Guatemala / Genocide Tribunals

New Court Ruling Another Obstacle in Genocide Prosecution of Guatemala's Rios Montt
By Benjamin Reeves
McClatchy News Service, October 25, 2013
"The human rights prosecution of former Guatemalan dictator Jose Efrain Rios Montt, whose brutal rule in the early 1980s saw the deaths of tens of thousands of the country's indigenous people, has hit another obstacle, with one of the country's two high courts saying the retired general may be entitled to amnesty. The court's declaration, which was leaked this week to a Guatemalan news outlet, orders the lower court that is trying Rios Montt to reconsider whether a 1986 amnesty law applies in his case. The court previously had ruled that it did not. The court's declaration and supporting documents have not been provided to either the defense or the prosecution in the case, and the court's precise arguments are yet to be reviewed by the lower court. But should the lower court accept them, it would be a major setback for human rights advocates, who've long viewed Rios Montt's prosecution as a milestone in Guatemala's assigning responsibility for one of the bloodiest period’s in Latin American history. Rios Montt, who enjoyed the support of the Reagan administration at the time, is accused of genocide for a bloody three-year campaign of rural pacification that drove nearly 1 million people from their homes and killed countless others. Massacres, disappearances and torture were common during his rule, which his government justified as being necessary to crush a communist-inspired rebellion among Guatemala’s indigenous people. On May 10, Rios Montt was found guilty of genocide and war crimes, the first time that a former head of state was convicted of crimes against humanity in his own country. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison. However, the Constitutional Court overturned Rios Montt's conviction just 10 days later, citing disputes over jurisdiction.

Iraq

"In this photo released by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, several of the 52 Iranian exiles killed in a Sept. 1 attack on Camp Ashraf, in eastern Iraq, are seen with gunshot wounds to the head and their hands bound behind their backs." (National Council of Resistance of Iran)

Envoys Urge UN Probe of Massacre at Iranian Exile Camp in Iraq
By Carol J. Williams
The Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2013
"A massacre this month at an Iranian exile camp in Iraq that killed 52 people under international protection was an act of premeditated slaughter and should be thoroughly investigated by the United Nations, two former foreign ministers told the world body Thursday. Former foreign ministers Bernard Kouchner of France and Sid Ahmed Ghozali of Algeria told a UN panel in Geneva that the Sept. 1 raid on the exile refuge known as Camp Ashraf represents 'a crime against humanity.' The former top diplomats also said they had grave fear for the safety of seven survivors of the attack who were taken hostage. A Paris-based Iranian dissident group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, has accused Iraqi security forces under Prime Minister Nouri Maliki of carrying out the raid on the last remaining exiles at the camp, which Baghdad has been attempting to close since US forces withdrew two years ago. Iraqi officials deny being behind the killings and lay the blame on infighting among the exiles. Camp Ashraf was set up east of Baghdad in Iraq's Diyala Province during the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein's troops were at war with Iran and the Islamic Republic government's enemies were given safe refuge. Some members of the exile group, known as the Mujahedin Khalq, or MEK, fought on the side of Iraq in their effort to see the clerical regime in their homeland defeated. The Mujahedin Khalq has been accused of carrying out bombings and assassinations in Iran in the 1980s. The exile group had been on the US list of foreign terrorist organizations but was removed a year ago, after  intense lobbying effort to convince Congress that the exiles had renounced violence.

Chad / National Tribunals

"Mbacke Fall, head of the Extraordinary African Chambers, a special court set up this year by Senegalese authorities in agreement with the African Union, speaks to journalists at a news conference in Dakar July 1, 2013." (Reuters/Joe Penney)

Ex-Chad Leader Habre Faces War Crimes Charges - Prosecutor
Reuters dispatch, July 1, 2013
"Chad's former president Hissene Habre will be charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture at a special court in Senegal, a legal official said on Monday, a day after the ex-leader's arrest. Habre, 71, was detained in Senegal where he has been living in exile for 22 years since he was overthrown in a coup. Human rights groups hold him responsible for the torture or killing up to 40,000 people during the eight years he led Chad, a poor, oil-rich central African state. Senegal, under pressure from the International Court of Justice and campaign groups, set up the special court this year to look into the allegations. 'After a comprehensive study of the issue, we have retained three charges namely crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of torture,' the court's attorney general, Mbacke Fall, told journalists. Fall said the crimes were alleged to have taken place during Habre's rule, especially during a conflict with neighbouring Libya. 'Widespread systematic attacks were ordered against civilian populations. In this context, what followed was torture and detention followed by summary executions suffered by prisoners and political detainees,' Fall said. Habre, who led Chad between 1982 and 1990, will be brought before court's judges on Tuesday for the confirmation of charges, he added."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

Syria / Gendercide

"Syrian youths walk amongst the rubble in the village of al-Hamidiyeh, north of Qusayr, in Homs province."

A Return to Homs
By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent, June 28, 2013
"Khalid is too frightened of travelling the 100 miles from Homs to Damascus to ask officials if they know what happened to his three sons, who disappeared 16 months ago as government troops over-ran the rebel stronghold of Baba Amr. He has not heard anything from them since and does not know if they are alive or dead, though he has repeatedly asked the authorities in Homs, Syria's third-largest city, about them. Khalid, a thick-set man of 60 with grizzled white hair -- who used to be a construction worker until he injured his back -- says he dare not make the journey to Damascus because 'as soon as the soldiers at the checkpoints on the road see I come from a place like Baba Amr, with a reputation for supporting the rebels, they are likely to arrest me'. He explains that he cannot risk being detained because he has a wife and four daughters who rely on him. He is the last man left in his family since his sons went missing. Syria is full of parents trying to keep their children alive or simply seeking to find out if they are already dead. It is as if both sides in the civil war are in a competition to see who can commit the worst atrocities. A few days before I spoke to Khalid I saw a picture on the internet of a fresh-faced 23-year-old soldier called Youssef Kais Abdin from near the port city of Latakia. He had been kidnapped a week earlier by the al Qa'ida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra while serving in the north-east of Syria, close to the Iraqi border. The next his parents heard of Youssef was a call from their son’s mobile at 4am from al-Nusra telling them to look for a picture of their son online. When they did so, they saw his decapitated body in a pool of blood with his severed head placed on top of it. The Syrian conflict is a civil war with all the horrors traditionally inflicted in such struggles wherever they are fought, be it Syria today or Russia, Spain, Greece, Lebanon or Iraq in the past. For the newly appointed American National Security Adviser Susan Rice, David Cameron or William Hague to pretend that this is a simple battle between a dictatorial government and an oppressed people is to misrepresent or misunderstand what is happening on the ground.

Burma/Myanmar

"Buddhist monasteries associated with the fundamentalist movement, which calls itself 969, have opened community centers and a Sunday school program for children nationwide." (Adam Dean/The New York Times)

Extremism Rises Among Myanmar Buddhists
By Thomas Fuller
The New York Times, June 20, 2013
"After a ritual prayer atoning for past sins, Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk with a rock-star following in Myanmar, sat before an overflowing crowd of thousands of devotees and launched into a rant against what he called 'the enemy' -- the country's Muslim minority. 'You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog,' Ashin Wirathu said, referring to Muslims. 'I call them troublemakers, because they are troublemakers,' Ashin Wirathu told a reporter after his two-hour sermon. 'I am proud to be called a radical Buddhist.' The world has grown accustomed to a gentle image of Buddhism defined by the self-effacing words of the Dalai Lama, the global popularity of Buddhist-inspired meditation and postcard-perfect scenes from Southeast Asia and beyond of crimson-robed, barefoot monks receiving alms from villagers at dawn. But over the past year, images of rampaging Burmese Buddhists carrying swords and the vituperative sermons of monks like Ashin Wirathu have underlined the rise of extreme Buddhism in Myanmar -- and revealed a darker side of the country's greater freedoms after decades of military rule. Buddhist lynch mobs have killed more than 200 Muslims and forced more than 150,000 people, mostly Muslims, from their homes. Ashin Wirathu denies any role in the riots. But his critics say that at the very least his anti-Muslim preaching is helping to inspire the violence. What began last year on the fringes of Burmese society has grown into a nationwide movement whose agenda now includes boycotts of Muslim-made goods. Its message is spreading through regular sermons across the country that draw thousands of people and through widely distributed DVDs of those talks. Buddhist monasteries associated with the movement are also opening community centers and a Sunday school program for 60,000 Buddhist children nationwide.

Kenya / United Kingdom / Colonialism

"Kenyans tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion are to receive compensation payments from the British government." (Dai Kurokawa/EPA)

Britain Has Said Sorry to the Mau Mau. The Rest of the Empire is Still Waiting
By Caroline Elkins
The Guardian, June 6, 2013
"On Thursday nearly 200 elderly Kikuyu people travelled from their rural homesteads and sat before the British high commissioner in Nairobi. Over half a century had passed since many were last in front of a British official. It was a different era then in Kenya. The Mau Mau war was raging, and Britain was implementing coercive policies that left indelible scars on the bodies and minds of countless men and women suspected of subversive activities. In the 1950s they experienced events in colonial detention camps that few imagined possible. Yesterday they gathered to witness another once unimaginable thing: the much-delayed colonial gesture at reconciliation. The high commissioner read extracts from William Hague's earlier statement in parliament. Hague acknowledged for the first time that the elderly Kikuyu and other Kenyans had been subjected to torture and other horrific abuses at the hands of the colonial administration during the Mau Mau emergency. On behalf of the British government he expressed 'sincere regret' that these abuses had taken place, announced payments of £2,600 to each of 5,200 vetted claimants, and urged that the process of healing for both nations begin. The faces of the elderly camp survivors betrayed the day's historical significance. Tears rolled down faces lined from years of internalised pain and bitterness. Many sat motionless as the high commissioner read the statement. Others let out audible gasps, and cries of joy. Some burst into song. By any measure the announcement was stunning. With it, Britain jettisoned its appeal of the Mau Mau reparation case in the high court. Filed in 2009, the case was the first of its kind against the former British empire.

Papua New Guinea / Witch Hunts

"Hundreds of bystanders watched as a woman accused of witchcraft was being burned alive in the Western Highlands provincial capital of Mount Hagen in Papua New Guinea, Feb. 6, 2013." (Post Courier/AP)

Despite Legal Moves, PNG's Terrifying Witchcraft Killings Look Set to Continue
By Ian Lloyd
Time.com, June 5, 2013
"One step forward and several giant steps back. That's how the UN's human-rights office described the reintroduction last week of the death penalty in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the concurrent repealing by parliament of the country's bizarre 1971 Sorcery Act. Straight off a script for Game of Thrones, the act's preamble recognized that various forms of sorcery existed and criminalized the practice of 'evil sorcery' or sanguma. While disputes over sorcery seldom came before the national judicial system, they are common in traditional village courts, where the belief that somebody is practicing sanguma has been used in defense of murder. The law's demise, and the reintroduction of the death penalty as a bid to curb sorcery-related killings, followed international outcry over a series of gruesome deaths earlier this year: the burning at the stake in February of a young mother in front of large crowd in the city of Mount Hagen, the decapitation of a retired school teacher in the autonomous region of Bougainville when I visited PNG in April, and the kidnapping and torturing with hot iron of six women and one man in the Southern Highlands province during the Easter weekend. '[This is] to stop this nonsense about witchcraft,' Prime Minister Peter O'Neill said on announcing his intention to scrap the law in parliament. But according to Richard Eves, an Australian anthropologist who specializes in PNG, political will alone shouldn’t be seen as a magic bullet against sorcery-related violence. Despite 19th century colonial attempts to eradicate it, sorcery is hardwired into the traditional culture of the country and has long been a quotidian fact of life across the socioeconomic and geographic spectrum.

Rwanda / United Kingdom / National Tribunals

"Emmanuel Nteziryayo, pictured in the dossier of his alleged crimes." (Jose Cendon/AFP)

Rwandans Held in Britain on Genocide Extradition Request
Reuters dispatch, May 30, 2013
"Five Rwandans accused of involvement in the genocide that killed 800,000 people in just 100 days were arrested in Britain on Thursday after an extradition request from Rwanda, London police said. Emmanuel Nteziryayo, Charles Munyaneza, Celestin Ugirashebuja, Vincent Bajinya and Celestin Mutabaruka appeared at a London court under extradition warrants alleging genocide and murder, a police spokesman said. Four of the five were freed by the High Court in 2009, overturning a ministerial extradition order because of fears they would not get a fair trial in Rwanda. They had been in custody since 2006. During 100 days of slaughter in 1994, 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed. Rwandan prosecutor general Martin Ngoga welcomed the arrests, which took place early on Thursday, and said he hoped London would follow the example of other jurisdictions that had extradited suspects. 'They are all suspects of genocide against Tutsis and crimes against humanity committed in Rwanda in 1994 ... Rwanda has made significant progress since 2009 when the British Courts rejected the extradition requests to Rwanda,' he said. The five men are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates court again on June 5."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

Serbia / Bosnia and Herzegovina / International Tribunals

"Jovica Stanisic, left, and Franko Simatovic, right, await judgment at the tribunal." (Martijn Beekman/AP)

Hague Tribunal Acquits Serbian State Security Chiefs of War Crimes
By Ian Traynor
The Guardian, May 30, 2013
|Two Serbian state security chiefs who facilitated the use of paramilitary murder squads in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s have been acquitted of all charges of war crimes in what is certain to be seen as a debacle for the prosecution at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Jovica Stanisic, one of the closest aides and state security chief of Slobodan Milosevic, and the late Serbian leader's sidekick and field officer, Franko Simatovic, walked free on Thursday after 10 years in detention and five years on trial. The judges found that the pair, widely seen as two of Milosevic's key henchmen in the wars of the 1990s, created, organised, directed, and funded special forces teams and paramilitary formations in Serbia whose function was to terrorise non-Serbs out of parts of Croatia and Bosnia. While declaring that the units were responsible for war crimes and mass murder, the judges ruled that the two accused could not be held responsible for any of the crimes. Apart from the continuing trials of the two Bosnian Serb leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who are both facing genocide charges, the case that concluded on Thursday was viewed as the most important in attempting to prove how Belgrade directed the vicious 1991-95 Serbian campaigns in Croatia and Bosnia. The judges found that the men 'directed and organised the formation of the [special forces] unit, organised its involvement in a number of operations in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and directed and organised its financing, logistical support, and other substantial assistance or support.' The special forces were found to have perpetrated acts of 'murder, deportation, and forcible transfer' in Bosnia in 1992. While the judges found that Stanisic and Simatovic 'organised the involvement' in the crimes, they said there was no proof the accused 'personally directed the operations' or 'issued orders or instructions.'

Bosnia and Herzegovina / International Tribunals

"(File) Bruno Stojic, left, and Jadranko Prlic appear at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2004."

6 Former Bosnian Croat Leaders Convicted of War Crimes
By Laura Smith-Spark
CNN.com, May 29, 2013
"Six former top Bosnian Croat leaders were handed long prison sentences Wednesday after they were convicted of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including the rape and murder of Bosnian Muslims. The offenses, which date to between 1992 and 1994, formed part of a wider conflict that followed the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. The six were accused at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia of trying to 'ethnically cleanse' non-Croats from areas of the territory of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian Croat leadership, along with Croat leaders, wanted to make this territory part of a 'Greater Croatia,' said the ICTY, which is based in the Hague. In order to achieve this, they carried out crimes against Bosnian Muslims and other non-Croats that included murder, rape, sexual assault, destruction of property, imprisonment and deportation, the ICTY statement said. Jadranko Prlic, Bruno Stojic, Milivoj Petkovic and Valentin Coric were convicted on 22 counts of the indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prlic, the former president of the Croatian Defense Council and later head of the government of a wartime Croat entity, Herceg-Bosna, was sentenced to 25 years in prison -- the toughest penalty. The other three were given prison terms ranging from 16 to 20 years in length. Two of the accused, Slobodan Praljak and Berislav Pusic, were acquitted on some of the charges against them.

Cambodia / Genocide Tribunals

"Nuon Chea expressed 'condolences' to victims of the regime present in the court." (EPA)

Khmer Rouge Leader Accepts Responsibility for Cambodia's Killing Fields
Reuters dispatch in The Telegraph, May 30, 2013
"A leader of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge expressed remorse on Thursday for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people during the 'Killing Fields' regime in the 1970s and accepted responsibility for the first time. 'I am responsible for what happened during the time of Democratic Kampuchea,' Nuon Chea told the United Nations-backed tribunal, referring to the name of the country during the period, when he was the party's second-in-command. 'I am very regretful for events that happened intentionally and unintentionally. I am morally responsible,' he said, expressing 'condolences' to victims of the regime present in the court, where he faces charges including war crimes and crimes against humanity. 'Brother Number Two' Nuon Chea and co-defendant Khieu Samphan, a former head of state during the Khmer Rouge period, have until now denied responsibility or even knowledge the killings. Khieu Samphan said he regretted the 'unspeakable suffering' done to the Cambodian people under the Khmer Rouge and offered condolences, his first such apology in court. It was unclear why the two men had chosen to express remorse now, but Lars Olsen, a court spokesman, welcomed the admission. 'Many victims have waited more than 30 years to hear any statement of apology or regret from leadership figures in the Khmer Rouge,' he said. However, Khieu Samphan continued to insist he was simply a figurehead of the regime and knew nothing about its murderous side.

Brazil / Genocides of Indigenous Peoples

"Umutima shaman in 1957: the Figueiredo report caused an outcry after it revealed crimes against Brazil's indigenous population." (José Idoyaga/Survival)

Brazil's "Lost Report" into Genocide Surfaces after 40 Years
By Jonathan Watts and Jan Rocha
The Guardian, May 29, 2013
"A 'lost' report into genocide, torture, rape and enslavement of indigenous tribes during Brazil's military dictatorship has been rediscovered, raising fresh questions about whether the government has made amends and punished those responsible. The 7,000-page Figueiredo report has not been seen for more than 40 years, but extracts acquired by the Guardian reveal hundreds of alleged crimes and perpetrators. Submitted in 1967 by the public prosecutor Jader de Figueiredo Correia, the document details horrific abuse by the Indian Protection Service (widely known as the SPI), which was set up to improve the livelihoods of indigenous communities but often ended up as a mechanism to rob them of land or wipe them out with guns or poison. The document caused an international storm when it was released, leading two years later to the foundation of the tribal rights organisation Survival International. Brazil, however, failed to jail a single person despite initial charges against 134 officials alleged to be involved in more than 1,000 crimes. The report was believed to have been destroyed by a fire at the agriculture ministry soon after it came out, prompting suspicions of a cover-up by the dictatorship and its allies among the big landowners. However, most of the document was discovered recently in a musty archive and is being examined by the National Truth Commission, which is investigating human rights violations between 1947 and 1988. Although the document has not been made public since its rediscovery, the Guardian has seen a scanned copy in which Figueiredo describes the enslavement of indigenous people, torture of children and theft of land. 'The Indian Protection Service has degenerated to the point of chasing Indians to extinction,' the prosecutor writes in an introduction addressed to the interior minister. The pages -- all bound, initialled and marked MI-58-455 -- include an alphabetical list of the alleged perpetrators and the indictments against them. Most are accused of falsely appropriating land, misusing funds or illegally selling cattle or timber to enrich themselves at the expense of the communities they were supposed to be protecting. But many are implicated in far more heinous crimes. The number of victims is impossible to calculate. The Truth Commission believes that some tribes, such as those in Maranhão, were completely wiped out. In one case, in Mato Grosso, only two survivors emerged to tell of an attack on a community of 30 Cinta Larga Indians with dynamite dropped from aeroplanes. Figueiredo also details how officials and landowners lethally introduced smallpox into isolated villages and donated sugar mixed with strychnine. Among those to whom responsibility is attributed is Major Luiz Vinhas Neves, who headed the SPI from 1964 until he was sacked as a result of the report in 1968. He is cited in more than 40 counts, including financial irregularities totalling more than 1bn reals (£300,000) in today's money. Following the report, a parliamentary resolution accused him of complicity in the spread of smallpox among two remote communities in Pataxó. [...]"

Indigenous Peoples / Slavery

Slave Descendants Seek Equal Rights from Cherokee Nation
By Marcos Barberry
Salon.com, May 22, 2013
"On an oppressively hot evening last May, David Cornsilk addressed a room of so-called 'black Indians' at Gilcrease Hills Baptist Church in northwest Tulsa. He wore a leather-braided bolo tie clasped by an emerald quartz. Though Cornsilk never formally studied law, his voice bellowed with the rhetorical ire of a white-shoed seasoned litigator. 'By a show of hands, how many folks here tonight are Freedmen?' Cornsilk asked into the microphone. Each raised an arm. Visibly dismayed, Cornsilk shook his head. It was a trick question. 'No,' Cornsilk said. 'The Freedmen died a long time ago. You are not Freedmen. You are Cherokee, and it is time that you begin to recognize who you are.' Cornsilk is Cherokee, and a self-taught civil rights advocate and genealogist. He traces his slave-owning ancestors back to their aboriginal lands of Georgia and Tennessee -- to a period before the Trail of Tears. [...] Headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the Cherokee Nation and its wholly owned business arm earned over a billion dollars last year through a myriad of businesses such as gaming, U.S. Department of Defense contracts, and federally funded programs. Today, taxpayers help support the Cherokee Nation through federal grants. The brutality committed by whites against American Indians -- especially the Trail of Tears -- has become a part of our national conscience. Yet it is hard to imagine that during this period an even more poorly documented atrocity was being perpetrated: The Cherokee were slave owners long before their forced removal from the southern states. By the time gold was discovered in Georgia at the dawn of the 19th century, Cherokee slave codes were indistinguishable from those enacted by the rest of the South. Soon after, when the US Indian Removal Act forced Cherokee and other Indians to relinquish their native land and move west, countless blacks enslaved by Cherokees crossed into the frontier bound and shackled. These black slaves suffered a far more violent experience than their Indian masters.

Guatemala / Genocide Tribunals

Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt. (Johan Ordonez/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

Genocide Trial of Guatemalan Ex-Dictator May Have to Restart
By Elisabeth Malkin
The New York Times, May 21, 2013
"A day after Guatemala's highest court threw out the genocide verdict against a former dictator, Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, lawyers on both sides of the case said Tuesday that his entire trial would probably have to be repeated. In a contentious 3-2 decision, the Constitutional Court on Monday ordered that the clock on the trial be turned back to April 19, part of an awkward remedy to resolve what it decided was a procedural irregularity. By that point in the trial, the prosecution had presented a month of chilling testimony from survivors of Army massacres carried out 30 years ago during one of the bloodiest periods of Guatemala's long civil war. Experts in the trial described how the Army had marched into remote hamlets in the Maya Ixil region in search of leftist guerrillas during General Ríos Montt's 17-month rule in 1982 and 1983. Soldiers killed all those who could not flee, burning down houses, killing livestock and destroying crops. The court's split decision to rewind the trial to April 19 means that everything that came after that point -- including closing statements, the genocide conviction and the general's 80-year prison sentence -- is invalid. Rather than simply restarting the case at that juncture, however, lawyers on both sides said that it would probably have to go before a new panel of judges -- one that had not already convicted the general. And because those new judges would need to rule on the evidence themselves, the trial would probably need to start over from the beginning, possibly dragging out the case against the 86-year-old general for months, if not longer.

Syria

"An image from Bayda, Syria, released by a group, the Syrian Revolution Against Bashar Assad." (Via Associated Press)

An Atrocity in Syria, With No Victim Too Small
By Anne Barnard and Hania Mourtgada
The New York Times, May 14, 2013
"After dragging 46 bodies from the streets near his hometown on the Syrian coast, Omar lost count. For four days, he said, he could not eat, remembering the burned body of a baby just a few months old; a fetus ripped from a woman's belly; a friend lying dead, his dog still standing guard. Omar survived what residents, antigovernment activists and human rights monitors are calling one of the darkest recent episodes in the Syrian war, a massacre in government-held Tartus Province that has inflamed sectarian divisions, revealed new depths of depravity and made the prospect of stitching the country back together appear increasingly difficult. That mass killing this month was one in a series of recent sectarian-tinged attacks that Syrians on both sides have seized on to demonize each other. Government and rebel fighters have filmed themselves committing atrocities for the world to see. Footage routinely shows pro-government fighters beating, killing and mutilating Sunni rebel detainees, forcing them to refer to President Bashar al-Assad as God. One rebel commander recently filmed himself cutting out an organ of a dead pro-government fighter, biting it and promising the same fate to Alawites, members of Mr. Assad's Shiite Muslim sect. That lurid violence has fueled pessimism about international efforts to end the fighting. As the United States and Russia work to organize peace talks next month between Mr. Assad and his opponents, the ever more extreme carnage makes reconciliation seem more remote. Nadim Houry, the director of Human Rights Watch in Beirut, said he sensed 'a complete disconnect between diplomacy and events on the ground.' 'The conflict is getting more visceral,' he said. Without concrete confidence-building measures, he said, and with more people 'seeing it as an existential struggle, it's hard to imagine what the negotiations would look like.'

Japan / Second World War / Rape as a Crime against Humanity

"Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto." (Associated Press)

Forced Prostitution of Women for Use by Japanese Soldiers during World War II Was "Necessary" Claims Mayor of Osaka
Associated Press dispatch in The Telegraph, May 14, 2013
"An outspoken nationalist mayor said the Japanese military's forced prostitution of Asian women before and during World War II was necessary to "maintain discipline" in the ranks and provide rest for soldiers who risked their lives in battle. The comments are already raising ire in neighbouring countries that bore the brunt of Japan's wartime aggression and that have long complained that Japan has failed to fully atone for wartime atrocities. Toru Hashimoto, the young, brash mayor of Osaka who is also co-leader of an emerging conservative political party, also told reporters that there wasn't clear evidence that the Japanese military coerced women to become what are euphemistically called 'comfort women.' 'To maintain discipline in the military, it must have been necessary at that time,' said Hashimoto. 'For soldiers who risked their lives in circumstances where bullets are flying around like rain and wind, if you want them to get some rest, a comfort women system was necessary. That's clear to anyone.' Historians say up to 200,000 women, mainly from the Korean Peninsula and China, were forced to provide sex for Japanese soldiers in military brothels.

Nigeria / Gendercide

"The hospital morgue in Maiduguri, Nigeria, where large numbers of bodies have been brought." (Adam Nossiter/The New York Times)

Bodies Pour In as Nigeria Hunts for Islamists
By Adam Nossiter
The New York Times, May 7, 2013
"A fresh load of battered corpses arrived, 29 of them in a routine delivery by the Nigerian military to the hospital morgue here. Unexpectedly, three bodies started moving. 'They were not properly shot,' recalled a security official here. 'I had to call the JTF' -- the military's joint task force -- 'and they gunned them down.' It was a rare oversight. Large numbers of bodies, sometimes more than 60 in a day, are being brought by the Nigerian military to the state hospital, according to government, health and security officials, hospital workers and human rights groups -- the product of the military’s brutal war against radical Islamists rooted in this northern city. The corpses were those of young men arrested in neighborhood sweeps by the military and taken to a barracks nearby. Accused, often on flimsy or no evidence, of being members or supporters of Boko Haram -- the Islamist militant group waging a bloody insurgency against the Nigerian state -- the detainees are beaten, starved, shot and even suffocated to death, say the officials, employees and witnesses. Then, soldiers bring the bodies to the hospital and dump them at the morgue, officials and workers say. The flood is so consistent that the small morgue at the edge of the hospital grounds often has no room, with corpses flung by the military in the sand around it. Residents say they sometimes have to flee the neighborhood because of the fierce smell of rotting flesh. From the outset of the battle between Boko Haram and the military, a dirty war on both sides that has cost nearly 4,000 lives since erupting in this city in 2009, security forces have been accused of extrajudicial killings and broad, often indiscriminate roundups of suspects and sympathizers in residential areas. The military's harsh tactics, which it flatly denies, have reduced militant attacks in this insurgent stronghold, but at huge cost and with likely repercussions, officials and rights advocates contend.

Guatemala / Genocide Tribunals

"The former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt waited for his verdict to be read on Friday. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison." (Moises Castillo/Associated Press)

Former Leader of Guatemala Is Guilty of Genocide Against Mayan Group
By Elisabeth Malkin
The New York Times, May 10, 2013
"A Guatemalan court on Friday found Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, the former dictator who ruled Guatemala during one of the bloodiest periods of its long civil war, guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. The verdict marked the first time a former head of state had been found guilty of genocide in his or her own country. Judge Yasmín Barrios sentenced General Ríos Montt, 86, to 80 years in prison. His co-defendant, José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, who served as the director of intelligence under the general, was acquitted of the same two charges. 'We are completely convinced of the intent to destroy the Ixil ethnic group,' Judge Barrios said as she read the hourlong summary of the ruling by the three-judge panel. Over five weeks, the tribunal heard more than 100 witnesses, including psychologists, military experts and Maya Ixil Indian survivors who told how General Ríos Montt's soldiers had killed their families and wiped out their villages. The judge said that as the commander in chief of Guatemala’s armed forces, the general knew about the systematic massacres of Ixil villagers living in hillside hamlets in El Quiché department and did nothing to stop them or the aerial bombardment of the refugees who had fled to nearby mountains. The crowd packed into the courtroom was quiet for much of Judge Barrios's reading. But cries of 'Justicia! Justicia!' erupted when she pronounced the lengthy sentence and ordered General Ríos Montt to begin serving it immediately. As the general tried to walk out a side door, Judge Barrios shouted at him to stay where he was and called for security forces. An hour after the verdict and sentence were read, General Ríos Montt was escorted from the courtroom by a dozen police officers. He said he was ready to go to prison. How long he will stay there is less clear than the verdict.

Jewish Holocaust / Bystanders to Genocide

"Toy Nazi figurines in this exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum." (Drew Angerer/The New York Times)

Bystanders, Not So Innocent
By Edward Rothstein
The New York Times, April 25, 2013
"Whatever larger themes are sounded when the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum commemorates its 20th anniversary here this weekend, whatever is said at a Monday ceremony by former President Bill Clinton or by the museum's founding chairman, Elie Wiesel, and whatever assessments are made about its influence, accomplishments or limitations, it will take a visit to its new exhibition, 'Some Were Neighbors,' to grasp one aspect of this imposing institution's power. It reveals the demonic not in grand forces, but in the most minute details. In one video interview, for example, a Lithuanianwitness, Regina Prudnikova, recalls that before the massacres, she cared for a Jewish child in her town, Pilviskiai. But, 'I was very young and had a very red face,' she explains, and was 'on the chubby side.' That wasn’t good. 'I was told that Jews cut you and take your blood.' She stopped baby-sitting. She now mocks such beliefs, but her tone becomes uncertain: 'I know that they say the Jews can't live without Christian blood. During their holidays they had to have at least a drop of that blood to taste.' Then, the recollection returns. The Jews were taken away and shot, their homes plundered. And we see a photograph of a wagon piled with loot being auctioned to passers-by. Or listen to Stanislaw Ochman, who transported the Jews of his village, Zdunska Wola, in Poland, in a wooden wagon to the cemetery where they were murdered. The children, holding their mothers' skirts, were often too short for the raked gunfire, and fell into the pit, still clinging, as soil was piled atop them.

Japan / Second World War

"Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaks during a news conference at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo April 19, 2013." (Reuters/Yuya Shino)

Japan PM Abe's War Shrine Offering Likely to Infuriate China
Reuters dispatch, April 21, 2013
"Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a ritual offering of a pine tree to a shrine seen as a symbol of Japan's former militarism on Sunday, a gesture likely to upset Asian victims of Japan's war-time aggression, including China and South Korea. Abe, an outspoken nationalist, offered the tree to the Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 Japanese leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal are honored along with other war dead. Abe did not visit the shrine. Abe, who became prime minister for a second time after his Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) election win in December, is unlikely to visit the shrine as he seeks to rebuild relationships with China and South Korea. Sino-Japanese relations deteriorated sharply in September after Japan bought islets in the East China Sea claimed by Beijing, sparking anti-Japanese protests across China. Ties have been shadowed for years by what Beijing says has been Tokyo's refusal to admit to wartime atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers in the country between 1931 and 1945. Memories of brutal Japanese occupation also run deep in North and South Korea. Two Japanese ministers and deputy chief cabinet secretary visited the shrine this weekend, as did Abe as main opposition party leader in October. 'It is natural for a lawmaker to offer condolences for the spirits of those who gave their lives for the country,' said Keiji Furuya, minister in charge of the issue of North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals, who visited on Sunday, as did Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato. Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Yoshitaka Shindo visited on Saturday."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]