Meyer
The Christian Science Monitor, March 10, 2011
"Deep in the peaceful Bohemian countryside 15 miles northwest of Prague sits the village of Lidice. The town itself has been transformed into a beautiful and haunting memorial with a museum and rose garden to commemorate a brutal Nazi retaliation that razed the original town after high-ranking Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated in Prague in 1942. In the museum, a new traveling exhibit tells the story of another group terrorized under the Nazis -- the Roma. About half a million European Roma were killed during World War II. Ninety percent of the Roma living on Czech lands are believed to have been killed. Lety, the Roma internment camp, was originally a prison work camp. It housed more than 1,000 Roma, also known as Gypsies, from 1942 to 1943; about 500 of them went to Auschwitz. Lidice Memorial staff now manage the Lety site as well as Lezaky, a second Roma internment camp, and plans are to develop memorials there as well. 'Like with the Lidice Memorial, we are trying to bring history to young people through various exhibitions,' says Ivona Kasalicka, director of the Lidice Gallery. The traveling exhibition will remain at Lidice until March 29 and then will be displayed at the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno, Czech Republic."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

Libya

"Hundreds of African migrant workers, many from Ghana and Nigeria, live next to the airport in Tripoli, Libya, hoping to fly home." (Moises Saman/The New York Times)

Libya War Traps Poor Immigrants at Tripoli's Edge
By David D. Kirkpatrick and Scott Sayare
The New York Times, March 7, 2011
"As wealthier nations send boats and planes to rescue their citizens from the violence in Libya, a new refugee crisis is taking shape on the outskirts of Tripoli, where thousands of migrant workers from sub-Saharan Africa have been trapped with scant food and water, no international aid and little hope of escape. The migrants -- many of them illegal immigrants from Ghana and Nigeria who have long constituted an impoverished underclass in Libya -- live amid piles of garbage, sleep in makeshift tents of blankets strung from fences and trees, and breathe fumes from a trench of excrement dividing their camp from the parking lot of Tripoli's airport. For dinner on Monday night two men killed a scrawny, half-plucked chicken by dunking it in water boiled on a garbage fire, then hacked it apart with a dull knife and cooked it over an open fire. Some residents of the camp are as young as Essem Ighalo, 9 days old, who arrived on his second day of life and has yet to see a doctor. Many refugees said they had seen deaths from hunger and disease every night. The airport refugees, along with tens of thousands of other African migrants lucky enough to make it across the border to Tunisia, are the most desperate contingent of a vast exodus that has already sent almost 200,000 foreigners fleeing the country since the outbreak of the popular revolt against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi nearly three weeks ago. Dark-skinned Africans say the Libyan war has caught them in a vise. The heavily armed police and militia forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi who guard checkpoints along the roads around the capital rob them of their money, possessions and cellphone chips, the migrants say. And the Libyans who oppose Colonel Qaddafi lash out at the African migrants because they look like the dark-skinned mercenaries many here say the Libyan leader has recruited to crush the uprising. 'Qaddafi has brought African soldiers to kill some of them, so if they see black people they beat them,' said Samson Adda, 31, who said residents of Zawiyah, a rebellious city, had beaten him so badly that he could no longer walk.

Libya

Black Men Face Death as Both Anti- and Pro-Gaddafi Bloc Hunt Them Down
The Star/Asia News Network, March 6, 2011
"It is a scary time to be a black man in Libya. The anti-Gaddafi protesters want to lynch you because they think you are a mercenary out to kill them, while the pro-Gaddafi forces want to kidnap you and force you to fight for them. Collins Daakqah from Ghana said he saw five dead Africans in Zawiyah, which is 30km from Tripoli. 'I saw a few Africans trying to leave but some armed men wouldn't let them and shot them. We were so afraid to stay inside if those people came after us, so we had to find a way to run away,' he said when met after crossing the border into Tunisia. Owusu Isaac also from Ghana was also relieved to make it out, but his heart is heavy. His face showed worry and he seemed preoccupied. His brother Stephen has been captured by the police in Tripoli and is being made to fight with the soldiers against the anti-Gaddafi protestors. 'They didn't know my brother still had his mobile phone with him. He managed to call me just to tell me that he was being taken away by the police and that he was given weapons and asked to fight. He was scared. A policeman spotted my brother talking to me on the phone and the line went dead,' he said. 'I want to try and help my brother but I can't. I need to run for my life,' he said. The men say they are not fighters or mercenaries and had merely come over to Libya to make a living. They were working in lowly-paid jobs, mostly plastering newly-built homes and half the time they didn't even get paid. In recent weeks, Libya has exploded into violence as anti-Gaddafi protestors have taken to the streets to try and oust their leader of 41 years, Muammar Gaddafi. But their leader has responded with heavy force to put down the uprising against him and even hired African mercenaries to do the killing and these men have been prowling the streets with weapons, shooting protestors indiscriminately In response, the anti-Gaddafi protestors have gone after the Africans and captured some of the mercenaries and even killed a few.

Kosovo / Serbia

"Serbian forces were accused of massacring 40 Kosovo Albanians in Racak in 1999." (Reuters)

Kosovo to Hold First Talks with Serbia since Independence
By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
The Independent, March 7, 2011
"Kosovo will tomorrow hold its first face-to-face talks with Serbia since declaring independence three years ago after insurgency and ethnic cleansing left 10,000 people dead and drove hundreds of thousands from their homes. The meeting in Brussels between senior officials will include discussions on the fate of 1,800 people still missing from the 1998-99 conflict and other complex humanitarian issues. Serbia has said that it will never recognise the independence of Kosovo but observers see the meeting as an opportunity for reconciliation despite obvious tensions that remain between Albanians and Serbs. The two sides agreed to the EU-sponsored talks last year to improve the lives of all those in Kosovo -- two million ethnic Albanians and a tiny Serb minority -- where unemployment stands at 50 per cent and many people are living in grinding poverty. 'We joined this process not to play a game of poker where one side will win and the other will lose, but to solve the problems of people,' said Belgrade negotiator Borko Stefanovic. But he added his team would not cross the 'clearly defined' lines regarding Serbia's refusal to accept Kosovo's independence. Serbia goes into the talks hoping to improve its international image, scarred by atrocities committed during the conflict in Kosovo when Serbia was run by Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006 while on trial for war crimes at The Hague. Serbia has come under heavy pressure from the EU to enter negotiations with the former province that Serbia claims as the historic birthplace of the Serb people. Serbia still refuses to allow any exports from Kosovo to pass through its territory and its stance has infuriated the EU as Serbia seeks to join the 27-nation bloc.

France / Anti-Semitism

"Orthodox Jews in the Marais district of Paris where John Galliano allegedly made his comments." (Alamy)

Jewish People in the French Capital Live in the Shadow of Hatred
By Kim Willsher
The Observer, March 6, 2011
"Like most Paris schools, the Ecole des Hospitalières-Saint-Gervais bears a sombre plaque. It reads: '165 Jewish children from this school, deported to Germany during the second world war, were exterminated in the Nazi camps. Do not forget.' In this district, known as the Marais, the heart of Paris's oldest Jewish quarter, gay bars rub shoulders with falafel cafés, kosher restaurants, synagogues and prayer rooms. Its labyrinthine streets have been home to Jews on and off since the 13th century. Ten days ago, however, it also played host to John Galliano. The alleged infamous outburst of the Dior designer, who has now been sacked, in which he is said to have abused a Jewish woman and her Asian boyfriend, was offensive on many levels -- not only because of what he allegedly said, but because of where he said it. It was in a bar just a few paces from the Hospitalières-Saint-Gervais that the couturier, who is British but has lived in the French capital for two decades, was arrested. And it was also where, last year, he was filmed telling two women he believed to be Jewish that he loved Hitler. His reported behaviour has shocked France and the fashion world. Yet in what locals call the pletzl -- "little place" in Yiddish -- it provoked little surprise. Local residents and traders say that the insult 'sale juif' (dirty Jew) is a fact of daily life; asking a local if they have suffered abuse provokes a quizzical stare as if you are trying to be funny. 'Bien sûr' ('of course') is the most common reply. 'It's stating the obvious,' says one kippah-wearing youngster in the Rue des Rosiers, the Jewish quarter's main street. 'We hear what Galliano said, or versions of it, every day, sometimes several times every day.' Like many I speak to, he prefers not to be named. Standing in the doorway of a grocery shop, Dan points to his wide-brimmed black hat. 'My 80-year-old neighbour told me that when she was growing up they used to say we Jews wore these hats to hide our horns, and long black coats to hide our tails,' he says, laughing. 'She would tell me not to let my boys wear their [skull] caps in case "they" come back. More than 50 years after the war, she still thought it could happen again.'

Argentina / National Tribunals

"Jorge Videla, left, and Reynaldo Bignone, right, are accused along with six other former military figures." (AFP/Getty)

Argentine Military Dictators on Trial over Baby Kidnappings
By Robin Yapp
The Telegraph, February 28, 2011
"Jorge Videla, who ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1981, and Reynaldo Bignone, the last leader of the military regime from 1982 to 1983, are accused along with six other former military figures. Federico Delgado, federal prosecutor, called the theft of children 'one of the darkest episodes in Argentina's history' as the case began in Buenos Aires. About 500 babies were stolen from their mothers during the dictatorship, according to the campaign group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Pregnant female political dissidents were interned at secret maternity wards in centres used to torture opponents of the dictatorship. The babies were handed to military officers or their relatives after birth while the mothers were simply killed, many of them dropped alive from military planes into the sea. Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo has managed to identify 102 of the stolen babies so far, some of whom had become politicians or human rights activists. 'We were the regime's war spoils,' said 33-year-old Leonardo Fossati, who was adopted after his parents were abducted while his mother was pregnant, as he gathered with other demonstrators on the steps of the court. The eight on trial, who arrived at court in handcuffs, are accused of being responsible for 34 cases of kidnapping and falsifying children's identities.

Bangladesh / National Tribunals

"Guerrillas beat people suspected of collaborating with pro-Pakistan militias in 1971 during Bangladesh’s war for independence, a conflict that may have killed more than one million people." (Horst Faas and Michel Laurent/Associated Press)

Bangladesh Faces Atrocities of Its Independence Era
By Lydia Polgreen
The New York Times, March 5, 2011
"In the last days of the bloody war that created this nation out of the eastern half of Pakistan in 1971, a gang of men abducted Dr. Alim Chowdhury, an eye surgeon and independence activist, from his home. Three days later, his battered body was found in a mass grave, his eyes gouged from his head. His killers, members of a pro-Pakistan militia, were never punished. Moulana Abdul Mannan, the man who confessed to orchestrating the killing, according to a government investigation, went on to become a cabinet minister and member of the Bangladesh Parliament. He died in 2006. Now, 40 years after Bangladesh's independence struggle -- one of the last century's most wrenching conflicts, whose death toll may have exceeded one million people -- the government here is seeking to prosecute individuals accused of atrocities like the one against Dr. Chowdhury. The effort has touched a raw political nerve here and illustrates a conundrum of international law: Can a country, particularly a young and poor one, fairly try its own citizens for crimes against humanity? Many of those accused of atrocities are not only still alive, but are also among the leading members of two of the main opposition political parties and have enjoyed long stints in power. Six men have been arrested in connection with various crimes of the era, all of them major political figures. The government hopes to try them in a tribunal of its own creation in the coming months.

Philosophy & Psychology of Genocide

A Philosophy of Genocide's Roots
Review of Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, by David Livingstone Smith
By David Berreby
The New York Times, March 4, 2011
"Consider, as Americans are so wont to do these days, the zombie. Once, he was a person, just like you or me, but then he changed. Now, despite his outward resemblance to a human being, he is a different thing altogether. He cannot disguise himself. He cannot change back. Another minus: He yearns to sink his zombie-plague-spreading teeth into your brain. But no cloud lacks a silver lining: He is a convenient image for people you despise -- as in the Tucson gunman Jared Loughner's 'zombie grin,' as in the 'zombie children' whom Amy Chua's 'Tiger Mother' philosophy supposedly produces, as in the 'climate zombies,' right-wingers who question the science of global warming. In 'Less Than Human,' the philosopher David Livingstone Smith explains why this sort of talk is not superficial metaphor-slinging. Dehumanization -- representing people to be lesser, non­human creatures, as when police officers label crimes against criminals as 'N.H.I.' ('No Humans Involved'), or when Muammar el-Qaddafi calls his critics 'stray dogs' -- isn't just shabby rhetoric. Dehumanization is a mind-set, as Smith writes, that 'decommissions' our 'moral inhibitions' about mistreating fellow human beings. Encased in law and custom, this psychological process has often licensed slavery, genocide and countless other cruelties. And it is, Smith writes in this stalwart attempt to tame the mystery with philosophy, a moral and cognitive problem as old as history.

Libya

Black Men Mistaken for Mercenaries
By Jason Koutsoukis
The Sydney Morning Herald, March 6, 2011
"Thousands of African workers were attempting to flee eastern Libya last week in fear for their lives after facing accusations of being mercenaries Media reports have quoted countless eyewitness accounts of African men being paid by dictator Muammar Gaddafi to put down the February 17 uprising that has brought his regime to the brink of collapse But the international advocacy group Human Rights Watch has told The Sun-Herald that it is yet to confirm a single case of a mercenary being used in the conflict. Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director for the group, said that, of the hundreds of suspected mercenaries detained in the east, all had turned out to be innocent workers or Libyans in the regular army. 'I cannot speak for the west of the country, in Tripoli, where reports of mercenaries being used are widespread, but of all the people interviewed by Human Rights Watch so far, we have not identified one mercenary,' he said. Mr. Bouckaert also condemned some media outlets for purporting to identify alleged mercenaries, saying the reports were untrue. He said rumours surrounding the alleged use of mercenaries had incited a level of hysteria that had led to people being lynched. The Sun-Herald has seen images depicting the bodies of alleged mercenaries killed in Bayda, a city in eastern Libya between Benghazi and Tobruk. In video taken on a mobile phone, a black man accused of being a mercenary is shown being harassed and then beaten by a crowd. On February 25 The Sun-Herald was taken to the morgue of Jalla Hospital, Benghazi, and shown the uniformed bodies of black men who had been killed in fighting in Benghazi between February 17 and February 21. Representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said they knew of the difficulties faced by African workers and had helped hundreds leave."

Sudan / Southern Sudan

"The U.N. head of mission in Abyei (C) greets Ngok Dinka leaders returning from a conference with the Missereyi Arab tribe on January 14, 2011." (Trevor Snapp/AFP/Getty Images)

Could Border Clashes Throw Sudan Back into War?
By Alan Boswell
Friday, March 04, 2011
"Over 100 people were killed in days of fighting in Sudan's hotly contested Abyei area, while thousands have fled southward away from the carnage. When south Sudan voted in January to secede, many observers warned that the move could lead to violence that could destabilize the entire region. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it a 'ticking time bomb' and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof saw it as a 'genocide foretold.' With Sudan only months away from dividing formally into two new countries, some are now wondering: Is this the moment it all starts falling apart? Dubbed Sudan's Kashmir, Sudan's 22-year conflict killed 2 million people before a peace deal brought fragile calm in 2005. Observers have long warned that if conflict was to break out again, it would most likely start in Abyei, a tiny area of 4,000 square miles where Sudan's northern desert peters into the marshes of the south. Claimed by both the southern Ngok Dinka, who live there year-round, and the northern Misseriya, nomadic cattle-herders who move to the area in dry months, Abyei risks being torn apart as the nation splits along the divide between its Arab north and African south.  As originally envisioned by Sudan's peace deal, the Abyei dispute was to be settled through its own special poll alongside the southern independence vote. But the Abyei vote never happened. As southerners were voting for their freedom in January, Abyei whizzed with bullets -- three days of attacks left at least 41 dead. Then this week the clashes returned with a new ferocity.

Libya

World and Press Watch as Africans Are Lynched in Libya
by Farouk Martins Aresa
By Francis Tawiah
Modern Ghana (undated: March 2, 2011?)
"The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching, the whole world is watching as innocent Africans are being lynched in Libya. The time to act is right now since nobody acted yesterday or day before. It started as a rumor, then it was reported on social network and now we know it is real. The world must act and act quickly. There are men, women and children dying in the hands of Libyan mobs simply because they look Africans and must therefore be mercenaries because they cannot place their hands on Gadhafi. Mercenaries come in different colors and nationalities and these Africans are ordinary workers like the Egyptian and Tunisians. We are demanding a special meeting of United Nation to discuss the elimination of Africans by lynching in Libya. If it was any other group, the world will be crying genocide. Not only are African families in danger, Libyan blacks will be lynched before they open their mouths and speak Arabic. Most people watching the atrocities on face book would have seen Arabian features on some of the people caught and tortured to death. The press published stories of Anti-Gadhafi forces cutting Africans into pieces and posting it on internet but it is yet to catch world outcry or outrage. There is no mention of it at the United Nations by African leaders and countries getting first hand reports are silent. These are not collateral damages of war, these are brutalities of war that must be addressed.

Libya / United Nations / Genocide Intervention

"Distinguished Members of the Council, Madam President,

"My Special Advisers on the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect have reminded the national authorities in Libya, as well as in other countries facing large-scale popular protests, that the heads of State and Government at the 2005 World Summit pledged to protect populations by preventing genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, as well as their incitement.

"The challenge for us now is how to provide real protection and do all we can to halt the ongoing violence."

Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General
Remarks to Security Council Meeting on Peace and Security in Africa
February 25, 2011

Libya / International Criminal Court

Photo: Getty Images

This Evil Despot Must Be Brought to Justice
By Geoffrey Robertson
The Independent, February 23, 2011
"Colonel Gaddafi is the worst man left in the world. His bloodstained record of terrorism, torture and mass murder deserves punishment many times over and a people liberated from the moronic tenets of his Green Book might, if they get the chance, string him up in revenge. But the days of hanging dictators from lampposts are over. International justice must take the place of righteous lynch mobs. Alternatively, if Colonel Gaddafi crushes the revolt, it must ensure that he is hunted down should he set foot again outside Libya. The Security Council, disgracefully slow in responding to this crisis, has an urgent duty either to establish an international court to try Gaddafi or (more simply) to require the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate and indict him for the massacre of protesters. The ICC has been cutting its teeth on a few Congo warlords and gnashing them over Sudan's President Omer Hassan al-Bashir (although its indictment might have prompted yesterday's announcement of his early retirement). Its treaty has now been ratified by 114 nations and the irrational hostility of the Bush era has been replaced by cautious support from President Barack Obama. Libya, of course, is not a member of the ICC (and nor are any other Arab countries except Jordan and Djibouti -- a situation which new powers in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere will be advised to change). But Colonel Gaddafi can be brought within the court's jurisdiction by a Security Council direction -- as was Mr. al-Bashir when the council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC prosecutor.

India / Gujarat Genocide

"The Godhra train fire killed 60 Hindu pilgrims and activists in February 2002 and triggered some of the worst communal violence in India in decades." (Sebastian D'Souza/AFP/Getty Images)

Godhra Train Fire Verdict Prompts Tight Security Measures
By Jason Burke
The Guardian, February 22, 2011
"India has imposed tight security measures across much of the western state of Gujarat following the conviction of 31 Muslim men for setting fire to a train in which 60 Hindu pilgrims and activists died nine years ago. The incident, which took place in the town of Godhra in February 2002, triggered some of the worst inter-communal violence in India for decades. More than 1,200 people, mainly from the minority Muslim community, were killed as groups of Hindus rioted in Muslim neighbourhoods and towns across the state. Gujurat security officials fear a repeat of the violence following the verdict. Public gatherings of more than four people in areas seen as prone to violence have been prohibited, local media have been asked not to broadcast images of the clashes that followed the attack on the train, and around 15,000 extra police have been deployed. The families of the more than 60 people acquitted of taking part in the train attack have been given police protection. Those convicted are to be sentenced later in the week. Many have been in jail for years, arrested soon after the violence. Special public prosecutor JM Panchal said he was satisfied with the verdict. The case has become highly politicised, reflecting deep divides in India. The chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi -- a rising star in the rightwing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) -- has been repeatedly accused of failing to stop Hindu revenge attacks. Modi has always denied such claims, but they have tarnished his image and that of the state, one of India's most successful in economic terms. A BJP spokesman said after the verdict that 'law and justice has prevailed', adding: 'There were elements who were trying to belittle [the case]. There have been politicians who tried to abuse it.' An investigation by a judge six years ago had concluded that the train fire had been an accident. However, a separate inquiry found it had been pre-planned and that the train, having been doused in petrol, was deliberately set alight by a mob. Commentators say that inter-communal strife following the verdict is unlikely. Last year, calm followed a controversial court decision over the disputed religious site of Ayodhya in northern India which granted many of the demands of Hindu religious groups, leading many to conclude that the days when sectarian issues could explode into street violence are over."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

Israel / Palestine / Apartheid

"Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's foreign minister, addresses a news conference at the European council in Brussels." (Francois Lenoir/Reuters)

Israeli Foreign Minister Accused of Apartheid in Attempted Citizen's Arrest
By Leigh Phillips
February 22, 2011
"An Irish journalist has attempted a citizen's arrest of the Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, outside a meeting of the EU-Israel Association council in Brussels. 'Mr. Lieberman, this is a citizen's arrest. You are charged with the crime of apartheid. Please accompany me to the nearest police station,' David Cronin told the Israeli minister as he entered the press room of the European council. Cronin, a freelance journalist who has written for the Economist, the Inter Press Service news agency and the Guardian's Comment is Free, was restrained by security guards and escorted from the building, shouting 'Free Palestine'. It is not the first time Cronin, a member of the Brussels press corps since 1998, has attempted such a manoeuvre. Last March he placed his arm on Tony Blair and announced that the former prime minister was under citizen's arrest for his role in the invasion of Iraq. On that occasion, his press pass was revoked but returned after a warning. The reporter was released without charge after the latest incident. However, Cronin reports that the head of security for the council has informed him that this time the pass will be permanently revoked. 'He told me: "If you come into my house, you have to behave yourself." It's a price I'm willing to pay though. Apartheid -- the domination by one racial group over another -- has been recognised as a crime by the UN since 1973. Israel is an apartheid state, both in the occupied territories and in Israel itself.' ... Yoel Mester, a spokesman for the Israeli mission to the EU, said the ambassador will not be pressing for tighter security for future visits of Israeli dignitaries. 'This was utterly uncivilised, in bad taste. But Israel, like the EU, is very supportive of free speech. It's just a shame that some people take advantage of that freedom sometimes.' [...]"

Libya

Qaddafi's Grip on the Capital Tightens as Revolt Grows
By Kareem Fahim and David D. Kirkpatrick
The New York Times, February 22, 2011
"Vowing to track down and kill protesters "house by house," Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya tightened his grip on the capital of Tripoli Tuesday, but the eastern half of the country was slipping beyond his control. A bloody crackdown drove protesters from the streets of Tripoli, where residents described a state of terror. The independent group Human Rights Watch said it had confirmed 62 deaths in two hospitals after a rampage Monday night, when witnesses said groups of heavily armed militiamen and African mercenaries cruised the streets in pickup trucks spraying crowds with machine gun fire. The death toll was likely higher; one witness said militia forces appeared to be using vans to cart away bodies. After Colonel Qaddafi's televised speech Tuesday night, thousands of his supporters converged in Tripoli's central Green Square, wearing green bandanas and brandishing oversized machetes. Many loaded into trucks headed for the outlying areas of the city, where they occupied traffic intersections and appeared to be massing for neighborhood-to-neighborhood searches. 'It looks like they have been given a green light to kill these people,' one witness said. [...] Wearing a beige robe and turban and reading at times from his manifesto, the Green Book, Colonel Qaddafi called the protesters 'cockroaches' and blamed the unrest shaking the country on foreigners, a small group of people distributing pills, brainwashing, and young people's naïve desire to imitate the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. He urged citizens to take to the streets and beat back the protesters, and he described himself in sweeping, megalomaniacal terms. 'Muammar Qaddafi is history, resistance, liberty, glory, revolution,' he declared. [...]"

Uganda

Victims of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army
By Joe Bavier
The Telegraph, February 18, 2011
"Valentine Mbolibirani was harvesting peanuts near her home in eastern Central African Republic when the gunmen arrived. It was 2009 and she was 14 years old. The men, members of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the notorious Ugandan rebel group, had terrorised the nearby villages for more than a year, appearing suddenly out of the dense forest to loot and take captives before vanishing again. Yet Valentine, like most of her neighbours, knew little about them. 'They told us they'd come to surrender,' she said. ‘Villagers arrived to see what was happening. Then a man rode by on a bicycle, and they knocked him to the ground and kicked him. We knew then that we were their prisoners. I was taken with my little sister. There were 14 of us in all.' At one of the rebels' main camps, Valentine was summoned to a grass-roofed hut and told to ready herself. She was about to be raped by Africa's most wanted war criminal, Joseph Kony. Nearly 25 years ago Kony, a former altar boy and self-styled mystic, announced that he had received instructions from the spirit world, ordering him to overthrow Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, and impose the Ten Commandments as the law of the land. Today, the 50-year-old warlord's army, responsible for Africa’s longest-running armed conflict, espouses no political programme and exists primarily to shield Kony and his top commanders from war crimes indictments issued by the International Criminal Court in 2005. Theirs is a campaign of incalculable brutality. Over two decades in Uganda, LRA rebels attacked the villages of their own Acholi people, displacing some two million civilians. Untold thousands were killed; exact figures do not exist.

Israel / Palestine / Genocide Studies

"Palestinians evacuate the village of Zenin in 1948. Some scholars say that what is now called 'ethnic cleansing' constitutes a form of genocide." (Getty Images)

Top Genocide Scholars Battle Over How To Characterize Israel's Actions
By Gal Beckerman
Forward.com, February 16, 2011
"Did Jews commit genocide in 1948? The question is provocative, and the answer for most people is an unequivocal no. But a debate over this idea has formed the crux of a heated argument among the most eminent genocide scholars in the world, and led recently to the censure of an Israeli professor by the field’s leading academic association. It's also one more reminder of the growing divide between European scholars and their American and Israeli counterparts when it comes to how they view Israel, both historically and in the present moment. The debate began in the pages of a scholarly publication, the Winter 2010 issue of the Journal of Genocide Research. Two specialists in genocide, Omer Bartov of Brown University and Martin Shaw of Roehampton University, in London, engaged in a back-and-forth exchange about whether the word 'genocide' could be applied to the expulsion and killing of Arabs in Palestine during Israel's War of Independence. During the course of the war, more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes and were later prevented from returning, creating what would become one of the world’s most enduring refugee crises. Both Bartov and Shaw agreed that some form of what is now called 'ethnic cleansing' did occur. But where Bartov was not willing to think of this as genocide, Shaw confidently argued that any policies meant to destroy a group, even if not outright murder, should be seen as genocide.

Poland / Jewish Holocaust / Genocide Memorials

"Efforts are underway to update the exhibitions at Auschwitz. Above, Piotr Cywinski, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum." (Piotr Malecki/The New York Times)

Auschwitz Shifts From Memorializing to Teaching
By Michael Kimmelman
The New York Times, February 18, 2011
"For nearly 60 years, Auschwitz has told its own story, shaped in the recent aftermath of the Second World War. It now unfolds, unadorned and mostly unexplained, in displays of hair, shoes and other remains of the dead. Past the notorious, mocking gateway, into the brick ranks of the former barracks of the Polish army camp that the Nazis seized and converted into prisons and death chambers, visitors bear witness via this exhibition. Now those in charge of passing along the legacy of this camp insist that Auschwitz needs an update. Its story needs to be retold, in a different way for a different age. Partly the change has to do with the simple passage of time, refurbishing an aging display. Partly it's about the pressures of tourism, and partly about the changing of generations. What is the most visited site and the biggest cemetery in Poland for Jews and non-Jews alike, needs to explain itself better, officials here contend. A proposed new exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum here, occupying some of the same barracks or blocks, will retain the piled hair and other remains, which by now have become icons, as inextricable from Auschwitz as the crematoria and railway tracks. But the display will start with an explanatory section on how the camp worked, as a German Nazi bureaucratic institution, a topic now largely absent from the present exhibition, which was devised by survivors during the 1950s. Back then they wished to erase the memory of their tormenters, as the Nazis had tried to erase them, so they said as little as possible in their exhibition about the Germans who had conceived and run the camp. They focused on mass victimhood but didn't highlight individual stories or testimonials of the sort that have become commonplace at memorial museums as devices to translate incomprehensible numbers of dead into real people, giving visitors personal stories and characters they can relate to.