Germany / Namibia / Herero Genocide

"The Namibian delegation attended a service in Berlin." (Associated Press)

Germany Returns Namibian Skulls Taken in Colonial Era
BBC Online, September 30, 2011
"Namibian tribal leaders have visited Berlin to collect the skulls of 20 compatriots who died under Germany's colonial rule in the early 1900s. German scientists took the heads to perform experiments seeking to prove the racial superiority of white Europeans over black Africans. The skulls were uncovered three years ago in medical archive exhibits. A ceremony was held in the German capital to return the remains as a gesture of reconciliation. But chaotic scenes accompanied the speeches, particularly an address by German Deputy Foreign Minister Cornelia Pieper. A handful of demonstrators shouted 'reparations', 'apology' and 'genocide'. In the 1880s, Germany acquired present-day Namibia, calling it German South-West Africa. In 1904 the Herero, the largest of about 200 ethnic groups, rose up against colonial rule killing more than a 120 civilians. The German response was ruthless. Gen. Lothar von Trotha signed a notorious extermination order against the Herero, defeated them in battle and drove them into the desert, where most died of thirst. Of an estimated 65,000 Herero, only 15,000 survived. It is thought about 10,000 Nama people also died. In 1985, a UN report classified the events as an attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of South-West Africa, and therefore the earliest attempted genocide in the 20th Century. In 2004, Germany's ambassador to Namibia expressed regret for what happened. Germany has consistently refused to pay reparations to its former colony, arguing that it has given much development aid to Namibia.

Rwanda / France

Rwandan Request to Extradite Widow from France Fails
By Pierre-Antoine Souchard
The Independent, September 29, 2011
"The widow of Rwanda's former President, wanted in connection with the 1994 genocide, has won her court appeal against extradition from France. Agathe Habyarimana has been sought by the Rwandan state prosecutor since 2009 on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. She denies the accusations. The Paris court's reasons for the decision were not immediately available. Rwanda could make a second request, but an extradition now appears unlikely. Rwanda's genocide was triggered when President Juvenal Habyarimana died after his plane was shot down above Kigali airport on 6 April 1994. Some 500,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis but also moderate Hutus, were massacred by radical Hutus in under 100 days. The massacres ended when Tutsi-led rebels under the current President, Paul Kagame, defeated the Hutu extremists in July 1994. French forces flew Mrs. Habyarimana out of Rwanda shortly after the violence began and she has lived in France for years. The head of the Rwandan government's National Commission for the Fight against Genocide last year claimed Mrs Habyarimana was the 'main architect' of the genocide. French police detained the widow last year, but she was released on condition that she check in regularly with police. At the court, Mrs. Habyarimana said she was 'delighted' with the decision."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

The Vatican / Sexual Crimes / Torture

"Pope Benedict XVI, flanked by bishop Pietro Marini, Master of Liturgical Celebration walks at the end of a Holy Mass in Ancona' s shipyard, on the shores of the Adriatic Sea, Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011." (Associated Press)

Vatican Calls "Ludicrous" Attempts by Clergy Sex Abuse Victims to Seek Court Case against Pope
By Mike Corder and Rachel Zoll
Associated Press/Canadian Press dispatches, September 14, 2011
"Clergy sex abuse victims upset that no high-ranking Roman Catholic leaders have been prosecuted for sheltering guilty priests have turned to the International Criminal Court, seeking an investigation of the pope and top Vatican cardinals for possible crimes against humanity. The Vatican called the move a 'ludicrous publicity stunt.' The Center for constitutional Rights, a New York-based non-profit legal group, requested the inquiry Tuesday on behalf of the US-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, arguing that the global church has maintained a "long-standing and pervasive system of sexual violence" despite promises to swiftly oust predators The Vatican's US lawyer, Jeffrey Lena, called the complaint a 'ludicrous publicity stunt and a misuse of international judicial processes' in a statement to The Associated Press. The complaint names Pope Benedict XVI, partly in his former role as leader of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which in 2001 explicitly gained responsibility for overseeing abuse cases; Cardinal William Levada, who now leads that office; Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state under Pope John Paul II; and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who now holds that post. Attorneys for the victims say rape, sexual violence and torture are considered a crime against humanity as described in the international treaty that spells out the court's mandate. The complaint also accuses Vatican officials of creating policies that perpetuated the damage, constituting an attack against a civilian population. Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivors Network, said going to the court was a last resort. 'We have tried everything we could think of to get them to stop and they won't,' she told The Associated Press. 'If the pope wanted to, he could take dramatic action at any time that would help protect children today and in the future, and he refuses to take the action.' The odds against the court opening an investigation are enormous. The prosecutor has received nearly 9,000 independent proposals for inquiries since 2002, when the court was created as the world's only permanent war crimes tribunal, and has never opened a formal investigation based solely on such a request.

Libya

"Libyan rebels gather on armoured vehicles outside Sirte, one of the last strongholds of the fugitive leader Muammar Gaddafi." (Ciro Fusco/ANSA)

Murder and Torture "Carried Out by Both Sides" of Uprising against Libyan Regime
By David Smith
The Guardian, September 12, 2011
"The civil war that brought down Muammar Gaddafi has been marked by widespread atrocities on both sides, according to Amnesty International. In one of the most comprehensive reports yet on the human cost of the six-month conflict, Amnesty offers harrowing testimony of the war crimes, killings of unarmed protesters and arbitrary detentions by Gaddafi's security forces. But it also lifts the lid on a catalogue of reprisal attacks that have gained less international attention during the revolution. 'Opposition fighters and supporters have abducted, arbitrarily detained, tortured and killed former members of the security forces, suspected Gaddafi loyalists, captured soldiers and foreign nationals wrongly suspected of being mercenaries fighting on behalf of Gaddafi forces,' Amnesty says. 'No independent or credible investigations are known to have been carried out by the NTC [opposition National Transitional Council], nor effective measures taken to hold to account those responsible for these abuses.' One chapter of the report, the Battle for Libya: killings, disappearances and torture, focuses on opposition abuses which, though on a 'smaller scale' than those of the regime, are said to have been often ruthless and deadly. The report says that in the first days of the uprising, groups of protesters killed captured soldiers and suspected mercenaries in al-Bayda, Derna and Benghazi. 'Some were beaten to death, at least three were hanged, and others were shot dead after they had been captured or had surrendered,' the report says. Those who tried to distance themselves from Gaddafi's military apparatus were often shown no mercy, Amnesty's researchers found.

Rwanda / France

"President Sarkozy receives President Kagame at the Élysée Palace- Paris, 12 September 2011." (Flickr)

Rwandan Leader, in Paris, Seeks to Ease Tensions
By Steven Erlanger
The New York Times, September 12, 2011
"President Paul Kagame of Rwanda met President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday in a fence-mending exercise on the Rwandan’s first visit to France since the genocide in his country in 1994. Rwanda and Mr. Kagame have accused the French military of aiding the government, then Hutu-dominated, as it massacred up to 800,000 Rwandans, mainly Tutsi. That government was overthrown by Mr. Kagame, a Tutsi, with help from Uganda. Diplomatic relations between Rwanda and France broke off in 1996 after a French judge implicated Mr. Kagame and his alliesin the 1994 downing of a plane carrying the president at the time, a Hutu, which the government used as a pretext for the genocide. Mr. Sarkozy visited Rwanda last year and said that 'a kind of blindness' had prevented France from seeing the 'genocidal aspect' of the Hutu government. Mr. Sarkozy said he regretted 'mistakes,' but gave no apology. Mr. Kagame said Monday that he would not demand an apology from France and had spoken to Mr. Sarkozy of the future. 'The whole purpose is to find ways of overcoming our differences over the past and going forward with a better relationship,' he told Agence France-Presse in an interview. In an address to the French Institute of Foreign Relations, Mr. Kagame dismissed the complaints of human rights advocates who accused him of jailing opponents and limiting press freedom and said he was emphasizing economic progress and development. His visit coincided with accusations made by Robert Bourgi, a onetime aide to former President Jacques Chirac, that Mr. Chirac and former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin received suitcases of cash from the leaders of former French colonies in Africa to finance French election campaigns. Lawyers for both men deny this. [...]"

South Africa / Violence against Whites

Shoot the Boer: "That's How a Genocide Can Start"
The Mail & Guardian, September 12, 2011
"A South African court on Monday ruled that ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema was guilty of hate speech for singing an apartheid-era song that advocated the killing the white farmers. 'I find the words uttered by Malema constitute hate speech,' said Judge Collin Lamont. Malema was ordered to pay court costs in the civil case that did not carry a criminal penalty. The verdict against Malema, a vocal proponent for the nationalisation of mines, comes as he is fighting for his political survival in a separate disciplinary case brought by the African National Congress, which has charged him with bringing the party into disrepute. The 30-year-old Malema, who is seen as a future leader of the ANC, was not present in court. The case was brought to the South Gauteng High Court by the Afrikaner civil rights group AfriForum Youth, which claimed white farmers felt vulnerable because of the song 'dubul' ibhunu', ('shoot the boer'). In his judgment, Lamont said words were powerful weapons that could lead to disastrous actions and even genocide. 'The words of one person inciting others ... that's how a genocide can start,' he said in his judgment. Lamont said in determining the outcome of the case the court had to analyse the meaning of the words in the song and its effect on society. He said single words and a group of words had 'elastic meanings'. The words Malema sang had not been forgotten as they were derogatory and hurtful. He said the response of the public was relevant to analyse the entirety of its context. Genocide was defined as 'the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, religious, or national group'. [...]"

Austria / Holocaust Denial

"Gerd Honsik, center, sits in the court room in Vienna's main court, in Austria, on Monday, April 20, 2009." (AP Photo/Ronald Zak)

Austrian Holocaust Denier, Gerd Honsik, Gets Parole
Associated Press dispatch in The Huffington Post, September 8, 2011
"An Austrian court official says a far-right author who has questioned the Holocaust has been paroled after serving three years in prison for glorifying Nazi ideology and backing Nazi-era beliefs. Gerd Honsik was serving concurrent four-year and two-year terms for writing books and in right wing publications that praised the Hitler era and contained anti-Jewish sentiments. He still had over a year left to serve. Court official Gerhard Hinger said Thursday the decision to release the 68-year-old Honsik was reached Monday. He says he does not know when Honsik actually left prison or where he is now. Officials said the parole decision was based on age and the fact that he is well-integrated in Spain, where he lives with his family."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

Iran / Violence against Homosexuals

"Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the United Nations 'we don’t have homosexuals'." (Vahid Salemi/AP)

Iran Executes Three Men on Homosexuality Charges
By Saeed Kamali Dehghan
The Guardian, September 7, 2011
"Three Iranian men have been executed after being found guilty of charges related to homosexuality, according to a semi-official news agency. The men, only identified by their initials, were hanged on Sunday in the south-western city of Ahvaz, the capital of Iran's Khuzestan province. 'The three convicts were sentenced to death based on the articles 108 and 110 of Iran's Islamic penal code, for acts against the sharia law and bad deeds,' the Isna agency quoted a judiciary official in Khuzestan as saying. Iran Human Rights, an independent NGO based in Norway, said the men were charged with 'lavat' -- sexual intercourse between two men. It is not clear whether the three men were homosexuals or merely smeared with homosexualityaccused of being gay. Isna said the men were also convicted of robbery and kidnapping. Three other people were also executed on the same day on charges related to drug-dealing, rape and robbery. It is believed that the execution of the three men is the first time for many years that any Iranians have been given death sentences on the basis of their sexuality. In the past, Iran has executed convicts for homosexuality but they were typically simultaneously convicted of other charges that carried the death sentence, such as male rape. 'The executions for sodomy might be among the rare cases where the Iranian authorities admit to having executed men convicted of homosexual acts ... Iranian authorities normally present such cases as rape, but rape has not been mentioned in this case,' said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, a spokesman for IHR.

Srebrenica Massacre / International Tribunals

"Momcilo Perisic, former chief of staff of the Yugoslav army, under guard before hearing his sentence at The Hague." (Peter Dejong/Reuters)

War Crimes Tribunal Jails Former Yugoslav Army Chief for 27 Years
Associated Press dispatch in The Guardian, September 6, 2011
"The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal has sentenced the former chief of the Yugoslav army to 27 years in prison for providing military aid to Bosnian Serb forces responsible for the Srebrenica massacre and for a deadly four-year campaign of shelling and sniping in Sarajevo. The verdict on General Momcilo Perisic is the first time the United Nations court has convicted a civilian or military officer from Yugoslavia of war crimes in Bosnia, and underscores the Yugoslav army's support for the Serb rebels in Bosnia and Croatia who committed the worst atrocities of the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s. The link between the disintegrating Yugoslav federation and Serb forces in the breakaway republics has been a matter of dispute and was the keystone of the trial in The Hague of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. That trial ended without a conclusion when Milosevic died in his cell in 2006 of a heart attack. The former Yugoslavia is now divided into independent states that include Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia. Perisic is a former Milosevic ally who remained Serbia's military chief until 2008 -- three years after the Bosnian and Croatian wars ended. He turned against the dictator after the Bosnian war and warned Milosevic's regime against fomenting conflict in Kosovo, where fighting erupted after he left his post.

Turkey / Restitution

Turkey to Return Confiscated Property
By Suzan Fraser
AP dispatch in The Guardian, August 28, 2011
"Turkey's government is returning hundreds of properties confiscated from the country's Christian and Jewish minorities over the past 75 years in a gesture to religious groups who complain of discrimination that is also likely to thwart possible court rulings against the country. A government decree published Saturday returns assets that once belonged to Greek, Armenian or Jewish trusts and makes provisions for the government to pay compensation for any confiscated property that has since been sold on. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was scheduled to announce the decision formally later Sunday when he hosts religious leaders and the heads of about 160 minority trusts, at a fast-breaking dinner for the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, officials said. The properties include former hospital, orphanage or school buildings and cemeteries. Their return is a key European Union demand and a series of court cases has also been filed against primarily Muslim Turkey at the European Court of Human Rights. Last year, the court ordered Turkey to return an orphanage to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. Some properties were seized when they fell into disuse over the years. Others were confiscated after 1974 when Turkey ruled that non-Muslim trusts could not own new property in addition to those that were already registered in their names in 1936. The 1974 decision came around the time of a Turkish invasion of Cyprus that followed a coup attempt by supporters of union with Greece and relations with that country were at an all time low. Erdogan's Islamic-rooted government seeking to promote religious freedoms has pledged to address the problems of the religious minorities. In the past few years, it amended laws to allow for the return of some of the properties, but restrictions remained and the issue on how to resolve properties that were sold on to third parties was left unsolved. The decree overcomes those restrictions and helps scupper further court rulings.

Sudan / South Kordofan

"New recruits for the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) train in a secret camp in the Nuba mountains of South Kordofan in preparation for what they call a long war against Khartoum." (AFP/Getty)

Satellite Images Reveal Signs of Mass Graves in South Sudan
The Telegraph, August 25, 2011
"A US monitoring group says satellite imagery had revealed the existence of two more mass graves in a contested region of Sudan, bringing the total number of mass graves sited there to eight. The Satellite Sentinel Project, a group backed by actor and Sudan activist George Clooney, said that witnesses told the group that a backhoe was used to dig some of the graves at sites in Kadugli, South Kordofan. Workers with the Sudanese Red Crescent Society were present during some of the burials, the group said. The US group has not made any estimates of the number of bodies it believes have been buried in the graves, saying that onsite research would need to be carried out. South Kordofan lies just across the border from newly independent South Sudan and has been the site of clashes between government troops from Sudan's Arab north and black tribesmen aligned with the south's Sudan People's Liberation Movement. Many inhabitants of South Kordofan fought for the south during the country's two decades-plus civil war against the north and are ethnically linked to the south. A report released this month by the UN human rights office in Geneva said Sudanese security forces allegedly carried out indiscriminate aerial bombardments in South Kordofan that killed civilians in the weeks before South Sudan became independent on July 9. It also alleged that Sudanese forces executed prisoners accused of belonging to the south's Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement before burying them in mass graves. 'The evidence against the Sudanese government continues to compound and has now become impossible to dismiss. It is time for the international community to take serious action and execute its responsibility to protect innocent lives in Sudan,' said John Prendergast, co-founder of the activist group the Enough Project. [...]"

France / Auschwitz / Nazi Holocaust

"The hellish entrance at Auschwitz."

The Death Camp Heroines
By Caroline Moorehead
Daily Express, August 21, 2011
"On an icy dawn in January 1943, 230 French women were herded on to four cattle trucks in the station of Compiègne. The eldest was a 68-year-old farmer’s wife, the youngest a 15-year-old schoolgirl. In between were teachers and shopkeepers, factory workers and students.Arrested by French police on the orders of the German occupying forces for resistance activities, acting as liaison officers, hiding weapons or writing anti- German slogans on the walls, they had been selected as a warning to troublemakers. Other resisters arrested like them from all over France were being sent to prison or to labour camps in Germany. This group was going to the death camp of Auschwitz. However, these 230 women had deep bonds of friendship and affection born during the many months they had been held together in the old fort of Romainville on the outskirts of Paris. Though separated by age, class, politics and education, they had listened to each other's stories, comforted those who had left children behind, looked after those who were little more than children themselves. They had shared their meagre rations, fought for better conditions, watched each other's backs.

India / Kashmir

Mass Graves Hold Thousands, Kashmir Inquiry Finds
By Lydia Polgreen
The New York Times August 22, 2011
"Thousands of bullet-riddled bodies are buried in dozens of unmarked graves across Kashmir, a state human rights commission inquiry has concluded, many of them likely to be those of civilians who disappeared more than a decade ago in the brutal insurgency in the troubled region. The inquiry, the result of three years of investigative work by senior police officers working for the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission, brings the first official acknowledgment that civilians might have been buried in mass graves in Kashmir, a region claimed by both India and Pakistan where insurgents waged a bloody battle for independence in the early 1990s. The report sheds new light on a grim chapter in the history of the troubled province and confirms a 2008 report by a Kashmiri human rights organization that found hundreds of bodies buried in the Kashmir Valley. Tens of thousands of people died in the insurgency, which began in 1989 and was partly fueled by training, weapons and cash from Pakistan. According to the report, the bodies of hundreds of men described as unidentified militants were buried in unmarked graves. But of the more than 2,000 bodies, 574 were identified as local residents. 'There is every probability that these unidentified dead bodies buried in various unmarked graves at 38 places of North Kashmir may contain the dead bodies of enforced disappearances,' the report said.

El Salvador / Spain

"A stone engraved with the names of the six Jesuit priests killed during El Salvador's 1980-92 civil war." (Luis Galdamez/Reuters)

Salvadoran Ex-Soldiers Face Extradition over Murder of Priests
By Stephen Burgen
The Guardian, August 9, 2011
"In one of the worst atrocities of El Salvador's dirty wars, members of the military murdered six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her 16-year-old daughter 22 years ago. Now an extradition battle looms after the defence ministry handed over nine of the 20 accused to the judicial authorities in a move that has surprised many human rights workers. The soldiers, all retired, include two generals. According to the El Salvador daily El Faro, the suspects presented themselves voluntarily so as to avoid being photographed in handcuffs. Five of the murdered priests were Spanish and in 2008 the Spanish Human Rights Association and the San Francisco-based Centre for Justice and Accountability demanded the extradition of the 20 accused. The extradition order was ratified by Spain's highest court. When the case first went to court in El Salvador in 1991, only two officers were found guilty of murder but were freed almost immediately under an amnesty law passed in 1993. Eloy Velasco, the Spanish judge in charge of the case, regards the 1991 trial as a fraud. 'These are crimes under international law,' said Esther Major, of Amnesty International's Central America team. 'We hope the court will pay regard to its international obligations when it rules on the extradition. We would expect them to allow this extradition and for justice to be sought in the Spanish courts, given that the amnesty law is such a huge obstacle to justice.'

Bosnia and Herzegovina / Srebrenica Massacre

"Mevludin Oric, in tears as he recounts the Serb genocide. Captured by the Serbs two days into the Death March, he miraculously survived a brutal mass execution by pretending to be dead."

Death March: The Extraordinary Story of the Bosnians Who Marched 70 Horrific Miles to Escape Genocide
By Charlotte Eagar
Daily Mail, August 6, 2011
"The walkers come marching resolutely down the dusty track from the forests, seven and a half thousand of them in bright hiking gear and T-shirts. They are on their way to Srebrenica, an old silver town set in a bowl of rolling, wooded hills. They call themselves the Mars Mira -- the peace march -- but this is no bunch of weekend revolutionaries. There are women, and girls and boys too young to remember the war, but the real heroes of the Mars Mira are the surviving men of Srebrenica, sweaty in the 100-degree heat, clutching the plastic water bottles they wished they had 16 years ago. They set off three days and almost 70 miles ago from the village of Nezuk in northern Bosnia and you can only imagine what memories assail them as they walked through those woods. For the Mars Mira follows (in reverse) the route of Srebrenica's Death March -- the Put Smrti -- along which these men battled for five days, after their town finally fell to the Serbs on July 11, 1995. Srebrenica's name is now synonymous with the worst single act of genocide in Europe since the Nazi Holocaust, when more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men were murdered by the Serbs; the actual number is still uncertain, but more than 5,000 bodies have been found so far and thousands more are still missing. But less well known is the extraordinary story of the men who tried to escape the massacre. For although 2,000 wounded and old men did give themselves up and were almost immediately killed, the able-bodied men refused to surrender. [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to Jo Jones for bringing this source to my attention.]

Bosnia and Herzegovina / Omarska Concentration Camp

"Kompleks logora Omarska." (BIRN)

Omarska: A Monument to Savagery and Resistance
Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, August 6, 2011
"Several hundred former detainees from Prijedor and their families have gathered in Omarska to commemorate August 6th, the day when the disassembly of this camp began 18 years ago. Representatives of victims and families of the killed once more reminded of the initiative to build a Memorial Center in Omarska. According to verdicts of the Hague Tribunal, at the end of May 1992 Serb forces in Prijedor formed the Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje camps. Omarska camp was placed near the former coal mine in the Omarska village. During its work, more then 3000 detainees were held there, and a third was killed. All three camps were closed at the end of August 1992 under pressure from the International community, and the disassembly of Omarska started on August 6th. The site of the camp, which consisted of hangars, the management building and the so-called white and red houses, is owned today by Mittal Steel mines. The Prijedor residents started an initiative in 2004 to build a Memorial center in the White house. At the commemoration of the 18th anniversary for killings in Prijedor, Fatima Fazlic president of the 'Association of Prijedor women - Izvor' said they will ask for the entire Mittal Steel facility, and all four buildings where Bosniaks and Croats were held, to be turned into a Memorial center.

Sudan / South Kordofan

"Representative Chris Smith (pictured in June), who heads the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, on Friday urged the immediate deployment of peacekeepers to Sudan's war-torn border region of Southern Kordofan, warning of a risk of 'genocide' by government forces." (AFP/File/Jim Watson)

US Lawmaker Seeks Peacekeepers on Sudan "Genocide"
Agence France-Presse dispatch on Yahoo! News, August 5, 2011
"A senior US lawmaker urged the immediate deployment of peacekeepers to Sudan's war-torn border region of Southern Kordofan, warning of a risk of 'genocide' by government forces. South Sudan last month broke away from Sudan to become the world's newest independent nation but violence has persisted in Southern Kordofan, an oil-producing region that remains under Khartoum's rule. Representative Chris Smith, who heads the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, on Friday said there were credible signs of systematic attacks by Sudan's Arab and Muslim forces against the largely Christian Nubian people. 'There has been far too little interest shown and there are no UN peacekeepers to help provide at least some semblance of protection. So the people are just being mowed down,' Smith said in an interview on C-SPAN's 'Newsmakers' program to air on Sunday. 'We have another potential genocide -- certainly mass killing -- because of who they are, their ethnicity and their faith,' Smith said.

Sudan / United Nations

Sudan Needs to Stop Harassing UN Peacekeepers To Death
By Lauren Jenkins
UNDispatch.com, August 5, 2011
"UN peacekeepers had just arrived in Abyei, Sudan earlier this month to monitor the withdrawal of warring northern and southern Sudanese forces when their convoy hit a landmine. One died instantly, ten more were wounded. The UN called for a Medevac helicopter to get the others emergency medical attention, but the government of Sudan refused to allow the airlift. In fact, they threatened to shoot the helicopter down. Negotiations for the airlift took three hours during which time three injured peacekeepers died. Those peacekeepers were part a 4,200 strong peacekeeping force in Abyei called UNISFA.  Their deaths were the latest tragedy in a long series of obstructions, obfuscations and official harassment of UN peacekeeping missions operating in Sudanese territory. Take, for example, the other peacekeeping mission in Sudan, the African Union -United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). Last Friday, the UN Security Council renewed the mandate of UNAMID). The one-year extension keeps over 19,000 peacekeepers in Darfur protecting civilians and creating space for humanitarian operations and calls on Sudan to remedy myriad issues -- specifically the deteriorating security situation due to aerial bombardments by the government of Sudan. (Just last week,  Sudanese air strikes on the village of Abu Hamara killed one civilian and forced others to flee the onslaught according to UN peacekeepers there.) Both votes on the two peacekeeping missions were unanimous, 15-0.

Croatia / Operation Storm

"Markac, left, and Gotovina were sentenced in April to prison terms of 18 and 24 years respectively." (EPA/Getty)

Croatian Prime Minister Hails Convicted War Crimes Generals
The Telegraph, August 5, 2011
"Jadranka Kosor, the Croatian prime minister, has hailed two ex-generals jailed by a UN war crimes court for their role in the offensive that ended the 1991-1995 Croatian war on the operation's anniversary. 'A special greeting I send to all Croatian veterans, all of Croatia's generals and particularly to generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac,' Kosor said in the southern town of Knin at a ceremony marking the anniversary of Operation Storm, broadcast live by national television. 'Without Storm and the commanders that had led it ... we would have not been here today, we would have nothing to celebrate and to be proud of,' Kosor said. Launched on August 4, 1995, Operation Storm was aimed at recapturing part of Croatian territory held by Belgrade-backed rebel Serbs who opposed Croatia's independence from the former Yugoslavia. Hundreds of Serb civilians were killed and tens of thousands fled Croatia during and after the operation.

Rwanda / Genocide Tribunals

"Rwandan president Paul Kagame is accused of ensuring that the so-called gacaca courts did not threaten the existing politcal order." (Reuters)

Genocide Courts Attacked for Failure to Heal Rwanda's Scars
By Daniel Howden
The Independent, August 5, 2011
"Rwanda's widely praised community genocide courts, due to wind up later this year, have done nothing to 'heal ethnic divisions' and have been used to 'bolster government authority', according to a new report by one of the country's leading donors. The unique 'gacaca' courts, which have heard more than one million cases, have been hailed as the centrepiece of the mountain nation's miracle recovery from the 1994 genocide but their reputation has been disputed in a study by the Japanese aid corporation, JICA. The courts were touted as an 'African solution' that would heal the legacy left by a Hutu-led genocide that killed nearly one in ten Rwandese, many from the Tutsi minority. But the gacaca courts are regarded in Rwanda as handing out 'victor's justice', argues researcher Shinichi Takeuch, who says they 'have done nothing to appease underlying ethnic tensions in the country.' Nearly a decade after 800,000 people were murdered in a 100-day killing spree, impoverished Rwanda found itself with 135,000 detainees and only 12 courts to process their cases. The innovative answer was to revive the concept of the customary 'courtyard' or 'gacaca' hearings and 11,000 of these courts were set up. All but the top tier suspects -- the planners and instigators of the genocide, notorious mass murderers and rapists who were sent to a UN tribunal -- went to gacaca courts where witnesses could confront alleged perpetrators.