A compendium of news stories, features, and human rights reports pertaining to genocide and crimes against humanity. Compiled by Adam Jones. Please send links and feedback to adamj_jones@hotmail.com.
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ARGENTINA
"'Dirty War' Defendant's Family Detained"
Associated Press dispatch on MSNBC.com, 14 December 2007
"Police have detained the wife and two children of a former coast guard officer who died in custody while facing a dictatorship-era human rights trial, hours after an autopsy found cyanide in the man's blood, a judge said Friday. Hector Febres, 66, who was accused of kidnapping and torturing dissidents during the past military dictatorship, died in his cell at a navy brig Monday, four days before an expected verdict in his high-profile trial. Autopsy results showed Febres had cyanide in his bloodstream at the time of his death. Federal Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado said that she had ordered the detention of two officers in charge of the navy brig, in addition to the family members. The judge's office did not explain the reason for the detentions, which came hours after the release of autopsy results. Authorities said they had not immediately determined if Febres poisoned himself. Febres, who was facing life in prison on charges related to the disappearance and torture of four people during the dictatorship's 'Dirty War' crackdown on dissent, was the first suspect tried for abuse at the notorious Navy Mechanics' School, the largest prison camp of the 1976-1983 junta. During his trial, Argentine prosecutors characterized Febres as a fierce torturer. His defense team insisted he was innocent. Jailers found Febres dead in his cell before breakfast on Monday. [...]"
"Argentina's New President Fernandez Pledges to Speed Up Genocide Trials"
Associated Press dispatch in The New Zealand Herald, 12 December 2007
"Cristina Fernandez was sworn in yesterday as Argentina's first elected female President, completing a rare husband-wife transfer of power as she promised to keep the nation's economic recovery moving forward. Fernandez, whose husband is credited with leading Argentina out of its 2001-2002 economic meltdown, vowed to deepen the centre-left economic programmes of outgoing President Nestor Kirchner, create jobs and reduce high poverty levels. During her hour-long inaugural speech, Fernandez's voice rose in anger as she demanded that dozens of slow-moving court investigations of human rights abuses of the 1976-83 dictatorship be speeded up. 'I expect that in the four years of my term, trials that have been delayed more than 30 years will be concluded. We must try to punish those who were responsible for the greatest genocide in modern Argentine history,' she said. Nearly 13,000 people are officially listed as missing or dead. Fernandez's main challenge will be to prolong an economic recovery that has seen annual growth rates above 8 per cent in recent years."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA/INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS
"Bosnian War General Jailed for 33 Years"
By Alexandra Hudson
The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 December 2007
"The United Nations tribunal in The Hague has sentenced a former Bosnian Serb general to 33 years in jail for ordering the deadly shelling of Sarajevo and terrorising its civilians during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. Judges yesterday found Dragomir Milosevic guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity that include responsibility for terror, murder and indiscriminate attacks on civilians by troops of his Sarajevo Romanija Corps unit of the Bosnian Serb Army. 'The evidence presents an horrific tale of the encirclement and entrapment of a city and its bombardment,' Judge Patrick Robinson said. Milosevic became commander of the corps in August 1994, taking over from Stanislav Galic, a former Bosnian Serb general already sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the siege. Judge Robinson said modified air bombs, highly inaccurate weapons, were first used under Milosevic's command. 'Each time a modified air bomb was launched, the accused was playing with the lives of the citizens of Sarajevo.' Prosecutors had demanded life imprisonment for the 65-year-old. Sarajevo's plight became synonymous with the Bosnian war, with television images of sniper and shell fire raining down on the city's mainly Muslim population from the steep surrounding hills broadcast around the world. In one infamous attack, in August 1995, 43 people were killed and 75 wounded when a mortar shell hit people queuing for bread at the city market. ... Research by the Sarajevo-based Investigation-Documentation Centre has found about 14,000 people were killed in the Sarajevo area during the war. Of these, more than 10,000 -- mostly Muslims -- were killed in the Muslim-held part of Sarajevo. [...]"
CHINA/JAPAN/NANJING MASSACRE
"In Japan, Denial over Nanjing Still Holds Sway after 70 Years"
By Takehiko Kambayashi
The Christian Science Monitor, 14 December 2007
"[...] During the Rape of Nanjing, as the event is generally known, 300,000 people were killed, 20,000 women raped, and the city ravaged, say Chinese authorities. But 70 years after Japanese soldiers took the then-Chinese capital on Dec. 13, 1937, battles over everything from numbers of casualties to the extent of the brutality in the six weeks after the Japanese marched in remain a point of contention. Japan has not, in its neighbors' eyes, fully addressed past wrongs -- the result, say some experts, of a postwar lack of examination of the emperor's wartime role; an often-disdainful attitude toward Korea and China, which Japan occupied; and a lack of broad public awareness of wartime history. In March, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied the military's involvement in wartime sexual slavery, triggering an international uproar. In June, some 100 lawmakers of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said that the number of those killed by Japanese troops during the Nanjing Massacre was closer to 20,000. Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 war criminals are memorialized with the rest of Japan's war dead, infuriated China and Korea, as have textbooks that experts say whitewash atrocities. A vocal minority continues to go further in Japan. 'I'm sure that there were absolutely no Japanese soldiers' assaults on Chinese civilians,' says Masaru Naya, a former senior officer, at the Yasukuni meeting. Heidayu Kondo, a captain of the infantry regiment, said it was calm in the city, as did Tomeji Kita, an 89-year-old former infantry corporal. Countering that view can be challenging. Akinori Fukuda is a leader of the Association of No More Nanjings, a Tokyo-based civic group that invited two Chinese victims to speak earlier this month and showed the not-yet-released independent film 'Closed Memories' at the event, in which some Japanese soldiers acknowledge atrocities. He notes the lack of interest. 'No media came here to report,' he says. 'There were no TV cameras.' [...]"
"As Victims Still Mourn, China Marks 70 Years since Rape of Nanking"
By Tim Johnson
Yahoo! News, 12 December 2007
"Seven decades after Japanese soldiers poured through the old city walls of Nanjing, launching a six-week killing spree known as the Nanjing Massacre, the memories are still raw for Zhang Xiuhong. 'I really hate the Japanese,' Zhang said, dissolving into tears. 'I have repeated this thousands of times. I really, really hate them.' Now 81, Zhang was only 11 during the infamous Japanese rampage, a seizure so violent that it's also known as the Rape of Nanking, the city's former name. For Zhang, that's an accurate description, for she, too, was raped. China this week marks the 70th anniversary of the massacre, reopening the Memorial Hall to the Victims after a two-year $33 million face-lift. But China treads a fine line as it promotes condemnation of the massacre while trying to protect trade and diplomatic relations with Japan, which are on the mend after years of severe stress. When the renovated memorial is unveiled Thursday, no senior leader of the central government is likely to attend. News coverage in China will be muted. Chinese officials say they've rebuilt the memorial not to evoke bitterness and anti-Japanese sentiment but to honor history and help forge a path to lasting peace. ... This year's anniversary coincides with renewed global interest in the Nanjing Massacre. About 10 movies and documentaries -- produced in Germany, the United States, Japan and China -- are being filmed, in post-production or already in cinemas. How the new focus on Japan's wartime atrocities will play out is of keen interest in Tokyo and Beijing. Anti-Japanese riots erupted in several Chinese cities in 2005, chilling relations. Many in Japan saw the hand of China's ruling Communist leaders behind the riots, seeking to promote their own legitimacy with nationalism. [...]"
"Giving Testimony on the Horror That Was Nanking" (movie review)
By Stephen Holden
The New York Times, 12 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"'Nanking' is a swift, incisive documentary about one of the lesser-known horrors of the 20th century: the 1937 Japanese invasion of the Chinese city now called Nanjing, where more than 200,000 civilians and prisoners of war were slaughtered in a matter of weeks. The capital of the Republic of China at the start of World War II and the headquarters of the Chiang Kai-shek government, this attractive, cosmopolitan city of parks and thoroughfares was largely destroyed in what is known as the rape of Nanking. Though some Japanese scholars dispute the statistics determined after the war by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, it is widely agreed that during the occupation in 1937 and 1938, more than 20,000 rapes were also committed by the rampaging Japanese Army. In its concentrated savagery, the catastrophe was comparable to the even more numerous mass murders in Rwanda in 1994. The film, directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, has the format of a mixed-media theater piece. Interwoven with rare, vintage news clips of the city's bombing, invasion and occupation are readings by actors from journals and letters kept by the few Westerners who remained in the city during the siege. Additional grisly firsthand recollections by now elderly Chinese survivors and Japanese soldiers tell a story that has become painfully familiar in the age of information overload: a collective fever of blood lust can lead to a kind of mass insanity in which the rules of civilized behavior are suspended. ... What makes the film bearable is the knowledge that a few people did what they could to hold the line against humanity's worst instincts. The voices in 'Nanking' speak for the persistence of good in times and places where a moral crevice opens to reveal a vision of hell on earth."
"Nanking" (movie review)
By Michelle Orange
The Village Voice, 11 December 2007
"December 13 marks the 70th anniversary of the Japanese invasion of Nanking, at that time the capital of China, and the atrocities that followed; Iris Chang chronicled these events (200,000 murders and more than 20,000 rapes within the first six weeks of the occupation) in The Rape of Nanking. Chang's 2005 suicide at the age of 36 spurred businessman Ted Leonsis to fund the production of Nanking, Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman's documentary on the subject. Focusing on a group of foreigners living in Nanking at the time of the invasion who formed a 'Safety Zone' for the Chinese too poor to flee the city, Guttentag and Sturman intersperse readings by actors (including Woody Harrelson and Mariel Hemingway) of letters from the time with wrenching testimonials from Chinese survivors and archival footage. Most of the foreigners were Christian missionaries, with the notable exception of John Rabe, a German and Hitler devotee: 'There's a question of morality here,' he wrote, explaining his decision to stay put, 'and so far I haven't been able to sidestep it.' When a Nazi's ethical core is pricked, attention should be paid. But it wasn't, the film reminds us, and one can't help but think of current corollaries and the documentaries to come: While the footage and survivors of Nanking are gray and decaying, its unbearable story is not something out of the past; the evil and ignorance it describes are alive and thriving today."
CUBA/SPAIN/GENOCIDE TRIBUNALS
"Spanish Court Rejects Lawsuit against Fidel Castro"
Antara News dispatch, 14 December 2007
"Spain's top anti-terrorism court Thursday rejected a complaint filed by Cuban dissidents against Cuban President Fidel Castro and former tourism minister Osmani Cienfuegos for genocide, terrorism and torture. The same complaint had earlier been rejected several times, the National Court said. The Committee of Help to Dissent 2506 accused Castro and Cienfuegos of crimes against humanity. The complaint was based on the deaths of nine participants in the US-fuelled Bay of Pigs invasion attempt in 1961. The nine were caught and died of suffocation inside a lorry transporting them to a prison in Havana. The dissidents accused Cienfuegos, who was also travelling on the lorry, and Castro of responsibility for the prisoners' fate. In 2005, the National Court rejected a similar complaint against Castro, Cienfuegos, Castro`s brother Raul and diplomat Carlos Amat. The case did not contain evidence of a genocide, a state could not be charged with terrorism, and the alleged torture could only be classified as degrading treatment, judge Ismael Moreno argued at the time. The dissidents refiled the complaint in the hope that Castro`s illness and partial incapacity to carry out his tasks would strip him of judicial immunity as head of state. The court, however, considered that Castro remained the Cuban head of state. The Spanish judiciary regards itself as competent to judge human-rights violations committed in other countries. The best-known such cases include the unsuccessful attempt by judge Baltasar Garzon to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, DPA reported."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
GERMANY/HOLOCAUST DENIAL
"Udo Voigt, Neo-Nazi, Questions Auschwitz Toll"
The Telegraph, 11 December 2007
"The leader of a far-Right party in Germany was facing a parliamentary inquiry last night after he questioned the number of Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis. Udo Voigt, the head of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), also demanded the return of land lost after the Second World War. 'Six million cannot be right. At most, 340,000 people could have died in Auschwitz,' he said in an interview with Iranian journalists. 'The Jews always say: "Even if one Jew died that is a crime." But of course it makes a difference whether one has to pay for six million people or for 340,000.' Conservative estimates put the number of dead at the camp at more than a million people. The comments will fuel a debate among German politicians about the funding of extremist parties with public money. The German constitution stipulates that all parties are to be treated equally. Sebastian Edathy, the head of the national parliament's internal affairs commission, said he would file a complaint against Mr. Voigt. The NDP, which the federal government has tried to ban, holds seats in regional parliaments in the eastern states of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania."
GREECE/HOLOCAUST DENIAL
"Greek Historian Convicted over Book Denying the Holocaust"
Associated Press dispatch in Haaretz.com, 13 December 2007
"A far-right Greek historian was sentenced to 14 months in prison Thursday for inciting racial hatred with a book that denies the Holocaust took place, court officials said. Historian Costas Plevris appealed his sentence and was not taken into custody. A three-member panel of judges voted 2-1 to find Plevris guilty of inciting violence and racial hatred. The court cleared three other defendants of similar charges: the publisher, the editor and a journalist at a small right-wing magazine that published extracts from the book. Greek Jewish community leaders had testified that Plevris' book The Jews: The whole truth has led to an increase in attacks on Jewish monuments in the country. Plevris protested to the court that his right to free speech had been violated. It was the first trial in Greece on the recently introduced incitement charges. An estimated 60,000 Greek Jews, most of the country's prewar Jewish population, were killed by the Nazis during World War II."
[n.b. this is the complete text of the dispatch.]
INDIA
"Religions in Conflict: India's State of War"
By Andrew Buncombe
The Independent, 7 December 2007
"[...] It has long been alleged that [Chief Minister Narendra] Modi and senior members of the BJP state government did nothing to prevent the violence that broke out in the spring of 2002. It was soon after the fire on board the Sabarmarti Express which broke out while the train was stopped at the city of Godhra. It was alleged that a Muslim mob deliberately started the fire after they got involved in an altercation with Hindus, but at least one government inquiry has concluded it was caused by a cooking-fire accident on board the train. In all, 58 pilgrims were killed -- among them 20 children -- and the train was gutted. The backlash began soon afterwards. In more than 150 towns and almost 1,000 villages, violence broke out, overwhelmingly as Hindus attacked Muslim communities. While there are also some reports of Muslims attacking Hindus, few dispute that most victims were members of the minority community that make up 10 per cent of the state's population. The official death toll said 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed, though a number of rights groups estimate the toll to have been double that. In the aftermath of the attacks the BJP government was widely condemned for not acting to prevent the killings. The Indian Supreme Court likened Mr Modi to a 'modern-day Nero' while the US government refused him a visa on the grounds that he had 'violated religious freedom.' A report by Human Rights Watch said state officials were involved. 'What happened was not a spontaneous uprising, it was a carefully orchestrated attack against Muslims," it said. "The attacks were planned in advance and organised with extensive participation of the police and state government officials.' Last month, the allegations got more serious. An undercover investigation in the news magazine Tehelka said Mr Modi explicitly approved of the 'pogrom' and helped to protect perpetrators. Using hidden video cameras, a reporter from the magazine filmed people allegedly involved in the planning and carrying-out of the killings. It quoted Haresh Batt, at the time the leader of a fundamentalist Hindu organisation, as saying: '[Modi] had given us three days to do whatever we could. He said he would not give us time after that. He said that openly. After three days he asked us to stop and everything came to a halt.' [...]"
IRAQ/VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
"Freedom Lost"
By Mark Lattimer
The Guardian, 13 December 2007
"They lie in the Sulaimaniyah hospital morgue in Iraqi Kurdistan, set out on white-tiled slabs. A few have been shot or strangled, some beaten to death, but most have been burned. One girl, a lock of hair falling across her half-closed eyes, could almost be on the point of falling asleep. Burns have stretched the skin on another young woman's face into a fixed look of surprise. These women are not casualties of battle. In fact, the cause of death is generally recorded as 'accidental,' although their bodies often lie unclaimed by their families. 'It is getting worse, especially the burnings,' says Khanim Rahim Latif, the manager of Asuda, an Iraqi organisation based in Kurdistan that works to combat violence against women. 'Just here in Sulaimaniyah, there were 400 cases of the burning of women last year.' Lack of electricity means that every house has a plentiful supply of oil, and she accepts that some cases may be accidents. But the nature and scale of the injuries suggest that most were deliberate, she says, handing me the morgue photographs of one young woman after another. Many of the bodies bear the unmistakable signs of having been subjected to intense heat. ... Even under Saddam, women in Iraq -- including in semi-autonomous Kurdistan -- were widely recognised as among the most liberated in the Middle East. They held important positions in business, education and the public sector, and their rights were protected by a statutory family law that was the envy of women's activists in neighbouring countries. But since the 2003 invasion, advances that took 50 years to establish are crumbling away. In much of the country, women can only now move around with a male escort. Rape is committed habitually by all the main armed groups, including those linked to the government. Women are being murdered throughout Iraq in unprecedented numbers. [...]"
"Basra's Murderous Militias Tell Christian Women to Cover Up or Face Death"
By Ali Hamdani and James Hider
The Times, 8 December 2007
"[...] In the past five months more than 40 women have been murdered and their bodies dumped in the street by militiamen, according to the Basra police chief. Major-General Abdul-Jalil Khalaf said that some of them had been killed alone, others gunned down with their children. One unveiled mother was murdered together with her children aged 6 and 11. The British Army will formally hand Basra over to Iraqi control in less than two weeks, claiming that it had done all it could to stabilise the southern port city during four years in charge. Yet as a tentative stability returns to Baghdad, where even alcohol shops are starting to reopen, Britain appears to be leaving Basra ever more firmly in the hands of lawless gangs and strict morality police. Messages are scrawled in graffiti warning women not to venture out without observing Islamic dress codes. 'Whoever disobeys will be punished. God is our witness that we have conveyed this message,' says one scrawled in red paint on a wall. A huge advert for mobile phones, featuring a mother and child, has been defaced to blot out the uncovered woman's head with the slogan 'No, no, to unveiled women' sprayed below. At the university, Sunni students complain of being harassed by Shia militias. Ahmed, a 19-year-old Sunni freshman, was told that he had to grow a beard but keep his hair short to adhere to Islamic norms. He said that boys and girls who try to sit next to each other will be told to stay apart and given a lecture on Islamic virtue. Self-appointed morality police, similar to the Bassiji who haunt students across the border in Iran, also grab people's mobile phones and scroll through them looking for 'immoral' video clips, music or pictures, Ahmed said. [...]"
"Refugees Caught Between Deportation and Death Threats"
By Ali al-Fadhily
IPSNews.net, 6 December 2007
"Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis driven out of their country by violence are now faced with detention abroad, or a homecoming to death threats. More than two million Iraqis, in a population of about 25 million, have taken refuge in many countries. Only a few have won official status as refugees. Most refugees in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and many other countries stay on as illegal residents, facing threats of deportation and imprisonment. 'To deport an Iraqi refugee is to issue a death warrant,' Ali Jassim, an Iraqi journalist recently deported from Lebanon told IPS in Baghdad. 'The Lebanese authorities are applying regular migration rules to Iraqis, meaning that most Iraqis in Lebanon will be deported.' The Human Rights Watch report titled 'Rot Here or Die There: Bleak Choices for Iraqi Refugees in Lebanon' released Dec. 4 says Lebanese authorities are arresting Iraqi refugees who have no valid visas, and detaining them indefinitely to coerce them to return to Iraq. 'Iraqi refugees in Lebanon live in constant fear of arrest,' Bill Frelick, refugee policy director for Human Rights Watch told reporters. 'Refugees who are arrested face the prospect of rotting in jail indefinitely unless they agree to return to Iraq and face the dangers there.' There are at least 40,000 Iraqi refugees in Lebanon, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Complaints of mistreatment by Lebanese authorities pushed many Iraqis to flee Lebanon for Syria earlier, but this is no longer possible. As of Oct. 1, the Syrian government requires Iraqis to obtain visas. The Iraqi refugees already in Syria are struggling. The World Food Programme (WFP) reported Dec. 4 that about a third of Iraqis in Syria are skipping one meal a day in order to feed their children. WFP officials said nearly 60 percent of Iraqi refugees reported purchasing cheaper, less nutritious food in the face of a dramatic increase in food prices. [...]"
[n.b. Link to the full text of the Human Rights Watch report referred to here, "Rot Here or Die There."]
JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Schindler Typist Adds Her Postscript"
By Peter Beaumont
The Observer, 9 December 2007
"In a moving postscript to the story of 'Schindler's list', as told by author Thomas Keneally and later by the film director Steven Spielberg, Mimi Reinhardt, now aged 92, the woman who typed the famous list that saved hundreds of Polish Jews from extermination in the Second World War, has emigrated to Israel and told her story after years of living quietly in New York. Her arrival in Tel Aviv last week, announced by the Jewish Agency that encourages immigration to Israel, has seen Reinhardt lionised by the Israeli media and attaining an instant celebrity that has bewildered her, according to her son Sacha, but which she says the flamboyant Oskar Schindler himself would have thoroughly enjoyed. ... 'I had been picked up in Krakow [where Schindler's factory was] for being a Jew and sent to Plaszow concentration camp, commanded by the notorious SS officer Amon Goeth. Schindler hired people from the camp to work in his factory. Speaking perfect German, and being able to write shorthand, had already proved her salvation in the slave labour battalions. My mother had insisted that I learn something useful, so I learnt to type. In the camp there were not so many people who spoke German and could do shorthand and type, so I was put into the administrative barracks. When the Germans came with Schindler's list of the workers that he wanted to take to Sudetenland [western Czechoslovakia] it was given to me to note and type up.' That list was the group who came to be known as Schindler's Jews, 1,300 or so individuals that at first perhaps for financial motives, but later for increasingly humanitarian reasons, Schindler would defend with his often aggressive charm against the SS, sheltering them first in his enamel wares factory in Krakow, then, as the Russian front advanced, in a factory in Sudetenland making bullets. It was at this moment that Schindler and his Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern, who had helped to motivate Schindler, prepared the 'list' of essential workers -- all of them Jews -- for relocation to his new factory. 'I was given the list to type up,' recalled Reinhardt last week. 'And when I typed it up I put my name and the name of two friends on it to make up the quota.' In doing so amid the accelerated extermination of Poland's Jews that was under way in 1944, she almost certainly saved all their lives. [...]"
MEXICO
"Mexico to Exhume More Than 4,000 Human Remains"
Associated Press dispatch on CNN.com, 6 December 2007
"Authorities in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez said Wednesday that they plan to exhume the remains of more than 4,000 unidentified people buried in common graves and take DNA samples in an attempt to identify them. Rene Medrano, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general's office, said the bodies were being exhumed because state attorney general Patricia Gonzalez 'wants to bring order and clarity to past police practices.' Officials did not provide more exact reasons for the exhumations, which they called part of a statewide project that includes at least 180 exhumations in another city. Authorities said the project was not directly related to the cases of 360 women killed over the past 14 years in Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million across from El Paso, Texas. Victims' relatives have long demanded that independent investigators take part in the probes, saying efforts by state officials have been tainted by inept officers. Chihuahua state investigators have been accused of losing or contaminating evidence and of other missteps that botched cases. Authorities' lack of progress in solving the cases of the Ciudad Juarez women prompted international outrage, as news of the killings made headlines around the world. Authorities have arrested and prosecuted a number of suspects over the years, but family members of some Juarez victims say authorities have yet to bring the true culprits to justice. Federal authorities intervened in 2003, promising to solve 14 rape-strangulation cases involving teenagers and women in Ciudad Juarez. The federal attorney general's office recently closed those investigations, however, without getting to the bottom of what happened. A team of 30 people, including forensic anthropologists and dental specialists, are already exhuming remains from cemeteries in Ciudad Juarez, Medrano said. The team will exhume unidentified bodies that were buried in common graves between 1991 and 2005, Medrano said. They will extract DNA samples and build a database. The remains then will be tagged and reburied in individual graves, he said. Officials estimate more than 4,000 unidentified bodies were buried in common graves in Ciudad Juarez alone over the 14-year period. The program first started three months ago in Chihuahua City where authorities exhumed 180 sets of remains. One already has been identified, Medrano said."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch. It will be very interesting to see the gender breakdown of those exhumed bodies. I am willing to bet (ghoulishly) that over 90 percent of them, possibly over 95 percent, will be male, not female. Perhaps this will help to place the global controversy over female rape-murder victims in perspective. For my own attempt to do so, see "The Murdered Men of Ciudad Juárez."]
NIGERIA/WITCH-HUNTS
"Children Are Targets of Nigerian Witch Hunt"
By Tracy McVeigh
The Guardian, 9 December 2007
"[...] Behind the smartly painted doors pastors make a living by 'deliverances' -- exorcisms -- for people beset by witchcraft, something seen to cause anything from divorce, disease, accidents or job losses. With so many churches it's a competitive market, but by local standards a lucrative one. But an exploitative situation has now grown into something much more sinister as preachers are turning their attentions to children -- naming them as witches. In a maddened state of terror, parents and whole villages turn on the child. They are burnt, poisoned, slashed, chained to trees, buried alive or simply beaten and chased off into the bush. Some parents scrape together sums needed to pay for a deliverance -- sometimes as much as three or four months' salary for the average working man -- although the pastor will explain that the witch might return and a second deliverance will be needed. Even if the parent wants to keep the child, their neighbours may attack it in the street. This is not just a few cases. This is becoming commonplace. In Esit Eket, up a nameless, puddled-and-potholed path is a concrete shack stuffed to its fetid rafters with roughly made bunk beds. Here, three to a bed like battery chickens, sleep victims of the besuited Christian pastors and their hours-long, late-night services. Ostracised and abandoned, these are the children a whole community believes fervently are witches. Sam Ikpe-Itauma is one of the few people in this area who does not believe what the evangelical 'prophets' are preaching. He opened his house to a few homeless waifs he came across, and now he tries his best to look after 131. 'The neighbours were not happy with me and tell me "you are supporting witches." This project was an accident, I saw children being abandoned and it was very worrying. I started with three children, then every day it increased up to 15, so we had to open this new place,' he says. 'For every maybe five children we see on the streets, we believe one has been killed, although it could be more as neighbours turn a blind eye when a witch child disappears.' [...]"
PALESTINE/ISRAEL
"Strangling Gaza"
By César Chelala
CommonDreams.org, 15 December 2007
"It could, rightfully, be a cause of shame to the world. But the world, besieged by violence and injustice, hardly notices it. The people of Gaza, 1.4 million of them, are slowly and purposely being deprived of basic foods and medicines by the so called civilized countries in the West and there is hardly a protest. And all this happens because the people in Gaza want to be free and independent. Never mind that in the process children and innocent civilians are killed or families dispossessed. Dr. Mona Elfarra, a Palestinian physician and human rights activist, thus describes a situation in her personal blog, 'I don't know exactly what was going on inside the little heads of the kids who were preparatory school children, of Al Buriege boy's preparatory school. But the two tiny bodies were shot, with many bullets, as I was told by my colleagues at the emergency room at the Al Aqsa hospital ... On November 10, the dreams of two tiny kids has stopped forever.' ... Most of the basic goods in Gaza are imported. Because of border closures, there is limited delivery of those goods, in particular sugar and wheat flour, which represent 80 percent of the caloric intake of Palestinians. The majority of the population depends on food aid from international organizations. At the same time, the flow of exports leaving Gaza has practically stopped, while the commercial and humanitarian goods allowed to come in continues to decline. The Gaza Strip is practically sealed off from the outside world. Approximately 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day. It is estimated that 70 percent of the potential workforce is out of work or without pay. The Gaza Strip is not receiving tax monies owed to by Israel, which amounts to almost half of its budget. Also critical is the public health and medical situation of the inhabitants of the Strip. The World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that the public health system is facing an unprecedented crisis. UNICEF reports that children are living in an environment of extreme violence, insecurity and fear. Shelling and sonic bombs [sic] have increased children’s signs of distress and exhaustion. [...]"
"Sealed Off by Israel, Gaza Reduced to Beggary"
By Scott Wilson
MSNBC.com, 15 December 2007
"[...] The Israeli government is increasingly restricting the import into the Gaza Strip of batteries, anesthesia drugs, antibiotics, tobacco, coffee, gasoline, diesel fuel and other basic items, including chocolate and compressed air to make soft drinks. This punishing seal has reduced Gaza, a territory of almost 1.5 million people, to beggar status, unable to maintain an effective public health system, administer public schools or preserve the traditional pleasures of everyday life by the sea. 'Essentially, it's the ordinary people, caught up in the conflict, paying the price for this political failure,' said John Ging, director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, which serves the majority refugee population. 'The humanitarian situation is atrocious, and it is easy to understand why -- 1.2 million Gazans now relying on U.N. food aid, 80,000 people who have lost jobs and the dignity of work. And the list goes on.' ... For Gazans, caught between Israel's concrete gun towers and the Mediterranean, the sense of crisis is pervasive as they struggle to keep their homes intact, buy essential food from a shrinking and increasingly expensive stock, and educate their children. 'I hold every man, woman and child in Israel responsible for this,' said Geraldine Shawa, 64, the Chicago-born director of the Atfaluna Society. A tall, imposing woman who has lived in Gaza for 36 years, Shawa has watched the fortunes of her pupils squeezed in recent months by what she calls Israel's practice of collective punishment. Israeli military officials said last week that 2,000 rockets had been launched from Gaza toward Israel this year, killing two Israelis, wounding many others and instilling fear across the southern region. Since the U.S.-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Md., last month, Israeli airstrikes and ground forces have killed 26 Hamas gunmen, the Islamic organization says, as well as at least four Palestinian civilians. [...]"
"The Grim Reality in Gaza"
By Mohammed Omer
New Statesman, 10 December 2007
"Traffic in the Gaza Strip slowed to a trickle last week, and this week medical centres have scaled back treatment in the medicines and sustenance-destitute Strip. 'Israel's decision is a death penalty: our reserve of fuel is almost zero and it may very likely run out by the end of today,' said Khaled Radi, Ministry of Health spokesman for the dismissed Hamas government. Radi spoke in reference to the 30 November Israeli Supreme Court decision to allow further fuel cutbacks, severe reductions which are crippling Gaza’s residents in all aspects of life. Prior to that ruling, as early as October Israel decided to begin limiting fuel, with Gaza soon after enduring serious cuts of over 50% of fuel needs, a dire statistic confirmed by the UN body OCHA. ... Shortages of fuel have greatly affected the public transportation system, leaving students from universities in Gaza City delayed for hours standing in wait for transportation back to Khan Younies and Rafah in the south. The fuel cuts in turn impede water access: with diesel-run pumps unable to function, leaving over 77,000 without fresh drinking water, according to Gaza’s water utility. Oxfam International has warned that soon 225,000 Gazans could suffer from inadequate water supplies, raising concerns for public health. Ambulances and clinics suffer too, a fact reiterated by Khaled Radi, who related how fuel shortages have already brought some ambulances to a standstill: 'This has affected the mobility of ambulances which are especially vital during on-going Israeli air strikes such as that of this morning.' He added that shortages further threatened to close essential clinics, which rely on back-up generators during the frequent electricity shortages in the Strip. Two first aid health centres have already been forced to suspend treatment during electricity cuts. Those that remain open suffer from want of medical supplies, with 91 of 416 essential medicines depleted, according to the WHO. [...]"
PERU
"Ex-President Stands Trial in Edgy Peru"
By Simon Romero
The New York Times, 10 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"The Supreme Court in Peru will start its trial of former President Alberto K. Fujimori on Monday, making him the country's first former head of state to be tried on human rights violations, including murder and kidnapping. Preparations for the trial have already stirred considerable unease as Peruvians grapple with revelations of the counterinsurgency methods used by Mr. Fujimori's government during his 10-year presidency, from 1990 to 2000, to combat two rebel groups, Shining Path and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. 'I want him to be judged severely because he ordered to kill,' said Raida Condor, 65, who lost her son Armando in a massacre of nine students and a professor from La Cantuta University in 1992. 'For 15 years, I have searched for justice and to know why my son died the way he died.' The 10 victims were abducted in July 1992; their incinerated bodies were found a year later on a hillside outside Lima, Peru’s capital. Mr. Fujimori, 69, faces charges related to those killings and another massacre, of 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, at a barbecue in the Barrios Altos area of Lima in November 1991. The former president faces 30 years in prison if he is convicted. Those killings and others took place during a harrowing time of guerrilla attacks in the heart of Lima. Mr. Fujimori ultimately subdued the insurgencies, capturing Abimael Guzmán, the supreme leader of the Maoist-inspired Shining Path, in 1992, and defeating Túpac Amaru after its seizure of the Japanese ambassador’s residence in 1997. But the costs were staggering: nearly 70,000 people died in Peru’s long internal war, from 1980 to 2000, a government-appointed commission determined in 2003. And Mr. Fujimori allowed his intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, to create a spy apparatus infamous for its corruption, opaque finances and reports of extrajudicial killings. Both men fled the country and have been extradited to face trial. [...]"
"Peru Ambivalent As Ex-Leader Faces Trial for Massacres"
By Monte Reel and Lucien Chauvin
The Washington Post, 10 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"When Alberto Fujimori was president of Peru in the 1990s, his authoritarian methods forced the country to debate how far a leader should go in the pursuit of terrorists. Now, as he faces a trial that could send him to prison for life, the debate for many here has shifted: How far should Peru go in pursuit of Fujimori? An awkward sort of ambivalence is defining the trial even before it starts on Monday. Although a majority of Peruvians say they believe Fujimori is guilty of human rights abuses and corruption, he remains near the top of the list of the country's most admired political figures. According to a survey conducted recently by the University of Lima, he is more popular than Alan Garcia, whom Peruvians returned to the presidency last year. Nearly 55 percent said they view Fujimori's 1990-2000 presidency favorably. Even Fujimori's political legacy survives. His daughter last year received more votes than any other candidate for Congress, where she is part of a minority bloc of his followers known as Fujimoristas. ... Much of Fujimori's popularity while president rested on his liberal dispersal of public aid, his taming of inflation and his backing of an aggressive battle against the Shining Path, a Maoist revolutionary group that for years terrorized wide swaths of the countryside and killed thousands. But in targeting the group, he also targeted students, journalists and others whose main offense was criticizing his methods. He shut down Congress, purged the judiciary and suspended the constitution -- measures that were supported by much of the public at the time. [...]"
RWANDA
"Academic Jailed for 19 Years for Rwanda Genocide Role"
Agence France-Presse dispatch on Yahoo! News, 15 December 2007
"A former university teacher was given a 19-year prison sentence this week for her role in the murder of a colleague's wife during the Rwanda genocide, a witness at the trial told AFP Saturday. Marie-Therese Kampire, who taught politics at Rwanda's National University, was found guilty on Thursday by a traditional 'gacaca' court, Elisabeth Mukajambo, a trials observer with a local human rights group, said. Kampire was found guilty of complicity in the murder of the wife of Pierre Claver Gasana, a professor of physics, who was also killed during the 1994 slaughter by extremists of Rwanda's Hutu majority of minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Rwanda's main university saw numerous staff and students murdered during the genocide, often by or at the instigation of colleagues. Gacaca courts were set up to try most of those accused of participation in the genocide which killed an estimated 800,000 people. Judges are elected from within the community to sit on nine-member panels in gacaca sessions to hear and record testimonies from community members who saw and witnessed what happened during the genocide. They then preside over trials of genocide suspects in their own villages. Most of the judges at Huye, which heard Kampire's case, teach at the university."
"Genocide Survivors 'Unhappy'"
SA dispatch on News24.com, 13 December 2007
"Rwandan officials are interfering in the trial of the country's 1994 genocide suspects and even intimidating witnesses, the country's main genocide survivors' group says. The Ibuka group of genocide survivors criticised 'the grave interference by officials of the national government in the jurisdiction of the gacacas (traditional courts) conducting the trials.' Judges were elected from within the community to sit on nine-member panels in gacaca sessions to hear and record testimonies from community members who saw and witnessed what happened during the genocide. They then presided over trials of genocide suspects in their own villages. Ibuka, which meant 'Remember' in the local language, said official interference was aimed at shielding 'intellectuals, the rich or officials being sought over their role in the genocide.' It said: 'There have been acts of intimidation against witnesses and some have even been incarcerated.' The Rwandan genocide saw the slaughter of 800 000 minority Tutsis by the Hutu majority. The UN estimates some 800 000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus were killed at this time. Rwandan Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama immediately rejected the allegations, telling Radio Rwanda that the gacaca courts had achieved formidable results 'which all Rwandans should rejoice in.' He said: 'Those who say otherwise are people who are never satisfied.'"
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
"Rwanda: Approximately a Million People Have Appeared Before Gacaca Courts"
Hirondelle News Agency dispatch on AllAfrica.com, 12 December 2007
"Around a million people accused of have [sic passim] played a part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda have appeared, up to date, before the semi-traditional gacaca courts, announced Wednesday in Kigali the executive secretary of the National Service of Gacaca Courts, Domitille Mukantaganzwa. Mrs. Mukantaganzwa specified during a press conference on this total of accused having appeared, more than 800 000 were tried. 'We are really satisfied,' estimated Mukantaganzwa, explaining that the initial number of suspects which was 818 564 increased because of additional information revealed during trials before the gacaca courts. To the question of knowing if the gacaca trials will end by 31 December as planned, she answered that the essence of the work was done. 'Many courts finished a while ago the trials which they were to try, those which have the greatest number of cases have not yet tried and have fifteen,' indicated Mukantaganzwa. 'Stress is not necessary. They were forecasts, if we note (at the end of the year) that we still need time, we will continue,' she indicated. Mrs. Mukantaganzwa also strongly refuted the allegations by Ibuka, the main organization of survivors, according to which the gacaca courts disappointed survivors [see story below]. 'It is a great astonishment for us,' she declared; criticizing Ibuka of 'generalizing.' Inspired by the traditional assemblies during which wise men from the village settled disagreements sitting on the grass (gacaca, in Rwandan language), the gacaca courts are charged with trying the majority of the alleged authors of the 1994 genocide. They are not presided by professional magistrates but by people with integrity chosen from among the community. They can sentence up to life in prison."
"Rwanda: Genocide Studies Start February"
Rwanda News Agency dispatch on AllAfrica.com, 11 December 2007
"The world's first dedicated research and postgraduate teaching resource for Genocide prevention is to open at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, it was announced on Tuesday. The study program will be open to undergraduates and postgraduates studying all aspects of human rights and conflict prevention, running both teaching seminars and giving access to primary research resources for doctorate and masters students, the centre said in a statement. Craig Cowbrough from the Centre told RNA separately that it is expected the new centre will be operational by the end of February next year. The centre exists as a permanent memorial to victims of the genocide; more than 258,000 people are buried on the site. The centrepiece of the new study facility will be a hi-tech documentation centre with detailed histories of more than 38,000 victims and survivors of the 1994 Genocide -- that left over a million lives massacred. The British campaign organization Aegis Trust, which funds and manages the Kigali memorial Centre, is investing in the major refurbishments and the IT infrastructure within the documentation centre. The resource will also be used to help develop a programme to improve the way the genocide is taught on the school curriculum within Rwanda. According to centre, it is hoped more than 15,000 young Rwandese will pass through the educational programme every year. The Memorial Centre is currently looking for academic partners in the fields of genocide prevention and human rights to help develop the resource."
"No Hero at Home, Hotel Rwanda Protagonist is a Critic in Exile"
By Elizabeth Sullivan
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) (on CommonDreams.org), 9 December 2007
"Paul Rusesabagina may be a hero, the real-life Hotel Rwanda operator who saved an estimated 1,200 lives by bartering words, cash and courage to save family, friends, neighbors and co-workers. Yet the nonfictional subject of the 2004 movie cannot go back again. The son of a Hutu father and a Tutsi mother -- considered a Hutu by Rwandan standards -- could have died for standing up to the radical 1994 Hutus who were butchering Tutsis and the Hutus who supported them. He saved hundreds in his Mille Collines hotel. Instead, he says he is persona non grata in today's 'democratic' Rwanda, with its Tutsi-dominated government. The 53-year-old has lived in exile in Brussels since 1996. His sons and nieces attend U.S. schools. When Stuart Muszynski of the Cleveland-area charity Project Love was in long-distance discussions with Rusesabagina about the group's Humanitarian of the Year award this year, Muszynski says he unexpectedly got an e-mail from the Rwandan government. It said Rusesabagina wasn't a hero and didn't deserve the award. Rusesabagina came to Cleveland anyway, and Muszynski presented the award to him Thursday night at a ceremony in Aurora. Why is the hero of Hotel Rwanda not considered a hero in Rwanda? His detractors accuse him of not saving as many people as he claimed, of taking money from the hotel guests he saved, of other supposed misdemeanors and exaggerations. But Rusesabagina told a group of Plain Dealer editors and reporters Thursday that such sniping didn't start until he began publicly criticizing Rwandan President Paul Kagame for his Tutsi rebel background and for allegedly suppressing Hutu opponents. [...]"
SERBIA/KOSOVO
"EU Summit Gambles on Huge Kosovo Mission"
By Ian Traynor
The Guardian, 15 December 2007
"European leaders yesterday agreed to send up to 1,800 police, judges, and administrators to Kosovo in its biggest foreign policy gamble, aimed at nurturing the breakaway Balkan province towards full statehood. Despite persistent divisions within the EU over how to react to Kosovo's secession from Serbia, now expected in February, a summit of EU presidents and prime ministers decided to launch Europe's biggest nation-building operation, telling union foreign ministers to work out the details after the new year. Gordon Brown, making his first visit to Brussels as prime minister, indicated the mission would be deployed -- probably in February. 'The EU mission is very much part of the next stage,' he said. Senior European government officials said the EU was responding to strong pressure from Washington, which has signalled that it will wait until February before recognising an independent Kosovo, but no longer. Balkan experts at the US state department are drafting Kosovo's declaration of independence, to be proclaimed by the ethnic Albanian leaders of Kosovo in early February after Serbia elects a new president, the sources said. 'The Kosovans and the Serbs no longer want to live together,' said Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. 'Our goal is that Europe does not explode.' A summit statement said the scope for any further negotiations between the Serbian and Kosovan leaderships was exhausted following two rounds of talks lasting almost two years. The statement called for a rapid resolution of Kosovo's status, and also sought to compensate Serbia by promising Belgrade a faster track to EU membership. [...]"
"Kosovo Deserves Its Independence"
By Anthony Lloyd
The Times, 12 December 2007
"[...] The argument of the critics of Kosovan independence rests on two bogus tenets of denial. First, they state that Serbia was not responsible for the widescale massacre of Albanian civilians between 1998 and 1999, and propose instead that Serb security forces were somehow tricked into killing thousands of innocents by the provocation of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Secondly, they advance the theory that the 800,000 Albanian refugees who fled their homes during Nato's 79-day air campaign did so as they were frightened of the bombing rather than Serb military units. Were these claims true then the fundamental case for Kosovo's independence, in the spotlight since the expiry on Monday of a UN deadline for Pristina and Belgrade to reach agreement on the province's future status, would be fatally flawed. But they are untrue. I know this not as an assumption, but as a fact. I have many memories of Kosovo acquired during the time I spent reporting there between 1998 and 2000. Among the images of mass graves, burnt villages and swelling bodies that spring to mind is one of particular significance. In the fields outside the town of Istinic in southwestern Kosovo one summer day I watched some 40,000 Kosovans corralled together by rings of Serb police. ... After a day or two the Serb police pushed them back into the hinterland, driving them with stinging switches and robotic threats broadcast from tannoys mounted on the sides of armoured personnel carriers. These people had not fled from fear of Nato bombing. The first Nato bomb was seven months away from falling. This was the summer of 1998. The world little cared for Kosovo then and in a dry run for their larger purge operations a year later the Serbs were already driving thousands of people from their homes. The memory is pertinent to Kosovo's case for independence now as it revealed the absolute complicity of the Serbian authorities in human rights abuses in Kosovo and proved them then, as later, a cruel and unjust power from which the oppressed Kosovo Albanian majority thoroughly deserved to be independent. [...]"
"EU-US Showdown with Russia over Kosovo"
By Harry de Quetteville and Bruno Waterfield
The Telegraph, 11 December 2007
"A Cold War-style stand-off over the future of Kosovo loomed last night as the European Union looked ready to join the United States in defying Russia and Serbia over independence for the breakaway Balkan province. As EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels headed for 'unity' in backing Kosovo's independence, Russia gave warning that such a move would spark 'a chain reaction' of instability across the Balkans and beyond. 'Those making such plans must think very carefully about the consequences,' said Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said that the diplomatic war of words could eventually lead to real fighting. Asked if Nato's 16,000 troops in Kosovo would need reinforcements if the situation deteriorated, he replied: 'The short answer is yes.' Until the meeting yesterday a group of five EU countries had shared Russian reservations about backing independence in Kosovo, fearing that it might foster breakaway hopes among their own minority communities. But Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain have come under intense pressure to drop their objections in favour of a common EU position over Kosovo. 'We will move to unity today,' said Luis Amado, the Portuguese foreign minister, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency. In fact Cyprus, a divided island in search of its own diplomatic settlement for more than 30 years, remains opposed to independence for Kosovo. Erato Kozakou Markoullis, the Cypriot foreign minister, warned against the EU 'breaking international law.' Nonetheless, Kosovar Albanian leaders in Pristina, the province's capital, are sure to interpret the Brussels meeting as a signal of strong EU backing. They have promised to co-ordinate any declaration of independence with the EU and America. [...]"
"U.N. Fears Serbs Will Disrupt a Free Kosovo"
By Nicholas Wood
The New York Times, 10 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"As Kosovo moves closer to declaring its independence, fears are rising that Serbia and Serbs in Kosovo's north could take steps to try to disrupt the province’s shaky economy and scare off countries ready to recognize it as a sovereign state. Senior United Nations officials say they are particularly worried that the Serbian government will direct Kosovo's Serbs to disrupt most of the province's power supply and assert partial control of the north by having Serb police officers break away from the province's police force. Such moves could further inflame tensions between the province's ethnic Albanians and Serbs, possibly leading to violence. Kosovo, which has a majority of ethnic Albanians, has been trying to break away from Serbia, but Serbia has vehemently fought to keep the province. Negotiations between Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leaders and Serbia over the province's fate have gone nowhere, and the United Nations -- which administers Kosovo and is trying to broker an agreement -- has said the talks should not drag past Monday. The United Nations is then expected to begin deliberations about its next possible step. Western diplomats in Brussels and Pristina suggest the United Nations will invite the European Union to replace the United Nations mission in the province, and leave it to individual countries to decide if they should recognize Kosovo as an independent nation. Aid agencies, including the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, have already drawn up contingency plans for an exodus of 5,000 to 100,000 refugees, many of which they expect will be ethnic Serbs. [...]"
SOMALIA
"Mogadishu Sliding Back into Anarchy"
By Xan Rice
The Guardian, 8 December 2007
"Women and children injured by stray bullets and mortars during fighting in the Somali capital Mogadishu are being turned back at military checkpoints as they try to reach hospitals, the United Nations children's agency said yesterday. Describing the humanitarian situation in the city as the worst since 1991 -- the last time Somalia had an effective government -- Unicef's representative for the country said the restrictions meant 'people are being left behind in the streets to die.' The roadblocks are manned by government and Ethiopian troops, who are battling to contain a growing insurgency. 'The lack of respect for basic humanitarian principles from all sides is horrific,' said Christian Balslev-Olesen. 'It's violence, harassment ... terror against the civilian population.' The conflict has already forced 600,000 people, more than half Mogadishu's population, to flee the city since February. More than a third of those fled in the past five weeks as fighting escalated. Hopes of a ceasefire are dim. Somalia's transitional government has made little effort to reach out to political opponents or the guerrilla fighters, who in turn have vowed to fight until the Ethiopian occupation ends. The insurgency is broad-based, comprising remnants of the Somali Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC), chased out of Mogadishu by Ethiopian forces last December, as well as militias controlled by warlords opposed to the government. Ethiopia and the United States, which backed the move to oust the SCIC citing alleged links to al-Qaida, say a large international peacekeeping mission is the answer. But no countries appear willing to add to the 1,600 Ugandan peacekeepers confined to a small area of Mogadishu. The abuses by government forces and the insurgents fit the pattern of impunity that has plagued Somalia for 16 years, and UN officials and diplomats admit they have little leverage over either party. Ethiopia, however, should be a different matter. [...]"
[n.b. I'm sure glad the Americans and Ethiopians toppled those nasty moderate Islamists. I know Somalis are, too.]
SUDAN/DARFUR
"Spielberg Appeals to Chinese President for Darfur Intervention"
Hollywood.com, 14 December 2007
"Hollywood director Steven Spielberg has appealed to Chinese President Hu Jintao to use his nation's influence in Sudan to put a stop to the genocide in the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan. In a Nov. 15 letter to Hu -- Spielberg's second missive this year -- released on Thursday, the filmmaker remarks the nearly five-year conflict in the African nation has deteriorated since his last correspondence. He writes, 'So I write to you now with a renewed sense of urgency in the hope that China will redouble its efforts to pressure Sudan to join in a fair peace agreement and, at last, bring an end to the genocide. China's economic, military and diplomatic ties to the government of Sudan continue to provide you with the influence and the obligation to press for change. Without China's insistence, I fear Sudan will simply "wait out the clock." I believe the decisive hour for Darfur is now. The world needs China to lead here. So many lives are at stake.' Spielberg -- who is the artistic director for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing -- came under criticism earlier this year from actress/activist Mia Farrow for not using his involvement with the global event to speak out about the humanitarian crisis. The armed conflict between the Arab-dominated militia group the Janjaweed and African rebels has resulted in 200,000 casualties and 2.5 million being forced from their homes since it began in 2003."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
"Sudanese Peace Deal Back on Track"
BBC Online, 12 December 2007
"Sudan's southern former rebels have said they will rejoin a national unity government in an apparent end to the two-month political crisis. The Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) withdrew from the government in October, jeopardising a peace deal. But the SPLM agreed to end its boycott after its leader Salva Kiir met Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir. They agreed funding for a census and a timetable to pull out troops either side of Sudan's north-south border. They have also announced that the government will move to the southern capital, Juba, every three months. Officials said this would be an important symbolic gesture to help develop key ties between the power-sharing partners. But there was no deal on the demarcation of the disputed oil-rich Abyei region after the two-hour meeting between the leaders. ... A timetable will now be worked out for the redeployment of northern troops from the south, especially from Unity and Upper Nile states. There will be more transparency on issues of oil management and marketing plus funding to pave the way for a census in 2011, when the south could decide to split from the north, has also been assured. However, the final border demarcation was not resolved -- which means the division of oil wealth cannot be completed. [...]"
"Delay, Obstruction and Darfur"
The New York Times (editorial), 10 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"The world's leaders say they care desperately about Darfur's suffering, until they get distracted. It took years of international hand-wringing before the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution to send in 26,000 peacekeepers to replace a current force of 7,000, to try to halt the killing. With the deployment now set for Jan. 1, major countries are ignoring the U.N.'s appeals for essential aircraft, and Sudan's government -- which unleashed the genocide -- is again reneging on its promises to cooperate. Khartoum is now refusing to accept some non-African peacekeeping units -- including a Thai infantry battalion and a Nepalese special forces unit -- in what is intended to be a joint United Nations-African Union force. It is also trying to limit the peacekeepers' use of helicopters, refusing to provide land for a peacekeeping base and insisting on other untenable restrictions, including advance notice of all troop movements. Khartoum never seems to run out of ways to demonstrate its contempt for the United Nations. ... Sudan has showed time and again that it does not care about the suffering in Darfur. Without a lot more international pressure, Sudan will continue to obstruct the peacekeeping mission and spread ever more suffering and mayhem. China, one of Sudan's major trading partners, and the Arab League must bring on that pressure. And the U.N. and other envoys must work full time for the resumption of peace talks. The credibility of the Security Council is on the line. So are the lives of 2.5 million Darfuris."
"An Impotent West Jerks Its Knee and Leaves Darfur Hurting More"
By Simon Jenkins
The Times, 9 December 2007
"Three years have passed since the British government, in the form of Jack Straw, declared states of affairs in both Darfur and Zimbabwe 'unacceptable.' A year later in the case of Darfur this was upgraded to 'completely unacceptable.' A feelgood Global Day for Darfur was declared, helped on its way by George Clooney and Elton John. Needless to say, the government accepted what was unacceptable -- and has done so ever since. Today Gordon Brown has decided to stay in bed rather than go to the European Union's Africa summit in Lisbon, thus avoiding the improbable risk of having to smile at Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe or Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese dictator. He has also avoided the recollection that, once upon a time, the word 'unacceptable' from a British prime minister would have had boots quaking across Africa. Today all Brown can do at a summit is put his thumbs in his ears, stick out his tongue and say 'Boo.' While diplomats concentrate on being beastly to Mugabe, carnage continues in Darfur and spreads into adjacent Chad. It makes a mockery of the new 'liberal interventionism' declared his greatest achievement by Tony Blair, and since endorsed by Brown. In Rwanda in 1994, western powers could at least argue that the massacre took them by surprise. No such excuse is available in Darfur. The horror has been unfolding in full view of the world for three years. The interventionists have hollered and abused and seized microphones and achieved nothing. The Sudan government's Arab Janjaweed irregulars, aided by air support, have continued with killings. This has been in response to a separatist rebellion similar to that which was partially successful in southern Sudan, resolved in 2002. In Darfur some 300,000 people have been massacred, 2m driven into exile and 4m left dependent on western aid in a network of more than 60 refugee camps. [...]"
SWEDEN/ASSYRIAN GENOCIDE
"Assyrian Professor Dies From Stab Wound"
CollectifVan.org, 15 December 2007
"Dr. Fuat Deniz, a renowned lecturer and Ph.D researcher in the field of sociology at Örebro University, was pronounced dead today by Örebro University Hospital; Dr. Deniz was stabbed in the neck by an unknown assailant on Tuesday. The murder of a teacher during day time and in his own workplace has shocked the community in Örebro, a mid size Swedish town. There are no witnesses to the stabbing and no suspect yet. Police are working to secure forensic evidence, survey the victim's daily routine and his circle of acquaintances. Sweden's equivalent to the FBI, the Swedish security police (SÄPO), have announced they are looking into this case because the attack could have a political motive. SÄPO noted that Mr. Fuat Deniz dedicated much of his research to Assyrian identity and the Turkish genocide of Assyrians. His masters thesis, A Minority's Odyssey: the Assyrian Example, was praised for its way of describing developments in social identities among Assyrians. The Swedish research and university minister, Lars Leijonborg, participated in the commemoration ceremony held in Örebro on Thursday, expressing his sorrow for the loss of a promising teacher and researcher. 'Dr. Fuat Deniz and his family came to our country to escape violence and assaults. It is a terrible tragedy that this has happened to him. He was not only a national hero for Assyrians but a role model for many in our society,' said the minister with tearful eyes. ... Dr. Fuat was to participate in an international conference on Assyrian identity and the Turkish Assyrian genocide at the University of Leiden in Holland on Friday 14 December. [...]"
[n.b. The English text appears below the French. Thanks to Stephen Feinstein for bringing this shocking news to my attention.]
UNITED STATES/THE "WAR ON TERROR"
"CIA Photos 'Show UK Guantanamo Detainee Was Tortured'"
By Robert Verkaik
The Independent, 10 December 2007
"Lawyers for a British resident who the US government refuses to release from Guantanamo Bay have identified the existence of photographs taken by CIA agents that they say show their client suffered horrific injuries under torture. The photographic evidence will be vital to clear Binyam Mohammed, 27, who the Americans want to bring before a Military Commission on charges of terrorism, say his lawyers. ... In a letter sent to the Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Britain is urged to ask the US to stop the CIA destroying the pictures. Clive Stafford-Smith, the legal director of Reprieve representing Mr Mohammed, said that he also knows the identity of the agents who were present when his client was allegedly beaten and tortured. Writing to Mr Miliband, he said: 'Given the opportunity, we can prove that the evidence was the fruit of torture. Indeed, we can prove that a photographic record was made of this by the CIA. Through diligent investigation we know when the CIA took pictures of Mr Mohammed's brutalised genitalia, we know the identity of the CIA agents who were present including the person who took the pictures (we know both their false identities and their true names), and we know what those pictures show.' ... Last week it emerged that the CIA destroyed hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the torture of detainees held by the US. Binyam Mohammed was born in Ethiopia but was given leave to remain in the UK after seeking asylum in 1994. Seven years later, he travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan where the Americans allege that he underwent training in firearms and explosives. In 2002, he was arrested by Pakistani immigration officials at Karachi airport on his way back to the UK. He says he was then taken to Morocco and tortured for 18 months, including having his penis slashed, before being sent to Guantanamo, where he still remains. [...]"
[n.b. Ain't freedom grand?]
"Supporters of Evil"
Once Upon a Time (blog), 9 December 2007
"[...] I do not want to be misunderstood on this point, so let me state it as plainly as I can. The time is long since past for every minimally decent American to take a stand: either you are on the side of civilization and humanity, and the irreplaceable, supreme value of an individual human life -- or you are on the side of evil, brutality, torture, sadism, genocidal war, and endless death. The Democrats and the Republicans both stand for Empire, and for the endless horrors already inflicted -- and the endless horrors that still lie in our future. If the Democrats do not repeal the Military Commissions Act or at least try to do so, and if you still support them in the 2008 elections, then you are on the side of all these horrors as well. If the Democrats do not repeal the Military Commissions Act -- and they will not -- and you support them in 2008, you are supporting evil. To that extent, you are evil yourself. ... If you choose to support evil and to embody evil yourself, I suggest you follow the vile example of the current administration: do so without apology, and brazenly revel in the evil you choose to inflict on the world. It is far more contemptible -- and, to speak personally, it is sickening beyond my capacity to describe accurately, in significant part because of the complex psychological dishonesties that are required -- to enable evil, while claiming you represent the 'moral' and 'practical' choice. These are the justifications used by those who made possible the cruelest and most unspeakably horrifying regimes in history, as Mayer's witness and many others attest. Withdraw your support entirely from those who perpetrate and make excuses for evil. If the refusal to support such people were widespread enough, we still might have a chance. I regard it as the very slightest of chances, one that will almost certainly be destroyed by another significant terrorist attack in the United States -- but it is the only one we have. [...]"
"Chasing Rummy: Michael Ratner Tries to Make Europe Too Hot for the Former Defense Secretary"
By Chris Thompson
The Village Voice, 4 December 2007
"Michael Ratner had it tough last week. In addition to his regular duties -- law professor at Columbia and Yale, defending Guantánamo detainees, prepping for his WBAI talk show -- there was the gig on Keith Olbermann's show. Then there was the quickie Columbia seminar on international human rights later that night, which meant he would miss dinner with his daughter. 'That's the one that really hurts,' he says. 'It's one thing to the next; I don't know that I'm a lawyer anymore.' All the frenzy has distracted him from what may be the most ambitious project he has ever undertaken: hounding Donald Rumsfeld for the rest of his natural life. For months, Ratner and his colleagues at the left-wing law group Center for Constitutional Rights had been working with French lawyers, preparing a prosecutorial brief against the former secretary of defense. They waited until October, when Rumsfeld was scheduled to be in Paris for a round-table discussion on international relations sponsored by Foreign Policy magazine. On the day Rumsfeld arrived, the lawyers walked into a Parisian court and formally charged him with ordering torture at Guantánamo Bay, a violation of the 1984 Convention Against Torture. When the round-table was finished, Ratner and his colleagues later noted in a press release, Rumsfeld ducked out of the building and 'left through a door connecting to the U.S. embassy to avoid journalists and human rights attorneys outside.' Ratner had already filed a criminal complaint in Germany a year earlier, and he plans to hit Rumsfeld with yet another one in a Spanish court this February. The odds of Rumsfeld being convicted of anything are slim -- but that's not really the point. If a criminal investigation is under way, Rumsfeld could be dragged into court to answer questions as long as he stays in France or Germany or Spain. The only way to avoid this embarrassment is to stay out of those countries indefinitely. [...]"
[n.b. Just seen, so posted late.]
ISSUE: GENOCIDE AND WAR
"Genocide and the Crime of War"
Elected Swineherd (blog), 7 December 2007
"[...] Genocide scholars (and I shall deal with this lot in a later post) spend a great deal of time focused on the 5 million European Jews that died at the hands of the Nazis. What one never hears discussed is the OTHER 5 million German citizens who were sent to their deaths by the German government. I speak, of course, of the German army; conscripted, forced by their own government to endure conditions that, imposed in any other setting than war, would be considered the height of cruelty -- Starvation, exposure to extreme heat and cold, the mental torment of repeated bombardments; the mercy of death, when it came (as it did to 30% of these unfortunates) tended not to be surgical or methodical in nature. A bullet in the back of the head or a dose of VX sounds like a walk in the park compared to being shot in the guts and left to writhe for a few hours, being crushed to death by the tank treads, burned alive by a flamethrower, or being literally dismembered by a high-explosive artillery shell. Of course, Germany was not alone, in World War II, or throughout history, in sending its citizens to a certain (and certainly horrific) death. ... As Leon Trotsky wrote: 'An army cannot be built without reprisals. Masses of men cannot be led to death unless the command has the death penalty in its arsenal. So long as those malicious tailless apes that are so proud of their technical achievements -- the animals that we call men -- will build armies and wage wars, the command will always be obliged to place the soldiers between the possible death in the front and the inevitable one in the rear.' ... Most countries still maintain it is their sovereign right to impress men into service (the dubious service of killing and being killed) at their whim; I should propose that the root of all war crimes, and in fact the crime against humanity that is war itself is the notion that any State has the sovereign right to make war, either against it's own citizens, or the citizens of other States. [...]"
ISSUE: AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES
"Subsidies' Harvest of Misery"
By Jimmy Carter
The Washington Post (on CommonDreams.org), 12 December 2007
"[...] It is embarrassing to note that, from 1995 to 2005, the richest 10 percent of [US] cotton growers received more than 80 percent of total subsidies. The wealthiest 1 percent of American cotton farmers continues to receive over 25 percent of payouts for cotton, while more than half of America's cotton farmers receive no subsidies at all. American farmers are not dependent on the global market because they are guaranteed a minimum selling price by the federal government. American producers of cotton received more than $18 billion in subsidies between 1999 and 2005, while market value of the cotton was $23 billion. That's a subsidy of 86 percent! The Carter Center works primarily among the world's poorest people, including those in West Africa whose scant livelihood depends on cotton production. For instance, in 2002 Burkina Faso received 57 percent of its total export revenue from cotton, while Benin depended on cotton exports for more than 75 percent of its national export revenue. Overproduction in the United States leads to the dumping of U.S. cotton on global markets, which drives prices down. In recent years, cotton exported from the United States has been sold 61 percent below its cost of production. Fragile African economies that depend on agricultural exports, especially cotton, are sometimes devastated by these practices. A 2002 report by Oxfam International estimates that in 2001 sub-Saharan Africa lost $302 million as a direct result of U.S. cotton subsidies, with two-thirds of the loss sustained in eight countries — Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Central African Republic, Chad and Togo. Compared with American humanitarian assistance, the subsidies to U.S. cotton farmers amount to more than the U.S. Agency for International Development’s total annual budget for all of sub-Saharan Africa. [...]"
ISSUE: MATERNAL MORTALITY
"Mothers Betrayed"
By Sarah Brown
New Statesman, 6 December 2007
"[...] Tragically, 20 years after the Global Safe Motherhood Initiative, seven years after the UN Millennium Summit, no progress has been made. If anything, the figures are worse. Of 211 million pregnancies worldwide in 2005, eight million women experienced life-threatening complications during pregnancy or childbirth. Those with access to skilled care and services tended to survive. But 536,000 died, the vast majority in developing countries, 80 per cent of them totally avoidable. Millions more have continuing health difficulties following obstetric complications, making life after childbirth difficult and painful. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of mothers dying in childbirth is around one in 50: up to 100,000 women die each year, and hundreds of thousands of babies and older children are left without a mother. ... What makes the lack of any progress on maternal mortality so depressing and frustrating is that, on other Millennium Development Goals, some progress -- albeit slowly -- is being made and things are beginning to improve. Millions more children are surviving infancy, receiving vaccinations and going to primary school than were in 2000, their life chances transformed by better health care and education. Even in the uphill struggle against Aids, great progress is being made. In Uganda, HIV infection has fallen from 16 per cent to 5 per cent in the past decade. Yet we know that for hundreds of thousands of children each year, the improvements we make to their life chances through better edu cation and health care are cancelled out by the loss of their mother. For every mother who dies in childbirth, the life chances of a new baby -- as well as its brothers and sisters -- can be damaged beyond repair. [...]"
Saturday, December 15, 2007
International Genocide Scholars Association Officially Recognizes Assyrian, Greek Genocides
*Press Release - For Immediate Circulation*
Date: December 15, 2007
Issued by: Adam Jones, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Political Science
University of British Columbia Okanagan
adam.jones@ubc.ca
In a groundbreaking move, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has voted overwhelmingly to recognize the genocides inflicted on Assyrian and Greek populations of the Ottoman Empire between 1914 and 1923.
The resolution passed with the support of fully 83 percent of IAGS members who voted. The resolution (text below) declares that "it is the conviction of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks." It "calls upon the government of Turkey to acknowledge the genocides against these populations, to issue a formal apology, and to take prompt and meaningful steps toward restitution."
In 1997, the IAGS officially recognized the Armenian genocide. The current resolution notes that while activist and scholarly efforts have resulted in widespread acceptance of the Armenian genocide, there has been "little recognition of the qualitatively similar genocides against other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire." Assyrians, along with Pontian and Anatolian Greeks, were killed on a scale equivalent in per capita terms to the catastrophe inflicted on the Armenian population of the empire -- and by much the same methods, including mass executions, death marches, and starvation.
IAGS member Adam Jones drafted the resolution, and lobbied for it along with fellow member Thea Halo, whose mother Sano survived the Pontian Greek genocide. In an address to the membership at the IAGS conference in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in July 2007, Jones paid tribute to the efforts of "representatives of the Greek and Assyrian communities ... to publicize and call on the present Turkish government to acknowledge the genocides inflicted on their populations," which had made Asia Minor their home for millennia. The umbrella term "Assyrians" includes Chaldeans, Nestorians, Syriacs, Aramaens, Eastern Orthodox Syrians, and Jacobites.
"The overwhelming backing given to this resolution by the world's leading genocide scholars organization will help to raise consciousness about the Assyrian and Greek genocides," Jones said on December 15. "It will also act as a powerful counter to those, especially in present-day Turkey, who still ignore or deny outright the genocides of the Ottoman Christian minorities."
The resolution stated that "the denial of genocide is widely recognized as the final stage of genocide, enshrining impunity for the perpetrators of genocide, and demonstrably paving the way for future genocides." The Assyrian population of Iraq, for example, remains highly vulnerable to genocidal attack. Since 2003, Iraqi Assyrians have been exposed to severe persecution and "ethnic cleansing"; it is believed that up to half the Assyrian population has fled the country.
Extensive supporting documentation for the Assyrian and Greek genocides was circulated to IAGS members in the months prior to the vote, and is available at http://www.genocidetext.net/iags_resolution_supporting_documentation.htm. IAGS President Gregory Stanton may be contacted at iagspresident@aol.com.
FULL TEXT OF THE IAGS RESOLUTION:
WHEREAS the denial of genocide is widely recognized as the final stage of genocide, enshrining impunity for the perpetrators of genocide, and demonstrably paving the way for future genocides;
WHEREAS the Ottoman genocide against minority populations during and following the First World War is usually depicted as a genocide against Armenians alone, with little recognition of the qualitatively similar genocides against other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire;
BE IT RESOLVED that it is the conviction of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Association calls upon the government of Turkey to acknowledge the genocides against these populations, to issue a formal apology, and to take prompt and meaningful steps toward restitution.
Date: December 15, 2007
Issued by: Adam Jones, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Political Science
University of British Columbia Okanagan
adam.jones@ubc.ca
In a groundbreaking move, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has voted overwhelmingly to recognize the genocides inflicted on Assyrian and Greek populations of the Ottoman Empire between 1914 and 1923.
The resolution passed with the support of fully 83 percent of IAGS members who voted. The resolution (text below) declares that "it is the conviction of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks." It "calls upon the government of Turkey to acknowledge the genocides against these populations, to issue a formal apology, and to take prompt and meaningful steps toward restitution."
In 1997, the IAGS officially recognized the Armenian genocide. The current resolution notes that while activist and scholarly efforts have resulted in widespread acceptance of the Armenian genocide, there has been "little recognition of the qualitatively similar genocides against other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire." Assyrians, along with Pontian and Anatolian Greeks, were killed on a scale equivalent in per capita terms to the catastrophe inflicted on the Armenian population of the empire -- and by much the same methods, including mass executions, death marches, and starvation.
IAGS member Adam Jones drafted the resolution, and lobbied for it along with fellow member Thea Halo, whose mother Sano survived the Pontian Greek genocide. In an address to the membership at the IAGS conference in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in July 2007, Jones paid tribute to the efforts of "representatives of the Greek and Assyrian communities ... to publicize and call on the present Turkish government to acknowledge the genocides inflicted on their populations," which had made Asia Minor their home for millennia. The umbrella term "Assyrians" includes Chaldeans, Nestorians, Syriacs, Aramaens, Eastern Orthodox Syrians, and Jacobites.
"The overwhelming backing given to this resolution by the world's leading genocide scholars organization will help to raise consciousness about the Assyrian and Greek genocides," Jones said on December 15. "It will also act as a powerful counter to those, especially in present-day Turkey, who still ignore or deny outright the genocides of the Ottoman Christian minorities."
The resolution stated that "the denial of genocide is widely recognized as the final stage of genocide, enshrining impunity for the perpetrators of genocide, and demonstrably paving the way for future genocides." The Assyrian population of Iraq, for example, remains highly vulnerable to genocidal attack. Since 2003, Iraqi Assyrians have been exposed to severe persecution and "ethnic cleansing"; it is believed that up to half the Assyrian population has fled the country.
Extensive supporting documentation for the Assyrian and Greek genocides was circulated to IAGS members in the months prior to the vote, and is available at http://www.genocidetext.net/iags_resolution_supporting_documentation.htm. IAGS President Gregory Stanton may be contacted at iagspresident@aol.com.
FULL TEXT OF THE IAGS RESOLUTION:
WHEREAS the denial of genocide is widely recognized as the final stage of genocide, enshrining impunity for the perpetrators of genocide, and demonstrably paving the way for future genocides;
WHEREAS the Ottoman genocide against minority populations during and following the First World War is usually depicted as a genocide against Armenians alone, with little recognition of the qualitatively similar genocides against other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire;
BE IT RESOLVED that it is the conviction of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Association calls upon the government of Turkey to acknowledge the genocides against these populations, to issue a formal apology, and to take prompt and meaningful steps toward restitution.
Monday, December 10, 2007
What Can the Holocaust Memorial Museum Be Thinking?
By Gerald Caplan
[n.b. I am pleased to post this article by one of Canada's noted human rights voices, and a regular reader of the Genocide Studies Mailing List.]The decision last March by the International Court of Justice, that Serbia had violated its obligations to prevent genocide, has direct implications for the Permanent Five members of the Security Council. At least twice, over Rwanda in 1994 and over Darfur for the past three years, China, Russia, France, Britain and the US have been guilty of exactly the same behavior as Serbia in 1995.
The World Court (as the ICJ is commonly known) was ruling on Serbia's role in the Bosnian city of Srebrenica in 1995. While finding that the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys constituted a genocide, the court decided that since Serbia didn't control the perpetrators of the crime, it wasn't guilty of genocide. But Serbia could have foreseen the slaughter, and therefore could have prevented or stopped it. Accordingly, the Court ruled, Serbia had "violated the obligation to prevent genocide under the [1948 United Nations] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ..."
If Serbia in 1995, what about the United States the previous year? Led aggressively by Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's Ambassador to the United Nations, the Security Council ensured that the repeated pleas of General Roméo Dallaire to reinforce his puny UN mission to Rwanda went unheeded. On the contrary, two weeks into the genocide, with tens of thousands of Tutsi being massacred each day, Albright led the Security Council in voting to slash Dallaire's forces by 90%. For the remainder of the 100 days of the Rwandan genocide, no reinforcements reached Dallaire. He watched helplessly as some 800,000 Tutsi were slaughtered -- although most of the murders, it is nearly universally agreed, could have been prevented with about 5,000 good soldiers.
Did Slobodan Milosevic do worse than this? If Serbia violated the Genocide Convention by failing to prevent or stop the genocide at Srebrenica, what can one say about Madeleine Albright and her colleagues? Who will take them to court for their passive complicity in genocide?
Well, as it happens, Ms. Albright is too busy to stand trial. She's just been appointed by (among others) the prestigious Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, as co-chair of a new Genocide Prevention Task Force. As she told a press conference, apparently with a straight face and no apparent shame in her heart: "We have a duty to find the answer [to genocide] before the vow of ‘never again' is once again betrayed."
Ms. Albright's co-chair is to be Clinton's former Secretary of Defense, William Cohen. The two worked together in Clinton's cabinet after she was promoted for her performance at the UN to Secretary of State -- the first American woman to hold the most influential post in the American government after the President.
Curiously enough, Albright and Cohen have something else in common. Only weeks ago, the two signed letters calling on Congress not to recognize the Armenian genocide. At an unusually hostile press conference, the two co-chairs explained that this was not an appropriate moment to alienate America's Turkish allies, who refuse to accept that Turkey was responsible for a genocide against the Armenian people in 1915. Nor were they prepared to describe the 1915 massacres as a genocide, which the overwhelming majority of genocide scholars have concluded it was.
Another reporter took them on: "It sounds as if you are both saying -- if our friends do it, it is not genocide. And if our enemies do it, it is genocide. Secretary Cohen, you say -- we can't say that about Turkey and the Armenian genocide because our boys and girls are in harm's way [in Iraq]. If you are going to define genocide by who does it, not by what it is, your task force is in trouble."
Indeed. This is a Task Force that should never have been created. It begins with its moral authority not just compromised, but totally undermined. It is possible there was a worst choice for co-chair than the woman who kept almost a million Tutsi from being saved, but it's not easy to see who it might be. Perhaps Henry Kissinger, with his record in Cambodia, Chile, and Indonesia. Perhaps George Bush and the neocons responsible for the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. And there are thousands upon thousands of preeminent Americans who support a resolution to blame Turkey for the Armenian genocide. But the Holocaust Memorial Museum, perhaps the most influential of America's countless Holocaust institutions, chose Albright and Cohen.
Genocide prevention through the ages has been one of humankind's less successful enterprises, as the record of our own era shows. Nonetheless, the struggle to suppress and marginalize genocide in our world continues apace. You have to wonder why an institution like the Holocaust Memorial Museum would actively seek to mock that effort.
[Gerald Caplan is the author of Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide and has written and spoken widely on the failures of the "international community" to prevent genocide. He has frequently demanded that the leaders of the Permanent Five members of the Security Council be tried for their crimes of commission or omission in the genocides of our time.]
Thursday, December 06, 2007
NOW AVAILABLE: Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, by Adam Jones (Routledge, 2006; 430 pp., US $33.95 pbk). See www.genocidetext.net. "The best introductory text available to students of genocide studies ... likely to become the gold standard by which all subsequent introductions to this enormously important subject will be measured" (Kenneth J. Campbell).
Genocide Studies Media File
November 26 - December 6, 2007
A compendium of news stories, features, and human rights reports pertaining to genocide and crimes against humanity. Compiled by Adam Jones. Please send links and feedback to adamj_jones@hotmail.com.
Consider inviting colleagues and friends to subscribe to Genocide_Studies and the G_S Media File. All it takes is an email to genocide_studies-subscribe@topica.com.
ARGENTINA
"Justice Still Delayed in Argentina"
By Uki Goni
Time.com, 28 November 2007
"In August 2003, Ana Careaga was jubilant. Argentina had just overturned two amnesty laws protecting military officers from prosecution for human rights crimes committed during its bloody 1976-83 dictatorship. 'I thought justice would be done at last,' says Careaga, a survivor of the Atletico death camp, where in 1977, at the age of 16, she was tortured at the hands of the military. Careaga wasn't looking for justice for herself but for her mother Esther, who had been a founder of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, a group of women who in 1977 started marching every Thursday in front of the the presidential palace in downtown Buenos Aires, to demand news of their missing children. A captive of another death camp, Esther Careaga perished in a 'death flight,' thrown alive from a military plane into the waters of the South Atlantic, the preferred method of disposal of its enemies by the dictatorship. But the hope of seeing sentences for such crimes handed down anytime soon is fading fast for Careaga and many other relatives of the over 20,000 people who 'disappeared' during those dark years. Over four years after the repeal of the laws, only a handful of the 850 suspects protected by them have been convicted, as trials remain bogged down in endless pre-trial hearings and insistent appeals by defense lawyers. 'This is a continuation of the amnesty laws by other means,' says Careaga. 'The delays are inadmissible. If normal judges can't do the job, they should set up special courts to try crimes against humanity in Argentina.' Careaga adds, 'The crimes have been proven, the witnesses have testified over and over again' referring to years of pre-trial hearings. [...]"
AUSTRIA/HOLOCAUST DENIAL
"Holocaust Denier to Do Prison Time in Austria"
Associated Press dispatch on MSNBC.com, 3 December 2007
"A right-wing Austrian writer who fled to Spain after being convicted of Holocaust denial charges 15 years ago must serve his 18-month sentence, Vienna's highest court said Monday. Gerd Honsik, 67, must serve out the sentence handed down in 1992, the court said, rejecting his plea for leniency because of his age and an unspecified illness. However, the court also turned down a prosecution request to make the former fugitive serve even more time. Honsik was captured in southern Spain in August and extradited in October. He fled after being convicted of denying the existence of the Holocaust and claiming the Nazis never used gas chambers -- grounds for criminal prosecution in Austria. The charges stemmed from writings that defended Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Between 1986 and 1989, Honsik published writings disputing that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews during World War II. Among his books is one titled 'Acquittal for Hitler?' Austria's law making it a crime to deny the Holocaust applies to 'whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media.' The crime is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. British author David Irving was convicted under the law in February 2006 and sentenced to three years in prison. He served 13 months and was released in December 2006 on probation."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
BANGLADESH
"Bangladesh Looks for Evidence of 1971 Genocide"
EarthTimes.org, 6 December 2007
"Intelligence agencies and police in Bangladesh on Thursday were looking for evidence of genocide allegedly committed by Islamic extremists after a private citizen filed a sedition case overnight against three prominent Islamists, judicial officials said. Former minister and secretary general of the Jamaat-e-Islami group, Ali Ahsan Mohammed Mujahid, senior cleric Kader Mullah and retired government minister Shah Abdul Hannan were also accused of murder, rape and looting in a petition to put the three men on trial for war crimes. Fazlur Rahman, a former independence fighter, filed the three separate cases in the court of chief metropolitan magistrate Emran Hossian Chowdhury, decrying their role in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. In his petition Rahman said the three had opposed the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan and were involved in creating militia groups to try to help the then Pakistani authorities win the war. The three men were also blamed for organizing al-Badr and al-Shams death squads from among Pakistani collaborators who were involved in the massacre of Bangladeshi civilians. Bangladeshi records say about three million civilians died in the nine-month war which also involved India after nearly ten million refugees fled the country. [...]"
CHINA/JAPAN
"China Names Massacre Victims on 70th Anniversary"
Reuters dispatch, 4 December 2007
"China has published an eight-volume list of 13,000 victims of the Nanjing massacre in which it says invading Japanese troops killed 300,000 civilians, state media said on Tuesday. The Chinese publications, released to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of the massacre, also known as the 'Rape of Nanking,' include the names, ages, sex, occupations and residential addresses of the victims, which Japanese army unit was responsible and how the victims were killed. 'The books are the most complete name lists of the known victims of the slaughter to date,' the China Daily said. 'The publication of name lists is just a start. We will continue collecting information about the victims,' the newspaper quoted Zhang Xianwen, editor-in-chief of the compilation, as saying. The lists are part of a 27-volume series of historical materials on the massacre and were released before December 13, the day in 1937 when Japanese troops took over the city, then known as Nanking and the capital of Nationalist China. China, where many people still harbor deep resentment over Japanese wartime atrocities, says Japanese troops killed 300,000 men, women and children, many of the victims raped or otherwise tortured. An allied tribunal put the death toll at about 142,000. Some Japanese historians say the numbers are exaggerated, estimating as few as 20,000 soldiers and civilians were killed. Japan does not present any figure, although it acknowledges that many civilians were killed by invading Japanese troops."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
GERMANY/ISRAEL/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Accord to Open Nazi Archive to Public"
Associated Press dispatch in The Globe and Mail, 28 November 2007
"The 11 countries that oversee a vast archive in Germany of Nazi documents and concentration camp records have completed ratification of an accord to open its doors to the public, ending more than 60 years of secrecy, the Red Cross said Wednesday. Greece was the last of the 11 to formally file its ratification papers with the German Foreign Ministry, clearing the way for Holocaust survivors and researchers to access some 50 million pages of wartime documents. The archive in Bad Arolsen, Germany, is administered by the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and has been used exclusively to trace missing persons, reunite families and provide documentation to victims of Nazi persecution to support compensation claims. 'The ratification process is complete,' Reto Meister, director of the Tracing Service, said by telephone from the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial. Mr. Meister said a long list of academics and research organizations already have applied to begin work in the archive, which includes untapped documents of communications among Nazi officials, camp registrations, transportation lists, slave labour files and death lists that detail the mechanics of the Nazi torment. 'I am pleased that the archive of the International Tracing Service can now be opened for research,' said Guenter Gloser, Germany's deputy foreign minister responsible for Europe. 'I would like to invite all researchers to make use of this, and work through this dark chapter of German history.'"
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
"Israeli Migration Agents Target German Jews"
By Kate Connolly
The Guardian, 28 November 2007
"An Israeli intelligence organisation is to send agents to Germany in an effort to persuade tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union to settle in Israel. Representatives of the organisation Nativ are soon to operate on the approval of the Israeli government to 'counter the dangerous assimilation of former Soviet Jews in Germany,' according to the wording of a decision recently passed by the cabinet of prime minister Ehud Olmert. Around 200,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union, about 70% of the total community, are currently living in Germany having begun arriving at the invitation of the government in the early 1990s. But their assimilation into what is now the fastest growing Jewish community in the world has been problematic, largely due to linguistic and cultural differences, including varying approaches to defining Jewishness and even sometimes a lack of knowledge about the Holocaust. ... The Central Council of Jews, the organisation representing Jews in Germany, has expressed its fury that Israel is trying to effectively steal its members. In a recent letter to Mr Olmert, the council described the decision as a 'sign of mistrust which we find personally offensive.' Stephan Kramer, the council's general secretary said that it gave the impression that the 'connection to Israel' and 'imparting Jewish values' was not important to Jewish community leaders, when it in fact belonged to the 'foundations of Jewish existence.' He added: 'If you read the cabinet decision, you get the impression that Jewish Germans need to be evacuated. That sends a fatal signal.' The German government has joined the row, insisting that it should be up to individuals to decide where they live. ... The council has said it fears the existence of Nativ will further deepen the rift between the older community and the former Soviet Jews, at a time when the revival of Jewish life in Germany is being widely celebrated. New synagogues are being built and old ones painstakingly renovated around the country, such as the Ryke Strasse synagogue in Berlin. [...]"
INDIA
"Explosive Report by Indian Magazine Exposes Those Responsible for 2002 Gujarat Massacre"
Democracy Now, 5 December 2007
"An explosive report by the Indian magazine Tehelka reveals new information about those responsible for the massacre of 2,500 Muslims in the western Indian state of Gujarat in March of 2002. The brutal violence against Muslims took place over a span of three days, followed an attack on a train carrying rightwing Hindu activists. Fifty-eight people on the train were burned to death when it stopped in the town of Godhra. Mainstream analyses have explained the statewide violence against Muslims as a 'spontaneous' reaction to the attack on the train. However, Tehelka's extensive exposé challenges this understanding of what happened in Gujarat five-and-a-half years ago and demonstrates that the anti-Muslim violence was highly organized and premeditated. The exposé was published in late October after a reporter infiltrated a rightwing Hindu organization for six months. It includes spycam video footage of Hindu activists bragging about killing Muslims and detailing the support they received from the highest levels of the state government. With state elections in Gujarat beginning next week, the exposé could have a significant political impact. Narendra Modi, who was Chief Minister during the 2002 massacre, never lost his position. He remains one of the leading contenders. Modi is from the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party], which is tied to a network of rightwing Hindu organizations. Many of the activists interviewed by Tehelka say the anti-Muslim violence could not have happened without Modi's tacit support. [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to Fara McLaren for bringing this source to my attention.]
IRAN/UNITED STATES/NUCLEARISM
"Nuclear Meltdown"
By Fred Kaplan
Slate.com, 3 December 2007
"If there was ever a possibility that President George W. Bush would drop bombs on Iran, the chances have now shrunk to nearly zero. In one of the most dramatic National Intelligence Estimates ever, the 16 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community concluded today 'with high confidence' that Iran 'halted its nuclear weapons' four years ago, in the fall of 2003. ... A little context is necessary to understand this report's full significance. For the past two years, various factions in the Bush administration have engaged in internecine skirmishes over how to deal with the anticipation of an Iranian atom bomb. Cheney and his associates are the prominent hawks, in favor of stepping up the pressure and, if the time comes, attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, perhaps pre-emptively. President Bush has sometimes seemed to take this side, at least rhetorically, as when he said recently that failure to keep Iran from gaining the ability to build A-bombs could trigger 'World War III.' Opposing this faction is ... well, nearly every other agency and high-ranking official that deals with national-security policy. And ever since Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense one year ago, the pro-diplomacy wing has grown increasingly outspoken. ... And now, with today's NIE, we see the entire U.S. intelligence community not only, in effect, coming down on the side of the doves but concluding that the threat animating the hawks doesn't even exist. ... Skeptics of war have rarely been so legitimized. Vice President Cheney has never been so isolated. If Bush were to order an attack under these circumstances, he would risk a major eruption in the chain of command, even a constitutional crisis, among many other crises. It seems extremely unlikely that even he would do that."
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
"Israel Risks Apartheid-Like Struggle if Two-State Solution Fails, Says Olmert"
By Rory McCarthy
The Guardian, 30 November 2007
"Israel's prime minister issued a rare warning yesterday that his nation risked being compared to apartheid-era South Africa if it failed to agree an independent state for the Palestinians. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Ehud Olmert said Israel was 'finished' if it forced the Palestinians into a struggle for equal rights. If the two-state solution collapsed, he said, Israel would 'face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, and as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.' Israel's supporters abroad would quickly turn against such a state, he said. 'The Jewish organisations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents,' he said. The Israeli government is usually bitterly resentful of any comparison to the apartheid regime but Olmert's remarks looked like an effort to galvanise support from a sceptical Israeli public for a return to peace negotiations with the Palestinians in the days after the Annapolis conference. Israel has a 20% Arab minority who are citizens and can vote, although they are frequently discriminated against and are described by some as a 'demographic threat.' Within a few years the number of Arabs in Israel and the Palestinian territories is expected to equal, and then exceed, the number of Jews in Israel and the settlements. Some Palestinians argue that they should campaign for a so-called one-state solution: equal voting and citizenship rights within a larger country that includes Israel and the occupied territories and in which Palestinians will soon have a majority. It is not the first time that Olmert has risked the South African comparison. Four years ago, in another interview with Ha'aretz, he gave a similar warning. But that was a time when, as deputy to the then prime minister Ariel Sharon, he argued that Israel should unilaterally draw up a border with the Palestinians, withdrawing from Gaza and holding on to the major Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank. [...]"
"An Excursion through the West Bank is a Trip to Disbelief"
By Dan Lieberman
Online Journal, 26 November 2007
"[...] Entering Bethlehem means being greeted by the separation wall which runs close to homes. The former popular Bethlehem has shrunk in size and economy. Israel decided to incorporate 22 percent of Bethlehem's land into Jerusalem. The government also routed the wall so that it cuts across the Jerusalem/Bethlehem highway and closes the previously used road to Bethlehem. This road brought tourists past the souvenir shops, which are now mostly closed. Hotels are only 10 percent occupied. The livelihoods of many Bethlehem citizens have disappeared. To obtain employment, laborers line up at 3 a.m. at checkpoints they must pass through in order to go to Jerusalem and work. The checkpoint funnels persons through a small fenced area, similar to a stockyard, bringing them to a turnstile and to security control. The once busy and proud Bethlehem is now a decaying town; empty shops, empty homes, empty tourist attractions. If the Christian Lord could rise again, he would be alone. The UN claims decaying Bethlehem water pipelines lose 25 percent of the water. The former Palestine Authority intelligence headquarters, bombed by Israeli jets on March 5, 2002, remains a bombed out group of senseless buildings. At a hilltop site in Gush Etzion, (Bloc of the Tree), the famous Zionist settlements, which were destroyed and abandoned under Jordanian rule, but have returned to grow to 40,000 settlers since Israel's occupation after the 1967 war, Israel's modification of the land is apparent. Israeli setlements dot the landscape. Several temporary vans with antennae are in view on the top of the hill. Two Israelis come jogging from the incipient settlement. An old Palestinan village is obvious in the near distance. We are told that its cisterns have been dampened and the village is static -- building of new homes is not permitted, except for special circumstances. A new narrow road winds its way in the distance. The direct road which led to the main road has been blocked, bypassed, reblocked and on and on. [...]"
[n.b. A stark account of "urbicide," to use the term recently deployed in the genocide-studies literature. See also Stephen Graham's fine essay, "'Clean Territory': Urbicide in the West Bank," available online; and a useful Wikipedia entry on the subject.]
JAPAN/CANADA/"COMFORT WOMEN"
"'Comfort Women' Want Canada's Help, Japan Apology"
Ctv.ca, 27 November 2007
"They were kidnapped from homes across Asia and raped repeatedly by Japanese soldiers during the Second World War. Now in their eighties, the women -- referred to as 'comfort women' by their Japanese captors -- are fighting back against the atrocities that were inflicted on them seven decades ago. On Tuesday, four of the women were in Ottawa hoping to get federal politicians on board as they demanded a formal apology from the Japanese government. Japan insists that the government has said sorry and offered money long ago to the 200,000 women and girls -- some as young as 12 -- who were used as sex slaves by the military from 1932 to 1945. The U.S. Congress recently asked for a formal apology from Japan's parliament, and now MPs here in Canada are backing a similar resolution. 'Sexual slavery is a crime against humanity and I just think we have the moral responsibility to speak out,' New Democrat MP Olivia Chow told CTV News. The Japanese, though, are lobbying hard against a formal apology. Ten days ago, their prime minister even called Prime Minister Stephen Harper to argue that his country has already done enough. But the women maintain that Japan has not done enough to satisfy the victims, and pleaded with MPs not to let the issue die. The women -- who traveled to Canada from China, Korea, the Philippines, and the Netherlands -- told politicians in Ottawa that the matter has not been settled. They said their injuries from war haven't healed and recalled the horrific events they endured during the war. One of the women said she was only 14 when she was impregnated by one of the soldiers who raped her. The fact that she was carrying a baby didn't stop the rapes from occurring repeatedly. Ellen van der Ploeg was living in Java when the Japanese occupiers labeled her as a prostitute. 'We were there for the pleasure of the Japanese soldiers,' said van der Ploeg. 'After 62 years, I'm still waiting for my salary.'"
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
JAPAN/CHINA/NANJING MASSACRE
"Propaganda War is Declared in Cinemas over Nanking Massacre"
By David McNeill
The Independent, 5 December 2007
"One way to learn what happened in one of history's most noxious but disputed episodes is to ask Satoru Mizushima. After what he calls 'exhaustive research' on the 1937 seizure of the then Chinese capital by Japanese troops, estimated to have cost anywhere from 20,000 to 300,000 lives, Mizushima offers a very precise figure for the number of illegal deaths: zero. 'The evidence for a massacre is faked,' he explains. 'It is Chinese Communist propaganda.' For support, he brandishes a book containing what he says are dozens of doctored photos. One shows a beheaded Chinese corpse with a cigarette in its mouth. 'Japanese people don't mistreat corpses like that,' he says, stabbing the page for emphasis. 'It is not in our culture.' The world will soon get a chance to assess his claims when Mizushima's movie, The Truth of Nanking, reaches the cinemas. Arguments over what occurred in Nanking began almost as soon as Imperial soldiers marched into the city on 13 December 1937 and have only grown in ferocity since. These smouldering disputes are set to cross over into mass entertainment on the 70th anniversary of the massacre, with nearly a dozen movies, backed by US, European and Chinese money, set to pick again at Nanking's scabs. Whatever the end result, one thing is certain: Japanese neo-nationalists have little hope of winning the propaganda war second time around. Yesterday, Chinese historians published an eight-volume list of 13,000 victims of the invasion, which includes the names, ages, sex, occupations and addresses of the victims, which Japanese army unit was responsible and how the victims were killed. But the work of the historians will make little impact in comparison with that of the film-makers. Mizushima's reputed $2m (£1m) budget for The Truth is dwarfed, for example, by the $53m Purple Mountain filming in China. Adapted from the bestseller The Rape of Nanking by the bête noire of Japanese conservatives, Iris Chang, the US-Chinese film is aiming for nothing less than an Asian version of Schindler's List. [...]"
NAZISM/GENOCIDE TRIBUNALS
"Last Chance to Catch Nazis in South America, Say Campaigners"
By Uki Goni and Rory Carroll
The Guardian, 28 November 2007
"A final effort to track down and prosecute Nazi war criminals who fled to South America after the second world war was launched in Argentina yesterday. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish human rights group, called its initiative Operation Last Chance because there was little time left to catch the suspects before they died. It will take the form of a media campaign in Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil and offer financial rewards for information that leads to convictions. The scheme, announced at a press conference in Buenos Aires, shone fresh light on South America's murky and embarrassing role as a haven for Nazis after Hitler's defeat in 1945. Between 150 and 300 suspected war criminals are believed to have slipped across the Atlantic to new lives, in some cases with the connivance of host governments, notably Argentina where President Juan Perón branded the Nuremberg trials an 'infamy' and organised rescue missions to smuggle Nazi officers out of Europe and relocate them as 'technicians' in Argentina's armed forces. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre first launched its scheme in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in 2002. The operation yielded the names of 488 suspects from 20 countries, it said. Of that number, 99 cases have been submitted to local prosecutors, resulting in three arrest warrants, two extradition requests and dozens of ongoing investigations. ... The highest-profile catch was Adolf Eichmann, one of the orchestrators of the Holocaust, who was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Argentina in 1960 and spirited to a trial in Jerusalem where he was executed two years later. Those who evaded capture included the Auschwitz doctor, Josef Mengele, who lived in Argentina before dying in Brazil in 1979, and the Butcher of Riga, Eduard Roschmann, blamed for the deaths of 40,000 Jews in Riga in Latvia, who died in Paraguay in 1977. Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who founded the centre, died in 2005."
PERU
"The Trial of Fujimori"
By John Crabtree
New Statesman, 3 December 2007
"The trial of ex-Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, due to begin on December 10, will put the spotlight on the large scale of corruption and human rights violations that took place in Peru in the 1990s. If convicted, he will be the first elected Latin American president in living memory to go to jail. Hitherto only a handful of military dictators -- including members of the Argentine junta that seized power in 1976 and the Bolivia's General Luis Garcia Meza who overturned democracy in 1980 with the support of that country's cocaine mafia -- have ended up behind bars in their own country. Fujimori was extradited from Chile to Peru in September, following lengthy judicial proceedings in Santiago. The Chilean Supreme Court finally ruled the crimes allegedly committed by Fujimori were sufficient to justify extradition. The case against Fujimori centres on his involvement in the corrupt use of public funds in Peru during his ten-year rule as president, as well as his role in authorising two now notorious cases of human rights violations. The first of these took place in November 1991 in a Lima suburb known as the Barrios Altos, when the military assassinated several people attending a party. The second was the killing, in July 1992, of a teacher and nine students at the 'La Cantuta' university in Lima. In both cases, 'La Colina' death squad was immediately responsible. ... The Barrios Altos and La Cantuta killings represent only isolated instances of human rights violation. According to the authoritative Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, published in 2003, some 70,000 Peruvians lost their lives in the course of a twenty-year war (1980-2000) between the Peruvian state and the Maoist-inspired Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) insurgency. The vast majority of victims were innocent peasants caught in the crossfire in this protracted and brutal conflict. [...]"
RWANDA/GENOCIDE TRIBUNALS
"Fulbright Fellowship Supports Research and Study of Genocide in Rwanda"
Newswise.com, 5 December 2007
"A genocide scholar from the University of Arkansas has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in Rwanda while developing a genocide studies program at that country's national university. At the National University of Rwanda, Samuel Totten will work with faculty and graduate students from the Centre for Conflict Management, as well as faculty in history, political science and law, to develop a master's degree program in genocide studies. In addition, he will conduct three research projects that build on his previous research in Rwanda. ... As part of his Fulbright Fellowship, from January through July 2008, Totten will conduct extensive interviews and oral histories with Rwandans. He will complete a current study of Rwandan gacacas -- local courts that aim to uncover the truth of who killed whom during the Rwanda genocide and to sentence the convicted to prison. During a visit to Rwanda in 2006, Totten conducted a series of in-depth, randomized interviews with 25 village residents about the genocide and the gacacas. The Fulbright Fellowship will allow him to conduct more interviews and analyze the data. Totten also will undertake a study of the status and actions of Hutus and Tutsis incarcerated in Rwanda prisons just prior to and during the 1994 genocide. He plans to spend a month conducting interviews with prisoners in four or five prisons in various parts of Rwanda. [...]"
[n.b. Congratulations, Sam!]
"Rwanda 'Hate Media' Terms Slashed"
BBC Online, 28 November 2007
"Three Rwandan media executives have had their sentences reduced for inciting violence against ethnic Tutsis during the genocide when 800,000 people died. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda reduced the life sentences of Ferdinand Nahimana and Hassan Ngeze to 30 and 35 years respectively. Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza's jail term was reduced from 35 to 32 years. Nahimana and Barayagwiza set up a radio station which broadcast lists of people to be killed in 1994. Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) urged Hutus to 'exterminate the cockroaches' in the wake of the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana on 6 April 1994. Barayagwiza was also a leading member of the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (CDR) -- a Hutu extremist party. Ngeze was the editor of an extremist Hutu magazine called Kangura. He was convicted for the publication's incitement to hatred but also for his role in the killings of Tutsis in his home town of Gisenyi. The Tanzanian-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) originally sentenced the men in 2003. The presiding appeal judge, Fausto Pocar, said the appeal tribunal had overturned the conclusion of the initial trial judges that there had been 'an understanding' between the accused -- RTLM, the CDR and Kangura with a view to committing genocide. [...]"
"Ghosts of Rwanda"
By Michael Gerson
The Washington Post, 28 November 2007 [Registration Required]
"We are used to seeing aged Holocaust survivors with faded photographs, telling their stories to remind the young and forgetful. So it is shocking to meet a 31-year-old genocide survivor with memories so fresh they bleed. I talked to Freddy Mutanguha in a field of white crosses, near a half-finished monument to perhaps 800,000 victims of the Rwandan genocide. 'My mom,' he recalled, 'gave money to be killed by a bullet, because she saw the machetes and knew what they would do to her. But the bullet was too expensive.' The mass violence of Hutu against Tutsi left a nation of corpses -- and a nation of stories. A young man took me on a tour of the neighborhood where he had been hunted for weeks by soldiers and informers. At one point, a friend purchased his life with the bribe of a case of beer. He hugs a woman along the dirt street, commenting as she walks away, 'She lost all of her children.' A man I met in passing, I later learned, was 14 when he performed the lonely task of burying his mother, father and siblings in a grave near their home. And the ghosts seem to gather in sacred places. At Ntarama Church, soldiers surrounded thousands of Tutsis seeking refuge, blocked the door and threw grenades inside. The walls and rafters of the dark sanctuary are covered with the clothing in which the victims were found. Light comes through the tin roof in holes from shrapnel, like constellations frozen at the hour of death. [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to Yadi Pantoja for bringing this source to my attention.]
SAUDI ARABIA/VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
"In the Name of God: The Saudi Rape Victim's Tale"
By Daniel Howden
The Independent, 29 November 2007
"Inside Saudi Arabia she has come to be known simply as the 'Qatif girl,' a teenager who was gang-raped then humiliated by first the police, then the judicial authorities. Her case has propelled her into the international headlines and made her an acute embarrassment for the House of Saud. To the Saudi Justice Ministry, she is an adulteress whose case is being used by critics of the Kingdom. To much of the rest of the world, she is a symbol of all that's wrong with Saudi Arabia. Today she lives under effective house arrest. She is forbidden to speak and may be taken into custody at any time. Her family's movements are monitored by the religious police and their telephones are tapped. Her lawyer, Saudi Arabia's foremost human rights advocate, Abd al-Rahman al-Lahem, has been suspended. He has had his passport confiscated and faces a hearing next week in which he may be disbarred. The crime of 'Qatif girl,' it seems, has been to refuse to be silent about what has happened to her. The 19-year-old first sought to bring to justice the seven men who raped her, then complained in public when the courts saw fit to sentence her to 90 lashes for 'mingling,' the crime of being out in public with a male who was not her relative prior to the attack. Coverage of the case this month in the usually tightly censored Saudi media infuriated the authorities. They increased her sentence to 200 lashes and six months in prison. Her sentence still hangs over her. [...]"
SERBIA/KOSOVO/GENOCIDE TRIBUNALS
"War Crimes Prosecutor Hands Serbia an Ultimatum"
By Mike Corder
Associated Press dispatch in The Herald (Glasgow), 7 December 2007
"Outgoing Yugoslav war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte has given Belgrade an ultimatum: hand over fugitive General Ratko Mladic by Monday, or she will block Serbia's bid to join the EU. EU officials initialled a pre-membership deal with Serbia last month, saying it was satisfied with Belgrade's co-operation with the tribunal. Del Ponte, however, says a formal signing of the agreement hinges on full co-operation. 'For me, it means Mladic,' she said yesterday. 'Mladic in The Hague.' She said that while visiting Belgrade on Monday, she told Serbian leaders: 'I give you some days more, but by Monday, Mladic must be in The Hague. Otherwise it will be a negative assessment about co-operation.' Del Ponte presents her final report on Monday to the UN Security Council, which set up the tribunal in 1993 in response to widespread atrocities in the Balkan wars. Her reports carry significant weight at the EU and a negative assessment would make it politically hard for member states to put Serbia on the road to full membership. The former Swiss attorney general leaves the court at the end of this month after more than eight years, to be her country's envoy to Argentina. During her tenure, 91 suspects were transferred to the court and 63 were indicted. However, she conceded that the failure to get her hands on key fugitives Mladic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was a disappointment. The pair, after former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, 'were the most responsible for the crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide committed during the conflict in Bosnia,' she said. Karadzic and Mladic are charged with genocide and crimes against humanity for allegedly orchestrating the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo. [...]"
"Top Serbian Official Issues War Threat over Kosovo"
By Julian Borger
The Guardian, 6 December 2007
"The EU special envoy on Kosovo today demanded a retraction of a threat by a senior Serbian official that his country could resort to war if the mostly ethnic Albanian province declares independence. Aleksandar Simic, an advisor to Serbia's prime minister, was quoted in the Belgrade media as saying that Serbia had the legal right to use war as a means of defending its territory if Kosovo, a UN protectorate for the past eight years, declares independence in the coming weeks as expected. 'Serbia has had negative experiences from certain armed clashes during the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, and this is why we are more prudent and cautious now, but, of course, state interests are defended by war as well,' Mr. Simic said. Wolfgang Ischinger, the European member of a troika of international negotiators who have spent the past four months trying in vain to find a negotiated settlement on Kosovo's future, reacted angrily to Mr Simic's remarks. 'I believe it is inadmissible and intolerable that even before the troika report is out one of the parties expresses himself in this way,' Mr Ischinger said in London today. 'I believe this is in clear violation of the firm commitments expressed by the president of Serbia himself at the conference table in a solemn fashion.' The envoy, who is also Germany's ambassador to London, said he expected the Serbian government to retract the statement. [...]"
"UK Troops Ready for Kosovo Crisis"
By Ian Traynor
The Guardian, 30 November 2007
"Britain yesterday offered to be the first Nato country to send extra troops to Kosovo within weeks, as the Conservatives and Balkan experts warned of a potentially violent crisis brewing. While David Cameron accused the Kremlin of stirring up trouble in the Balkans and warned of a new crisis by Christmas, Gordon Brown's government also risked Russian wrath by issuing a robust statement of support for quick Kosovan independence. Lord Ashdown, the former international governor of Bosnia, accused the Russians and the Serbian government of fomenting trouble in Bosnia and Kosovo, and demanded troops reinforcements to try to keep the peace. 'Unless we get a grip on this situation very fast, the issue of the Balkans will be back on our agenda with a vengeance,' Ashdown told the BBC. Amid a growing sense of foreboding after the collapse of two years of negotiations between the Serb and Kosovo Albanian leaderships over the future of the contested Balkan province, the Foreign Office signalled strong support for a breakaway Kosovo. 'Long-term European stability and security demand a viable status settlement for Kosovo without delay,' a spokesman said, voicing support for the supervised independence proposed by the UN envoy, Martti Ahtisaari. If more peacekeepers were needed in Kosovo, Britain would be the first to send extra forces, he said. In one of his first big foreign policy speeches in Washington last night, Cameron called for extra troops immediately to pre-empt violence. 'There could be a new crisis in the Balkans by Christmas ... That is a direct threat to our national security, and we must take decisive action now to prevent it,' he said. British diplomats indicated that any call for extra troops should first come from Nato commanders on the ground."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
"Final Kosovo Talks End in Failure"
BBC Online, 28 November 2007
"Serbs and ethnic Albanians have failed to resolve the future status of Kosovo at a final round of internationally-brokered talks. The UN had set a 10 December deadline for a negotiated settlement on Kosovo. The province's ethnic Albanians demand independence from Serbia but Belgrade has consistently rejected this. Although both sides say they will avoid a return to violence, the US envoy to Kosovo has warned the 'peace of the Balkans is very much at stake.' ... Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders have said they would consider a unilateral declaration of independence if the 10 December deadline lapsed without a negotiated deal. But the EU has cautioned against this, saying Kosovo must only achieve statehood in partnership with international bodies. Speaking after the final round of talks in Vienna on Wednesday, Kosovo's ethnic Albanian President Fatmir Sejdiu said independence for Kosovo 'will happen very quickly' but refused to give an exact date. However, Serbian President Boris Tadic said Belgrade would 'annul' any unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo. He said his country would use all legal and diplomatic means to resist such a declaration, stopping short of violence. Though technically part of Serbia, Kosovo has been administered by the UN for the last eight years. ... Russia has supported Serbia's stance at the UN Security Council, arguing that independence for Kosovo could provide dangerous inspiration for separatists elsewhere. All attempts to decide the final status of Kosovo through negotiations have so far failed."
"Serbia Threatens Blockades on Kosovo"
Associated Press dispatch on NDTV.com, 28 November 2007
"Serbia threatened to impose an economic and travel blockade on Kosovo if the breakaway province declares independence, as a last-ditch attempt to negotiate a settlement deadlocked and appeared doomed to fail. International mediators' failure to forge a compromise before a December 10 UN deadline raised the likelihood that an increasingly impatient Kosovo will declare statehood sometime early in 2008, throwing the Balkans into fresh turmoil and possibly violence. Top officials from the rival sides both conceded they remain far apart. Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority demands full independence, while Serbia insists the southern province remain part of its territory. 'Hopefully, in a time not too long from now, we will be able to take our decision,' Kosovo's president, Fatmir Sejdiu, told reporters in the Austrian spa town of Baden, where the closed-door talks at a castle hotel wrap up on Wednesday. Sejdiu shrugged off Serbia's fierce opposition to statehood for Kosovo, saying the province 'will not be held hostage' to those who object. As the talks mediated by the US, European Union and Russia hit what looked like an insurmountable stalemate, there were ominous statements from the Serbian side suggesting ugly and possibly bloody confrontations could await Kosovo if it declares independence unilaterally as many expect. Serbia will impose a 'complete economic and travel blockade' of Kosovo, including cutting off electricity supplies to the province and banning ethnic Albanians and their goods from crossing the borders, a high-ranking Serbian official told The Associated Press in Belgrade on Tuesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
SOUTH KOREA
"Unearthing War's Horrors Years Later in South Korea"
By Choe Sang-Hun
The New York Times, 3 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"Shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, Kim Man-sik, a military police sergeant, received an urgent radio message from the South Korean Army’s Counterintelligence Corps: Go to local police stations, take custody of scores of Communist suspects held there and execute them. Mr. Kim complied. What he did and saw in those days is etched permanently in his mind. 'They were all tied together with military communications wire,' said Mr. Kim, now 81. 'So when we opened fire, they all pulled at each other to try to escape. The wire cut into their wrists. Blood was splattered all over their white clothes.' That Mr. Kim's story has emerged after half a century is a testament to this nation's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, modeled after the South African group set up in the 1990s to expose crimes and injustices committed during the apartheid era. Unlike the situation in South Africa, where the truth commission started work soon after the collapse of the apartheid government, South Korea's commission was not created for decades. During most of that time, the country was ruled by anti-Communist authoritarian governments that wanted to keep buried the history of violence against people who had been accused of being Communists. It was not until after President Roh Moo-hyun was elected that the country created the commission in 2005, starting a nationwide investigation to uncover the history of atrocities by each Korea. ... South Korean troops executed tens of thousands of unarmed civilians and prisoners as they retreated in advance of the North Korean invaders during the war, according to historians. The victims were often accused of being Communist sympathizers or collaborators. The commission's investigators have discovered the remains of hundreds of people -- including women and children -- who were killed without trial. They have also identified 1,222 probable instances of mass killings during the war. The cases include 215 episodes in which survivors say American warplanes and ground troops killed unarmed civilians. [...]"
SUDAN/DARFUR/INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS
"U.N. Fails Darfur Again"
By Nat Hentoff
The Village Voice, 6 December 2007
"Consider this a battle plan—which includes intersecting campaigns under way here and abroad—to rescue the survivors of this century's first genocide: the hundreds of thousand of lives that are at stake in the Darfur holocaust. To begin with, forget the United Nations as a savior. As famed British playwright Tom Stoppard put it plainly: 'If the United Nations could die of shame, it would have been dead years ago.' To put another nail in its coffin, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon -- the Alberto Gonzales of that feeble body -- convened, in concert with the African Union, peace talks in Sirte, Libya, on October 27. But the talks soon collapsed because the leaders of the two main rebel groups refused to come, thanks to their acute distrust of Sudan's Hitler, General Omar al-Bashir. On the first day of the conference, Bashir, in a slick propaganda move, declared a cease-fire in Darfur, presumably disarming the Janjaweed, the government's mass killers and rapists. On the very next day, Bashir's bombers attacked civilian and rebel targets in West Darfur. As genocide historian Eric Reeves reported, neither the U.N. nor the African Union condemned these bombings. The only way to end this genocide is by putting intense, continuing pressure on China to compel Bashir to stop the bloodbath. China is, by far, the chief buyer of Sudan's oil and has substantial other investments in the country -- while also being Bashir's main arms supplier. At the U.N. Security Council, China protects Sudan against any possibility of real sanctions aimed at Bashir and supports Sudan's obstructions of the much-heralded Security Council Resolution 1769, which will supposedly send 26,000 troops and civilian police to Darfur, along with helicopters, by the beginning of next year. With Bashir holding supreme power, that deadline -- or any other -- will never be met. The shooting-down of U.N. Resolution 1769 -- along with the hopes of Darfur's survivors -- received only scant attention in the American press, mainly the five small paragraphs on page A10 in the November 22 New York Times: "U.N. Concerned Over Darfur Force." But with the value of the dollar falling around the world, who cares about a Darfur force? Where is Darfur anyway? [...]"
"World Court Opens Two Darfur Probes"
By Maggie Farley
The Los Angeles Times, 6 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Wednesday that he was opening new investigations in Darfur, one targeting Sudanese government officials for alleged violence against civilians in displacement camps and the other against those who have attacked aid workers and U.N. peacekeepers. Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina also said that he would seek to hold senior Sudanese officials accountable for protecting two suspects indicted by the ICC this year. The prosecutor said he hoped the inquiries would pressure Sudan's leaders and play off diplomats' frustration over their stonewalling. The investigations also put rebel groups on notice that their actions are being scrutinized, he said. When Moreno-Ocampo announced his first two arrest warrants in June, United Nations officials and diplomats were reluctant to press the government in Khartoum to hand over the suspects, fearing it would upset negotiations over a peacekeeping force and talks for the troubled Darfur region. But since then, Ahmad Harun, one of those indicted, has been promoted to coordinate aid and oversee peacekeepers for the displaced people in Darfur he is charged with helping uproot. The ICC charged the other suspect, militia leader Ali Mohammed Ali Abdalrahman, better known as Kushayb, with leading mass attacks in Darfur on Harun's orders. He was freed after a brief detention. Since June, Khartoum has raised obstacles on the deployment of peacekeepers and access for aid workers, as well as cooperation with the ICC. 'The secretary-general and the Security Council have seen that trading peace for justice has not gained them much,' said Richard Dicker of New York-based Human Rights Watch. 'Today, there is rising pressure on Sudan to arrest and surrender these guys, or the ICC will go after them too.' [...]"
"China 'Deeply Concerned' over Threats in Darfur"
Agence France-Presse dispatch in The Mail & Guardian (South Africa), 27 November 2007
"China on Tuesday voiced deep concern about the safety of its peacekeepers in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region after rebel groups boycotting the peace process declared they were not immune from attack. 'Up to now there has been no incident, but we are deeply concerned about the matter,' the Chinese ambassador to Khartoum, Li Cheng Wen, said. More than 100 Chinese engineers were deployed to Darfur last week to build roads and bridges and dig wells to prepare for a 26 000-strong African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force, but they were immediately told to go home by rebels. In all, 315 Chinese engineers at the invitation of the United Nations will deploy by December to the region, where war has raged for nearly five years. 'Joining the peacekeeping action in the Darfur region reflects China's constructive role in solving Darfur's problem properly,' the ambassador said. 'This is good for Darfur peace and stability. It benefits reconstruction and improves people's life in Darfur. So it is very difficult for the Chinese side to understand and [we] cannot accept the criticism of joining the peacekeeping operation. Furthermore, we stand against the public threat to the Chinese peacekeepers' safety. I will contact certain organs in Unamid [the joint AU-UN force] to guarantee their safety and take all necessary measures to protect them,' the ambassador said. The Chinese military engineers carry small arms and are entitled to defend themselves if attacked, in line with UN resolutions. 'China hopes those military groups that have not signed the Darfur Peace Agreement will join the peace process as soon as possible and work so that peace and development can be realised,' added the ambassador. Darfur rebels have charged that as 'allies' of the government in Khartoum, the Chinese are not immune from attack. China is the biggest buyer of Sudan's oil and sells weapons to the Khartoum government -- blamed for fanning the violence in Darfur. [...]"
UNITED KINGDOM/HOLOCAUST DENIAL
"In Britain, Free Speech for Far Right?"
By Mark Rice-Oxley
The Christian Science Monitor, 27 November 2007
"It styles itself as the world's most prestigious debating forum, a hallowed chamber at the heart of Oxford University that has played host, over the years, to everyone from Mother Teresa to Henry Kissinger, and from Diego Maradona to the Dalai Lama. But now the Oxford Union is courting furious controversy for inviting two guests of an altogether different distinction. David Irving is a discredited historian who served a year in an Austrian jail for denying the Holocaust. Invitations to the pair to take part in a debate on Monday night has provoked furious reaction in Britain. MPs and ministers have withdrawn from events or resigned their membership of what is essentially an elite club for the political leaders of tomorrow to cut their teeth. Antifascist groups were descending on Oxford Sunday to vent their anger at the decision to offer a platform to two of Britain's most venomous voices on the right. 'This is not about freedom of speech, it's about providing a free platform to disseminate fear in the British community of Jews, Asians, and black people,' says Denis MacShane, a Labour MP and former minister, who pulled out of an Oxford debate because of the invitation. Mr. Irving and Mr. Griffin, he says, 'have had freedom of speech. They have had their day in court and were convicted of Holocaust denial which is one of most egregious forms of anti-Semitism.' Mr. MacShane is not the only one voting with his feet. Last week, the defense minister, Des Browne, pulled out of a debate; and a Conservative MP, Julian Lewis, went one step further, tearing up his life membership of the prestigious union which he said was giving a 'boost' to 'a couple of scoundrels who can put up with anything except being ignored.' [...]"
"Oxford Union Debate Features Holocaust Denier"
The New York Times, 26 November 2007 [Registration Required]
"In the face of angry protests, the Oxford Union debating society went ahead today with plans for an evening debate featuring David Irving, a British author jailed in Austria in 2005 for denying the Holocaust, and Nick Griffin, leader of the far-right British National Party, acquitted by a British court last year of stirring racial hatred. The police in Oxford said they planned to mount 'a ring of steel' around the union building in the city center, where student and trade union groups were preparing to bus in hundreds of people for what they described as an 'anti-fascist' protest. The union's members, mostly students at Oxford University, voted by a margin of more than two to one at a special meeting on Friday to proceed with the event, which was to debate free speech. Mr. Irving, the author of several books on Hitler's Germany, had billed his appearance at the Oxford debate as a warm-up for a proposed national speaking tour in Britain, where his writing and other publicly expressed views on that period have provoked bitter dispute for years. An Austrian appellate court ordered him released last year after he had served one year of a three-year term for denying the Holocaust. Mr. Griffin's party has remained a fringe group despite attracting growing support among disaffected, mainly white voters in areas of northern England that have substantial Asian populations. He was found not guilty of provoking racial hatred last year in a court in the northern city of Leeds. Prosecutors at the trial played a videotape recording made by an undercover reporter for the BBC in which Mr. Griffin attacked British Muslims, accusing them of plotting to make Britain an Islamic republic. The invitation to the two right-wing speakers plunged the Oxford debating society into one of the fiercest controversies in its 184-year history. In 1933 it stirred anger in Britain with its notorious 'king and country' debate, in which members voted they would in no circumstances fight a war against Nazism. Although an independent body with no formal links to Oxford University, many of the union’s members are Oxford students, and many of the union’s leaders have gone on to prominent role in British politics. [...]"
UNITED KINGDOM/HOLOCAUST PREVENTION/DARFUR
"Groups Will Use Holocaust Day to Highlight Mass Murder in Darfur"
By Colin Brown
The Independent, 26 November 2007
"Britain's official day to mark the Holocaust will be dedicated to highlighting the mass murder taking in place in Darfur today, to increase pressure on the Sudanese government to stop the killing there. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust will use its national day on 27 January to demand tougher action to stop atrocities in Sudan. The official charity was set up with the backing of the Government to learn the lessons of the Holocaust against six million Jews in the Second World War. A survey conducted by YouGov for the charity showed that 53 per cent of British people are aware of the outrages being committed in Darfur but 83 per cent have done nothing about them. About 24 per cent said they had done nothing because they did not believe they could change anything, and 18 per cent said they did not know what to do. The charity was hoping that by drawing attention to the killing in Darfur, it would persuade more people to lobby MPs and protest for tougher action against a regime presiding over the mass murder. ... The UN has declared the situation in Sudan a 'severe humanitarian crisis' rather than 'genocide,' which would allow countries to intervene more directly under international law. Britain, the EU, US and UN are working to put pressure on the Sudanese government to disarm and disband the militia. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair did not rule out the use of force, but that is not on the agenda, although UN peace talks earlier this month failed to produce a solution. [...]"
UNITED KINGDOM/FEMALE FOETICIDE
"Britain's Missing Babies: A Chilling New Investigation Reveals a Disturbing Trend"
By Paul Bracchi
The Daily Mail, 2 December 2007
"The waiting rooms of Dr. Mangala Telang's private clinics in the suburbs of Delhi are always full. Dr. Telang is a leading IVF specialist, after all, and one of the doctors recommended by the British High Commission (her name is given out to Britons visiting or living in the city who need to see a gynaecologist). Pictures of smiling, gurgling babies adorn the walls of her surgeries. How chillingly ironic these photographs turn out to be. In fact, doctors like Mangala Telang are at the heart of a scandal -- and human tragedy -- which extends to thousands of homes in Britain. Worrying new research reveals that between 1990 and 2005, about 1,500 fewer girls were born to Indian mothers living in England and Wales than would have been statistically probable for this group. Indeed, the Oxford University population expert who collated the information insists the discrepancy in birth ratios between boys and girls is too 'sudden and pronounced to have a likely biological or environmental cause ... the most probable explanation is sex-selective abortion.' The revelation follows a threemonth investigation by a team from the highly-respected BBC Asian Network. ... The 1,500 total represents one in ten girls 'missing' from birth statistics for mothers having their third or fourth female child. It is almost certainly a very conservative estimate, based solely on records for Indian-born women who moved to Britain, not Indian women born in Britain -- for which data is not easily available. Indian women in Britain it appears, are also travelling to the subcontinent to use the services of doctors such as Mangala Telang, who does not carry out terminations herself, but for 4,000 rupees (about £49), Dr Telang will tell you the sex of your unborn child and is happy to recommend someone who can terminate the pregnancy. It is illegal in India to use ultrasound scans for such a purpose -- even in the UK it is the policy of most hospitals not to divulge this information until after the 24-week abortion limit. Anyone who is familiar with Indian society and culture will probably understand why. Girls are often unwanted. [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to Jo Jones for bringing this source to my attention.]
UNITED KINGDOM/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Britain: Muslims End Holocaust Day Boycott"
The New York Times, 4 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"The Muslim Council of Britain, the biggest Muslim umbrella group in the country, has voted to end its boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day, The Guardian reported. The organization's central working committee voted 18 to 8 on Saturday to end the boycott, which began in 2001, and to send representatives to the next Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration, on Jan. 27, in Liverpool. The Guardian said that those who voted to attend said the boycott had allowed the council to be accused of anti-Semitism. Those who supported the boycott argued for a more inclusive title like Genocide Memorial Day that they said could give greater recognition to recent genocides like those in Rwanda and Bosnia. The newspaper said there were concerns that the vote might lead some of the 500 organizations in the council to leave."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
UNITED STATES/MILITARISM/IMPERIALISM
"Now and Forever"
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times, 4 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"Most of the time we pretend it's not there: The staggering financial cost of the war in Iraq, which continues to soar, unchecked, like a rocket headed toward the moon and beyond. Early last year, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated that the 'true' cost of the war would ultimately exceed $1 trillion, and maybe even $2 trillion. Incredibly, that estimate may have been low. A report prepared for the Democratic majority on the Joint Economic Committee of the House and Senate warns that without a significant change of course in Iraq, the long-term cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could head into the vicinity of $3.5 trillion. The vast majority of those expenses would be for Iraq. Priorities don't get much more twisted. A country that can't find the money to provide health coverage for its children, or to rebuild the city of New Orleans, or to create a first-class public school system, is flushing whole generations worth of cash into the bottomless pit of a failed and endless war. ... What matters more than the precision of these estimates (Republicans are not happy with them) is the undeniable fact that the costs associated with the Iraq war are huge and carry with them enormous societal consequences. Far from seeking a halt to the war, the Bush administration has been considering a significant U.S. military presence in Iraq that would last for many years, if not decades. There has been very little public discussion and no thorough analysis of the overall implications of such a policy. ... There are myriad better ways to use the many millions of dollars that the U.S. spends on Iraq every day. Two important long-term investments that come to mind -- and that would put large numbers of Americans to work -- are the development of a serious strategy for achieving energy independence over the next several years and the creation of a large-scale program for rebuilding the aging American infrastructure. ... Youngsters who were just starting high school when the U.S. invaded Iraq are in college now. Their children, yet unborn, will be called on to fork over tax money to continue paying for the war. Seriously. How long do we want this madness to last?"
"America in the Time of Empire"
By Chris Hedges
Truthdig.org, 27 November 2007
"All great empires and nations decay from within. By the time they hobble off the world stage, overrun by the hordes at the gates or vanishing quietly into the pages of history books, what made them successful and powerful no longer has relevance. This rot takes place over decades, as with the Soviet Union, or, even longer, as with the Roman, Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires. It is often imperceptible. Dying empires cling until the very end to the outward trappings of power. They mask their weakness behind a costly and technologically advanced military. They pursue increasingly unrealistic imperial ambitions. They stifle dissent with efficient and often ruthless mechanisms of control. They lose the capacity for empathy, which allows them to see themselves through the eyes of others, to create a world of accommodation rather than strife. The creeds and noble ideals of the nation become empty cliches, used to justify acts of greater plunder, corruption and violence. By the end, there is only a raw lust for power and few willing to confront it. The most damning indicators of national decline are upon us. We have watched an oligarchy rise to take economic and political power. The top 1 percent of the population has amassed more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined, creating economic disparities unseen since the Depression. If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes president, we will see the presidency controlled by two families for the last 24 years. ... Nothing makes [the] diseased priorities more starkly clear than what the White House did last week. On the same day, Tuesday, President Bush vetoed a domestic spending bill for education, job training and health programs, yet signed another bill giving the Pentagon about $471 billion for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. All this in the shadow of a Joint Economic Committee report suggesting that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been twice as expensive [as] previously imagined, almost $1.5 trillion. ... We leave the fighting and dying mostly to our poor and hired killers. No nationwide sacrifices are required. We will worry about it later. It all amounts to a tacit complicity on the part of a passive population. This permits the oligarchy to squander capital and lives. It creates a world where we speak exclusively in the language of violence. It has plunged us into an endless cycle of war and conflict that is draining away the vitality, resources and promise of the nation. It signals the twilight of our empire."
UNITED STATES/SUDAN/DARFUR
"It's Only Black Muslims"
By Nat Hentoff
The Village Voice, 27 November 2007
"[...] Remember that it took just 100 days to murder 800,000 people in Rwanda. And, needless to say, if these mounting atrocities were taking place, day after day after day, in Belgium, Spain, or Poland, correspondents and television crews from across the globe would be there. But in this case, the victims are 'only' black Muslims that Sudan's National Islamic Front government despises as inferior human beings. It is already resettling Arab Muslims onto much of the land that two and a half million of the black survivors have been torn from—and because of the constant violence, some humanitarian organizations that provide food and medicine to these people are leaving to save themselves. Others have been expelled by the government. It would be hard to find any survivors in Darfur with a single remaining hope of help from the pinnacle of the international community -- the United Nations. So far, there have been 21 U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that action be taken by the commander in chief of this holocaust, Sudan's maximum leader, General Omar al-Bashir. Bashir has broken every U.N. agreement he has signed. He basks in the knowledge that under U.N. rules, no member state can be forced to accept U.N. peacekeeping troops without that state's permission—no matter what barbarisms it is inflicting on its own people. Meanwhile, the various rebel tribes fighting this government for their own reasons have splintered into often brutal factions that attack not only the Janjaweed and uniformed Sudanese forces, but also one another and the remaining humanitarian workers. ... Though [President Bush] had, at one time, harbored a genuine desire to stop the killing and raping, there is another complicating factor in our relationship with General al-Bashir. There has long been close cooperation between the CIA and Sudan's intelligence forces, which purportedly provide us with leads on Al Qaeda and other terrorists operating in Africa. As I've written in a previous column, the head of Sudanese intelligence was flown to Washington for a secret strategy conference with CIA chieftains as the genocide devoured more victims. I wonder which high-end Washington restaurant has been graced with his presence. That cozy relationship continues to this day. [...]"
ZIMBABWE
"The Horror of a Stricken Nation Waiting to Die"
By Martin Fletcher
The Times, 1 December 2007
"[...] We found paupers' burials, starving children with stunted bodies, orphans left to fend for themselves in the most brutal environments. It is a country regressing from commercial farms to vegetable patches, from the light bulb to the oil lamp, from the tap to the well. Feet -- often bare -- are replacing the wheel as the most common form of transport. Once Africa's breadbasket, Zimbabwe can no longer provide its citizens with bread and water. 'This is the world's worst humanitarian disaster, worse even than Darfur,' said David Coltart, an opposition MP. 'We lose more people a week to preventable illnesses than are lost in Iraq, but because there's no blood on the streets, little attention is paid to what's going on here.' Zimbabwe, like Sarudzai, has deteriorated dramatically since March. It is closer than ever to complete collapse, according to the International Crisis Group. Inflation has soared from 1,700 to 15,000 per cent. Draconian price controls have emptied the shops because producers cannot cover their costs. Though millions are starving, farmers are slaughtering dairy herds because they cannot sell milk at a viable price. But those who still have money can buy almost anything on the flourishing black market. ... The human consequences are desperate. A senior NGO official said that nearly half the population now needed food aid. In both rural and urban areas The Times found children with the distended bellies and swollen joints of kwashiorkor -- a disease caused by severe malnutrition. In one rural clinic, a 20-month-old boy lay dying of marasmus, another disease caused by malnutrition. He weighed 11 lb. There was no hope, said the doctor in charge. The clinic treats hundreds of villagers who come from far and wide each day on buses, donkey carts or foot. More than 80 per cent are HIV-positive. Half are medically malnourished. That lethal combination has destroyed their immune systems and caused an explosion of other diseases such as TB, malaria, meningitis and pneumonia. ... No country on Earth has such a rapidly contracting economy or plummeting life expectancy, but diplomats still believe Mr Mugabe will retain the presidency in elections due next March. [...]"
ISSUE: GLOBAL AGRICULTURE/WORLD BANK
"Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts"
By Celia W. Dugger
The New York Times, 2 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"Malawi hovered for years at the brink of famine. After a disastrous corn harvest in 2005, almost five million of its 13 million people needed emergency food aid. But this year, a nation that has perennially extended a begging bowl to the world is instead feeding its hungry neighbors. It is selling more corn to the World Food Program of the United Nations than any other country in southern Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to Zimbabwe. In Malawi itself, the prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply. ... Farmers explain Malawi's extraordinary turnaround -- one with broad implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa -- with one word: fertilizer. Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi's newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached. Stung by the humiliation of pleading for charity, he led the way to reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical reception from the United States and Britain. Malawi's soil, like that across sub-Saharan Africa, is gravely depleted, and many, if not most, of its farmers are too poor to afford fertilizer at market prices. 'As long as I'm president, I don't want to be going to other capitals begging for food,' Mr. Mutharika declared. ... In a withering evaluation of the World Bank's record on African agriculture, the bank’s own internal watchdog concluded in October not only that the removal of subsidies had led to exorbitant fertilizer prices in African countries, but that the bank itself had often failed to recognize that improving Africa's declining soil quality was essential to lifting food production. 'The donors took away the role of the government and the disasters mounted,' said Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist who lobbied Britain and the World Bank on behalf of Malawi's fertilizer program and who has championed the idea that wealthy countries should invest in fertilizer and seed for Africa's farmers. The rest of the world is fed because of the use of good seed and inorganic fertilizer, full stop,' said Stephen Carr, who has lived in Malawi since 1989, when he retired as the World Bank's principal agriculturalist in sub-Saharan Africa. 'This technology has not been used in most of Africa. The only way you can help farmers gain access to it is to give it away free or subsidize it heavily.' [...]"
[n.b. What Mr. Mutharika clearly does not understand is that his station in life is to do what the West says, not what it does. He is to preside over a starving people, and spend his days running hat-in-hand to wealthy countries, seeking charitable handouts from their granary-busting mega-subsidized surpluses. Then he is to race home in time to dutifully cut the last kwacha from any remaining subsidy to the poor ... Seriously, this article is as interesting for what it leaves unsaid as for what it reports. What is the scale of destruction wrought in recent years and this very minute, by hegemonic policies that *dogmatically rule out and actively work to eliminate* all subsidies of this type? There is a "holocaust of neglect," as Henry Shue memorably argued; but there is also holocaust by active intervention, and when this takes the form of policies so totally at odds with those one implements at home, the damage caused might reasonably be considered not only intentional, but selective and discriminatory; therefore (if massive in scale) genocidal.]
ISSUE: GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTS
"Poor Most 'Vulnerable' to Climate Change: UN"
CTV.ca, 27 November 2007
"If changes are not made, the world's poorest countries could see 'hundreds of millions facing malnutrition, water scarcity, ecological threats, and a loss of livelihoods,' says the report, 'Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world.' United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Papa Seck, a contributing author to the report, told CTV's Canada AM on Tuesday that the effects of climate change are already in motion. 'If every person in the world was emitting like the average Canadian we'd need about nine planets to absorb the CO2 (carbon dioxide) that is emitted in order to avoid dangerous climate change,' said Seck. 'It is the same thing for the United States.' The findings come just one week ahead of a major climate-change conference in Bali where experts will meet to negotiate a successor climate treaty to the Kyoto Accord. Seck said Tuesday's report offers countries like Canada climate-change solutions that are attainable. 'We advocate a path that is feasible, it won't cost the world to much to achieve ... we just need the political will to do it,' he said. 'The world's poor just cannot afford for us to renege on our responsibilities.' The report calls for a 'twin track' approach that combines 'stringent mitigation to limit 21st Century warming to less than 2°C (3.6°F), with strengthened international cooperation on adaptation.' On mitigation, the authors want developed countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050. The report also calls on rich countries to put climate-change adaptation at the centre of international partnerships on poverty reduction. In total, the authors say $86 billion by 2015 is needed from rich countries to help the world's poor adapt to global warming. 'Increased exposure to drought, to more intense storms, to floods and environmental stress is holding back the efforts of the world's poor to build a better life for themselves and their children,' says the report. The report also calls for increased international support for the development of sub-Saharan Africa's capacity to monitor climate and improve public access to meteorological information. 'Ultimately, climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole. But it is the poor, a constituency with no responsibility for the ecological debt we are running up, who face the immediate and most severe human costs,' UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis said in the report."
ISSUE: NUCLEARISM
"Talkin' World War III: The Return of the Repressed"
By Ron Rosenbaum
Slate.com, 29 November 2007
"[...] The real worry is what happens when Musharraf falls, which seems at least a good possibility. What happens if the authority to authorize a [nuclear] launch falls into the hands of either al-Qaida-sympathizer elements in the military and intelligence service or, worst case, al-Qaida itself? After all, polls in Pakistan have consistently shown Bin Laden to be more popular than Musharraf. From a cave to a nuclear control room is not an utterly unforeseeable nightmare. I think this is the urgent debate question that should be posed to both parties' candidates. What happens if Pakistan falls into the hands of al-Qaida-inclined elements? What happens if Musharraf hands over the launch authorization codes before he's beheaded? Don't kid yourself: At this very moment, there's a high probability that this scenario is being wargamed incessantly in the defense and intelligence ministries of every nuclear nation, most particularly the United States, Russia, and Israel. War is just a shot away, a well-aimed shot at Musharraf. But World War III? Not inevitably. Still, in any conflict involving nukes, the steps from regional to global can take place in a flash. The new 'authorized' users of the Islamic bomb fire one or more at Israel, which could very well retaliate against Islamic capitals and perhaps bring retaliation upon itself from Russia, which may have undeclared agreements with Iran, for instance, that calls for such action if the Iranians are attacked. [...]"
[n.b. A scary and quite urgent piece.]
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ARGENTINA
"Justice Still Delayed in Argentina"
By Uki Goni
Time.com, 28 November 2007
"In August 2003, Ana Careaga was jubilant. Argentina had just overturned two amnesty laws protecting military officers from prosecution for human rights crimes committed during its bloody 1976-83 dictatorship. 'I thought justice would be done at last,' says Careaga, a survivor of the Atletico death camp, where in 1977, at the age of 16, she was tortured at the hands of the military. Careaga wasn't looking for justice for herself but for her mother Esther, who had been a founder of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, a group of women who in 1977 started marching every Thursday in front of the the presidential palace in downtown Buenos Aires, to demand news of their missing children. A captive of another death camp, Esther Careaga perished in a 'death flight,' thrown alive from a military plane into the waters of the South Atlantic, the preferred method of disposal of its enemies by the dictatorship. But the hope of seeing sentences for such crimes handed down anytime soon is fading fast for Careaga and many other relatives of the over 20,000 people who 'disappeared' during those dark years. Over four years after the repeal of the laws, only a handful of the 850 suspects protected by them have been convicted, as trials remain bogged down in endless pre-trial hearings and insistent appeals by defense lawyers. 'This is a continuation of the amnesty laws by other means,' says Careaga. 'The delays are inadmissible. If normal judges can't do the job, they should set up special courts to try crimes against humanity in Argentina.' Careaga adds, 'The crimes have been proven, the witnesses have testified over and over again' referring to years of pre-trial hearings. [...]"
AUSTRIA/HOLOCAUST DENIAL
"Holocaust Denier to Do Prison Time in Austria"
Associated Press dispatch on MSNBC.com, 3 December 2007
"A right-wing Austrian writer who fled to Spain after being convicted of Holocaust denial charges 15 years ago must serve his 18-month sentence, Vienna's highest court said Monday. Gerd Honsik, 67, must serve out the sentence handed down in 1992, the court said, rejecting his plea for leniency because of his age and an unspecified illness. However, the court also turned down a prosecution request to make the former fugitive serve even more time. Honsik was captured in southern Spain in August and extradited in October. He fled after being convicted of denying the existence of the Holocaust and claiming the Nazis never used gas chambers -- grounds for criminal prosecution in Austria. The charges stemmed from writings that defended Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Between 1986 and 1989, Honsik published writings disputing that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews during World War II. Among his books is one titled 'Acquittal for Hitler?' Austria's law making it a crime to deny the Holocaust applies to 'whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media.' The crime is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. British author David Irving was convicted under the law in February 2006 and sentenced to three years in prison. He served 13 months and was released in December 2006 on probation."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
BANGLADESH
"Bangladesh Looks for Evidence of 1971 Genocide"
EarthTimes.org, 6 December 2007
"Intelligence agencies and police in Bangladesh on Thursday were looking for evidence of genocide allegedly committed by Islamic extremists after a private citizen filed a sedition case overnight against three prominent Islamists, judicial officials said. Former minister and secretary general of the Jamaat-e-Islami group, Ali Ahsan Mohammed Mujahid, senior cleric Kader Mullah and retired government minister Shah Abdul Hannan were also accused of murder, rape and looting in a petition to put the three men on trial for war crimes. Fazlur Rahman, a former independence fighter, filed the three separate cases in the court of chief metropolitan magistrate Emran Hossian Chowdhury, decrying their role in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. In his petition Rahman said the three had opposed the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan and were involved in creating militia groups to try to help the then Pakistani authorities win the war. The three men were also blamed for organizing al-Badr and al-Shams death squads from among Pakistani collaborators who were involved in the massacre of Bangladeshi civilians. Bangladeshi records say about three million civilians died in the nine-month war which also involved India after nearly ten million refugees fled the country. [...]"
CHINA/JAPAN
"China Names Massacre Victims on 70th Anniversary"
Reuters dispatch, 4 December 2007
"China has published an eight-volume list of 13,000 victims of the Nanjing massacre in which it says invading Japanese troops killed 300,000 civilians, state media said on Tuesday. The Chinese publications, released to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of the massacre, also known as the 'Rape of Nanking,' include the names, ages, sex, occupations and residential addresses of the victims, which Japanese army unit was responsible and how the victims were killed. 'The books are the most complete name lists of the known victims of the slaughter to date,' the China Daily said. 'The publication of name lists is just a start. We will continue collecting information about the victims,' the newspaper quoted Zhang Xianwen, editor-in-chief of the compilation, as saying. The lists are part of a 27-volume series of historical materials on the massacre and were released before December 13, the day in 1937 when Japanese troops took over the city, then known as Nanking and the capital of Nationalist China. China, where many people still harbor deep resentment over Japanese wartime atrocities, says Japanese troops killed 300,000 men, women and children, many of the victims raped or otherwise tortured. An allied tribunal put the death toll at about 142,000. Some Japanese historians say the numbers are exaggerated, estimating as few as 20,000 soldiers and civilians were killed. Japan does not present any figure, although it acknowledges that many civilians were killed by invading Japanese troops."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
GERMANY/ISRAEL/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Accord to Open Nazi Archive to Public"
Associated Press dispatch in The Globe and Mail, 28 November 2007
"The 11 countries that oversee a vast archive in Germany of Nazi documents and concentration camp records have completed ratification of an accord to open its doors to the public, ending more than 60 years of secrecy, the Red Cross said Wednesday. Greece was the last of the 11 to formally file its ratification papers with the German Foreign Ministry, clearing the way for Holocaust survivors and researchers to access some 50 million pages of wartime documents. The archive in Bad Arolsen, Germany, is administered by the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and has been used exclusively to trace missing persons, reunite families and provide documentation to victims of Nazi persecution to support compensation claims. 'The ratification process is complete,' Reto Meister, director of the Tracing Service, said by telephone from the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial. Mr. Meister said a long list of academics and research organizations already have applied to begin work in the archive, which includes untapped documents of communications among Nazi officials, camp registrations, transportation lists, slave labour files and death lists that detail the mechanics of the Nazi torment. 'I am pleased that the archive of the International Tracing Service can now be opened for research,' said Guenter Gloser, Germany's deputy foreign minister responsible for Europe. 'I would like to invite all researchers to make use of this, and work through this dark chapter of German history.'"
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
"Israeli Migration Agents Target German Jews"
By Kate Connolly
The Guardian, 28 November 2007
"An Israeli intelligence organisation is to send agents to Germany in an effort to persuade tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union to settle in Israel. Representatives of the organisation Nativ are soon to operate on the approval of the Israeli government to 'counter the dangerous assimilation of former Soviet Jews in Germany,' according to the wording of a decision recently passed by the cabinet of prime minister Ehud Olmert. Around 200,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union, about 70% of the total community, are currently living in Germany having begun arriving at the invitation of the government in the early 1990s. But their assimilation into what is now the fastest growing Jewish community in the world has been problematic, largely due to linguistic and cultural differences, including varying approaches to defining Jewishness and even sometimes a lack of knowledge about the Holocaust. ... The Central Council of Jews, the organisation representing Jews in Germany, has expressed its fury that Israel is trying to effectively steal its members. In a recent letter to Mr Olmert, the council described the decision as a 'sign of mistrust which we find personally offensive.' Stephan Kramer, the council's general secretary said that it gave the impression that the 'connection to Israel' and 'imparting Jewish values' was not important to Jewish community leaders, when it in fact belonged to the 'foundations of Jewish existence.' He added: 'If you read the cabinet decision, you get the impression that Jewish Germans need to be evacuated. That sends a fatal signal.' The German government has joined the row, insisting that it should be up to individuals to decide where they live. ... The council has said it fears the existence of Nativ will further deepen the rift between the older community and the former Soviet Jews, at a time when the revival of Jewish life in Germany is being widely celebrated. New synagogues are being built and old ones painstakingly renovated around the country, such as the Ryke Strasse synagogue in Berlin. [...]"
INDIA
"Explosive Report by Indian Magazine Exposes Those Responsible for 2002 Gujarat Massacre"
Democracy Now, 5 December 2007
"An explosive report by the Indian magazine Tehelka reveals new information about those responsible for the massacre of 2,500 Muslims in the western Indian state of Gujarat in March of 2002. The brutal violence against Muslims took place over a span of three days, followed an attack on a train carrying rightwing Hindu activists. Fifty-eight people on the train were burned to death when it stopped in the town of Godhra. Mainstream analyses have explained the statewide violence against Muslims as a 'spontaneous' reaction to the attack on the train. However, Tehelka's extensive exposé challenges this understanding of what happened in Gujarat five-and-a-half years ago and demonstrates that the anti-Muslim violence was highly organized and premeditated. The exposé was published in late October after a reporter infiltrated a rightwing Hindu organization for six months. It includes spycam video footage of Hindu activists bragging about killing Muslims and detailing the support they received from the highest levels of the state government. With state elections in Gujarat beginning next week, the exposé could have a significant political impact. Narendra Modi, who was Chief Minister during the 2002 massacre, never lost his position. He remains one of the leading contenders. Modi is from the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party], which is tied to a network of rightwing Hindu organizations. Many of the activists interviewed by Tehelka say the anti-Muslim violence could not have happened without Modi's tacit support. [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to Fara McLaren for bringing this source to my attention.]
IRAN/UNITED STATES/NUCLEARISM
"Nuclear Meltdown"
By Fred Kaplan
Slate.com, 3 December 2007
"If there was ever a possibility that President George W. Bush would drop bombs on Iran, the chances have now shrunk to nearly zero. In one of the most dramatic National Intelligence Estimates ever, the 16 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community concluded today 'with high confidence' that Iran 'halted its nuclear weapons' four years ago, in the fall of 2003. ... A little context is necessary to understand this report's full significance. For the past two years, various factions in the Bush administration have engaged in internecine skirmishes over how to deal with the anticipation of an Iranian atom bomb. Cheney and his associates are the prominent hawks, in favor of stepping up the pressure and, if the time comes, attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, perhaps pre-emptively. President Bush has sometimes seemed to take this side, at least rhetorically, as when he said recently that failure to keep Iran from gaining the ability to build A-bombs could trigger 'World War III.' Opposing this faction is ... well, nearly every other agency and high-ranking official that deals with national-security policy. And ever since Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense one year ago, the pro-diplomacy wing has grown increasingly outspoken. ... And now, with today's NIE, we see the entire U.S. intelligence community not only, in effect, coming down on the side of the doves but concluding that the threat animating the hawks doesn't even exist. ... Skeptics of war have rarely been so legitimized. Vice President Cheney has never been so isolated. If Bush were to order an attack under these circumstances, he would risk a major eruption in the chain of command, even a constitutional crisis, among many other crises. It seems extremely unlikely that even he would do that."
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
"Israel Risks Apartheid-Like Struggle if Two-State Solution Fails, Says Olmert"
By Rory McCarthy
The Guardian, 30 November 2007
"Israel's prime minister issued a rare warning yesterday that his nation risked being compared to apartheid-era South Africa if it failed to agree an independent state for the Palestinians. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Ehud Olmert said Israel was 'finished' if it forced the Palestinians into a struggle for equal rights. If the two-state solution collapsed, he said, Israel would 'face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, and as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.' Israel's supporters abroad would quickly turn against such a state, he said. 'The Jewish organisations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents,' he said. The Israeli government is usually bitterly resentful of any comparison to the apartheid regime but Olmert's remarks looked like an effort to galvanise support from a sceptical Israeli public for a return to peace negotiations with the Palestinians in the days after the Annapolis conference. Israel has a 20% Arab minority who are citizens and can vote, although they are frequently discriminated against and are described by some as a 'demographic threat.' Within a few years the number of Arabs in Israel and the Palestinian territories is expected to equal, and then exceed, the number of Jews in Israel and the settlements. Some Palestinians argue that they should campaign for a so-called one-state solution: equal voting and citizenship rights within a larger country that includes Israel and the occupied territories and in which Palestinians will soon have a majority. It is not the first time that Olmert has risked the South African comparison. Four years ago, in another interview with Ha'aretz, he gave a similar warning. But that was a time when, as deputy to the then prime minister Ariel Sharon, he argued that Israel should unilaterally draw up a border with the Palestinians, withdrawing from Gaza and holding on to the major Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank. [...]"
"An Excursion through the West Bank is a Trip to Disbelief"
By Dan Lieberman
Online Journal, 26 November 2007
"[...] Entering Bethlehem means being greeted by the separation wall which runs close to homes. The former popular Bethlehem has shrunk in size and economy. Israel decided to incorporate 22 percent of Bethlehem's land into Jerusalem. The government also routed the wall so that it cuts across the Jerusalem/Bethlehem highway and closes the previously used road to Bethlehem. This road brought tourists past the souvenir shops, which are now mostly closed. Hotels are only 10 percent occupied. The livelihoods of many Bethlehem citizens have disappeared. To obtain employment, laborers line up at 3 a.m. at checkpoints they must pass through in order to go to Jerusalem and work. The checkpoint funnels persons through a small fenced area, similar to a stockyard, bringing them to a turnstile and to security control. The once busy and proud Bethlehem is now a decaying town; empty shops, empty homes, empty tourist attractions. If the Christian Lord could rise again, he would be alone. The UN claims decaying Bethlehem water pipelines lose 25 percent of the water. The former Palestine Authority intelligence headquarters, bombed by Israeli jets on March 5, 2002, remains a bombed out group of senseless buildings. At a hilltop site in Gush Etzion, (Bloc of the Tree), the famous Zionist settlements, which were destroyed and abandoned under Jordanian rule, but have returned to grow to 40,000 settlers since Israel's occupation after the 1967 war, Israel's modification of the land is apparent. Israeli setlements dot the landscape. Several temporary vans with antennae are in view on the top of the hill. Two Israelis come jogging from the incipient settlement. An old Palestinan village is obvious in the near distance. We are told that its cisterns have been dampened and the village is static -- building of new homes is not permitted, except for special circumstances. A new narrow road winds its way in the distance. The direct road which led to the main road has been blocked, bypassed, reblocked and on and on. [...]"
[n.b. A stark account of "urbicide," to use the term recently deployed in the genocide-studies literature. See also Stephen Graham's fine essay, "'Clean Territory': Urbicide in the West Bank," available online; and a useful Wikipedia entry on the subject.]
JAPAN/CANADA/"COMFORT WOMEN"
"'Comfort Women' Want Canada's Help, Japan Apology"
Ctv.ca, 27 November 2007
"They were kidnapped from homes across Asia and raped repeatedly by Japanese soldiers during the Second World War. Now in their eighties, the women -- referred to as 'comfort women' by their Japanese captors -- are fighting back against the atrocities that were inflicted on them seven decades ago. On Tuesday, four of the women were in Ottawa hoping to get federal politicians on board as they demanded a formal apology from the Japanese government. Japan insists that the government has said sorry and offered money long ago to the 200,000 women and girls -- some as young as 12 -- who were used as sex slaves by the military from 1932 to 1945. The U.S. Congress recently asked for a formal apology from Japan's parliament, and now MPs here in Canada are backing a similar resolution. 'Sexual slavery is a crime against humanity and I just think we have the moral responsibility to speak out,' New Democrat MP Olivia Chow told CTV News. The Japanese, though, are lobbying hard against a formal apology. Ten days ago, their prime minister even called Prime Minister Stephen Harper to argue that his country has already done enough. But the women maintain that Japan has not done enough to satisfy the victims, and pleaded with MPs not to let the issue die. The women -- who traveled to Canada from China, Korea, the Philippines, and the Netherlands -- told politicians in Ottawa that the matter has not been settled. They said their injuries from war haven't healed and recalled the horrific events they endured during the war. One of the women said she was only 14 when she was impregnated by one of the soldiers who raped her. The fact that she was carrying a baby didn't stop the rapes from occurring repeatedly. Ellen van der Ploeg was living in Java when the Japanese occupiers labeled her as a prostitute. 'We were there for the pleasure of the Japanese soldiers,' said van der Ploeg. 'After 62 years, I'm still waiting for my salary.'"
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
JAPAN/CHINA/NANJING MASSACRE
"Propaganda War is Declared in Cinemas over Nanking Massacre"
By David McNeill
The Independent, 5 December 2007
"One way to learn what happened in one of history's most noxious but disputed episodes is to ask Satoru Mizushima. After what he calls 'exhaustive research' on the 1937 seizure of the then Chinese capital by Japanese troops, estimated to have cost anywhere from 20,000 to 300,000 lives, Mizushima offers a very precise figure for the number of illegal deaths: zero. 'The evidence for a massacre is faked,' he explains. 'It is Chinese Communist propaganda.' For support, he brandishes a book containing what he says are dozens of doctored photos. One shows a beheaded Chinese corpse with a cigarette in its mouth. 'Japanese people don't mistreat corpses like that,' he says, stabbing the page for emphasis. 'It is not in our culture.' The world will soon get a chance to assess his claims when Mizushima's movie, The Truth of Nanking, reaches the cinemas. Arguments over what occurred in Nanking began almost as soon as Imperial soldiers marched into the city on 13 December 1937 and have only grown in ferocity since. These smouldering disputes are set to cross over into mass entertainment on the 70th anniversary of the massacre, with nearly a dozen movies, backed by US, European and Chinese money, set to pick again at Nanking's scabs. Whatever the end result, one thing is certain: Japanese neo-nationalists have little hope of winning the propaganda war second time around. Yesterday, Chinese historians published an eight-volume list of 13,000 victims of the invasion, which includes the names, ages, sex, occupations and addresses of the victims, which Japanese army unit was responsible and how the victims were killed. But the work of the historians will make little impact in comparison with that of the film-makers. Mizushima's reputed $2m (£1m) budget for The Truth is dwarfed, for example, by the $53m Purple Mountain filming in China. Adapted from the bestseller The Rape of Nanking by the bête noire of Japanese conservatives, Iris Chang, the US-Chinese film is aiming for nothing less than an Asian version of Schindler's List. [...]"
NAZISM/GENOCIDE TRIBUNALS
"Last Chance to Catch Nazis in South America, Say Campaigners"
By Uki Goni and Rory Carroll
The Guardian, 28 November 2007
"A final effort to track down and prosecute Nazi war criminals who fled to South America after the second world war was launched in Argentina yesterday. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish human rights group, called its initiative Operation Last Chance because there was little time left to catch the suspects before they died. It will take the form of a media campaign in Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil and offer financial rewards for information that leads to convictions. The scheme, announced at a press conference in Buenos Aires, shone fresh light on South America's murky and embarrassing role as a haven for Nazis after Hitler's defeat in 1945. Between 150 and 300 suspected war criminals are believed to have slipped across the Atlantic to new lives, in some cases with the connivance of host governments, notably Argentina where President Juan Perón branded the Nuremberg trials an 'infamy' and organised rescue missions to smuggle Nazi officers out of Europe and relocate them as 'technicians' in Argentina's armed forces. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre first launched its scheme in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in 2002. The operation yielded the names of 488 suspects from 20 countries, it said. Of that number, 99 cases have been submitted to local prosecutors, resulting in three arrest warrants, two extradition requests and dozens of ongoing investigations. ... The highest-profile catch was Adolf Eichmann, one of the orchestrators of the Holocaust, who was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Argentina in 1960 and spirited to a trial in Jerusalem where he was executed two years later. Those who evaded capture included the Auschwitz doctor, Josef Mengele, who lived in Argentina before dying in Brazil in 1979, and the Butcher of Riga, Eduard Roschmann, blamed for the deaths of 40,000 Jews in Riga in Latvia, who died in Paraguay in 1977. Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who founded the centre, died in 2005."
PERU
"The Trial of Fujimori"
By John Crabtree
New Statesman, 3 December 2007
"The trial of ex-Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, due to begin on December 10, will put the spotlight on the large scale of corruption and human rights violations that took place in Peru in the 1990s. If convicted, he will be the first elected Latin American president in living memory to go to jail. Hitherto only a handful of military dictators -- including members of the Argentine junta that seized power in 1976 and the Bolivia's General Luis Garcia Meza who overturned democracy in 1980 with the support of that country's cocaine mafia -- have ended up behind bars in their own country. Fujimori was extradited from Chile to Peru in September, following lengthy judicial proceedings in Santiago. The Chilean Supreme Court finally ruled the crimes allegedly committed by Fujimori were sufficient to justify extradition. The case against Fujimori centres on his involvement in the corrupt use of public funds in Peru during his ten-year rule as president, as well as his role in authorising two now notorious cases of human rights violations. The first of these took place in November 1991 in a Lima suburb known as the Barrios Altos, when the military assassinated several people attending a party. The second was the killing, in July 1992, of a teacher and nine students at the 'La Cantuta' university in Lima. In both cases, 'La Colina' death squad was immediately responsible. ... The Barrios Altos and La Cantuta killings represent only isolated instances of human rights violation. According to the authoritative Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, published in 2003, some 70,000 Peruvians lost their lives in the course of a twenty-year war (1980-2000) between the Peruvian state and the Maoist-inspired Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) insurgency. The vast majority of victims were innocent peasants caught in the crossfire in this protracted and brutal conflict. [...]"
RWANDA/GENOCIDE TRIBUNALS
"Fulbright Fellowship Supports Research and Study of Genocide in Rwanda"
Newswise.com, 5 December 2007
"A genocide scholar from the University of Arkansas has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in Rwanda while developing a genocide studies program at that country's national university. At the National University of Rwanda, Samuel Totten will work with faculty and graduate students from the Centre for Conflict Management, as well as faculty in history, political science and law, to develop a master's degree program in genocide studies. In addition, he will conduct three research projects that build on his previous research in Rwanda. ... As part of his Fulbright Fellowship, from January through July 2008, Totten will conduct extensive interviews and oral histories with Rwandans. He will complete a current study of Rwandan gacacas -- local courts that aim to uncover the truth of who killed whom during the Rwanda genocide and to sentence the convicted to prison. During a visit to Rwanda in 2006, Totten conducted a series of in-depth, randomized interviews with 25 village residents about the genocide and the gacacas. The Fulbright Fellowship will allow him to conduct more interviews and analyze the data. Totten also will undertake a study of the status and actions of Hutus and Tutsis incarcerated in Rwanda prisons just prior to and during the 1994 genocide. He plans to spend a month conducting interviews with prisoners in four or five prisons in various parts of Rwanda. [...]"
[n.b. Congratulations, Sam!]
"Rwanda 'Hate Media' Terms Slashed"
BBC Online, 28 November 2007
"Three Rwandan media executives have had their sentences reduced for inciting violence against ethnic Tutsis during the genocide when 800,000 people died. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda reduced the life sentences of Ferdinand Nahimana and Hassan Ngeze to 30 and 35 years respectively. Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza's jail term was reduced from 35 to 32 years. Nahimana and Barayagwiza set up a radio station which broadcast lists of people to be killed in 1994. Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) urged Hutus to 'exterminate the cockroaches' in the wake of the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana on 6 April 1994. Barayagwiza was also a leading member of the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (CDR) -- a Hutu extremist party. Ngeze was the editor of an extremist Hutu magazine called Kangura. He was convicted for the publication's incitement to hatred but also for his role in the killings of Tutsis in his home town of Gisenyi. The Tanzanian-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) originally sentenced the men in 2003. The presiding appeal judge, Fausto Pocar, said the appeal tribunal had overturned the conclusion of the initial trial judges that there had been 'an understanding' between the accused -- RTLM, the CDR and Kangura with a view to committing genocide. [...]"
"Ghosts of Rwanda"
By Michael Gerson
The Washington Post, 28 November 2007 [Registration Required]
"We are used to seeing aged Holocaust survivors with faded photographs, telling their stories to remind the young and forgetful. So it is shocking to meet a 31-year-old genocide survivor with memories so fresh they bleed. I talked to Freddy Mutanguha in a field of white crosses, near a half-finished monument to perhaps 800,000 victims of the Rwandan genocide. 'My mom,' he recalled, 'gave money to be killed by a bullet, because she saw the machetes and knew what they would do to her. But the bullet was too expensive.' The mass violence of Hutu against Tutsi left a nation of corpses -- and a nation of stories. A young man took me on a tour of the neighborhood where he had been hunted for weeks by soldiers and informers. At one point, a friend purchased his life with the bribe of a case of beer. He hugs a woman along the dirt street, commenting as she walks away, 'She lost all of her children.' A man I met in passing, I later learned, was 14 when he performed the lonely task of burying his mother, father and siblings in a grave near their home. And the ghosts seem to gather in sacred places. At Ntarama Church, soldiers surrounded thousands of Tutsis seeking refuge, blocked the door and threw grenades inside. The walls and rafters of the dark sanctuary are covered with the clothing in which the victims were found. Light comes through the tin roof in holes from shrapnel, like constellations frozen at the hour of death. [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to Yadi Pantoja for bringing this source to my attention.]
SAUDI ARABIA/VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
"In the Name of God: The Saudi Rape Victim's Tale"
By Daniel Howden
The Independent, 29 November 2007
"Inside Saudi Arabia she has come to be known simply as the 'Qatif girl,' a teenager who was gang-raped then humiliated by first the police, then the judicial authorities. Her case has propelled her into the international headlines and made her an acute embarrassment for the House of Saud. To the Saudi Justice Ministry, she is an adulteress whose case is being used by critics of the Kingdom. To much of the rest of the world, she is a symbol of all that's wrong with Saudi Arabia. Today she lives under effective house arrest. She is forbidden to speak and may be taken into custody at any time. Her family's movements are monitored by the religious police and their telephones are tapped. Her lawyer, Saudi Arabia's foremost human rights advocate, Abd al-Rahman al-Lahem, has been suspended. He has had his passport confiscated and faces a hearing next week in which he may be disbarred. The crime of 'Qatif girl,' it seems, has been to refuse to be silent about what has happened to her. The 19-year-old first sought to bring to justice the seven men who raped her, then complained in public when the courts saw fit to sentence her to 90 lashes for 'mingling,' the crime of being out in public with a male who was not her relative prior to the attack. Coverage of the case this month in the usually tightly censored Saudi media infuriated the authorities. They increased her sentence to 200 lashes and six months in prison. Her sentence still hangs over her. [...]"
SERBIA/KOSOVO/GENOCIDE TRIBUNALS
"War Crimes Prosecutor Hands Serbia an Ultimatum"
By Mike Corder
Associated Press dispatch in The Herald (Glasgow), 7 December 2007
"Outgoing Yugoslav war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte has given Belgrade an ultimatum: hand over fugitive General Ratko Mladic by Monday, or she will block Serbia's bid to join the EU. EU officials initialled a pre-membership deal with Serbia last month, saying it was satisfied with Belgrade's co-operation with the tribunal. Del Ponte, however, says a formal signing of the agreement hinges on full co-operation. 'For me, it means Mladic,' she said yesterday. 'Mladic in The Hague.' She said that while visiting Belgrade on Monday, she told Serbian leaders: 'I give you some days more, but by Monday, Mladic must be in The Hague. Otherwise it will be a negative assessment about co-operation.' Del Ponte presents her final report on Monday to the UN Security Council, which set up the tribunal in 1993 in response to widespread atrocities in the Balkan wars. Her reports carry significant weight at the EU and a negative assessment would make it politically hard for member states to put Serbia on the road to full membership. The former Swiss attorney general leaves the court at the end of this month after more than eight years, to be her country's envoy to Argentina. During her tenure, 91 suspects were transferred to the court and 63 were indicted. However, she conceded that the failure to get her hands on key fugitives Mladic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was a disappointment. The pair, after former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, 'were the most responsible for the crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide committed during the conflict in Bosnia,' she said. Karadzic and Mladic are charged with genocide and crimes against humanity for allegedly orchestrating the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo. [...]"
"Top Serbian Official Issues War Threat over Kosovo"
By Julian Borger
The Guardian, 6 December 2007
"The EU special envoy on Kosovo today demanded a retraction of a threat by a senior Serbian official that his country could resort to war if the mostly ethnic Albanian province declares independence. Aleksandar Simic, an advisor to Serbia's prime minister, was quoted in the Belgrade media as saying that Serbia had the legal right to use war as a means of defending its territory if Kosovo, a UN protectorate for the past eight years, declares independence in the coming weeks as expected. 'Serbia has had negative experiences from certain armed clashes during the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, and this is why we are more prudent and cautious now, but, of course, state interests are defended by war as well,' Mr. Simic said. Wolfgang Ischinger, the European member of a troika of international negotiators who have spent the past four months trying in vain to find a negotiated settlement on Kosovo's future, reacted angrily to Mr Simic's remarks. 'I believe it is inadmissible and intolerable that even before the troika report is out one of the parties expresses himself in this way,' Mr Ischinger said in London today. 'I believe this is in clear violation of the firm commitments expressed by the president of Serbia himself at the conference table in a solemn fashion.' The envoy, who is also Germany's ambassador to London, said he expected the Serbian government to retract the statement. [...]"
"UK Troops Ready for Kosovo Crisis"
By Ian Traynor
The Guardian, 30 November 2007
"Britain yesterday offered to be the first Nato country to send extra troops to Kosovo within weeks, as the Conservatives and Balkan experts warned of a potentially violent crisis brewing. While David Cameron accused the Kremlin of stirring up trouble in the Balkans and warned of a new crisis by Christmas, Gordon Brown's government also risked Russian wrath by issuing a robust statement of support for quick Kosovan independence. Lord Ashdown, the former international governor of Bosnia, accused the Russians and the Serbian government of fomenting trouble in Bosnia and Kosovo, and demanded troops reinforcements to try to keep the peace. 'Unless we get a grip on this situation very fast, the issue of the Balkans will be back on our agenda with a vengeance,' Ashdown told the BBC. Amid a growing sense of foreboding after the collapse of two years of negotiations between the Serb and Kosovo Albanian leaderships over the future of the contested Balkan province, the Foreign Office signalled strong support for a breakaway Kosovo. 'Long-term European stability and security demand a viable status settlement for Kosovo without delay,' a spokesman said, voicing support for the supervised independence proposed by the UN envoy, Martti Ahtisaari. If more peacekeepers were needed in Kosovo, Britain would be the first to send extra forces, he said. In one of his first big foreign policy speeches in Washington last night, Cameron called for extra troops immediately to pre-empt violence. 'There could be a new crisis in the Balkans by Christmas ... That is a direct threat to our national security, and we must take decisive action now to prevent it,' he said. British diplomats indicated that any call for extra troops should first come from Nato commanders on the ground."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
"Final Kosovo Talks End in Failure"
BBC Online, 28 November 2007
"Serbs and ethnic Albanians have failed to resolve the future status of Kosovo at a final round of internationally-brokered talks. The UN had set a 10 December deadline for a negotiated settlement on Kosovo. The province's ethnic Albanians demand independence from Serbia but Belgrade has consistently rejected this. Although both sides say they will avoid a return to violence, the US envoy to Kosovo has warned the 'peace of the Balkans is very much at stake.' ... Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders have said they would consider a unilateral declaration of independence if the 10 December deadline lapsed without a negotiated deal. But the EU has cautioned against this, saying Kosovo must only achieve statehood in partnership with international bodies. Speaking after the final round of talks in Vienna on Wednesday, Kosovo's ethnic Albanian President Fatmir Sejdiu said independence for Kosovo 'will happen very quickly' but refused to give an exact date. However, Serbian President Boris Tadic said Belgrade would 'annul' any unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo. He said his country would use all legal and diplomatic means to resist such a declaration, stopping short of violence. Though technically part of Serbia, Kosovo has been administered by the UN for the last eight years. ... Russia has supported Serbia's stance at the UN Security Council, arguing that independence for Kosovo could provide dangerous inspiration for separatists elsewhere. All attempts to decide the final status of Kosovo through negotiations have so far failed."
"Serbia Threatens Blockades on Kosovo"
Associated Press dispatch on NDTV.com, 28 November 2007
"Serbia threatened to impose an economic and travel blockade on Kosovo if the breakaway province declares independence, as a last-ditch attempt to negotiate a settlement deadlocked and appeared doomed to fail. International mediators' failure to forge a compromise before a December 10 UN deadline raised the likelihood that an increasingly impatient Kosovo will declare statehood sometime early in 2008, throwing the Balkans into fresh turmoil and possibly violence. Top officials from the rival sides both conceded they remain far apart. Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority demands full independence, while Serbia insists the southern province remain part of its territory. 'Hopefully, in a time not too long from now, we will be able to take our decision,' Kosovo's president, Fatmir Sejdiu, told reporters in the Austrian spa town of Baden, where the closed-door talks at a castle hotel wrap up on Wednesday. Sejdiu shrugged off Serbia's fierce opposition to statehood for Kosovo, saying the province 'will not be held hostage' to those who object. As the talks mediated by the US, European Union and Russia hit what looked like an insurmountable stalemate, there were ominous statements from the Serbian side suggesting ugly and possibly bloody confrontations could await Kosovo if it declares independence unilaterally as many expect. Serbia will impose a 'complete economic and travel blockade' of Kosovo, including cutting off electricity supplies to the province and banning ethnic Albanians and their goods from crossing the borders, a high-ranking Serbian official told The Associated Press in Belgrade on Tuesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
SOUTH KOREA
"Unearthing War's Horrors Years Later in South Korea"
By Choe Sang-Hun
The New York Times, 3 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"Shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, Kim Man-sik, a military police sergeant, received an urgent radio message from the South Korean Army’s Counterintelligence Corps: Go to local police stations, take custody of scores of Communist suspects held there and execute them. Mr. Kim complied. What he did and saw in those days is etched permanently in his mind. 'They were all tied together with military communications wire,' said Mr. Kim, now 81. 'So when we opened fire, they all pulled at each other to try to escape. The wire cut into their wrists. Blood was splattered all over their white clothes.' That Mr. Kim's story has emerged after half a century is a testament to this nation's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, modeled after the South African group set up in the 1990s to expose crimes and injustices committed during the apartheid era. Unlike the situation in South Africa, where the truth commission started work soon after the collapse of the apartheid government, South Korea's commission was not created for decades. During most of that time, the country was ruled by anti-Communist authoritarian governments that wanted to keep buried the history of violence against people who had been accused of being Communists. It was not until after President Roh Moo-hyun was elected that the country created the commission in 2005, starting a nationwide investigation to uncover the history of atrocities by each Korea. ... South Korean troops executed tens of thousands of unarmed civilians and prisoners as they retreated in advance of the North Korean invaders during the war, according to historians. The victims were often accused of being Communist sympathizers or collaborators. The commission's investigators have discovered the remains of hundreds of people -- including women and children -- who were killed without trial. They have also identified 1,222 probable instances of mass killings during the war. The cases include 215 episodes in which survivors say American warplanes and ground troops killed unarmed civilians. [...]"
SUDAN/DARFUR/INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS
"U.N. Fails Darfur Again"
By Nat Hentoff
The Village Voice, 6 December 2007
"Consider this a battle plan—which includes intersecting campaigns under way here and abroad—to rescue the survivors of this century's first genocide: the hundreds of thousand of lives that are at stake in the Darfur holocaust. To begin with, forget the United Nations as a savior. As famed British playwright Tom Stoppard put it plainly: 'If the United Nations could die of shame, it would have been dead years ago.' To put another nail in its coffin, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon -- the Alberto Gonzales of that feeble body -- convened, in concert with the African Union, peace talks in Sirte, Libya, on October 27. But the talks soon collapsed because the leaders of the two main rebel groups refused to come, thanks to their acute distrust of Sudan's Hitler, General Omar al-Bashir. On the first day of the conference, Bashir, in a slick propaganda move, declared a cease-fire in Darfur, presumably disarming the Janjaweed, the government's mass killers and rapists. On the very next day, Bashir's bombers attacked civilian and rebel targets in West Darfur. As genocide historian Eric Reeves reported, neither the U.N. nor the African Union condemned these bombings. The only way to end this genocide is by putting intense, continuing pressure on China to compel Bashir to stop the bloodbath. China is, by far, the chief buyer of Sudan's oil and has substantial other investments in the country -- while also being Bashir's main arms supplier. At the U.N. Security Council, China protects Sudan against any possibility of real sanctions aimed at Bashir and supports Sudan's obstructions of the much-heralded Security Council Resolution 1769, which will supposedly send 26,000 troops and civilian police to Darfur, along with helicopters, by the beginning of next year. With Bashir holding supreme power, that deadline -- or any other -- will never be met. The shooting-down of U.N. Resolution 1769 -- along with the hopes of Darfur's survivors -- received only scant attention in the American press, mainly the five small paragraphs on page A10 in the November 22 New York Times: "U.N. Concerned Over Darfur Force." But with the value of the dollar falling around the world, who cares about a Darfur force? Where is Darfur anyway? [...]"
"World Court Opens Two Darfur Probes"
By Maggie Farley
The Los Angeles Times, 6 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Wednesday that he was opening new investigations in Darfur, one targeting Sudanese government officials for alleged violence against civilians in displacement camps and the other against those who have attacked aid workers and U.N. peacekeepers. Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina also said that he would seek to hold senior Sudanese officials accountable for protecting two suspects indicted by the ICC this year. The prosecutor said he hoped the inquiries would pressure Sudan's leaders and play off diplomats' frustration over their stonewalling. The investigations also put rebel groups on notice that their actions are being scrutinized, he said. When Moreno-Ocampo announced his first two arrest warrants in June, United Nations officials and diplomats were reluctant to press the government in Khartoum to hand over the suspects, fearing it would upset negotiations over a peacekeeping force and talks for the troubled Darfur region. But since then, Ahmad Harun, one of those indicted, has been promoted to coordinate aid and oversee peacekeepers for the displaced people in Darfur he is charged with helping uproot. The ICC charged the other suspect, militia leader Ali Mohammed Ali Abdalrahman, better known as Kushayb, with leading mass attacks in Darfur on Harun's orders. He was freed after a brief detention. Since June, Khartoum has raised obstacles on the deployment of peacekeepers and access for aid workers, as well as cooperation with the ICC. 'The secretary-general and the Security Council have seen that trading peace for justice has not gained them much,' said Richard Dicker of New York-based Human Rights Watch. 'Today, there is rising pressure on Sudan to arrest and surrender these guys, or the ICC will go after them too.' [...]"
"China 'Deeply Concerned' over Threats in Darfur"
Agence France-Presse dispatch in The Mail & Guardian (South Africa), 27 November 2007
"China on Tuesday voiced deep concern about the safety of its peacekeepers in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region after rebel groups boycotting the peace process declared they were not immune from attack. 'Up to now there has been no incident, but we are deeply concerned about the matter,' the Chinese ambassador to Khartoum, Li Cheng Wen, said. More than 100 Chinese engineers were deployed to Darfur last week to build roads and bridges and dig wells to prepare for a 26 000-strong African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force, but they were immediately told to go home by rebels. In all, 315 Chinese engineers at the invitation of the United Nations will deploy by December to the region, where war has raged for nearly five years. 'Joining the peacekeeping action in the Darfur region reflects China's constructive role in solving Darfur's problem properly,' the ambassador said. 'This is good for Darfur peace and stability. It benefits reconstruction and improves people's life in Darfur. So it is very difficult for the Chinese side to understand and [we] cannot accept the criticism of joining the peacekeeping operation. Furthermore, we stand against the public threat to the Chinese peacekeepers' safety. I will contact certain organs in Unamid [the joint AU-UN force] to guarantee their safety and take all necessary measures to protect them,' the ambassador said. The Chinese military engineers carry small arms and are entitled to defend themselves if attacked, in line with UN resolutions. 'China hopes those military groups that have not signed the Darfur Peace Agreement will join the peace process as soon as possible and work so that peace and development can be realised,' added the ambassador. Darfur rebels have charged that as 'allies' of the government in Khartoum, the Chinese are not immune from attack. China is the biggest buyer of Sudan's oil and sells weapons to the Khartoum government -- blamed for fanning the violence in Darfur. [...]"
UNITED KINGDOM/HOLOCAUST DENIAL
"In Britain, Free Speech for Far Right?"
By Mark Rice-Oxley
The Christian Science Monitor, 27 November 2007
"It styles itself as the world's most prestigious debating forum, a hallowed chamber at the heart of Oxford University that has played host, over the years, to everyone from Mother Teresa to Henry Kissinger, and from Diego Maradona to the Dalai Lama. But now the Oxford Union is courting furious controversy for inviting two guests of an altogether different distinction. David Irving is a discredited historian who served a year in an Austrian jail for denying the Holocaust. Invitations to the pair to take part in a debate on Monday night has provoked furious reaction in Britain. MPs and ministers have withdrawn from events or resigned their membership of what is essentially an elite club for the political leaders of tomorrow to cut their teeth. Antifascist groups were descending on Oxford Sunday to vent their anger at the decision to offer a platform to two of Britain's most venomous voices on the right. 'This is not about freedom of speech, it's about providing a free platform to disseminate fear in the British community of Jews, Asians, and black people,' says Denis MacShane, a Labour MP and former minister, who pulled out of an Oxford debate because of the invitation. Mr. Irving and Mr. Griffin, he says, 'have had freedom of speech. They have had their day in court and were convicted of Holocaust denial which is one of most egregious forms of anti-Semitism.' Mr. MacShane is not the only one voting with his feet. Last week, the defense minister, Des Browne, pulled out of a debate; and a Conservative MP, Julian Lewis, went one step further, tearing up his life membership of the prestigious union which he said was giving a 'boost' to 'a couple of scoundrels who can put up with anything except being ignored.' [...]"
"Oxford Union Debate Features Holocaust Denier"
The New York Times, 26 November 2007 [Registration Required]
"In the face of angry protests, the Oxford Union debating society went ahead today with plans for an evening debate featuring David Irving, a British author jailed in Austria in 2005 for denying the Holocaust, and Nick Griffin, leader of the far-right British National Party, acquitted by a British court last year of stirring racial hatred. The police in Oxford said they planned to mount 'a ring of steel' around the union building in the city center, where student and trade union groups were preparing to bus in hundreds of people for what they described as an 'anti-fascist' protest. The union's members, mostly students at Oxford University, voted by a margin of more than two to one at a special meeting on Friday to proceed with the event, which was to debate free speech. Mr. Irving, the author of several books on Hitler's Germany, had billed his appearance at the Oxford debate as a warm-up for a proposed national speaking tour in Britain, where his writing and other publicly expressed views on that period have provoked bitter dispute for years. An Austrian appellate court ordered him released last year after he had served one year of a three-year term for denying the Holocaust. Mr. Griffin's party has remained a fringe group despite attracting growing support among disaffected, mainly white voters in areas of northern England that have substantial Asian populations. He was found not guilty of provoking racial hatred last year in a court in the northern city of Leeds. Prosecutors at the trial played a videotape recording made by an undercover reporter for the BBC in which Mr. Griffin attacked British Muslims, accusing them of plotting to make Britain an Islamic republic. The invitation to the two right-wing speakers plunged the Oxford debating society into one of the fiercest controversies in its 184-year history. In 1933 it stirred anger in Britain with its notorious 'king and country' debate, in which members voted they would in no circumstances fight a war against Nazism. Although an independent body with no formal links to Oxford University, many of the union’s members are Oxford students, and many of the union’s leaders have gone on to prominent role in British politics. [...]"
UNITED KINGDOM/HOLOCAUST PREVENTION/DARFUR
"Groups Will Use Holocaust Day to Highlight Mass Murder in Darfur"
By Colin Brown
The Independent, 26 November 2007
"Britain's official day to mark the Holocaust will be dedicated to highlighting the mass murder taking in place in Darfur today, to increase pressure on the Sudanese government to stop the killing there. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust will use its national day on 27 January to demand tougher action to stop atrocities in Sudan. The official charity was set up with the backing of the Government to learn the lessons of the Holocaust against six million Jews in the Second World War. A survey conducted by YouGov for the charity showed that 53 per cent of British people are aware of the outrages being committed in Darfur but 83 per cent have done nothing about them. About 24 per cent said they had done nothing because they did not believe they could change anything, and 18 per cent said they did not know what to do. The charity was hoping that by drawing attention to the killing in Darfur, it would persuade more people to lobby MPs and protest for tougher action against a regime presiding over the mass murder. ... The UN has declared the situation in Sudan a 'severe humanitarian crisis' rather than 'genocide,' which would allow countries to intervene more directly under international law. Britain, the EU, US and UN are working to put pressure on the Sudanese government to disarm and disband the militia. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair did not rule out the use of force, but that is not on the agenda, although UN peace talks earlier this month failed to produce a solution. [...]"
UNITED KINGDOM/FEMALE FOETICIDE
"Britain's Missing Babies: A Chilling New Investigation Reveals a Disturbing Trend"
By Paul Bracchi
The Daily Mail, 2 December 2007
"The waiting rooms of Dr. Mangala Telang's private clinics in the suburbs of Delhi are always full. Dr. Telang is a leading IVF specialist, after all, and one of the doctors recommended by the British High Commission (her name is given out to Britons visiting or living in the city who need to see a gynaecologist). Pictures of smiling, gurgling babies adorn the walls of her surgeries. How chillingly ironic these photographs turn out to be. In fact, doctors like Mangala Telang are at the heart of a scandal -- and human tragedy -- which extends to thousands of homes in Britain. Worrying new research reveals that between 1990 and 2005, about 1,500 fewer girls were born to Indian mothers living in England and Wales than would have been statistically probable for this group. Indeed, the Oxford University population expert who collated the information insists the discrepancy in birth ratios between boys and girls is too 'sudden and pronounced to have a likely biological or environmental cause ... the most probable explanation is sex-selective abortion.' The revelation follows a threemonth investigation by a team from the highly-respected BBC Asian Network. ... The 1,500 total represents one in ten girls 'missing' from birth statistics for mothers having their third or fourth female child. It is almost certainly a very conservative estimate, based solely on records for Indian-born women who moved to Britain, not Indian women born in Britain -- for which data is not easily available. Indian women in Britain it appears, are also travelling to the subcontinent to use the services of doctors such as Mangala Telang, who does not carry out terminations herself, but for 4,000 rupees (about £49), Dr Telang will tell you the sex of your unborn child and is happy to recommend someone who can terminate the pregnancy. It is illegal in India to use ultrasound scans for such a purpose -- even in the UK it is the policy of most hospitals not to divulge this information until after the 24-week abortion limit. Anyone who is familiar with Indian society and culture will probably understand why. Girls are often unwanted. [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to Jo Jones for bringing this source to my attention.]
UNITED KINGDOM/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Britain: Muslims End Holocaust Day Boycott"
The New York Times, 4 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"The Muslim Council of Britain, the biggest Muslim umbrella group in the country, has voted to end its boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day, The Guardian reported. The organization's central working committee voted 18 to 8 on Saturday to end the boycott, which began in 2001, and to send representatives to the next Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration, on Jan. 27, in Liverpool. The Guardian said that those who voted to attend said the boycott had allowed the council to be accused of anti-Semitism. Those who supported the boycott argued for a more inclusive title like Genocide Memorial Day that they said could give greater recognition to recent genocides like those in Rwanda and Bosnia. The newspaper said there were concerns that the vote might lead some of the 500 organizations in the council to leave."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
UNITED STATES/MILITARISM/IMPERIALISM
"Now and Forever"
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times, 4 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"Most of the time we pretend it's not there: The staggering financial cost of the war in Iraq, which continues to soar, unchecked, like a rocket headed toward the moon and beyond. Early last year, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated that the 'true' cost of the war would ultimately exceed $1 trillion, and maybe even $2 trillion. Incredibly, that estimate may have been low. A report prepared for the Democratic majority on the Joint Economic Committee of the House and Senate warns that without a significant change of course in Iraq, the long-term cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could head into the vicinity of $3.5 trillion. The vast majority of those expenses would be for Iraq. Priorities don't get much more twisted. A country that can't find the money to provide health coverage for its children, or to rebuild the city of New Orleans, or to create a first-class public school system, is flushing whole generations worth of cash into the bottomless pit of a failed and endless war. ... What matters more than the precision of these estimates (Republicans are not happy with them) is the undeniable fact that the costs associated with the Iraq war are huge and carry with them enormous societal consequences. Far from seeking a halt to the war, the Bush administration has been considering a significant U.S. military presence in Iraq that would last for many years, if not decades. There has been very little public discussion and no thorough analysis of the overall implications of such a policy. ... There are myriad better ways to use the many millions of dollars that the U.S. spends on Iraq every day. Two important long-term investments that come to mind -- and that would put large numbers of Americans to work -- are the development of a serious strategy for achieving energy independence over the next several years and the creation of a large-scale program for rebuilding the aging American infrastructure. ... Youngsters who were just starting high school when the U.S. invaded Iraq are in college now. Their children, yet unborn, will be called on to fork over tax money to continue paying for the war. Seriously. How long do we want this madness to last?"
"America in the Time of Empire"
By Chris Hedges
Truthdig.org, 27 November 2007
"All great empires and nations decay from within. By the time they hobble off the world stage, overrun by the hordes at the gates or vanishing quietly into the pages of history books, what made them successful and powerful no longer has relevance. This rot takes place over decades, as with the Soviet Union, or, even longer, as with the Roman, Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires. It is often imperceptible. Dying empires cling until the very end to the outward trappings of power. They mask their weakness behind a costly and technologically advanced military. They pursue increasingly unrealistic imperial ambitions. They stifle dissent with efficient and often ruthless mechanisms of control. They lose the capacity for empathy, which allows them to see themselves through the eyes of others, to create a world of accommodation rather than strife. The creeds and noble ideals of the nation become empty cliches, used to justify acts of greater plunder, corruption and violence. By the end, there is only a raw lust for power and few willing to confront it. The most damning indicators of national decline are upon us. We have watched an oligarchy rise to take economic and political power. The top 1 percent of the population has amassed more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined, creating economic disparities unseen since the Depression. If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes president, we will see the presidency controlled by two families for the last 24 years. ... Nothing makes [the] diseased priorities more starkly clear than what the White House did last week. On the same day, Tuesday, President Bush vetoed a domestic spending bill for education, job training and health programs, yet signed another bill giving the Pentagon about $471 billion for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. All this in the shadow of a Joint Economic Committee report suggesting that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been twice as expensive [as] previously imagined, almost $1.5 trillion. ... We leave the fighting and dying mostly to our poor and hired killers. No nationwide sacrifices are required. We will worry about it later. It all amounts to a tacit complicity on the part of a passive population. This permits the oligarchy to squander capital and lives. It creates a world where we speak exclusively in the language of violence. It has plunged us into an endless cycle of war and conflict that is draining away the vitality, resources and promise of the nation. It signals the twilight of our empire."
UNITED STATES/SUDAN/DARFUR
"It's Only Black Muslims"
By Nat Hentoff
The Village Voice, 27 November 2007
"[...] Remember that it took just 100 days to murder 800,000 people in Rwanda. And, needless to say, if these mounting atrocities were taking place, day after day after day, in Belgium, Spain, or Poland, correspondents and television crews from across the globe would be there. But in this case, the victims are 'only' black Muslims that Sudan's National Islamic Front government despises as inferior human beings. It is already resettling Arab Muslims onto much of the land that two and a half million of the black survivors have been torn from—and because of the constant violence, some humanitarian organizations that provide food and medicine to these people are leaving to save themselves. Others have been expelled by the government. It would be hard to find any survivors in Darfur with a single remaining hope of help from the pinnacle of the international community -- the United Nations. So far, there have been 21 U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that action be taken by the commander in chief of this holocaust, Sudan's maximum leader, General Omar al-Bashir. Bashir has broken every U.N. agreement he has signed. He basks in the knowledge that under U.N. rules, no member state can be forced to accept U.N. peacekeeping troops without that state's permission—no matter what barbarisms it is inflicting on its own people. Meanwhile, the various rebel tribes fighting this government for their own reasons have splintered into often brutal factions that attack not only the Janjaweed and uniformed Sudanese forces, but also one another and the remaining humanitarian workers. ... Though [President Bush] had, at one time, harbored a genuine desire to stop the killing and raping, there is another complicating factor in our relationship with General al-Bashir. There has long been close cooperation between the CIA and Sudan's intelligence forces, which purportedly provide us with leads on Al Qaeda and other terrorists operating in Africa. As I've written in a previous column, the head of Sudanese intelligence was flown to Washington for a secret strategy conference with CIA chieftains as the genocide devoured more victims. I wonder which high-end Washington restaurant has been graced with his presence. That cozy relationship continues to this day. [...]"
ZIMBABWE
"The Horror of a Stricken Nation Waiting to Die"
By Martin Fletcher
The Times, 1 December 2007
"[...] We found paupers' burials, starving children with stunted bodies, orphans left to fend for themselves in the most brutal environments. It is a country regressing from commercial farms to vegetable patches, from the light bulb to the oil lamp, from the tap to the well. Feet -- often bare -- are replacing the wheel as the most common form of transport. Once Africa's breadbasket, Zimbabwe can no longer provide its citizens with bread and water. 'This is the world's worst humanitarian disaster, worse even than Darfur,' said David Coltart, an opposition MP. 'We lose more people a week to preventable illnesses than are lost in Iraq, but because there's no blood on the streets, little attention is paid to what's going on here.' Zimbabwe, like Sarudzai, has deteriorated dramatically since March. It is closer than ever to complete collapse, according to the International Crisis Group. Inflation has soared from 1,700 to 15,000 per cent. Draconian price controls have emptied the shops because producers cannot cover their costs. Though millions are starving, farmers are slaughtering dairy herds because they cannot sell milk at a viable price. But those who still have money can buy almost anything on the flourishing black market. ... The human consequences are desperate. A senior NGO official said that nearly half the population now needed food aid. In both rural and urban areas The Times found children with the distended bellies and swollen joints of kwashiorkor -- a disease caused by severe malnutrition. In one rural clinic, a 20-month-old boy lay dying of marasmus, another disease caused by malnutrition. He weighed 11 lb. There was no hope, said the doctor in charge. The clinic treats hundreds of villagers who come from far and wide each day on buses, donkey carts or foot. More than 80 per cent are HIV-positive. Half are medically malnourished. That lethal combination has destroyed their immune systems and caused an explosion of other diseases such as TB, malaria, meningitis and pneumonia. ... No country on Earth has such a rapidly contracting economy or plummeting life expectancy, but diplomats still believe Mr Mugabe will retain the presidency in elections due next March. [...]"
ISSUE: GLOBAL AGRICULTURE/WORLD BANK
"Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts"
By Celia W. Dugger
The New York Times, 2 December 2007 [Registration Required]
"Malawi hovered for years at the brink of famine. After a disastrous corn harvest in 2005, almost five million of its 13 million people needed emergency food aid. But this year, a nation that has perennially extended a begging bowl to the world is instead feeding its hungry neighbors. It is selling more corn to the World Food Program of the United Nations than any other country in southern Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to Zimbabwe. In Malawi itself, the prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply. ... Farmers explain Malawi's extraordinary turnaround -- one with broad implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa -- with one word: fertilizer. Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi's newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached. Stung by the humiliation of pleading for charity, he led the way to reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical reception from the United States and Britain. Malawi's soil, like that across sub-Saharan Africa, is gravely depleted, and many, if not most, of its farmers are too poor to afford fertilizer at market prices. 'As long as I'm president, I don't want to be going to other capitals begging for food,' Mr. Mutharika declared. ... In a withering evaluation of the World Bank's record on African agriculture, the bank’s own internal watchdog concluded in October not only that the removal of subsidies had led to exorbitant fertilizer prices in African countries, but that the bank itself had often failed to recognize that improving Africa's declining soil quality was essential to lifting food production. 'The donors took away the role of the government and the disasters mounted,' said Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist who lobbied Britain and the World Bank on behalf of Malawi's fertilizer program and who has championed the idea that wealthy countries should invest in fertilizer and seed for Africa's farmers. The rest of the world is fed because of the use of good seed and inorganic fertilizer, full stop,' said Stephen Carr, who has lived in Malawi since 1989, when he retired as the World Bank's principal agriculturalist in sub-Saharan Africa. 'This technology has not been used in most of Africa. The only way you can help farmers gain access to it is to give it away free or subsidize it heavily.' [...]"
[n.b. What Mr. Mutharika clearly does not understand is that his station in life is to do what the West says, not what it does. He is to preside over a starving people, and spend his days running hat-in-hand to wealthy countries, seeking charitable handouts from their granary-busting mega-subsidized surpluses. Then he is to race home in time to dutifully cut the last kwacha from any remaining subsidy to the poor ... Seriously, this article is as interesting for what it leaves unsaid as for what it reports. What is the scale of destruction wrought in recent years and this very minute, by hegemonic policies that *dogmatically rule out and actively work to eliminate* all subsidies of this type? There is a "holocaust of neglect," as Henry Shue memorably argued; but there is also holocaust by active intervention, and when this takes the form of policies so totally at odds with those one implements at home, the damage caused might reasonably be considered not only intentional, but selective and discriminatory; therefore (if massive in scale) genocidal.]
ISSUE: GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTS
"Poor Most 'Vulnerable' to Climate Change: UN"
CTV.ca, 27 November 2007
"If changes are not made, the world's poorest countries could see 'hundreds of millions facing malnutrition, water scarcity, ecological threats, and a loss of livelihoods,' says the report, 'Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world.' United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Papa Seck, a contributing author to the report, told CTV's Canada AM on Tuesday that the effects of climate change are already in motion. 'If every person in the world was emitting like the average Canadian we'd need about nine planets to absorb the CO2 (carbon dioxide) that is emitted in order to avoid dangerous climate change,' said Seck. 'It is the same thing for the United States.' The findings come just one week ahead of a major climate-change conference in Bali where experts will meet to negotiate a successor climate treaty to the Kyoto Accord. Seck said Tuesday's report offers countries like Canada climate-change solutions that are attainable. 'We advocate a path that is feasible, it won't cost the world to much to achieve ... we just need the political will to do it,' he said. 'The world's poor just cannot afford for us to renege on our responsibilities.' The report calls for a 'twin track' approach that combines 'stringent mitigation to limit 21st Century warming to less than 2°C (3.6°F), with strengthened international cooperation on adaptation.' On mitigation, the authors want developed countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050. The report also calls on rich countries to put climate-change adaptation at the centre of international partnerships on poverty reduction. In total, the authors say $86 billion by 2015 is needed from rich countries to help the world's poor adapt to global warming. 'Increased exposure to drought, to more intense storms, to floods and environmental stress is holding back the efforts of the world's poor to build a better life for themselves and their children,' says the report. The report also calls for increased international support for the development of sub-Saharan Africa's capacity to monitor climate and improve public access to meteorological information. 'Ultimately, climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole. But it is the poor, a constituency with no responsibility for the ecological debt we are running up, who face the immediate and most severe human costs,' UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis said in the report."
ISSUE: NUCLEARISM
"Talkin' World War III: The Return of the Repressed"
By Ron Rosenbaum
Slate.com, 29 November 2007
"[...] The real worry is what happens when Musharraf falls, which seems at least a good possibility. What happens if the authority to authorize a [nuclear] launch falls into the hands of either al-Qaida-sympathizer elements in the military and intelligence service or, worst case, al-Qaida itself? After all, polls in Pakistan have consistently shown Bin Laden to be more popular than Musharraf. From a cave to a nuclear control room is not an utterly unforeseeable nightmare. I think this is the urgent debate question that should be posed to both parties' candidates. What happens if Pakistan falls into the hands of al-Qaida-inclined elements? What happens if Musharraf hands over the launch authorization codes before he's beheaded? Don't kid yourself: At this very moment, there's a high probability that this scenario is being wargamed incessantly in the defense and intelligence ministries of every nuclear nation, most particularly the United States, Russia, and Israel. War is just a shot away, a well-aimed shot at Musharraf. But World War III? Not inevitably. Still, in any conflict involving nukes, the steps from regional to global can take place in a flash. The new 'authorized' users of the Islamic bomb fire one or more at Israel, which could very well retaliate against Islamic capitals and perhaps bring retaliation upon itself from Russia, which may have undeclared agreements with Iran, for instance, that calls for such action if the Iranians are attacked. [...]"
[n.b. A scary and quite urgent piece.]
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