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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AFGHANISTAN/VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
"Acid Attacks and Rape: Growing Threat to Women Who Oppose Traditional Order"
By Clancy Chassay
The Guardian, 22 November 2008
"[...] For women and girls across Afghanistan, conditions are worsening -- and those women who dare to publicly oppose the traditional order now live in fear for their lives. The Afghan MP Shukria Barakzai receives regular death threats for speaking out on women's issues. Talking at her home in central Kabul, she closed the living room door as her three young daughters played in the hall. 'You can't imagine what it feels like as a mother to leave the house each day and not know if you will come back again,' she said, her eyes welling up as she spoke. 'But there is no choice. I would rather die for the dignity of women than die for nothing. Should I stop my work because there is a chance I might be killed? I must go on, and if it happens it happens.' Barakzai receives frequent but cryptic warnings about planned suicide attacks on her car, but no help from the government. Officials advise her to stay at home and not go to work, but offer nothing in the way of security assistance, despite her requests. She said warlords in parliament who received similar threats were immediately provided with armoured vehicles, armed guards and a safe house by the government. Afghan women are feeling increasingly vulnerable as the security situation worsens and a growing number of western and Afghan officials call for the Taliban to join the government. ... Under Taliban rule, up until 2001, women were not allowed to work and were forbidden from venturing outside the home without a male escort. Afghan women who defy traditional gender roles and speak out against the oppression of women are routinely subject to threats, intimidation and assassination. An increasingly powerful Taliban regularly attacks projects, schools and businesses run by women. [...]"
CANADA/ANTI-SEMITISM
"Ahenakew Testifies That He Doesn't Hate Jews, Only 'What They Do to People'"
By Chris Purdy
Canadian Press dispatch in The Globe and Mail, 27 November 2008
"A former aboriginal leader on trial for wilfully promoting hatred has testified that he doesn't hate Jews, only 'what they do to people.' And he said he still believes Jews caused the Second World War. David Ahenakew took the stand in his own defence Thursday and said his feelings about Jews developed when he was serving with the Canadian military in the Middle East. 'Everybody says "I'm a Jew-hater,"' he said. 'I don't hate the Jews, but I hate what they do to people.' This is the second trial for Mr. Ahenakew, 75. It's alleged that he promoted hatred against Jews during a public speech and subsequent interview with a Saskatoon reporter in 2002. Mr. Ahenakew recalled for the court how he was peacekeeping in the Gaza Strip, the coastal piece of land bordering Egypt and Israel, in 1964 and trying to maintain fences where land mines were killing children. He told the judge he believed the Israelis kept taking down the fences. ... Mr. Ahenakew testified that the fences reminded him of his own people living on reservations and brought up a lot of emotion in him. ... He became a leader with the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations and eventually was named national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. But his career went off the rails in 2002. During a fiery, rambling speech at a Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations health conference, Mr. Ahenakew complained about bigotry in Canada and blamed the Jews for causing the Second World War. A reporter later asked him to clarify his comments and Mr. Ahenakew suggested that the Holocaust was justified. 'How do you get rid of a disease like that, that's going to take over, that's going to dominate?' Mr. Ahenakew told the reporter. 'The Jews damn near owned all of Germany prior to the war. That's how Hitler came in. He was going to make damn sure that the Jews didn't take over Germany or Europe ... That's why he fried six million of those guys, you know. Jews would have owned the God damned world.' Mr. Ahenakew was asked Thursday if he still believes what he said, and he answered yes. [...]"
CONGO
"Congo: Hutus and Tutsis 'Will Always Kill Each Other'"
By David Blair
THe Telegraph, 30 November 2008
"At the root of Congo's turmoil is the presence of the militias who exterminated at least 800,000 people, largely the minority Tutsis, in neighbouring Rwanda 14 years ago. Once, they called themselves the 'Interahamwe,' or 'those who kill together.' Now, they seek respectability under a new name -- the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, known by their French acronym FDLR -- and their fighters are deployed in Eastern Congo's lawless provinces of North and South Kivu. They are bitter enemies of General Laurent Nkunda, the renegade Congolese Tutsi who has thrown a noose around Goma, North Kivu's capital. While global attention has focused on Gen Nkunda, the FDLR's presence is the central cause of the bloodshed. Major Vincent Habamungu, who commands the FDLR's 'Tiger' unit, told The Daily Telegraph that nothing could stop their campaign. 'We are fighting every day because we are Hutu and they are Tutsis. We cannot mix, we are always in conflict,' he said. 'We will stay enemies forever.' The FDLR's official goal is to return to Rwanda and topple President Paul Kagame. Although the movement tries to disown the genocide, many believe the FDLR also wants to complete the extirpation of the Tutsis. Gen. Nkunda portrays himself as the protector of the Tutsis, who also live in eastern Congo. Hence the FLDR's presence provides the justification for his rebellion. Today, Congo is trapped in what one United Nations official calls a "vicious circle" of conflict. As long as the FLDR fights on, Gen Nkunda's campaign will continue. But the FDLR says it will only disarm if Gen. Nkunda does the same. [...]"
"Reports Detail Congo Atrocities"
By Owen Bowcott
The Guardian, 26 November 2008
"Government soldiers and rebels fighting in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have both committed serious human rights abuses, according to the United Nations secretary general. A report presented by Ban Ki-moon to the UN security council documents atrocities perpetrated against the displaced civilian population of the vast region. Up to 250,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the past few months. The details of mass killings and rapes emerged as Human Rights Watch released a separate report estimating that as many as 500 political opponents of President Joseph Kabila's government had been murdered since 2006 elsewhere in Congo. It described the human rights situation in the central African state as 'a cause for grave concern' despite a current lull in fighting. The UN report, which covers conditions between July and November, said elements of the Congolese army and national police were responsible for violations including arbitrary killings, rape and torture. Rebels -- including those loyal to Laurent Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People and Rwandan Hutu fighters -- are accused in the report of 'perpetrating serious human rights abuses with impunity.' Among the Hutu fighters are said to be some who participated in Rwanda's 1994 genocide."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
"'Cursed' Congo Still Shocks and Fascinates"
Reuters dispatch, 21 November 2008
By Daniel Magnowski
"Reports of massacres, rapes, looting and child soldiers have put Democratic Republic of Congo back on the world news agenda this month as Tutsi rebels battled government troops and militias in the east. The fighting may be new, but the image of Congo it projects is not, communications experts and writers said on Friday. In the West, description, discourse and even decisions about Congo are still shaped by Joseph Conrad's 1902 novel 'Heart of Darkness,' which some believe has encouraged a view of the country as being beyond anyone's help. 'Conrad's novel helped fix in the European mind the idea of Congo as ... a moral void in which barbarism is the only law,' said writer Ronan Bennett, whose 1997 novel 'The Catastrophist' is also set in the central African country. ... The idea of a dark, savage place resonates deeply in the Western psyche, to the point at which violence has become the expected national trait of Congo, and the country a canvas upon which the worst excesses of depravity have been painted. 'Ever since white outsiders have been there, it has thrown up the darker side of human behavior,' said Tim Butcher, whose 2007 book 'Blood River' retraces the eventful voyage along the Congo River of Victorian explorer Henry Morton Stanley. 'It's a dazzling place, it blinds you, but its problems are so immense, people get spooked by the scale of it and the nature of the people. There is a propensity to violence,' said Butcher. [...]"
[n.b. I haven't seen this theme addressed in press coverage until now -- the kind of atavistic image of Congo generated by Conrad's book, Leopold's depredations, and contemporary events.]
"Congo Refugees Suffer Shooting, Rape, Looting"
By Anita Powell
Associated Press dispatch on Yahoo! News, 21 November 2008
"Looting soldiers tried to rape one woman and fatally shot another at a refugee camp, witnesses said Friday, as the United Nations prepared to send more peacekeepers to help protect traumatized civilians in eastern Congo. But Congo's president said the 3,100 additional troops proposed by the U.N. would not be enough to halt the unfolding disaster. Some 67,000 people have overrun the village of Kibati, just north of the provincial capital of Goma. The U.N. refugee agency said Friday it was postponing plans to move refugees from the area, which is near the front line between soldiers and rebels. 'We fear that the civilian population, already in a dramatic and desperate humanitarian situation, could be caught in the crossfire should fighting resume in the area,' the refugee agency's spokesman, William Spindler, said in Geneva. Shootings, looting and rape have plagued the already desperate lives of refugees. Tumayini Kahumba, 20, was fatally shot in the village Thursday night as she slept next to her mother and two siblings in a tent, uncle Jean-Dieu Bansi said. 'When the soldiers got here, they wanted to rape a woman. She screamed a lot and the people woke up to help her. They (soldiers) began to shoot in the air to try to spread the crowd. They were also looting,' Bansi said. One gunshot pierced the tent and hit Kahumba near the ear. Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said 20 rapes were reported in a week at a health center in Goma, the eastern provincial capital, but that probably many more go unreported. [...]"
FRANCE/RWANDA
"Rwandan Official Charged in France"
AlJazeera.net, 20 November 2008
"French judicial officials have charged a key aide of Rwanda's president over the assassination of a former president of the country, amid national protests over her arrest. Germany extradited Rose Kabuye, who now serves as chief of protocol to President Paul Kagame, 10 days after police acting on a French warrant arrested her as she arrived at Frankfurt airport. The French warrant connected Kabuye to the downing of an aircraft in 1994 in which Juvenal Habyarimana, then Rwanda's president, was killed. French officials took charge of her in Frankfurt, and she was flown to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris aboard an Air France aeroplane. From there she was transferred to the main law courts in Paris to appear before Marc Trevidic, an anti-terrorism investigating magistrate, Bernard Maingain, Kabuye's lawyer, told the AFP news agency. Judicial officials confirmed that Kabuye was put under judicial investigation -- in effect, charged -- with 'complicity in murder in relation to terrorism.' She was later released on condition she not leave France without permission and appear when requested by magistrates, her lawyers said. 'I'm not so scared because I am very innocent,' Kabuye said on the France24 television news channel after being released. 'I know that when I get a chance to explain what happened everything will be okay, so I am not scared.' Habyarimana's death sparked a genocide which consequently engulfed the country. Authorities in France began investigating the attack because the two pilots of the aircraft were French. [...]"
INDIA
"Can Love Conquer Caste?"
By Emily Wax
The Washington Post, 22 November 2008
"[...] Even though India legalized inter-caste marriage more than 50 years ago, newlyweds are still threatened by violence, most often from their families. As more young urban and small-town Indians start to rebel and choose mates outside of arranged marriages and caste commandments, killings of inter-caste couples have increased, according to a recent study by the All India Democratic Women's Association. In the past month, seven so-called honor killings have targeted inter-caste couples. In the latest incident, a Hindu youth in Bihar was beaten by villagers this week and thrown under an oncoming train because he sent a love letter to a girl of a different caste. The attacks continue despite decades of government decrees intended to dismantle the bulwark of caste, which is widely seen as the glue of traditional Indian society but is considered among the most corrosive features of the emerging new India. 'The recent rise in violence actually shows that the younger generation -- especially women -- are slowly gaining individual freedom in marriage. But the older generation still cling to the old ways where marriage is still a symbol of status, not emotional love,' said Shashi Kiran, a lawyer in India's Supreme Court who married outside her caste and is handling several honor-killing cases. 'It shows a society still in transition and wrestling with deep change.' As part of a controversial incentive for inter-caste couples to marry, the government recently began offering $1,000 bonuses. That's nearly a year's salary for the vast majority of Indians. Smaller cash payments first started in 2006 after a Supreme Court ruling in which judges described several high-profile honor killings as acts of 'barbarism' and labeled the caste system 'a curse on the nation.' [...]"
IRAQ
"Kurds in Search of Their Dead Meet Remains"
By Asso Ahmed
The Los Angeles Times, 30 November 2008
"For more than 20 years, Aska Ali Ameen waited for her husband to come home. She knew he was dead, but getting his corpse would be better than having nothing. At least she could give him a decent burial. When Ameen finally got a peek inside the coffin given to her by government officials, though, she felt no relief. 'As I look inside the coffin, I wonder, is the man inside my husband or not?' said Ameen, standing on an airport tarmac where the coffins of 150 long-deceased Kurds had just been unloaded from a cargo plane in the northern city of Irbil, capital of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region. After so many years, Shareef Ali's remains were like the others that arrived from Najaf last month: bones and dust. There were no shreds of clothing, no jewelry, nothing personal -- only a slip of paper stating that an identification document proved these were Ali's remains. An estimated 180,000 Kurds died in the 1980s in what came to be known as the Anfal campaign, or 'spoils of war.' The campaign included gas attacks on the Kurds' northern homeland and the transfer of Kurds to southern Iraq, where many were killed. As with most of the crackdowns designed to bolster President Saddam Hussein's Sunni Arab-led dictatorship, most of the victims were civilians. The remains of Anfal victims have stayed beneath the country's sandy soil, in the deep holes where the Kurds fell after being gunned down. Identification cards are mixed among bones or tucked in pockets of whatever remains of clothing. Since Hussein's ouster in 2003, the graves have been uncovered one by one. So many, in fact, that the Iraqi government has designated May 16 as Mass Graves Day, a national day of remembrance. [...]"
JAPAN/VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
"Sex Slave Victims Press for Apology"
By Jun Hongo
The Japan Times, 26 November 2008
"Victims of Japan's wartime sexual slavery were joined by international activists and lawmakers Tuesday to demand what they call a proper apology and compensation from the government for its past atrocities. 'The government has kept its eyes shut and ignored the issue,' Upper House member Azuma Konno of the Democratic Party of Japan said at the ninth Solidarity Conference for the Issue of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. The group, which held a three-day meeting in Tokyo over the weekend, demands redress for women who were forced into sexual servitude for the Japanese military during the war. 'To build our future, we cannot remain blind to the past,' Konno said, emphasizing that many countries, including the United States, have passed resolutions requesting Tokyo formally apologize. The event brought together activist groups from Asia, including South Korea and China, as well as victims of wartime sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. The conference released a resolution Monday urging the government to enact legislation to compensate victims, issue an official apology, give an account of the matter in school textbooks and refute comments that question the authenticity of sexual slavery. Lee Soo San, who said she was raped by Japanese troops at Mudanjiang in Manchuria, demanded immediate compensation for her suffering."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
NAZISM/JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
"Oldest Holocaust Survivor Tells a Story of Faith and Courage That's Out of the Ordinary"
By Isabelle de Pommereau
The Christian Science Monitor, 1 December 2008
"Leopold Engleitner's blue eyes still burn bright. Last month, the 103-year-old traveled to Frankfurt, from his home in Austria to tell his story at the world's largest publishing event. Mr. Engleitner, a former farmer from the Salzburg region, is a Jehovah's Witness. And he is the oldest living survivor of the Holocaust. At first no one seemed interested in the facts of his life, which included an unwavering faith and enduring internments in the Buchenwald, Wewelsburg, and Ravensbrueck camps run by German Nazis. Then a young Austrian filmmaker met Engleitner by chance and ended up listening to his stories for hours on end. The filmmaker, Berhnard Rammerstorfer, was captivated by what he heard and eventually dropped everything he was doing to write Engleitner's biography. 'What impressed me was that a simple farmer had the courage to withstand Hitler, to refuse to go to war although millions of people did go to war, that he had the strength to adhere to his own conscience,' says Mr. Rammerstorfer. He first published 'Unbroken Will: The Extraordinary Courage of an Ordinary Man,' in German in 1999. It was republished this year, and an English edition is scheduled to be released in 2009. Walter Manoschek, a political scientist at the University of Vienna who has worked on a project sponsored by the Austrian government to rehabilitate Austrian victims of the Nazi regime, says that Engleitner's story brings to life one of the least-known groups of Nazi victims that also included Gypsies, homosexuals, political prisoners, and the mentally and physically disabled. Nazis targeted Jehovah's Witnesses mainly because as religious conscientious objectors they eschew swearing an oath to any earthly authority and refused to serve in the German Army. Refusal to serve under Hitler was regarded as treason, punishable by death. Among the 3,200 Witnesses interned in concentration camps, thousands were killed, according to historians. Unlike other groups -- most notably, of course, millions of Jews -- they could have walked out free had they agreed to renounce their faith. [...]"
NAZISM/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Nazis and the Movies"
By Annette Insdorf
Newsweek, 28 November 2008
"[...] The Holocaust movie is one of Hollywood's most unlikely staples in any season. There's an inherent tension between commercial films and depicting the 20th century's most unimaginable atrocity. The nature of narrative in general, and of mainstream movies in particular, is to be reassuring. But the Shoah offers few resolutions that can fit neatly into a two-hour package. In order to offer the requisite feel-good conclusion that reflects the triumph of the human spirit, the horrors often get sanitized. 'Defiance' tells the true story of three brothers who escape the Nazis and lead a Jewish uprising in the Belarussian forest. It is the rare Hollywood Holocaust movie that puts Jews at its center, perhaps because the scale of their destruction during World War II far outweighs the few tales of uplift. As Frank Rich once pointedly noted, the Jews in 'Schindler's List' were relegated to background players, extras in their own drama. But ever since 'Anne Frank' and 'Judgment at Nuremberg' -- the first major-studio movies on the Holocaust -- American films have done a noble job telling World War II stories in ways that illuminate rather than exploit the inherent drama. They are still as much a product of their times as of their historical inspiration. ... By the late 1970s and '80s, Americans had grown accustomed to images of violence from the Vietnam War, so Holocaust movies could challenge more concretely the limits of what we could bear to watch -- even if they usually found some way to give viewers a Hollywood catharsis. What's remarkable about this year's releases is the acknowledgment that we no longer need the neat Hollywood ending. [...]"
"Never Forget. You're Reminded."
By A.O. Scott
The New York Times, 21 November 2008
"This holiday season the multiplexes, the art houses and the glossy for-your-consideration ads in publications like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter will be overrun with Nazis. A minor incursion of this sort is an annual Oscar-season tradition, but 2008 offers an abundance of peaked caps and riding breeches, lightning-bolt collar pins and swastika armbands, as an unusually large cadre of prominent actors assumes the burden of embodying the most profound and consequential evil of the recent past. David Thewlis, playing a death camp commandant in 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,' will be joined by Willem Dafoe, who takes on a similar role in 'Adam Resurrected,' Paul Schrader’s new film. In 'The Reader,' directed by Stephen Daldry and based on Bernhard Schlink's best-selling novel of the same name, Kate Winslet plays a former concentration camp guard tried for war crimes. Tom Cruise, the star of Bryan Singer’s 'Valkyrie,' wears the uniform of the Third Reich though his character, Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, was not a true-believing Nazi but rather a patriotic German military officer involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. And of course there will be plenty of room on screen for the victims and survivors of Hitler's regime. Adam, the title character in 'Adam Resurrected,' is a Berlin nightclub performer, played by Jeff Goldblum, who finds himself, after enduring the camps, confined to an Israeli asylum somewhere between 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' and 'King of Hearts.' And in Edward Zwick’s 'Defiance,' Daniel Craig transmutes his James Bond action-heroism into the moral heroism of Tuvia Bielski, the real-life leader of a group of Jewish partisans who fought the Germans in the forests of Belarus. Meanwhile the wave of European cinema dealing with Nazism and the Holocaust ... continued this fall with the American releases of 'A Secret' and 'One Day You'll Understand,' two quiet, powerful French-language films exploring themes of memory and its suppression. [...]"
NIGERIA
"Death Toll More Than 300 in Nigeria Violence"
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 29 November 2008
"Mobs burned homes, churches and mosques today in a second day of riots, as the death toll rose to more than 300 in the worst sectarian violence in Africa's most populous nation in years. Sheikh Khalid Abubakar, the imam at the city's main mosque, said more than 300 dead bodies were brought there today alone and 183 could be seen laying near the building waiting to be interred. Those killed in the Christian community would not likely be taken to the city mosque, raising the possibility that the total death toll could be much higher. The city morgue wasn't immediately accessible today. Police spokesman Bala Kassim said there were 'many dead,' but couldn't cite a firm number. The hostilities mark the worst clashes in the restive West African nation since 2004, when as many as 700 people died in Plateau State during Christian-Muslim clashes. Jos, the capital of Plateau State, has a long history of community violence that has made it difficult to organize voting. Rioting in September 2001 killed more than 1,000 people. The city is situated in Nigeria's 'middle belt,' where members of hundreds of ethnic groups commingle in a band of fertile and hotly contested land separating the Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south. Authorities imposed an around-the-clock curfew in the hardest-hit areas of the central Nigerian city, where traditionally pastoralist Hausa Muslims live in tense, close quarters with Christians from other ethnic groups. The fighting began as clashes between supporters of the region's two main political parties following the first local election in the town of Jos in more than a decade. But the violence expanded along ethnic and religious fault lines, with Hausas and members of Christian ethnic groups doing battle. [...]"
PALESTINE/ISRAEL
"UNRWA Chief: Gaza on Brink of Humanitarian Catastrophe"
Reuters dispatch in Haaretz.com, 21 November 2008
"Gaza faces a humanitarian 'catastrophe' if Israel continues to prevent aid reaching the territory by blocking crossing points, the head of the main UN aid agency for the Palestinians said on Friday. Karen AbuZayd, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said the human toll of this month's sealing of Gaza's goods crossings was the gravest since the early days of a Palestinian uprising eight years ago. ... Israel closed the crossings after Palestinian militants responded with daily rocket salvoes to an Israeli army incursion on Nov. 4 into the Hamas-run territory, where a five-month-old, Egyptian-brokered ceasefire had largely been holding. At present, UNRWA provides rations for 820,000 people classed as refugees and the United Nations' World Food Program aids a further 200,000 people, AbuZayd told Reuters in Amman. 'They often bring us to the brink but they never have let us really be frightened about whether we are going to have food tomorrow or not,' AbuZayd said. Israel had restricted goods into Gaza despite the truce, which calls on militants to halt rocket attacks in return for Israel easing its embargo on the territory. 'This time throughout this whole truce since June none of us have been able to bring in anything extra that would create a reserve so we had nothing to call upon,' she said. ... Ailments associated with insufficient food were surfacing among the impoverished coastal strip's 1.5 million population, including growing malnutrition. 'There is a chronic anemia problem. There are signs that's increasing. What we are beginning to notice is what we call stunting of children ... which means they are not eating well enough to be bigger than their parents,' AbuZayd added. The humanitarian plight of Gazans was by far the worst among the more than 4.6 million Palestinian refugees across the region. 'They are not just under occupation, they are under siege,' AbuZayd said."
RUSSIA/STALINISM
"Nationalism of Putin's Era Veils Sins of Stalin's"
By Clifford J. Levy
The New York Times, 26 November 2008
"For years, the earth in this Siberian city had been giving up clues: a scrap of clothing, a fragment of bone, a skull with a bullet hole. And so a historian named Boris P. Trenin made a plea to officials. Would they let him examine secret archives to confirm that there was a mass grave here from Stalin’s purges? Would they help him tell the story of the thousands of innocent people who were said to have been carted from a prison to a ravine, shot in the head and tossed over? The answer was no, and Mr. Trenin understood what many historians in Russia have come to realize: Under Vladimir V. Putin, the attitude toward the past has changed. The archives that Mr. Trenin was seeking, stored on the fourth floor of a building in Tomsk, in boxes stamped 'K.G.B. of the U.S.S.R.,' would remain sealed. The Kremlin in the Putin era has often sought to maintain as much sway over the portrayal of history as over the governing of the country. In seeking to restore Russia’s standing, Mr. Putin and other officials have stoked a nationalism that glorifies Soviet triumphs while playing down or even whitewashing the system’s horrors. As a result, across Russia, many archives detailing killings, persecution and other such acts committed by the Soviet authorities have become increasingly off limits. The role of the security services seems especially delicate, perhaps because Mr. Putin is a former K.G.B. officer who ran the agency's successor, the F.S.B., in the late 1990s. To historians like Mr. Trenin, the closing of these archives reflects a larger truth. Russia, they say, has never fully grappled with and exposed the sins of Communism, never embarked on the kind of truth and reconciliation process pursued by other countries, like South Africa, after regimes were overthrown. [...]"
SUDAN/DARFUR
"Darfur Getting More Dangerous: UN Humanitarian Chief"
By Jennie Matthew
Agence France-Presse dispatch on Yahoo! News, 30 November 2008
"Sudan's war-torn Darfur is becoming ever more dangerous, warned the UN's top humanitarian official on Sunday, calling for rapid progress towards a political settlement after a government ceasefire. 'The longer this conflict goes on, the more dangerous it becomes in terms of the ability to return to normality as it was before,' John Holmes, UN emergency relief coordinator, told a news conference after a six-day visit to Sudan. The Darfur conflict began in February 2003, when two rebel groups in the western part of the country rose up against the Arab-led Sudanese government. Since then, the conflict has mushroomed into a hugely complex web of violence fought between myriad groups and marred increasingly by banditry. ... 'The situation has not changed fundamentally in five years, except for its gradual deterioration in camps, still there five years later,' said Holmes. 'The environment becomes ever more politicised and more difficult to operate in, and what is happening there in the camps (for displaced people) and elsewhere becomes more difficult to unravel,' he added. UN officials say security in Darfur has worsened considerably in 2008, with 11 humanitarian workers killed, 172 assaults on humanitarian premises, 261 vehicles hijacked and 170 staff temporarily abducted so far this year. [...]"
"ICC Warrants Sought for 3 Sudanese Rebel Chiefs"
By Nora Boustany
The Washington Post, 21 November 2008
"Vowing to protect Sudanese civilians, the International Criminal Court prosecutor yesterday requested arrest warrants for three rebel commanders he accused of war crimes in an attack that killed 12 African Union peacekeepers in the Darfur region of Sudan. Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said the commanders were responsible for the storming of an A.U. camp in Haskanita on Sept. 29, 2007. The attack, which involved 1,000 rebels, was one of the bloodiest against peacekeepers since the conflict erupted in 2003. 'Attacking peacekeepers is a very serious crime,' he said. 'This means civilians have no protection.' Four months ago, Moreno-Ocampo charged Sudanese President Hassan al-Bashir with genocide -- the court's first charges against a sitting head of state. 'No one is above the law,' Moreno-Ocampo said yesterday. The sealed warrants against the three commanders, who lead offshoots of the main rebel movement, were part of a strategy to get rebel support, Moreno-Ocampo said. Their names will remain confidential for now, he added. Leaders of the mainstream groups indicated they would cooperate with the court. Suleiman Jamous, a top Sudan Liberation Army-Unity commander, said his group was not guilty of crimes in Darfur but if named would go to court to prove its innocence. [...]"
"Darfur Peacekeepers Short of Men, Gear: General"
By Andrew Heavens
Reuters dispatch, 25 November 2008
"Overstretched peacekeepers in Darfur lack vehicles, helicopters and other equipment and could be in trouble if seriously attacked, the force's deputy commander said on Tuesday. The joint U.N.-African Union force now has about 12,000 soldiers and police, less than half of a promised 26,000, almost a year after it arrived in Sudan's violent west. Major General Emmanuel Karenzi told reporters the mission was severely short of equipment, including a total lack of transport and attack helicopters. 'I wouldn't say we are helpless,' he said at UNAMID headquarters in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur. 'If you are talking about a fully-fledged attack on UNAMID with big weapons we may find ourselves in a difficult position to defend ourselves.' A total of 11 UNAMID peacekeepers have been killed in Darfur in ambushes and other incidents since the force replaced an African Union mission at the beginning of the year. The peacekeepers, who are supposed to cover a remote region about the size of France, have often found themselves caught up in a chaotic conflict involving bandits, government forces, insurgent factions and militias. In the single bloodiest attack on peacekeepers since the start of the conflict, 12 African Union troops were killed when gunmen stormed their base in Haskanita in September 2007. Karenzi said officers were still hoping to build up the international force to 60 per cent of its promised deployment by the end of the year. But he said the impact of a simple increase in troop numbers would be minimal. [...]"
UKRAINIAN HOLODOMOR
"Holodomor Survivors Recount Tragic Tales of Soviet Genocide"
By Chris Mitchell
The London Free Press, 1 December 2008
"At the tender age of 11 and in defiance of an empire, Stephan Tischenko searched for food to feed his three starving brothers. It was 1932 and the Soviet government was deliberately starving people in Ukraine, a tactic aimed at destroying any hopes of independence. 'The government took everything. We had nothing left,' Tischenko said yesterday as about 200 people attended a memorial service at the London Ukrainian Centre to honour the survivors and remember the victims. He recalled going out to find any food he could, knowing if the authorities caught him, he could be shot on sight. He picked rotten potatoes and weeds. 'When I came home, there was one brother dead -- the youngest.' Again he went out to find food and when he returned, another of his brothers had died. Tischenko's tragic story is only one from the Holodomor, a famine that killed as many as 10 million people in Ukraine. 'Ukraine remembers -- the world acknowledges,' said Mykola Wasylko, president of the Ukrainian Centre, in an address to the crowd at yesterday's ceremony. This year is the 75th anniversary of the famine, which until only recently was almost unknown outside Ukraine. Survivors were afraid to speak of the tragedy in public until the Soviet Union collapsed. In May, Canada recognized the Holodomar as an act of genocide. At yesterday's ceremony, the crowd ate bread baked by one of the 12 survivors who attended. It symbolized 'the bread that was forcibly taken from the mouths of the dying,' Wasylko said. [...]"
"Ukrainian-Canadians Mark Famine's 75th Anniversary"
CTV.ca, 22 November 2008
"Ukrainian-Canadians spent Saturday marking the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor, the nightmarish famine that killed millions in the Ukraine in the early 1930s. The famine is largely blamed on Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's forced collectivization of grain and other foodstuffs that left millions of people without adequate food supplies. Estimates put the number of dead anywhere between two and 10 million. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper supported a private member's bill that acknowledged the famine as a genocide, following the lead of a dozen or so other countries. National Holodomor Awareness Week in Canada begins this weekend with candlelight vigils and other events Saturday, and memorial services at Ukrainian churches across the country on Sunday. 'This is the bare minimum which we, as Ukrainians, should do not only for the millions of victims, but more importantly, for our descendants who must always remember the Holodomor and heighten the international community's sensitivity to the re-occurrence of similar tragedies,' the Ukrainian Canadian Congress said in a statement on its website. Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney marked the anniversary of the famine in Kyiv alongside leaders from the Ukrainian-Canadian community. The Canadian delegation is expected to participate in a forum on the famine. 'Our government is committed to remembering the victims of communism and heightening international awareness of genocide, and we are proud that our Conservative government recognized the Holodomor as a genocide,' Kenney said in a statement issued by the UCC. 'We take such actions to help ensure that similar atrocities never happen again.' Ceremonies across the Ukraine Saturday were marred by opposition from Russia, which objects to Ukraine's campaign to have the famine recognized worldwide as a genocide. [...]"
UNITED STATES/INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
"A Massacre Explained" (Review of Karl Jacoby, "Shadows at Dawn")
By Tim Morrison
Time.com, 24 November 2008
"In the predawn hours of April 30, 1871, a group of attackers ambushed an encampment of Apaches in Aravaipa Canyon, outside the town of Tuscon. 144 people -- overwhelmingly women and children -- were slaughtered. This much we know at the outset of Shadows at Dawn, by Brown University historian Karl Jacoby. We also know who these attackers were, for the most part: an unlikely alliance of white settlers, Spanish-speaking landholders known as vecinos and members of an opposing tribe, the Tohono O'odham. But rather than tie these four groups' tales together into a standard history of what became known as the Camp Grant Massacre -- one of the most brutal and sensational acts in the American Southwest of the late 19th century -- Jacoby breaks them out separately, to better unpack what he calls the 'palimpsest of many stories' surrounding the massacre. The goal is to add nuance to the accepted narratives of the American frontier as cowboy vs. Indian, good vs. bad, Manifest Destiny vs. native Americans' ancient claim to the land. ... On the increasingly brutal attitude of white settlers towards the Apache[, he writes]: 'The civilian scout leader [King] Woolsey, for example, was blunt in his embrace of such tactics. "As there has been a great deal said about my killing women and children," he wrote to the territory's military authorities, "I will state to you that we killed in this Scout 22 Bucks 5 women & 3 children. We would have killed more women but [did not] owing to having attacked in the day time when the women were at work gathering Mescal. It sir is next to impossible to prevent killing squaws in jumping a rancheria even were we disposed to save them. For my part I am frank to say that I fight on the broad platform of extermination."' [...]"
[n.b. A chilling quote which you will be seeing in the next edition of my "Genocide" textbook.]
UNITED STATES/UNITED NATIONS
"Obama's Choice for UN is Advocate of Strong Action against Mass Killings"
By Peter Baker
International Herald Tribune, 1 December 2008
"President-elect Barack Obama has chosen his foreign policy adviser, Susan Rice, to be ambassador to the United Nations, picking an advocate of 'dramatic action' against genocide as he rounds out his national security team, Democrats close to the transition said Sunday. ... The choice of Rice to represent the United States before the United Nations will make her one of the most visible faces of the Obama administration to the outside world aside from Clinton. It will also send to the world organization a prominent and forceful advocate of stronger action, including military force if necessary, to stop mass killings like those in the Darfur region of Sudan in recent years. To reinforce his intention to work more closely with the United Nations after the tensions of President George W. Bush's tenure, Obama plans to restore the ambassador's post to cabinet rank, as it was under President Bill Clinton, according to Democrats close to the transition. ... Rice at 44 would be the second-youngest ambassador to the United Nations. A Rhodes scholar who earned a doctorate in international relations at Oxford University, she joined Bill Clinton's National Security Council staff in 1993 before rising to assistant secretary of state for African affairs at age 32. ... During her first run at the State Department, Rice was a point person in responding to Al Qaeda's 1998 bombing of United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. But her most searing experience was visiting Rwanda after the 1994 genocide when she was still on the NSC staff. As she later described the scene, the hundreds, if not thousands, of decomposing, hacked up bodies that she saw haunted her and fueled a desire to never let it happen again. 'I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required,' she told The Atlantic Monthly in 2001. She eventually became a sharp critic of the Bush administration's handling of the Darfur killings and last year testified before Congress on behalf of an American-led bombing campaign or naval blockade to force a recalcitrant Sudanese government to stop the slaughter. Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition, praised the pending Rice nomination on Sunday, calling it a powerful sign of the new president's interest in the issue. The coalition is urging Obama to begin a 'peace surge' of sustained diplomacy to address the continuing problems in Sudan. 'It sends a very strong signal about his approach to the issue of Sudan and Africa in general,' Fowler said. [...]"
UNITED STATES/THE "WAR ON TERROR"
"Why Can't We Hold Torturers Accountable and Still Find Out the Truth?"
By Dahlia Lithwick
Slate.com, 26 November 2008
"[...] It's sweet and fanciful to think that with a grant of immunity and a hot cup of chai, Bush-administration officials who have scoffed at congressional subpoenas and court dates will sit down and unburden themselves to a truth commission about their role in the U.S. attorney firings. ... I just cannot bring myself to believe that the full story will ever be told to our collective satisfaction. Even if every living American were someday to purchase and read the truth commission's collectively agreed-on bipartisan narrative, weaving together John Yoo's best intentions and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's torment on the water board, sweeping national reconciliation will elude us. As my friend Jack Goldsmith points out in an op-ed today, we already know the truth of what happened. Not all of it, to be sure, but we know a good deal about who made which critical decisions and when. Just read Michael Ratner's devastating new book, The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld. Read Philippe Sands' Torture Team. Read Jane Mayer's The Dark Side. Read this painfully detailed new report from U.C.-Berkeley, in partnership with the Center for Constitutional Rights, chronicling the experiences of former detainees held in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. These writers are not crackpots. We may not have every memo, and we may not be able to name every name. But do truth commissions alone ever reveal the full story? If we decline to hold lawbreakers to account, we may find out a whole lot of facts and arrive at no truth at all. Is the truth that if the president orders it, it isn't illegal? Or is the truth that good people do bad things in wartime, but that's OK? Is the truth that if we torture strange men with strange names, it's not lawbreaking? What legal precedent will this big bipartisan narrative set for the next president with a hankering for dunking prisoners? [...]"
ISSUE: GENOCIDE CAUSES AND PREVENTION
"The World's Most Heinous Crime"
CNN.com, 1 December 2008
"They share a deep sorrow: an idealistic American who tried to protect the Kurds of Iraq, a Canadian general who refused to follow orders in Rwanda, a French priest who fought for the soul of Cambodia. Each one tried to focus the world's attention on the world's most heinous crime: genocide. Each time, they were shunned, ignored or told it was someone else's problem. To understand why, CNN's Christiane Amanpour traveled to the killing fields of Europe, Africa and Asia for a two-hour documentary, 'Scream Bloody Murder.' Having reported on mass atrocities around the world, this time Amanpour traced the personal accounts of those who tried to stop the slaughter. The yearlong CNN investigation found that instead of using a U.N. treaty outlawing genocide as a springboard to action, political leaders have invoked reason after reason to make intervention seem unnecessary, pointless and even counter-productive. December marks the 60th anniversary of the U.N.'s Genocide Convention, when -- in the aftermath of the Holocaust -- the nations of the world pledged to prevent and punish future attempts to eliminate ethnic, religious and national groups. 'The Genocide Convention should have stopped genocide, but it didn't,' said Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. Intervention is a daunting challenge, he believes, because of a tendency to minimize accounts from refugees and victims. 'It's better not to believe, because if you believe, you don't sleep nights. And how can you eat? How can you drink a glass of wine when you know?' [...]"
ISSUE: GENOCIDE TRIBUNALS
"War Crime Tribunals Facing Crisis as Staff Quit"
By Afua Hirsch
The Guardian, 29 November 2008
"Two tribunals at the centre of efforts to bring war criminals to justice are under threat because of insecurity among staff, the Guardian has learned. The international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR) face losing staff at a record rate, putting existing trials, including that of the former Bosnian Serb president, Radovan Karadzic, in jeopardy, sources inside the tribunals say. Many staff contracts are due to end next month, reflecting the tribunals' initial mandate to complete their caseload by the end of 2008. Despite extensions allowing the cases to continue at least until the end of 2009, up to 40% of foreign staff are expected to abandon their jobs, uncertain whether their positions will be renewed. Turnover rates topped 14% in 2007 and are expected to be even higher in 2008. Karadzic's trial is one of 43 cases still being heard by the ICTY, the Hague-based tribunal which also tried the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. The ICTR, a tribunal established in Tanzania to try suspects from the 1994 Rwandan genocide, has more than 30 cases under way and is struggling to track down suspects hiding in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many of those leaving, including lawyers, investigators and detention officers, have specific skills, such as translators with expertise on autopsy evidence from mass graves. Senior figures inside the UN have expressed alarm. The secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, described it as a potential exodus, and said he shared 'concern that there may be difficulties in retaining and recruiting key staff as the tribunals complete their mandates.' ... There are also concerns about the safety of staff from the former Yugoslavia when they return home from The Hague. [...]"
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
NOW AVAILABLE: Crimes Against Humanity: A Beginner's Guide, by Adam Jones (OneWorld, 2008; 168 pp., US $14.95 pbk). See www.crimesagainsthumanity.ca. "A remarkable book that is immediately accessible for the novice in the field, or students, and yet also engages with its topic in intellectually interesting ways for the more seasoned reader." (James Gow, Professor of International Peace and Security, King's College London.)
Genocide Studies Media File
November 1-17, 2008
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.
AUSTRIA/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Shards of Kristallnacht Still Cut Deep"
By Adam LeBor
The Times, 8 November 2008
"Seventy years on, the memories have not faded. Kitty Suschny was a terrified schoolgirl of 13 when the Nazis unleashed a night of violence against Vienna's Jews on November 9, 1938. 'I saw the brown shirts marching from our window but my mother pulled me inside. I heard them shouting "Jews go to hell." There was screaming, shouting, the synagogues were set on fire. Many people committed suicide,' recalled Mrs. Suschny, who was evacuated to Britain but returned to Vienna where she lives with her husband, Otto. Thousands of Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps on Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, a harbinger of the destruction to come. The dazzling era of Jewish Vienna, that brought the world the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, the writer Arthur Schnitzler and the composer Gusztav Mahler, soon evaporated in the crematoria of the Nazi concentration camps. Of the city's 185,000 Jews, one third perished in the Holocaust and the remainder emigrated. Pogroms erupted across the Third Reich that night but the onslaught against Vienna's Jews was especially ferocious. Annexed by Nazi Germany in March 1938, Hitler's homeland was his most devoted disciple. Vienna was a 'laboratory for anti-Jewish violence,' writes the historian Mark Mazower, in Hitler's Empire. This weekend Austria and its neighbours commemorate the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht. But behind the diplomatic dinners and sombre speeches lies a darker reality: of a nation much of whose post-war prosperity was built on looted Jewish assets, numerous members of whose elite were personally enriched by the Holocaust, and which has only just started to face the darkest chapter in its history. [...]"
BOLIVIA/UNITED STATES
"Bolivia Asks US to Extradite Former President for Genocide Trial"
NewKerala.com, 12 November 2008
"Bolivia has asked the US to extradite a former president and two ministers in his 2002-2003 administration to face genocide charges, EFE reported Wednesday. 'We have officially delivered the letters requesting the extradition of former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, his defence minister Carlos Sanchez Berzain and energy minister Jorge Berindoague,' Charges d'Affaires at the Bolivian Embassy here, Erika Dueñas, said Tuesday. Bolivia's Congress in October 2004 authorized a trial of Lozada and his two ministers and in September 2007 the Supreme Court ordered the foreign ministry to request the former president's extradition from the United States. Lozada, who had previously been president from 1993-1997, resigned amid unrest Oct 17, 2003, and fled to the United States. The former president and the two former ministers face genocide charges for the death of 63 people during an uprising by coca growers, unionists and peasant farmers that erupted over his plans to export natural gas to the United States and Mexico via Chilean ports. He also faces charges on eight other counts. [...]"
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
"Film on Horrors of Bosnian War Wins Rome Festival"
Reuters dispatch, 31 October 2008
"'Resolution 819,' a film about the Srebrenica massacre in the last months of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, won the top prize at the Rome film festival Friday. A French production directed by Italy's Giacomo Battiato, the film tells the true story of a policeman sent by the U.N.'s highest court to investigate the disappearance of 8,000 Muslim men and boys from the Bosnian town after it fell to Bosnian Serb forces. The film spares the audience little of the harrowing evidence the policeman gathers over the years on the slaughter in what was supposed to be a U.N. safe area. That evidence served as the basis for the indictment for genocide of Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, who was arrested in July. His wartime commander Ratko Mladic, also indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, is still at large. The title refers to a 1993 U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an end to armed Serb attacks on Srebrenica. 'Resolution 819' won the prize for best film awarded by members of the public. ... 'I think the public shared my point of view, and that is the anger, the pain toward the worst war since World War Two, a war that happened before our eyes,' Battiato said at the awards ceremony. [...]"
CHINA/TIBET
"Tibetans Meet to Rethink Autonomy"
AlJazeera.net, 17 November 2008
"Hundreds of exiled Tibetans have begun a landmark meeting in northern India to discuss their homeland's future with China. The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, called the meeting following frustrations over repeated failed talks with the Chinese government, saying that new ideas were necessary. The gathering in Dharamsala, the seat of Tibet's government in exile, is to re-evaluate the so-called 'middle path' policy with China which espouses 'meaningful autonomy' for the Himalayan region. Talks last week -- the third round since violent anti-China protests rocked the Tibetan capital Lhasa in March -- failed because of 'a great divergence' between the two sides over China's policy on Tibet, according to Chinese officials. A Chinese government spokesman earlier dismissed the gathering to discuss the core of the decades-old dispute, saying that such 'separatist attempts will get nowhere.' On Sunday, the Dalai Lama's envoys to the Beijing talks said China had rejected a detailed plan on how Tibetans could meet their needs of autonomy within the framework of the Chinese constitution. Before Monday's meeting, the Dalai Lama urged the 500 participants to consider all aspects of policy regarding China, ensuring that the thorny issue of whether to push for full independence is tackled. [...]"
COLOMBIA
"U.N. Says Colombian Military Executing Civilians"
CNN.com, 1 November 2008
"Colombia's U.S.-backed security forces are engaging in 'systematic and widespread' extrajudicial executions of innocent civilians as part of their counterinsurgency campaign, a top United Nations diplomat said Saturday U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, in Bogota, says Colombia must rein in its security forces. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, in Bogota, says Colombia must rein in its security forces. Speaking in Bogota after a weeklong fact-finding tour, Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the scale of the killings could constitute a 'crime against humanity' under international humanitarian law, adding that international courts could intervene if the Colombian government was 'unwilling or unable' to handle the investigations itself. 'An offense becomes a crime against humanity if it is widespread and systematic against the civilian population,' Pillay said at a news conference. 'We are observing and keeping a record of the number of extrajudicial killings [in Colombia], and it does appear to be systematic and widespread in my view. The goal is to have the national authorities these crimes and prosecute the perpetrators. It's only when a country is unable and unwilling that the International Criminal Court, for instance, would have the power to intervene,' she added. Her comments come three days after Colombian President Alvaro Uribe fired 25 army officers and non-commissioned officers, including three generals and 11 colonels, for alleged involvement or negligence in a case involving the forced disappearance and summary executions of at least 11 young men from a poor Bogota suburb this year. It was the biggest purge in Colombian military ranks for alleged human rights abuses. [...]"
CONGO
"UN Adviser Urges Combatants in Congo to Refrain from Actions That Might Encourage Genocide"
By Edith M. Lederer
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 7 November 2008
"A key U.N. adviser warned combatants in eastern Congo Friday against any actions that might encourage genocide, saying anyone promoting ethnic killings will be held accountable. Francis Deng, the special adviser on genocide to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said he has been 'especially alarmed by the escalation of violence in the past few weeks.' The conflict in eastern Congo is fueled by ethnic hatred left over from genocide in 1994 the claimed half-million Tutsis in neighboring Rwanda. Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, who went on the offensive Aug. 28, claims he is fighting to protect minority Tutsis from Rwandan Hutu rebels who participated in the genocide and fled to Congo afterward. In a statement released at U.N. headquarters, Deng emphasized 'that the belligerents in eastern Congo must refrain from actions that might encourage genocide and that they, and any actors who provide material support, will be held accountable if they fail to do so.' He said that under international law 'the intention to destroy an ethnic population group, in whole or in part, is a grave crime' and that the international community is obligated to punish violators. ... Deng, a human rights expert and former Sudanese diplomat, is responsible for determining from existing sources of information whether there is a risk of genocide in any part of the world and to alert the international community to such risks."
"Murder, Muddle and Panic"
The Economist, 6 November 2008
"'The situation is catastrophic,' says a Red Cross man. 'There's no other word.' Tens of thousands of terrified civilians are jamming the roads of Congo's North Kivu province in a frantic southbound exodus in the hope of self-preservation ... General Laurent Nkunda's mainly Tutsi rebels are poised to grab the eastern city of Goma after capturing most of the smaller towns in the area. Reports of massacres on the night of November 5th in Kiwanja, a small town north of Goma, have increased the panic. An officer in General Nkunda's force said that his men had 'neutralised' men in civilian clothes there who, he said, covertly belonged to the so-called Mai-Mai militias; they, along with the Congolese army and others, have been fighting the Tutsi rebels. A local clergyman said at least 180 civilians had been killed during the night. The UN's mission to Congo, known by the acronym MONUC, which has 17,000 peacekeepers across the country, including 6,000-odd in North Kivu, has been unable to cope. Diplomacy, hitherto fruitless, is intensifying. European diplomats, led by the foreign ministers of Britain and France, David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner, have visited regional capitals, calling for talks and troop reinforcements. The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, was set to host a summit on November 7th in Nairobi, Kenya's capital, bringing together the presidents of Congo and Rwanda, Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame respectively, who have been sponsoring some of the rival rebel armies. ... The French government suggested that a robust European force of 400 to 1,500 soldiers be dispatched urgently to protect the humanitarian missions that are struggling to give relief to hundreds of thousands of hapless and hungry civilians. So far the European Union has been loth to give the go-ahead. [...]"
"Ashley Judd's Heart Of Darkness"
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek, 30 October 2008
"[...] 'This epidemic of rape; it's like a contagion,' said Judd. 'When one man does it, it activates other men, and then the more brutal it becomes—looking for pregnant women to rape, and children. It's so unbelievably heinous that it's hard for us to wrap our minds around. Sit with a woman, who, through word of mouth, heard there was a clinic which could help a woman who had been raped ... She had to figure out -- in the midst of being stigmatized, in the midst of her physical agony, in the midst of incontinence and starvation -- how to get herself walking, crawling to this clinic, only to find that it's overcrowded, because there are so many women, hundreds, if not thousands, just like her. And just imagine, this is a clinic that does nothing but genital reconstruction.' 'What exactly are we talking about here?' 'Well, the vagina will tear when being forced to accommodate either a rapist's anatomy or objects that are introduced: wood, rock, sticks, guns, bayonets. There will be perforation of the vaginal walls, perforation and ripping of the cervix, potentially, based on the extent of the penetration into the uterus. The wall between the rectum and vagina is ripped apart. The urethra, which goes to the bladder, is damaged. There is incontinence. The urine is constantly seeping out, because the muscles and mechanisms that hold the bladder intact are ruined; there is faecal incontinency, which of course can introduce faecal matter into the gut, which results in horrific infections. Does that paint the picture?' It did. So I asked Judd if she thought people ought to have a stronger sense of just how horrible these scenes are -- or would people simply turn their backs ... again?" [...]"
[As this excerpt indicates, this is no mere celebrity portrait, but one of the more powerful and evocative recent features on Congo that I have seen.]
EL SALVADOR
"In El Salvador, A New Push for Justice in Priests' Slayings"
By Tracy Wilkinson and Alex Renderos
The Los Angeles Times, 13 November 2008
"The murder 19 years ago of six Jesuit priests by a U.S.-trained army unit was the turning point in El Salvador's long civil war, an atrocity so grave that it helped force an end to the fighting. But the soldiers and officers convicted or implicated in the slayings are free under a controversial amnesty law that is receiving new attention thanks to election politics here and a potentially landmark court case in Spain. Relatives of the priests, who were killed along with their housekeeper and her young daughter, have joined with two human rights organizations and today plan to file suit in Madrid against the generals, colonels and soldiers blamed for the killings. The plaintiffs are invoking the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, which Spanish courts have championed, that allows a case of egregious human rights violation to be heard in a country even if the acts did not take place there and the defendants do not reside there. Human rights activists in the Americas and Europe said they hoped the Jesuit complaint could be used to fight impunity and bring justice to the victims' families by joining a procession of Spanish court cases that have forced Latin America to confront its violent past. These include suits against Guatemalan military officers accused in the massacre of indigenous citizens and figures in Argentina's 'dirty war' against leftist dissidents. 'This has an invaluable historic importance for El Salvador,' said David Morales, program coordinator at a legal think tank in San Salvador that specializes in justice issues. 'All Salvadoran society has been the victim here. ... Just knowing the truth has a restorative effect.' [...]"
GERMANY/ITALY/SECOND WORLD WAR
"Berlin Takes Rome to Court"
Der Spiegel Online, 3 November 2008
"After a high court in Italy ruled that Germany is liable for damages stemming from a 1944 massacre in the village of Civitella perpetrated by Nazi soldiers, Berlin has asked the International Criminal Court to look into the case. Berlin worries the verdict could set off an avalanche of World War II-related court cases against the German government. On Oct. 22, Italy's highest appellate court, the Cassation, ruled that Germany must pay €1 million in compensation to the descendents of those killed by Nazi soldiers in the Italian town of Civitella in 1944. Now, Germany has taken the case to the International Criminal Court in The Hague in the hopes that it will rule that the payments don't have to be made. A spokesman for the foreign ministry in Berlin on Saturday confirmed a report in this week's SPIEGEL, saying that the ICC 'has been asked to clarify this question.' The October verdict in Rome also sentenced a German officer named Max Josef Milde in abstentia to life in prison. The court found that the officer was involved in the June 29, 1944 massacre which saw over 200 villagers, including the village priest, executed in revenge for the killing of three German soldiers by partisans 10 days earlier. Germany and Italy signed an agreement in 1961, which resulted in a blanket payment of 40 million deutsche marks. Of particular concern to Berlin, however, is the finding that Germany can also be held liable for the massacre. Such a precedent could trigger an expensive wave of individual lawsuits against Germany. [...]"
GERMANY/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Alleged Nazi Mass Murderer Could Face Trial in Germany"
Spiegel Online, 10 November 2008
"A suspected Nazi mass murderer, accused of complicity in the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews, could soon find himself hauled before the courts in Germany. Ivan John Demjanjuk's alleged role as a World War II death camp guard has for years made him one of the most hotly pursued targets of German investigators. And now Nazi hunter Kurt Schrimm, who heads up the world's largest investigation center for such atrocities in Ludwigsburg, Germany believes he has finally pinned him down. Following painstaking research across three continents, Schrimm and his colleagues believe they have enough material to request the extradition of 88-year-old Demjanjuk, who now lives in the state of Ohio in the United States. Public investigator Schrimm on Monday handed documentation for preliminary proceedings against the 88-year-old, remembered by those he allegedly tortured as 'Ivan the Terrible,' over to the Public Prosecutor's Office in Munich. ... The charges against the elderly man are enough to send a shiver down the spine of even the most conflict-hardened. It is alleged he trained as a guard in the SS camp Trawniki close to the Polish city of Lublin. From the end of March to the middle of September 1943, prosecutors claim he served in the death camp Sobibor in south-east Poland. Between May 1942 and October 1943, some 250,000 people were executed there. It is alleged Demjanjuk personally has the blood of tens of thousands of these victims on his hands. [...]"
[n.b. See also Spiegel's useful "Nazi Most Wanted List."]
"Blueprints for Auschwitz Camp Found in Germany"
By Erik Kirschbaum
Reuters dispatch, 9 November 2008
"The original construction plans believed used for a major expansion of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in 1941 have been found in a Berlin flat, Germany's Bild newspaper reported on Saturday. The daily printed three architect's drawings on yellowing paper from the batch of 28 pages of blueprints it obtained. One has an 11.66 meter by 11.20 meter room marked 'Gaskammer' (gas chamber) that was part of a 'delousing facility.' No one from the federal government's archives was immediately available for comment on the authenticity or importance of the documents. The plans, published ahead of the 70th anniversary of the 'Kristallnacht' or the Nazi pogrom that was a harbinger of the Holocaust, also include a crematorium and a 'L. Keller' -- an abbreviation for 'Leichenkeller' or corpse cellar. A drawing of the building for Auschwitz's main gate was also found in the documents that Bild said were believed to have been discovered when a Berlin flat was cleaned out. The mass-circulation newspaper quoted Hans-Dieter Kreikamp, head of the federal archives office in Berlin, as saying the blueprints offered 'authentic evidence of the systematically planned genocide of European Jews.' There were mass killings of about one million Jews before the Nazi's "Final Solution" was formulated in late 1941. The decision to kill Europe's 11 million Jews was made at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. ... 'These documents reveal that everyone who had even anything remotely to do with the planning and construction of the concentration camp must have know that people were to be gassed to death in assembly-line fashion,' Bild wrote. [...]"
"Germany Confronts Its Dark Past"
By Andrew Purvis
Time.com, 8 November 2008
"Seventy years ago on Nov. 9, the Jews of Germany -- and perhaps most of Europe -- had their fate revealed to them on one frightening night. Kristallnacht, or 'Night of Broken Glass,' saw the ruling Nazi party unleash bands of thugs on Jewish communities throughout Germany and Austria, ostensibly to avenge an attack on a German diplomat in Paris by a young German Jew whose family had been forced to flee Hitler's regime. By dawn on Nov. 10, 92 Jews lay dead, among the 400 beaten, shot or driven to suicide by the abuse. Some 267 synagogues had been torched and hundreds of Jewish businesses destroyed, and 30,000 Jews had been rounded up and dispatched to concentration camps. It was, most historians believe, the pogrom that portended the systematic murder of 6 million European Jews by Hitler's regime. Germany will commemorate the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht on Sunday through a series of events aimed at ensuring that a new generation of Germans, too young to have known anyone connected with those events, learn about the horrors that flowed from the racism of Germany's past, in the hope of guarding against any future recurrence. Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to mark the anniversary by speaking alongside the head of Germany's Jewish community, Charlotte Knobloch, at the Ryke Street synagogue in the old eastern part of Berlin. Although the synagogue was torched on Kristallnacht (or Reichspogromnacht, as some German Jews now prefer to call it), its structure remained intact, and it was reopened last year for the first time since World War II. The ceremony will include the screening of a documentary on the infamous night and another on the Jewish community in Germany today. Elsewhere in Berlin, a Mozart requiem and concert for violin by Felix Mendelssohn will be performed by the philharmonic chamber orchestra. [...]"
"Berlin Center Marks Those Who Saved Jews"
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 2 November 2008
"The 'Silent Heroes' now have a voice. A new memorial center in Berlin pays tribute to the thousands of German gentiles who risked everything to save Jews from persecution by the Nazis and documents the stories of those who sometimes spent years in hiding. The 'Silent Heroes' memorial center opened to the public last week amid a new focus in recent years on the legacy of the 'good German' -- individuals who resisted Hitler, were labeled as traitors by the Nazis and were often shunned after the war. 'Their accomplishments were totally forgotten, and this is an initiative to bring them back into our memory,' said Johannes Tuchel, director of the German Resistance Memorial Center Foundation, which is behind the new memorial. About 5,000 Jews were able to survive the war in hiding in Germany. It is not clear how many people were involved in helping them, Tuchel said. Research suggests that for each person in hiding, about 10 people aided him or her. Peter Michalski, whose family went into hiding in 1944, said it was a long overdue tribute to the Germans who helped people like him escape death. 'Where would you be now if these people hadn't existed?' he asked contemplatively while looking at an exhibit focusing on his family's plight. 'The answer is simple: We wouldn't be.' The three-room exhibition has many multimedia displays in English and German -- audio accounts, touch-screen computers focusing on 18 aspects of survival, and computers with more details on those in hiding and their rescuers. There are also personal photos, diaries and letters. The best-known subject is Oskar Schindler, whose story was told by Steven Spielberg's Oscar-winning film 'Schindler's List,' which showed his efforts to shield 1,000 Jews from Nazi camps by hiring them to work in his factories. Some of the lesser-known stories are just as moving. [...]"
INDIA/FOOD SECURITY
"The GM Genocide: Thousands of Indian Farmers are Committing Suicide after Using Genetically Modified Crops"
By Andrew Malone
The Daily Mail, 3 November 2008
"[...] Official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture do indeed confirm that in a huge humanitarian crisis, more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month. Simple, rural people, they are dying slow, agonising deaths. Most swallow insecticide -- a pricey substance they were promised they would not need when they were coerced into growing expensive GM crops. It seems that many are massively in debt to local money-lenders, having over-borrowed to purchase GM seed.Take the case of Suresh Bhalasa, another farmer who was cremated this week, leaving a wife and two children. As night fell after the ceremony, and neighbours squatted outside while sacred cows were brought in from the fields, his family had no doubt that their troubles stemmed from the moment they were encouraged to buy BT Cotton, a geneticallymodified plant created by Monsanto. 'We are ruined now,' said the dead man's 38-year-old wife. 'We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.' Villagers bundled him into a rickshaw and headed to hospital along rutted farm roads. 'He cried out that he had taken the insecticide and he was sorry,' she said, as her family and neighbours crowded into her home to pay their respects. 'He was dead by the time they got to hospital.' Asked if the dead man was a 'drunkard' or suffered from other 'social problems', as alleged by pro-GM officials, the quiet, dignified gathering erupted in anger. 'No! No!' one of the dead man's brothers exclaimed. 'Suresh was a good man. He sent his children to school and paid his taxes. 'He was strangled by these magic seeds. They sell us the seeds, saying they will not need expensive pesticides but they do. We have to buy the same seeds from the same company every year. It is killing us. Please tell the world what is happening here.' [...]"
ISRAEL/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Holocaust is Over, Leading Israeli Tells Likud"
By Donald Macintyre
The Independent, 1 November 2008
"Benjamin Netanyahu, a front-runner for the Israeli premiership, has been severely criticised by a former Speaker of the Knesset and head of the Jewish Agency for comparing the threat posed by Iran to that of pre-war Nazi Germany. Mr. Netanyahu, whose Likud Party is running neck and neck in the polls with Kadima, led by Tzipi Livni, has gone further than his rivals in implying he might authorise a unilateral attack on Iranian nuclear installations. Avraham Burg, whose new book The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise From Its Ashes is out in Britain this weekend, says in an interview with The Independent Magazine that the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is 'no doubt a problem.' Mr. Burg adds: 'He is an issue in the Western world and for Israel's sense of confidence in particular.' But he continues: 'What is [Mr. Netanyahu's] soundbite? "It is [19]38 all over again." Do me a favour. Did we have such a powerful state in '38? Did we have this onmipotent army in '38? Did we have the most important superpowers siding with us in '38? Did we have the Catholic church taking a different attitude in '38? It's not '38, however you look at it. And even Ahmadinejad, when you compare him with Hitler, you diminish Hitler.' Mr. Burg's book, in part a plea to fellow Israelis more than 60 years after the Holocaust to stop seeing themselves as 'a nation of victims,' caused furious debate when the Hebrew version became a bestseller in Israel last year. The new translation is likely to provoke similar argument, particularly in the US. Mr. Burg, a strong Barack Obama supporter, says 'a dialoguing President is better than a shooter' and that George Bush has been a 'disaster for the world and for Israel.' He argues against Israel defining itself as a 'Jewish state' instead of as a 'state for the Jewish people which belongs to all its citizens' -- including Arabs. Mr. Burg, who does not rule out a return to Israeli politics, also warns that the days for a two-state solution are 'numbered' because Israeli and Palestinian societies have been 'abducted' by fundamentalists. [...]"
JAPAN/SECOND WORLD WAR
"WWII Apologists Persist Despite Japanese Policy"
By Blaine Harden
The Washington Post, 3 November 2008
"Once again, a Japanese official with nationalist sympathies -- in this case, the head of the air force -- has glossed over the Asian suffering caused by Japan during World War II. Once again, China and South Korea -- principal victims of Japan's wartime depredations -- have expressed shock and anger. And once again, the government in Tokyo has restated its official policy, which is that Japan deeply regrets and apologizes for its wartime aggression. The abiding reluctance of prominent nationalists in Japan to come to grips with the past resurfaced Friday, when a hotel company announced the winner of its $30,000 'true modern history' essay contest. The winning essay was written by Gen. Toshio Tamogami, who until Friday night was chief of staff of the air force. He was fired a few hours after the essay appeared on the hotel company's Web site. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because of a 'trap' set by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Tamogami claimed in his essay, which also argued 'that many Asian countries take a positive view' of Japan's role in the war. He wrote, too, that the war was good for international race relations: 'If Japan had not fought the Great East Asia War at that time, it might have taken another 100 or 200 years before we could have experienced the world of racial equality that we have today.' The essay concluded that 'it is certainly a false accusation to say that our country was an aggressor nation.' Explaining why Tamogami was fired, Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters that a senior military leader 'should not make public an opinion opposed to the government's position.' [...]"
JEWISH HOLOCAUST/RACISM
"Kristallnacht 70 Years On"
By Karen Pollock
New Statesman, 8 November 2008
"[...] If we are to learn anything from Kristallnacht it is a reminder to us all of where unchecked racism and intolerance can lead and underscores our responsibility as human beings to ensure that such evil is always confronted whenever and wherever it occurs. The Holocaust did not begin with the gas chambers at Auschwitz, it did not even begin with Kristallnacht -- it began with words and was reacted to with silence. The extermination of European Jewry took place at the end of a long road, a long history marked by centuries of age-old antisemitism and prejudice dating back to the middle ages and most significantly it was a long road marked by indifference. Nor was the Holocaust a mere symptom of the time; the era. As we have seen repeatedly in the years that have followed the Holocaust genocide and atrocities have plagued every corner of the globe and continue to do so. We cannot and must not consign the terror and cruelty of that night to our history books or fool ourselves into believing that it was a history belonging to a different era. To remove ourselves in this way is to remove our own responsibility in fighting racism and intolerance today. This year, many of us have no doubt felt helpless as far-right parties continue to gain a foothold in local councils, and even in the London Assembly -- the body representing one of the most diverse cities in the world. And make no mistake about it -- these are politicians who exploit community divisions, and whose ideology is based on the same racism and prejudice exhibited during the Holocaust. But we do have the ability to halt racism in its tracks. [...]"
KENYA
"Kenyan Police Units 'Murder Hundreds'"
By Jon Swain
The Times, 16 November 2008
"A damning report containing evidence of a high-level policy to murder suspected criminals and troublemakers in Kenya threatens to undermine the reputation of the government of President Mwai Kibaki. The report, by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, reveals that in the past 18 months about 500 young men have been killed or have disappeared in a police campaign carried out with the apparent connivance of political leaders. The dead and missing were suspected of being members of the Mungiki, a feared criminal gang that had itself committed gruesome murders. The Mungiki was outlawed in 2002 following a spate of slum violence. It is a quasi-religious group from the dominant Kikuyu tribe and had become one of Kenya's largest crime and extortion rings. In a speech on June 1 last year, Kibaki warned gang members they should expect no mercy. Two days later more than 300 Mungiki members were arrested and 20 killed. John Michuki, the internal security minister, said: 'We will pulverise and finish them off. Even those arrested over the recent killings, I cannot tell you where they are today. What you will certainly hear is that so and so's burial is tomorrow.' Since then the commission has compiled the names of at least 300 men who have been killed or have disappeared. It also said there were about 200 victims whose identities could not be established since they were booked into the mortuaries as unknown. Initially the police shot most suspects but then, the commission said, they turned to strangulation, drowning, mutilation and bludgeoning in an attempt to make the public believe rival gangs were responsible for the killings. Several witnesses told the commission that police death squads carried machetes, iron bars, ropes and other crude weapons in their cars. Its evidence is being studied by the United Nations committee against torture. [...]"
PALESTINE/ISRAEL
"Chronic Malnutrition in Gaza Blamed on Israel"
By Donald Macintyre
The Independent, 15 November 2008
"The Israeli blockade of Gaza has led to a steady rise in chronic malnutrition among the 1.5 million people living in the strip, according to a leaked report from the Red Cross. It chronicles the 'devastating' effect of the siege that Israel imposed after Hamas seized control in June 2007 and notes that the dramatic fall in living standards has triggered a shift in diet that will damage the long-term health of those living in Gaza and has led to alarming deficiencies in iron, vitamin A and vitamin D. The 46-page report from the International Committee of the Red Cross -- seen by The Independent -- is the most authoritative yet on the impact that Israel's closure of crossings to commercial goods has had on Gazan families and their diets. The report says the heavy restrictions on all major sectors of Gaza's economy, compounded by a cost of living increase of at least 40 per cent, is causing 'progressive deterioration in food security for up to 70 per cent of Gaza's population.' That in turn is forcing people to cut household expenditures down to 'survival levels.' 'Chronic malnutrition is on a steadily rising trend and micronutrient deficiencies are of great concern,' it said. Since last year, the report found, there had been a switch to 'low cost/high energy' cereals, sugar and oil, away from higher-cost animal products and fresh fruit and vegetables. Such a shift 'increases exposure to micronutrient deficiencies which in turn will affect their health and wellbeing in the long term.' Israel has often said that it will not allow a humanitarian crisis to develop in Gaza and the report says that the groups surveyed had 'accessed their annual nutritional energy needs.' But it warned governments, including Israel's, that 'food insecurity and undernutrition, including micronutrient deficiencies' were occurring in the absence of 'overt food shortages.' [...]"
RWANDA
"Rwanda President: Aide Arrested in Germany Was on Government Business"
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 11 November 2008
"Rwandan President Paul Kagame said today his country's sovereignty was violated when an aide visiting Germany was arrested in connection with an attack that set off Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Rose Kabuye, Kagame's chief of protocol, was arrested Sunday at Frankfurt International Airport on a warrant from France, where she is wanted in connection with the fatal April 1994 attack on the plane of President Juvenal Habyarimana. Hutu extremists accuse Tutsi fighters -- then led by Kagame -- of shooting down the plane and killing Habyarimana, a Hutu. Other speculation, though, has focused on hard-line Hutus hoping to create a pretext for mass violence against Tutsis. Kagame visited Kabuye today at the Preungsheim women's prison where she is being held. He told reporters afterward that her case was politically motivated and added it could affect Rwanda's cooperation with the European Union in regard to the fighting in Congo. ... French authorities, who are investigating because Habyarimana's two pilots were French, suspect Kabuye housed the commando unit blamed for shooting down the plane. Forster said Kabuye denies involvement. Ties between Rwanda and France have been strained since a French judge's decision to issue warrants for nine associates of Kagame, including Kabuye, over the crash, All nine are in Kagame's government. The Tutsi-led government and genocide survivor organizations by contrast have often accused France of training and arming the Hutu militias and former government troops who led the genocide. [...]"
[n.b. Does the shootdown of Habyarimana's plane now count as the most significant unsolved act of homicide anywhere in the world?]
"Warrants over Rwanda Genocide Imminent: Sources"
Agence France-Presse dispatch on RawStory.com, 11 November 2008
"Rwanda is poised to issue indictments and arrest warrants against 23 French military and political officials over their suspected role in the country's 1994 genocide, judicial sources said on Tuesday. Indictments against France's late president Francois Mitterrand and former prime minister Dominique de Villepin among others would mark a new step in the judicial escalation between the two countries. The threat of warrants against top French officials -- several of whom are still active -- came as hundreds demonstrated in Kigali against the arrest by Germany, acting on a French warrant, of a top aide to the Rwandan president. ... Rwandan prosecutors had spent the past three months examining a 500-page report drafted by a special commission tasked with probing France's role in the genocide and released on August 5 by the justice ministry. It names former French prime minister Edouard Balladur, former foreign minister Alain Juppe and then-president Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996, among 13 French politicians accused of playing a role in the massacres. Dominique de Villepin, who was then Juppe's top aide and later became prime minister, was also among those listed in the Rwandan report. It also names 20 military officials, involved notably in Operation Turquoise, a 1994 French military mission to Rwanda which Kigali charges was used to assist Hutu genocide perpetrators. The justice official speaking to AFP on Tuesday did not specify who were the 23 officials facing indictment. [...]"
SPAIN
"Spanish Court Suspends Opening of Franco-Era Mass Graves"
The Telegraph, 7 November 2008
"A court in Spain has halted the opening of mass graves of victims of the nation's 1936-39 civil war and the ensuing dictatorship as ordered by top judge Baltasar Garzon while it analyses the legal basis for his decision. A panel of judges belonging to the National Audience, Spain's top criminal court, ruled to suspend the order by 10 votes to five in response to a demand by the public prosecutor. ... National Audience judge Baltasar Garzon, on October 16, ordered the opening of 19 mass graves, including one near Granada where Spain's most widely acclaimed 20th century poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, is thought to be buried. He ordered four more mass graves to be opened on Thursday as part of an investigation into the disappearances of some 114,000 people during the war and the early years of General Francisco Franco's right-wing dictatorship. Judge Garzon decided to open Spain's first criminal investigation into Franco-era executions and repression in response to a petition filed by 13 associations of victims' families. He based his decision on the grounds that he was probing a case of crimes against humanity that he says has no statute of limitations, an argument he has used in the past to try to prosecute atrocities that took place under military rule in Argentina and Chile that affected Spaniards. But the public prosecutor's office appealed his decision, arguing that it violated an amnesty agreed by political parties in the spirit of national reconciliation in 1977, two years after Franco's death, for crimes committed under the general's rule. The opposition conservative Popular Party has argued that the judge's move would open up old wounds in Spanish society, but last week Judge Garzon's move got the backing of the UN Commission on Human Rights which called on Spain to abolish its 1977 amnesty law. [...]"
SUDAN/DARFUR/UNITED STATES
"Obama is Asked to Focus on Darfur"
By Elise Labott
CNN.com, 13 November 2008
"Human rights groups are asking President-elect Barack Obama to pay early attention to the crisis in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, where government forces have waged a bloody war against militias that some international critics have characterized as genocide. Sudan President Omar al-Bashir has agreed to a cease-fire with rebels, which could give the U.S. an opening. 'We've seen the military surge in Iraq. We've seen the development surge that NATO's announced for Afghanistan,' said Darfur activist John Prendergast. 'What's really needed in Sudan and the broader Horn and East Africa region is a peace surge.' Prendergast's ENOUGH organization to combat genocide is a project of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank run by Obama's transition co-chairman, John Podesta. Prendergast and other Darfur activists penned a recent letter to Obama, asking him to designate a team to focus solely on the Darfur issue within the first 100 days of his administration. ... During the presidential campaign, Obama called the crisis in Darfur 'a collective stain on our national and human conscience' and said he would make ending it a priority on 'Day One.' Obama has promised to appoint a special envoy to deal with the Darfur issue and implementing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the decades-long civil war between the North and South. That agreement could be a model for a peace process in Darfur, Prendergast said. Although the United States does not have to lead the peace process, it could be an active partner in the global effort to develop a strategy for getting the various parties in Sudan together, he said. [...]"
"Sudan President Offers Ceasefire in Darfur, Other Steps Aiming to Show Ready for Peace"
By Mohamed Osman
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 12 November 2008
"President Omar al-Bashir offered a ceasefire in Darfur on Wednesday and promised to disarm militias, a top rebel demand, in a new push by his government to show it is serious about ending the nearly 6-year-old conflict. Darfur rebels dismissed the moves, saying they don't trust al-Bashir and want to see disarmament of the feared janjaweed militias before agreeing to a ceasefire. Al-Bashir's announcement is part of a high-profile campaign by Khartoum to display its readiness amid attempts to cobble together new Darfur peace negotiations mediated by the Arab nation Qatar and a U.N. envoy. It comes as the Sudanese president is trying to fend off possible genocide charges by the International Criminal Court over atrocities in Darfur. Up to 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million driven from their homes in the vast region of western Sudan since fighting erupted in early 2003. The war pits troops from the Arab-led Sudanese government against ethnic African rebels, and Khartoum is accused of backing Arab militias known as janjaweed said to have carried out widespread atrocities against ethnic African civilians. The government has repeatedly called ceasefires in Darfur in the past, but they have quickly broken down. ... The call appeared to stop short of ordering a unilateral ceasefire by government troops in Darfur. [...]"
TANZANIA
"Tanzania's Macabre Trade: Albinos Killed for Body Parts"
The Telegraph, 7 November 2008
"Tanzanian albinos are living in terror following 30 murders in the east African nation by people apparently seeking their body parts for witchcraft, a campaigner said. The government says most of the killings happened in the last 10 months. The latest three occurred just after a rally held in Dar es Salaam last month to denounce the practice. 'Our biggest fear right now is the fear of living. If you leave work at night as an albino, you are unsure of reaching home safely. When you sleep, you are unsure of waking up in one piece,' Zihada Msembo, secretary general of the Tanzania Albino Society said. 'We marched, the president (Jakaya Kikwete) received us and we said "now we can have some peace" and slept soundly that night. Next morning, we hear yet another albino was killed that very night.' The government says most of the murders occurred in western Tanzania. Police have arrested 53 suspects. The killers sell body parts such as arms, legs, hair, skin and genitals, according to police and albino groups. Those involved in witchcraft, especially in mining and fishing industries, believe these will enrich them, President Kikwete said last month, calling it a 'stupid belief.' Local media have reported several incidents of victims left to bleed to death. [...]"
UKRAINE/RUSSIA
"Kiev Famine Tribute Irks Medvedev"
The Moscow Times, 17 November 2008
"President Dmitry Medvedev accused Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Friday of distorting history for political gain by commemorating a famine engineered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. 'We clearly see that this theme, along with persistent attempts to secure an invitation to NATO's "prep classes," has in recent years all but become the main element of Ukrainian foreign policy,' Medvedev told Yushchenko in a letter. 'Such steps can hardly be explained by a bid to restore historical justice or to honor the victims' memory. They are more likely aimed at dividing our peoples as much as possible,' he said. The dispute over this week's anniversary of the 1932-33 famine is part of a long series of disputes between the neighbors over Kiev's shift toward the West, which includes seeking membership of NATO and the European Union. Historians say 7.5 million people died in the famine, intended to break the spirit of Ukraine's independent farmers. Medvedev said the famine was 'the consequence of drought and forced collectivization. ... To suggest that the main aim was to destroy Ukrainians is to fly in the face of the facts and paint a general tragedy in nationalist tones.' Ukrainian authorities, led by Yushchenko, have sought to have the famine internationally declared a genocide. Several days of commemorations this week include a conference to be attended by regional leaders, the unveiling of a monument and a solemn procession to honor victims."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
"Ukrainians Remember Famine-Genocide of 1933"
By Lori Sherman
Niagara This Week, 14 November 2008
"Mary Burtatynsky was once a happy child, playing in the fields and helping her mother, while growing up with her brother and sister in a small village in the Ukraine. But that childhood was short-lived and soon the happy memories were overshadowed by horrible atrocities most cannot fathom. At the tender age of eight, Burtatynsky endured Holodomor - the widely unknown genocide inflicted by means of a Soviet government-engineered famine that wiped out millions of people across the Ukraine in the early 30s. Burtatynsky joined 19 other survivors at a 75th anniversary commemoration ceremony this weekend at the Ukrainian Black Sea Hall on Welland Avenue. 'We suffered. We suffered so much,' said Burtatynsky, clutching a tissue and wiping away tears from her aging face. 'My father hid a bag of wheat in our home. I remember watching the soldiers go through. They took everything, but they didn't find the bag of wheat.' That bag fed her family of five for over a month, each eating a cup a day mixed with leaves from trees and flowers from the gardens. 'My family survived, but so many did not. My neighbours died. The houses were empty. My street was empty.' Burtatynsky recalls seeing people dying in the streets of her village, some even resorting to cannibalism to feed their starving bodies. ... Until recently, Holodomor, which roughly translates to suffering through starvation, was not recognized by the world as a form of genocide. It wasn't until this year that the European parliament recognized Holodomor as a crime against humanity. Canada has also now followed the lead of other nations in recognizing the event as a deliberate attempt by Josef Stalin to torture and ultimately kill Ukrainians and as such, Canada has now proclaimed the fourth Saturday of November as a memorial day for the victims of Holodomor. [...]"
UNITED KINGDOM
"Our Haven for War Criminals"
By Ken Macdonald
The Guardian, 8 November 2008
"... There are serious gaps in our law. Suspects can be tried for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed abroad only if they are UK residents or nationals, and if they committed their crimes after the International Criminal Court Act was passed in 2001. Quite illogically, this differs from hostage-taking and torture, which are fully prosecutable here, wherever the offences took place, and have no nationality or residency requirements. So foreign torturers and hostage-takers who commit their crimes overseas can be prosecuted, but Rwandan génocidaires living in the UK are protected. British residents committing war crimes abroad in 2002 may face justice here, but those whose crimes occurred in 1992 are immune. These distinctions lack all humanity and their consequences are ugly. At present, four suspected category-one genocidaires are appealing against an order for their extradition to Rwanda. If they succeed we shall be unable to prosecute them for genocide in our courts. These men, each accused of mass murder, will simply be released to live contentedly among us. The Aegis Trust, an organisation that campaigns on genocide issues, proposes two changes to the law. First, we should move from a strict 'residency' requirement for prosecution, and embrace something closer to a basic 'presence' requirement. This would deal with situations where suspects are found temporarily visiting our country, for example to enjoy medical treatment. It would also bring the UK into line with other common law countries. Second, our courts should be given jurisdiction over crimes against humanity, genocide and all war crimes from the point at which these offences were recognised under international customary law. This would greatly extend our reach into the past. It would largely scrub away the stain of impunity. [...]"
UNITED STATES
"Obama Election Spurs Race Crimes around Country"
By Jesse Washington
Associated Press dispatch on Yahoo! News, 16 November 2008
"Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting 'Assassinate Obama.' Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars. Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America. From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders. There have been 'hundreds' of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes. One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: 'I hope Obama gets assassinated.' That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said. She described her emotions as a combination of anger and fear. 'I can't say that every white person in Snellville is evil and anti-Obama and willing to desecrate my property because one or two idiots did it,' said Millner, who is black. 'But it definitely makes you look a little different at the people who you live with, and makes you wonder what they're capable of and what they're really thinking.' Potok, who is white, said he believes there is 'a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them.' [...]"
UNITED STATES/THE "WAR ON TERROR"
"Bush Torture Memo Slapped Down by Court"
By Johnny Dwyer
Time.com, 3 November 2008
"As the curtain falls on the Bush Administration, one set piece of the Administration's policy on torture has finally been ushered offstage. The Bybee Memo, a 2002 opinion authored by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, was brushed aside last week by a federal judge overseeing the nation's first-ever criminal trial of an American accused of torture abroad. The public defenders representing torture suspect Chucky Taylor, a U.S. citizen and the son of former Liberian military strongman Charles Taylor, submitted it for consideration as part of potential jury instructions. But Federal Judge Cecilia Altonaga rejected the terms laid out in the memo, saying, 'I will not give an instruction that relies upon that memorandum as its authority.' It was a humiliating epilogue to the Bush Administration's attempt to integrate what many critics describe as undeniable torture into U.S. military and intelligence policy. The Bybee memo, (named for Jay Bybee, then head of the Office of Legal Counsel) was largely authored by John Yoo, then Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Office of General Counsel. ... Rejected now by both court and bureaucracy, the Bybee Memo may have no effective existence. But its notoriety is certain to outlive this Administration. Indeed, critics believe it will be part of the Bush legacy. Says Martin Lederman, visiting professor with the Georgetown University Law Center and former adviser to the Office of Legal Counsel: 'the memo will be seen as one of the most extreme deviations from the rule of law and from the President's obligation to take care that the law is faithfully executed.'"
VATICAN/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Catholic-Jewish Controversy Slows Path to Sainthood for Pope Pius XII"
By Justin Ewers
US News & World Report, 14 November 2008
"A half-century after the death of Pope Pius XII, the pontiff who led the Vatican during World War II, the passionate debate over his wartime actions and his qualifications for sainthood shows no signs of fading. Critics have long insisted that Pius was no saint, accusing him of turning a blind eye to the fate of the Jews when he failed to publicly condemn the Holocaust. Pius's defenders disagree, and the former pope's legacy has become the center of a ferocious battle among the Vatican, church historians, and the Jewish community -- a struggle, many experts believe, that has delayed Pius's sainthood for years. Last month, when the Vatican commemorated the 50th anniversary of Pius's death, high-ranking members of the Roman Catholic Church seemed determined to renew the push for Pius's beatification -- a declaration that he is blessed and worthy of veneration, and the last step before sainthood. Pope Benedict XVI himself, in one of the most forceful defenses by a pope of Pius to date, declared that his predecessor, who led the church from 1939 to 1958, had done all he could -- and more than most -- to stop the Holocaust. ... Seeming to excuse Pius's silence during the Holocaust, when the Vatican, like the rest of Europe, was threatened by the Nazis, Benedict insisted the pope's wartime interventions were 'made secretly and silently precisely because, given the concrete situation of that difficult historical moment, only in this way was it possible to avoid the worst and save the greatest number of Jews.' This increasingly muscular defense of Pius, which experts viewed as an attempt to pave the way to sainthood, outraged many in the Jewish community. [...]"
"Holocaust Group to Lobby Pope over Pius Sainthood"
By Philip Pullella
Reuters dispatch, 7 November 2008
"Holocaust survivors and their descendants will lobby Pope Benedict to stop the process of making his wartime predecessor Pius XII a saint, saying beatifying him would be a tragedy for Catholic-Jewish relations. The plan, involving appealing to the pope by lobbying his ambassadors around the world, was approved Thursday night in New York and will be announced formally Monday, a leader of an organization spearheading it told Reuters Friday. 'Beatifying Pius XII would be a tragedy for Catholic-Jewish relations, which have become so warm in recent years,' said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants (AGJHSD). Some Jews have accused Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked silently behind the scenes and helped save many Jews from certain death during World War Two. Steinberg, who is also executive director emeritus of the World Jewish Congress, said survivors' groups around the world would seek meetings with Vatican nuncios (ambassadors) to express their concern. This is believed to be the first time Holocaust survivors have organized a global campaign to lobby the Vatican. The American group has about 60,000 members. Thursday, Pope Benedict's deputy, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said Jewish accusations were 'outrageous' and that no one could tell the Vatican whether Pius should be made a saint. [...]"
ISSUE: INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS
"UN Court on Rwandan Genocide Expects Its Term to Be Extended"
By Sarah McGregor
Bloomberg.com, 12 November 2008
"The United Nations-backed war crimes court on the Rwandan genocide expects that its term will be extended until the end of next year to allow more time to handle a backlog of cases, spokesman Roland Amoussouga said. The Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has handed down 32 convictions and five acquittals, while one case is on appeal, Amoussouga said yesterday in an interview in Arusha, Tanzania. Another 37 detainees are on or awaiting trial, the ICTR said on its Web site. Thirteen people suspected of genocide-related crimes are still at large, Amoussouga said. 'The tribunal made a presentation to the Security Council in June and requested it be granted an extension in order to complete the cases,' Amoussouga said. 'We are waiting a final decision, but already there are indications that we should be granted such an extension at least until the end of December 2009.' As many as 800,000 people, or more than a 10th of Rwanda's population, died in the three-month long slaughter of minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus by ethnic Hutu militias, following the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994. Habyarimana died when a plane he was traveling in was shot down as it prepared for landing in Kigali, Rwanda's capital. The term of ICTR judges already has been extended to next year, Amoussouga said. The tribunal was established in 1994 with a mandate to conclude first instance cases by the end of this year and appeal trials by 2010. Verdicts on three cases, including that of Colonel Theoneste Bagosora who is an alleged mastermind of the killings, will be delivered next month, Amoussouga said. 'We have reached our cruising altitude and now many decisions are coming,' he said. Operating the Arusha-based tribunal and its offices at the Hague and in Rwanda have cost an average of $90 million a year, Amoussouga said."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
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AUSTRIA/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Shards of Kristallnacht Still Cut Deep"
By Adam LeBor
The Times, 8 November 2008
"Seventy years on, the memories have not faded. Kitty Suschny was a terrified schoolgirl of 13 when the Nazis unleashed a night of violence against Vienna's Jews on November 9, 1938. 'I saw the brown shirts marching from our window but my mother pulled me inside. I heard them shouting "Jews go to hell." There was screaming, shouting, the synagogues were set on fire. Many people committed suicide,' recalled Mrs. Suschny, who was evacuated to Britain but returned to Vienna where she lives with her husband, Otto. Thousands of Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps on Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, a harbinger of the destruction to come. The dazzling era of Jewish Vienna, that brought the world the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, the writer Arthur Schnitzler and the composer Gusztav Mahler, soon evaporated in the crematoria of the Nazi concentration camps. Of the city's 185,000 Jews, one third perished in the Holocaust and the remainder emigrated. Pogroms erupted across the Third Reich that night but the onslaught against Vienna's Jews was especially ferocious. Annexed by Nazi Germany in March 1938, Hitler's homeland was his most devoted disciple. Vienna was a 'laboratory for anti-Jewish violence,' writes the historian Mark Mazower, in Hitler's Empire. This weekend Austria and its neighbours commemorate the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht. But behind the diplomatic dinners and sombre speeches lies a darker reality: of a nation much of whose post-war prosperity was built on looted Jewish assets, numerous members of whose elite were personally enriched by the Holocaust, and which has only just started to face the darkest chapter in its history. [...]"
BOLIVIA/UNITED STATES
"Bolivia Asks US to Extradite Former President for Genocide Trial"
NewKerala.com, 12 November 2008
"Bolivia has asked the US to extradite a former president and two ministers in his 2002-2003 administration to face genocide charges, EFE reported Wednesday. 'We have officially delivered the letters requesting the extradition of former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, his defence minister Carlos Sanchez Berzain and energy minister Jorge Berindoague,' Charges d'Affaires at the Bolivian Embassy here, Erika Dueñas, said Tuesday. Bolivia's Congress in October 2004 authorized a trial of Lozada and his two ministers and in September 2007 the Supreme Court ordered the foreign ministry to request the former president's extradition from the United States. Lozada, who had previously been president from 1993-1997, resigned amid unrest Oct 17, 2003, and fled to the United States. The former president and the two former ministers face genocide charges for the death of 63 people during an uprising by coca growers, unionists and peasant farmers that erupted over his plans to export natural gas to the United States and Mexico via Chilean ports. He also faces charges on eight other counts. [...]"
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
"Film on Horrors of Bosnian War Wins Rome Festival"
Reuters dispatch, 31 October 2008
"'Resolution 819,' a film about the Srebrenica massacre in the last months of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, won the top prize at the Rome film festival Friday. A French production directed by Italy's Giacomo Battiato, the film tells the true story of a policeman sent by the U.N.'s highest court to investigate the disappearance of 8,000 Muslim men and boys from the Bosnian town after it fell to Bosnian Serb forces. The film spares the audience little of the harrowing evidence the policeman gathers over the years on the slaughter in what was supposed to be a U.N. safe area. That evidence served as the basis for the indictment for genocide of Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, who was arrested in July. His wartime commander Ratko Mladic, also indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, is still at large. The title refers to a 1993 U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an end to armed Serb attacks on Srebrenica. 'Resolution 819' won the prize for best film awarded by members of the public. ... 'I think the public shared my point of view, and that is the anger, the pain toward the worst war since World War Two, a war that happened before our eyes,' Battiato said at the awards ceremony. [...]"
CHINA/TIBET
"Tibetans Meet to Rethink Autonomy"
AlJazeera.net, 17 November 2008
"Hundreds of exiled Tibetans have begun a landmark meeting in northern India to discuss their homeland's future with China. The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, called the meeting following frustrations over repeated failed talks with the Chinese government, saying that new ideas were necessary. The gathering in Dharamsala, the seat of Tibet's government in exile, is to re-evaluate the so-called 'middle path' policy with China which espouses 'meaningful autonomy' for the Himalayan region. Talks last week -- the third round since violent anti-China protests rocked the Tibetan capital Lhasa in March -- failed because of 'a great divergence' between the two sides over China's policy on Tibet, according to Chinese officials. A Chinese government spokesman earlier dismissed the gathering to discuss the core of the decades-old dispute, saying that such 'separatist attempts will get nowhere.' On Sunday, the Dalai Lama's envoys to the Beijing talks said China had rejected a detailed plan on how Tibetans could meet their needs of autonomy within the framework of the Chinese constitution. Before Monday's meeting, the Dalai Lama urged the 500 participants to consider all aspects of policy regarding China, ensuring that the thorny issue of whether to push for full independence is tackled. [...]"
COLOMBIA
"U.N. Says Colombian Military Executing Civilians"
CNN.com, 1 November 2008
"Colombia's U.S.-backed security forces are engaging in 'systematic and widespread' extrajudicial executions of innocent civilians as part of their counterinsurgency campaign, a top United Nations diplomat said Saturday U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, in Bogota, says Colombia must rein in its security forces. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, in Bogota, says Colombia must rein in its security forces. Speaking in Bogota after a weeklong fact-finding tour, Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the scale of the killings could constitute a 'crime against humanity' under international humanitarian law, adding that international courts could intervene if the Colombian government was 'unwilling or unable' to handle the investigations itself. 'An offense becomes a crime against humanity if it is widespread and systematic against the civilian population,' Pillay said at a news conference. 'We are observing and keeping a record of the number of extrajudicial killings [in Colombia], and it does appear to be systematic and widespread in my view. The goal is to have the national authorities these crimes and prosecute the perpetrators. It's only when a country is unable and unwilling that the International Criminal Court, for instance, would have the power to intervene,' she added. Her comments come three days after Colombian President Alvaro Uribe fired 25 army officers and non-commissioned officers, including three generals and 11 colonels, for alleged involvement or negligence in a case involving the forced disappearance and summary executions of at least 11 young men from a poor Bogota suburb this year. It was the biggest purge in Colombian military ranks for alleged human rights abuses. [...]"
CONGO
"UN Adviser Urges Combatants in Congo to Refrain from Actions That Might Encourage Genocide"
By Edith M. Lederer
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 7 November 2008
"A key U.N. adviser warned combatants in eastern Congo Friday against any actions that might encourage genocide, saying anyone promoting ethnic killings will be held accountable. Francis Deng, the special adviser on genocide to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said he has been 'especially alarmed by the escalation of violence in the past few weeks.' The conflict in eastern Congo is fueled by ethnic hatred left over from genocide in 1994 the claimed half-million Tutsis in neighboring Rwanda. Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, who went on the offensive Aug. 28, claims he is fighting to protect minority Tutsis from Rwandan Hutu rebels who participated in the genocide and fled to Congo afterward. In a statement released at U.N. headquarters, Deng emphasized 'that the belligerents in eastern Congo must refrain from actions that might encourage genocide and that they, and any actors who provide material support, will be held accountable if they fail to do so.' He said that under international law 'the intention to destroy an ethnic population group, in whole or in part, is a grave crime' and that the international community is obligated to punish violators. ... Deng, a human rights expert and former Sudanese diplomat, is responsible for determining from existing sources of information whether there is a risk of genocide in any part of the world and to alert the international community to such risks."
"Murder, Muddle and Panic"
The Economist, 6 November 2008
"'The situation is catastrophic,' says a Red Cross man. 'There's no other word.' Tens of thousands of terrified civilians are jamming the roads of Congo's North Kivu province in a frantic southbound exodus in the hope of self-preservation ... General Laurent Nkunda's mainly Tutsi rebels are poised to grab the eastern city of Goma after capturing most of the smaller towns in the area. Reports of massacres on the night of November 5th in Kiwanja, a small town north of Goma, have increased the panic. An officer in General Nkunda's force said that his men had 'neutralised' men in civilian clothes there who, he said, covertly belonged to the so-called Mai-Mai militias; they, along with the Congolese army and others, have been fighting the Tutsi rebels. A local clergyman said at least 180 civilians had been killed during the night. The UN's mission to Congo, known by the acronym MONUC, which has 17,000 peacekeepers across the country, including 6,000-odd in North Kivu, has been unable to cope. Diplomacy, hitherto fruitless, is intensifying. European diplomats, led by the foreign ministers of Britain and France, David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner, have visited regional capitals, calling for talks and troop reinforcements. The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, was set to host a summit on November 7th in Nairobi, Kenya's capital, bringing together the presidents of Congo and Rwanda, Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame respectively, who have been sponsoring some of the rival rebel armies. ... The French government suggested that a robust European force of 400 to 1,500 soldiers be dispatched urgently to protect the humanitarian missions that are struggling to give relief to hundreds of thousands of hapless and hungry civilians. So far the European Union has been loth to give the go-ahead. [...]"
"Ashley Judd's Heart Of Darkness"
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek, 30 October 2008
"[...] 'This epidemic of rape; it's like a contagion,' said Judd. 'When one man does it, it activates other men, and then the more brutal it becomes—looking for pregnant women to rape, and children. It's so unbelievably heinous that it's hard for us to wrap our minds around. Sit with a woman, who, through word of mouth, heard there was a clinic which could help a woman who had been raped ... She had to figure out -- in the midst of being stigmatized, in the midst of her physical agony, in the midst of incontinence and starvation -- how to get herself walking, crawling to this clinic, only to find that it's overcrowded, because there are so many women, hundreds, if not thousands, just like her. And just imagine, this is a clinic that does nothing but genital reconstruction.' 'What exactly are we talking about here?' 'Well, the vagina will tear when being forced to accommodate either a rapist's anatomy or objects that are introduced: wood, rock, sticks, guns, bayonets. There will be perforation of the vaginal walls, perforation and ripping of the cervix, potentially, based on the extent of the penetration into the uterus. The wall between the rectum and vagina is ripped apart. The urethra, which goes to the bladder, is damaged. There is incontinence. The urine is constantly seeping out, because the muscles and mechanisms that hold the bladder intact are ruined; there is faecal incontinency, which of course can introduce faecal matter into the gut, which results in horrific infections. Does that paint the picture?' It did. So I asked Judd if she thought people ought to have a stronger sense of just how horrible these scenes are -- or would people simply turn their backs ... again?" [...]"
[As this excerpt indicates, this is no mere celebrity portrait, but one of the more powerful and evocative recent features on Congo that I have seen.]
EL SALVADOR
"In El Salvador, A New Push for Justice in Priests' Slayings"
By Tracy Wilkinson and Alex Renderos
The Los Angeles Times, 13 November 2008
"The murder 19 years ago of six Jesuit priests by a U.S.-trained army unit was the turning point in El Salvador's long civil war, an atrocity so grave that it helped force an end to the fighting. But the soldiers and officers convicted or implicated in the slayings are free under a controversial amnesty law that is receiving new attention thanks to election politics here and a potentially landmark court case in Spain. Relatives of the priests, who were killed along with their housekeeper and her young daughter, have joined with two human rights organizations and today plan to file suit in Madrid against the generals, colonels and soldiers blamed for the killings. The plaintiffs are invoking the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, which Spanish courts have championed, that allows a case of egregious human rights violation to be heard in a country even if the acts did not take place there and the defendants do not reside there. Human rights activists in the Americas and Europe said they hoped the Jesuit complaint could be used to fight impunity and bring justice to the victims' families by joining a procession of Spanish court cases that have forced Latin America to confront its violent past. These include suits against Guatemalan military officers accused in the massacre of indigenous citizens and figures in Argentina's 'dirty war' against leftist dissidents. 'This has an invaluable historic importance for El Salvador,' said David Morales, program coordinator at a legal think tank in San Salvador that specializes in justice issues. 'All Salvadoran society has been the victim here. ... Just knowing the truth has a restorative effect.' [...]"
GERMANY/ITALY/SECOND WORLD WAR
"Berlin Takes Rome to Court"
Der Spiegel Online, 3 November 2008
"After a high court in Italy ruled that Germany is liable for damages stemming from a 1944 massacre in the village of Civitella perpetrated by Nazi soldiers, Berlin has asked the International Criminal Court to look into the case. Berlin worries the verdict could set off an avalanche of World War II-related court cases against the German government. On Oct. 22, Italy's highest appellate court, the Cassation, ruled that Germany must pay €1 million in compensation to the descendents of those killed by Nazi soldiers in the Italian town of Civitella in 1944. Now, Germany has taken the case to the International Criminal Court in The Hague in the hopes that it will rule that the payments don't have to be made. A spokesman for the foreign ministry in Berlin on Saturday confirmed a report in this week's SPIEGEL, saying that the ICC 'has been asked to clarify this question.' The October verdict in Rome also sentenced a German officer named Max Josef Milde in abstentia to life in prison. The court found that the officer was involved in the June 29, 1944 massacre which saw over 200 villagers, including the village priest, executed in revenge for the killing of three German soldiers by partisans 10 days earlier. Germany and Italy signed an agreement in 1961, which resulted in a blanket payment of 40 million deutsche marks. Of particular concern to Berlin, however, is the finding that Germany can also be held liable for the massacre. Such a precedent could trigger an expensive wave of individual lawsuits against Germany. [...]"
GERMANY/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Alleged Nazi Mass Murderer Could Face Trial in Germany"
Spiegel Online, 10 November 2008
"A suspected Nazi mass murderer, accused of complicity in the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews, could soon find himself hauled before the courts in Germany. Ivan John Demjanjuk's alleged role as a World War II death camp guard has for years made him one of the most hotly pursued targets of German investigators. And now Nazi hunter Kurt Schrimm, who heads up the world's largest investigation center for such atrocities in Ludwigsburg, Germany believes he has finally pinned him down. Following painstaking research across three continents, Schrimm and his colleagues believe they have enough material to request the extradition of 88-year-old Demjanjuk, who now lives in the state of Ohio in the United States. Public investigator Schrimm on Monday handed documentation for preliminary proceedings against the 88-year-old, remembered by those he allegedly tortured as 'Ivan the Terrible,' over to the Public Prosecutor's Office in Munich. ... The charges against the elderly man are enough to send a shiver down the spine of even the most conflict-hardened. It is alleged he trained as a guard in the SS camp Trawniki close to the Polish city of Lublin. From the end of March to the middle of September 1943, prosecutors claim he served in the death camp Sobibor in south-east Poland. Between May 1942 and October 1943, some 250,000 people were executed there. It is alleged Demjanjuk personally has the blood of tens of thousands of these victims on his hands. [...]"
[n.b. See also Spiegel's useful "Nazi Most Wanted List."]
"Blueprints for Auschwitz Camp Found in Germany"
By Erik Kirschbaum
Reuters dispatch, 9 November 2008
"The original construction plans believed used for a major expansion of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in 1941 have been found in a Berlin flat, Germany's Bild newspaper reported on Saturday. The daily printed three architect's drawings on yellowing paper from the batch of 28 pages of blueprints it obtained. One has an 11.66 meter by 11.20 meter room marked 'Gaskammer' (gas chamber) that was part of a 'delousing facility.' No one from the federal government's archives was immediately available for comment on the authenticity or importance of the documents. The plans, published ahead of the 70th anniversary of the 'Kristallnacht' or the Nazi pogrom that was a harbinger of the Holocaust, also include a crematorium and a 'L. Keller' -- an abbreviation for 'Leichenkeller' or corpse cellar. A drawing of the building for Auschwitz's main gate was also found in the documents that Bild said were believed to have been discovered when a Berlin flat was cleaned out. The mass-circulation newspaper quoted Hans-Dieter Kreikamp, head of the federal archives office in Berlin, as saying the blueprints offered 'authentic evidence of the systematically planned genocide of European Jews.' There were mass killings of about one million Jews before the Nazi's "Final Solution" was formulated in late 1941. The decision to kill Europe's 11 million Jews was made at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. ... 'These documents reveal that everyone who had even anything remotely to do with the planning and construction of the concentration camp must have know that people were to be gassed to death in assembly-line fashion,' Bild wrote. [...]"
"Germany Confronts Its Dark Past"
By Andrew Purvis
Time.com, 8 November 2008
"Seventy years ago on Nov. 9, the Jews of Germany -- and perhaps most of Europe -- had their fate revealed to them on one frightening night. Kristallnacht, or 'Night of Broken Glass,' saw the ruling Nazi party unleash bands of thugs on Jewish communities throughout Germany and Austria, ostensibly to avenge an attack on a German diplomat in Paris by a young German Jew whose family had been forced to flee Hitler's regime. By dawn on Nov. 10, 92 Jews lay dead, among the 400 beaten, shot or driven to suicide by the abuse. Some 267 synagogues had been torched and hundreds of Jewish businesses destroyed, and 30,000 Jews had been rounded up and dispatched to concentration camps. It was, most historians believe, the pogrom that portended the systematic murder of 6 million European Jews by Hitler's regime. Germany will commemorate the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht on Sunday through a series of events aimed at ensuring that a new generation of Germans, too young to have known anyone connected with those events, learn about the horrors that flowed from the racism of Germany's past, in the hope of guarding against any future recurrence. Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to mark the anniversary by speaking alongside the head of Germany's Jewish community, Charlotte Knobloch, at the Ryke Street synagogue in the old eastern part of Berlin. Although the synagogue was torched on Kristallnacht (or Reichspogromnacht, as some German Jews now prefer to call it), its structure remained intact, and it was reopened last year for the first time since World War II. The ceremony will include the screening of a documentary on the infamous night and another on the Jewish community in Germany today. Elsewhere in Berlin, a Mozart requiem and concert for violin by Felix Mendelssohn will be performed by the philharmonic chamber orchestra. [...]"
"Berlin Center Marks Those Who Saved Jews"
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 2 November 2008
"The 'Silent Heroes' now have a voice. A new memorial center in Berlin pays tribute to the thousands of German gentiles who risked everything to save Jews from persecution by the Nazis and documents the stories of those who sometimes spent years in hiding. The 'Silent Heroes' memorial center opened to the public last week amid a new focus in recent years on the legacy of the 'good German' -- individuals who resisted Hitler, were labeled as traitors by the Nazis and were often shunned after the war. 'Their accomplishments were totally forgotten, and this is an initiative to bring them back into our memory,' said Johannes Tuchel, director of the German Resistance Memorial Center Foundation, which is behind the new memorial. About 5,000 Jews were able to survive the war in hiding in Germany. It is not clear how many people were involved in helping them, Tuchel said. Research suggests that for each person in hiding, about 10 people aided him or her. Peter Michalski, whose family went into hiding in 1944, said it was a long overdue tribute to the Germans who helped people like him escape death. 'Where would you be now if these people hadn't existed?' he asked contemplatively while looking at an exhibit focusing on his family's plight. 'The answer is simple: We wouldn't be.' The three-room exhibition has many multimedia displays in English and German -- audio accounts, touch-screen computers focusing on 18 aspects of survival, and computers with more details on those in hiding and their rescuers. There are also personal photos, diaries and letters. The best-known subject is Oskar Schindler, whose story was told by Steven Spielberg's Oscar-winning film 'Schindler's List,' which showed his efforts to shield 1,000 Jews from Nazi camps by hiring them to work in his factories. Some of the lesser-known stories are just as moving. [...]"
INDIA/FOOD SECURITY
"The GM Genocide: Thousands of Indian Farmers are Committing Suicide after Using Genetically Modified Crops"
By Andrew Malone
The Daily Mail, 3 November 2008
"[...] Official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture do indeed confirm that in a huge humanitarian crisis, more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month. Simple, rural people, they are dying slow, agonising deaths. Most swallow insecticide -- a pricey substance they were promised they would not need when they were coerced into growing expensive GM crops. It seems that many are massively in debt to local money-lenders, having over-borrowed to purchase GM seed.Take the case of Suresh Bhalasa, another farmer who was cremated this week, leaving a wife and two children. As night fell after the ceremony, and neighbours squatted outside while sacred cows were brought in from the fields, his family had no doubt that their troubles stemmed from the moment they were encouraged to buy BT Cotton, a geneticallymodified plant created by Monsanto. 'We are ruined now,' said the dead man's 38-year-old wife. 'We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.' Villagers bundled him into a rickshaw and headed to hospital along rutted farm roads. 'He cried out that he had taken the insecticide and he was sorry,' she said, as her family and neighbours crowded into her home to pay their respects. 'He was dead by the time they got to hospital.' Asked if the dead man was a 'drunkard' or suffered from other 'social problems', as alleged by pro-GM officials, the quiet, dignified gathering erupted in anger. 'No! No!' one of the dead man's brothers exclaimed. 'Suresh was a good man. He sent his children to school and paid his taxes. 'He was strangled by these magic seeds. They sell us the seeds, saying they will not need expensive pesticides but they do. We have to buy the same seeds from the same company every year. It is killing us. Please tell the world what is happening here.' [...]"
ISRAEL/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Holocaust is Over, Leading Israeli Tells Likud"
By Donald Macintyre
The Independent, 1 November 2008
"Benjamin Netanyahu, a front-runner for the Israeli premiership, has been severely criticised by a former Speaker of the Knesset and head of the Jewish Agency for comparing the threat posed by Iran to that of pre-war Nazi Germany. Mr. Netanyahu, whose Likud Party is running neck and neck in the polls with Kadima, led by Tzipi Livni, has gone further than his rivals in implying he might authorise a unilateral attack on Iranian nuclear installations. Avraham Burg, whose new book The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise From Its Ashes is out in Britain this weekend, says in an interview with The Independent Magazine that the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is 'no doubt a problem.' Mr. Burg adds: 'He is an issue in the Western world and for Israel's sense of confidence in particular.' But he continues: 'What is [Mr. Netanyahu's] soundbite? "It is [19]38 all over again." Do me a favour. Did we have such a powerful state in '38? Did we have this onmipotent army in '38? Did we have the most important superpowers siding with us in '38? Did we have the Catholic church taking a different attitude in '38? It's not '38, however you look at it. And even Ahmadinejad, when you compare him with Hitler, you diminish Hitler.' Mr. Burg's book, in part a plea to fellow Israelis more than 60 years after the Holocaust to stop seeing themselves as 'a nation of victims,' caused furious debate when the Hebrew version became a bestseller in Israel last year. The new translation is likely to provoke similar argument, particularly in the US. Mr. Burg, a strong Barack Obama supporter, says 'a dialoguing President is better than a shooter' and that George Bush has been a 'disaster for the world and for Israel.' He argues against Israel defining itself as a 'Jewish state' instead of as a 'state for the Jewish people which belongs to all its citizens' -- including Arabs. Mr. Burg, who does not rule out a return to Israeli politics, also warns that the days for a two-state solution are 'numbered' because Israeli and Palestinian societies have been 'abducted' by fundamentalists. [...]"
JAPAN/SECOND WORLD WAR
"WWII Apologists Persist Despite Japanese Policy"
By Blaine Harden
The Washington Post, 3 November 2008
"Once again, a Japanese official with nationalist sympathies -- in this case, the head of the air force -- has glossed over the Asian suffering caused by Japan during World War II. Once again, China and South Korea -- principal victims of Japan's wartime depredations -- have expressed shock and anger. And once again, the government in Tokyo has restated its official policy, which is that Japan deeply regrets and apologizes for its wartime aggression. The abiding reluctance of prominent nationalists in Japan to come to grips with the past resurfaced Friday, when a hotel company announced the winner of its $30,000 'true modern history' essay contest. The winning essay was written by Gen. Toshio Tamogami, who until Friday night was chief of staff of the air force. He was fired a few hours after the essay appeared on the hotel company's Web site. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because of a 'trap' set by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Tamogami claimed in his essay, which also argued 'that many Asian countries take a positive view' of Japan's role in the war. He wrote, too, that the war was good for international race relations: 'If Japan had not fought the Great East Asia War at that time, it might have taken another 100 or 200 years before we could have experienced the world of racial equality that we have today.' The essay concluded that 'it is certainly a false accusation to say that our country was an aggressor nation.' Explaining why Tamogami was fired, Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters that a senior military leader 'should not make public an opinion opposed to the government's position.' [...]"
JEWISH HOLOCAUST/RACISM
"Kristallnacht 70 Years On"
By Karen Pollock
New Statesman, 8 November 2008
"[...] If we are to learn anything from Kristallnacht it is a reminder to us all of where unchecked racism and intolerance can lead and underscores our responsibility as human beings to ensure that such evil is always confronted whenever and wherever it occurs. The Holocaust did not begin with the gas chambers at Auschwitz, it did not even begin with Kristallnacht -- it began with words and was reacted to with silence. The extermination of European Jewry took place at the end of a long road, a long history marked by centuries of age-old antisemitism and prejudice dating back to the middle ages and most significantly it was a long road marked by indifference. Nor was the Holocaust a mere symptom of the time; the era. As we have seen repeatedly in the years that have followed the Holocaust genocide and atrocities have plagued every corner of the globe and continue to do so. We cannot and must not consign the terror and cruelty of that night to our history books or fool ourselves into believing that it was a history belonging to a different era. To remove ourselves in this way is to remove our own responsibility in fighting racism and intolerance today. This year, many of us have no doubt felt helpless as far-right parties continue to gain a foothold in local councils, and even in the London Assembly -- the body representing one of the most diverse cities in the world. And make no mistake about it -- these are politicians who exploit community divisions, and whose ideology is based on the same racism and prejudice exhibited during the Holocaust. But we do have the ability to halt racism in its tracks. [...]"
KENYA
"Kenyan Police Units 'Murder Hundreds'"
By Jon Swain
The Times, 16 November 2008
"A damning report containing evidence of a high-level policy to murder suspected criminals and troublemakers in Kenya threatens to undermine the reputation of the government of President Mwai Kibaki. The report, by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, reveals that in the past 18 months about 500 young men have been killed or have disappeared in a police campaign carried out with the apparent connivance of political leaders. The dead and missing were suspected of being members of the Mungiki, a feared criminal gang that had itself committed gruesome murders. The Mungiki was outlawed in 2002 following a spate of slum violence. It is a quasi-religious group from the dominant Kikuyu tribe and had become one of Kenya's largest crime and extortion rings. In a speech on June 1 last year, Kibaki warned gang members they should expect no mercy. Two days later more than 300 Mungiki members were arrested and 20 killed. John Michuki, the internal security minister, said: 'We will pulverise and finish them off. Even those arrested over the recent killings, I cannot tell you where they are today. What you will certainly hear is that so and so's burial is tomorrow.' Since then the commission has compiled the names of at least 300 men who have been killed or have disappeared. It also said there were about 200 victims whose identities could not be established since they were booked into the mortuaries as unknown. Initially the police shot most suspects but then, the commission said, they turned to strangulation, drowning, mutilation and bludgeoning in an attempt to make the public believe rival gangs were responsible for the killings. Several witnesses told the commission that police death squads carried machetes, iron bars, ropes and other crude weapons in their cars. Its evidence is being studied by the United Nations committee against torture. [...]"
PALESTINE/ISRAEL
"Chronic Malnutrition in Gaza Blamed on Israel"
By Donald Macintyre
The Independent, 15 November 2008
"The Israeli blockade of Gaza has led to a steady rise in chronic malnutrition among the 1.5 million people living in the strip, according to a leaked report from the Red Cross. It chronicles the 'devastating' effect of the siege that Israel imposed after Hamas seized control in June 2007 and notes that the dramatic fall in living standards has triggered a shift in diet that will damage the long-term health of those living in Gaza and has led to alarming deficiencies in iron, vitamin A and vitamin D. The 46-page report from the International Committee of the Red Cross -- seen by The Independent -- is the most authoritative yet on the impact that Israel's closure of crossings to commercial goods has had on Gazan families and their diets. The report says the heavy restrictions on all major sectors of Gaza's economy, compounded by a cost of living increase of at least 40 per cent, is causing 'progressive deterioration in food security for up to 70 per cent of Gaza's population.' That in turn is forcing people to cut household expenditures down to 'survival levels.' 'Chronic malnutrition is on a steadily rising trend and micronutrient deficiencies are of great concern,' it said. Since last year, the report found, there had been a switch to 'low cost/high energy' cereals, sugar and oil, away from higher-cost animal products and fresh fruit and vegetables. Such a shift 'increases exposure to micronutrient deficiencies which in turn will affect their health and wellbeing in the long term.' Israel has often said that it will not allow a humanitarian crisis to develop in Gaza and the report says that the groups surveyed had 'accessed their annual nutritional energy needs.' But it warned governments, including Israel's, that 'food insecurity and undernutrition, including micronutrient deficiencies' were occurring in the absence of 'overt food shortages.' [...]"
RWANDA
"Rwanda President: Aide Arrested in Germany Was on Government Business"
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 11 November 2008
"Rwandan President Paul Kagame said today his country's sovereignty was violated when an aide visiting Germany was arrested in connection with an attack that set off Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Rose Kabuye, Kagame's chief of protocol, was arrested Sunday at Frankfurt International Airport on a warrant from France, where she is wanted in connection with the fatal April 1994 attack on the plane of President Juvenal Habyarimana. Hutu extremists accuse Tutsi fighters -- then led by Kagame -- of shooting down the plane and killing Habyarimana, a Hutu. Other speculation, though, has focused on hard-line Hutus hoping to create a pretext for mass violence against Tutsis. Kagame visited Kabuye today at the Preungsheim women's prison where she is being held. He told reporters afterward that her case was politically motivated and added it could affect Rwanda's cooperation with the European Union in regard to the fighting in Congo. ... French authorities, who are investigating because Habyarimana's two pilots were French, suspect Kabuye housed the commando unit blamed for shooting down the plane. Forster said Kabuye denies involvement. Ties between Rwanda and France have been strained since a French judge's decision to issue warrants for nine associates of Kagame, including Kabuye, over the crash, All nine are in Kagame's government. The Tutsi-led government and genocide survivor organizations by contrast have often accused France of training and arming the Hutu militias and former government troops who led the genocide. [...]"
[n.b. Does the shootdown of Habyarimana's plane now count as the most significant unsolved act of homicide anywhere in the world?]
"Warrants over Rwanda Genocide Imminent: Sources"
Agence France-Presse dispatch on RawStory.com, 11 November 2008
"Rwanda is poised to issue indictments and arrest warrants against 23 French military and political officials over their suspected role in the country's 1994 genocide, judicial sources said on Tuesday. Indictments against France's late president Francois Mitterrand and former prime minister Dominique de Villepin among others would mark a new step in the judicial escalation between the two countries. The threat of warrants against top French officials -- several of whom are still active -- came as hundreds demonstrated in Kigali against the arrest by Germany, acting on a French warrant, of a top aide to the Rwandan president. ... Rwandan prosecutors had spent the past three months examining a 500-page report drafted by a special commission tasked with probing France's role in the genocide and released on August 5 by the justice ministry. It names former French prime minister Edouard Balladur, former foreign minister Alain Juppe and then-president Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996, among 13 French politicians accused of playing a role in the massacres. Dominique de Villepin, who was then Juppe's top aide and later became prime minister, was also among those listed in the Rwandan report. It also names 20 military officials, involved notably in Operation Turquoise, a 1994 French military mission to Rwanda which Kigali charges was used to assist Hutu genocide perpetrators. The justice official speaking to AFP on Tuesday did not specify who were the 23 officials facing indictment. [...]"
SPAIN
"Spanish Court Suspends Opening of Franco-Era Mass Graves"
The Telegraph, 7 November 2008
"A court in Spain has halted the opening of mass graves of victims of the nation's 1936-39 civil war and the ensuing dictatorship as ordered by top judge Baltasar Garzon while it analyses the legal basis for his decision. A panel of judges belonging to the National Audience, Spain's top criminal court, ruled to suspend the order by 10 votes to five in response to a demand by the public prosecutor. ... National Audience judge Baltasar Garzon, on October 16, ordered the opening of 19 mass graves, including one near Granada where Spain's most widely acclaimed 20th century poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, is thought to be buried. He ordered four more mass graves to be opened on Thursday as part of an investigation into the disappearances of some 114,000 people during the war and the early years of General Francisco Franco's right-wing dictatorship. Judge Garzon decided to open Spain's first criminal investigation into Franco-era executions and repression in response to a petition filed by 13 associations of victims' families. He based his decision on the grounds that he was probing a case of crimes against humanity that he says has no statute of limitations, an argument he has used in the past to try to prosecute atrocities that took place under military rule in Argentina and Chile that affected Spaniards. But the public prosecutor's office appealed his decision, arguing that it violated an amnesty agreed by political parties in the spirit of national reconciliation in 1977, two years after Franco's death, for crimes committed under the general's rule. The opposition conservative Popular Party has argued that the judge's move would open up old wounds in Spanish society, but last week Judge Garzon's move got the backing of the UN Commission on Human Rights which called on Spain to abolish its 1977 amnesty law. [...]"
SUDAN/DARFUR/UNITED STATES
"Obama is Asked to Focus on Darfur"
By Elise Labott
CNN.com, 13 November 2008
"Human rights groups are asking President-elect Barack Obama to pay early attention to the crisis in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, where government forces have waged a bloody war against militias that some international critics have characterized as genocide. Sudan President Omar al-Bashir has agreed to a cease-fire with rebels, which could give the U.S. an opening. 'We've seen the military surge in Iraq. We've seen the development surge that NATO's announced for Afghanistan,' said Darfur activist John Prendergast. 'What's really needed in Sudan and the broader Horn and East Africa region is a peace surge.' Prendergast's ENOUGH organization to combat genocide is a project of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank run by Obama's transition co-chairman, John Podesta. Prendergast and other Darfur activists penned a recent letter to Obama, asking him to designate a team to focus solely on the Darfur issue within the first 100 days of his administration. ... During the presidential campaign, Obama called the crisis in Darfur 'a collective stain on our national and human conscience' and said he would make ending it a priority on 'Day One.' Obama has promised to appoint a special envoy to deal with the Darfur issue and implementing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the decades-long civil war between the North and South. That agreement could be a model for a peace process in Darfur, Prendergast said. Although the United States does not have to lead the peace process, it could be an active partner in the global effort to develop a strategy for getting the various parties in Sudan together, he said. [...]"
"Sudan President Offers Ceasefire in Darfur, Other Steps Aiming to Show Ready for Peace"
By Mohamed Osman
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 12 November 2008
"President Omar al-Bashir offered a ceasefire in Darfur on Wednesday and promised to disarm militias, a top rebel demand, in a new push by his government to show it is serious about ending the nearly 6-year-old conflict. Darfur rebels dismissed the moves, saying they don't trust al-Bashir and want to see disarmament of the feared janjaweed militias before agreeing to a ceasefire. Al-Bashir's announcement is part of a high-profile campaign by Khartoum to display its readiness amid attempts to cobble together new Darfur peace negotiations mediated by the Arab nation Qatar and a U.N. envoy. It comes as the Sudanese president is trying to fend off possible genocide charges by the International Criminal Court over atrocities in Darfur. Up to 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million driven from their homes in the vast region of western Sudan since fighting erupted in early 2003. The war pits troops from the Arab-led Sudanese government against ethnic African rebels, and Khartoum is accused of backing Arab militias known as janjaweed said to have carried out widespread atrocities against ethnic African civilians. The government has repeatedly called ceasefires in Darfur in the past, but they have quickly broken down. ... The call appeared to stop short of ordering a unilateral ceasefire by government troops in Darfur. [...]"
TANZANIA
"Tanzania's Macabre Trade: Albinos Killed for Body Parts"
The Telegraph, 7 November 2008
"Tanzanian albinos are living in terror following 30 murders in the east African nation by people apparently seeking their body parts for witchcraft, a campaigner said. The government says most of the killings happened in the last 10 months. The latest three occurred just after a rally held in Dar es Salaam last month to denounce the practice. 'Our biggest fear right now is the fear of living. If you leave work at night as an albino, you are unsure of reaching home safely. When you sleep, you are unsure of waking up in one piece,' Zihada Msembo, secretary general of the Tanzania Albino Society said. 'We marched, the president (Jakaya Kikwete) received us and we said "now we can have some peace" and slept soundly that night. Next morning, we hear yet another albino was killed that very night.' The government says most of the murders occurred in western Tanzania. Police have arrested 53 suspects. The killers sell body parts such as arms, legs, hair, skin and genitals, according to police and albino groups. Those involved in witchcraft, especially in mining and fishing industries, believe these will enrich them, President Kikwete said last month, calling it a 'stupid belief.' Local media have reported several incidents of victims left to bleed to death. [...]"
UKRAINE/RUSSIA
"Kiev Famine Tribute Irks Medvedev"
The Moscow Times, 17 November 2008
"President Dmitry Medvedev accused Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Friday of distorting history for political gain by commemorating a famine engineered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. 'We clearly see that this theme, along with persistent attempts to secure an invitation to NATO's "prep classes," has in recent years all but become the main element of Ukrainian foreign policy,' Medvedev told Yushchenko in a letter. 'Such steps can hardly be explained by a bid to restore historical justice or to honor the victims' memory. They are more likely aimed at dividing our peoples as much as possible,' he said. The dispute over this week's anniversary of the 1932-33 famine is part of a long series of disputes between the neighbors over Kiev's shift toward the West, which includes seeking membership of NATO and the European Union. Historians say 7.5 million people died in the famine, intended to break the spirit of Ukraine's independent farmers. Medvedev said the famine was 'the consequence of drought and forced collectivization. ... To suggest that the main aim was to destroy Ukrainians is to fly in the face of the facts and paint a general tragedy in nationalist tones.' Ukrainian authorities, led by Yushchenko, have sought to have the famine internationally declared a genocide. Several days of commemorations this week include a conference to be attended by regional leaders, the unveiling of a monument and a solemn procession to honor victims."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
"Ukrainians Remember Famine-Genocide of 1933"
By Lori Sherman
Niagara This Week, 14 November 2008
"Mary Burtatynsky was once a happy child, playing in the fields and helping her mother, while growing up with her brother and sister in a small village in the Ukraine. But that childhood was short-lived and soon the happy memories were overshadowed by horrible atrocities most cannot fathom. At the tender age of eight, Burtatynsky endured Holodomor - the widely unknown genocide inflicted by means of a Soviet government-engineered famine that wiped out millions of people across the Ukraine in the early 30s. Burtatynsky joined 19 other survivors at a 75th anniversary commemoration ceremony this weekend at the Ukrainian Black Sea Hall on Welland Avenue. 'We suffered. We suffered so much,' said Burtatynsky, clutching a tissue and wiping away tears from her aging face. 'My father hid a bag of wheat in our home. I remember watching the soldiers go through. They took everything, but they didn't find the bag of wheat.' That bag fed her family of five for over a month, each eating a cup a day mixed with leaves from trees and flowers from the gardens. 'My family survived, but so many did not. My neighbours died. The houses were empty. My street was empty.' Burtatynsky recalls seeing people dying in the streets of her village, some even resorting to cannibalism to feed their starving bodies. ... Until recently, Holodomor, which roughly translates to suffering through starvation, was not recognized by the world as a form of genocide. It wasn't until this year that the European parliament recognized Holodomor as a crime against humanity. Canada has also now followed the lead of other nations in recognizing the event as a deliberate attempt by Josef Stalin to torture and ultimately kill Ukrainians and as such, Canada has now proclaimed the fourth Saturday of November as a memorial day for the victims of Holodomor. [...]"
UNITED KINGDOM
"Our Haven for War Criminals"
By Ken Macdonald
The Guardian, 8 November 2008
"... There are serious gaps in our law. Suspects can be tried for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed abroad only if they are UK residents or nationals, and if they committed their crimes after the International Criminal Court Act was passed in 2001. Quite illogically, this differs from hostage-taking and torture, which are fully prosecutable here, wherever the offences took place, and have no nationality or residency requirements. So foreign torturers and hostage-takers who commit their crimes overseas can be prosecuted, but Rwandan génocidaires living in the UK are protected. British residents committing war crimes abroad in 2002 may face justice here, but those whose crimes occurred in 1992 are immune. These distinctions lack all humanity and their consequences are ugly. At present, four suspected category-one genocidaires are appealing against an order for their extradition to Rwanda. If they succeed we shall be unable to prosecute them for genocide in our courts. These men, each accused of mass murder, will simply be released to live contentedly among us. The Aegis Trust, an organisation that campaigns on genocide issues, proposes two changes to the law. First, we should move from a strict 'residency' requirement for prosecution, and embrace something closer to a basic 'presence' requirement. This would deal with situations where suspects are found temporarily visiting our country, for example to enjoy medical treatment. It would also bring the UK into line with other common law countries. Second, our courts should be given jurisdiction over crimes against humanity, genocide and all war crimes from the point at which these offences were recognised under international customary law. This would greatly extend our reach into the past. It would largely scrub away the stain of impunity. [...]"
UNITED STATES
"Obama Election Spurs Race Crimes around Country"
By Jesse Washington
Associated Press dispatch on Yahoo! News, 16 November 2008
"Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting 'Assassinate Obama.' Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars. Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America. From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders. There have been 'hundreds' of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes. One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: 'I hope Obama gets assassinated.' That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said. She described her emotions as a combination of anger and fear. 'I can't say that every white person in Snellville is evil and anti-Obama and willing to desecrate my property because one or two idiots did it,' said Millner, who is black. 'But it definitely makes you look a little different at the people who you live with, and makes you wonder what they're capable of and what they're really thinking.' Potok, who is white, said he believes there is 'a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them.' [...]"
UNITED STATES/THE "WAR ON TERROR"
"Bush Torture Memo Slapped Down by Court"
By Johnny Dwyer
Time.com, 3 November 2008
"As the curtain falls on the Bush Administration, one set piece of the Administration's policy on torture has finally been ushered offstage. The Bybee Memo, a 2002 opinion authored by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, was brushed aside last week by a federal judge overseeing the nation's first-ever criminal trial of an American accused of torture abroad. The public defenders representing torture suspect Chucky Taylor, a U.S. citizen and the son of former Liberian military strongman Charles Taylor, submitted it for consideration as part of potential jury instructions. But Federal Judge Cecilia Altonaga rejected the terms laid out in the memo, saying, 'I will not give an instruction that relies upon that memorandum as its authority.' It was a humiliating epilogue to the Bush Administration's attempt to integrate what many critics describe as undeniable torture into U.S. military and intelligence policy. The Bybee memo, (named for Jay Bybee, then head of the Office of Legal Counsel) was largely authored by John Yoo, then Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Office of General Counsel. ... Rejected now by both court and bureaucracy, the Bybee Memo may have no effective existence. But its notoriety is certain to outlive this Administration. Indeed, critics believe it will be part of the Bush legacy. Says Martin Lederman, visiting professor with the Georgetown University Law Center and former adviser to the Office of Legal Counsel: 'the memo will be seen as one of the most extreme deviations from the rule of law and from the President's obligation to take care that the law is faithfully executed.'"
VATICAN/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"Catholic-Jewish Controversy Slows Path to Sainthood for Pope Pius XII"
By Justin Ewers
US News & World Report, 14 November 2008
"A half-century after the death of Pope Pius XII, the pontiff who led the Vatican during World War II, the passionate debate over his wartime actions and his qualifications for sainthood shows no signs of fading. Critics have long insisted that Pius was no saint, accusing him of turning a blind eye to the fate of the Jews when he failed to publicly condemn the Holocaust. Pius's defenders disagree, and the former pope's legacy has become the center of a ferocious battle among the Vatican, church historians, and the Jewish community -- a struggle, many experts believe, that has delayed Pius's sainthood for years. Last month, when the Vatican commemorated the 50th anniversary of Pius's death, high-ranking members of the Roman Catholic Church seemed determined to renew the push for Pius's beatification -- a declaration that he is blessed and worthy of veneration, and the last step before sainthood. Pope Benedict XVI himself, in one of the most forceful defenses by a pope of Pius to date, declared that his predecessor, who led the church from 1939 to 1958, had done all he could -- and more than most -- to stop the Holocaust. ... Seeming to excuse Pius's silence during the Holocaust, when the Vatican, like the rest of Europe, was threatened by the Nazis, Benedict insisted the pope's wartime interventions were 'made secretly and silently precisely because, given the concrete situation of that difficult historical moment, only in this way was it possible to avoid the worst and save the greatest number of Jews.' This increasingly muscular defense of Pius, which experts viewed as an attempt to pave the way to sainthood, outraged many in the Jewish community. [...]"
"Holocaust Group to Lobby Pope over Pius Sainthood"
By Philip Pullella
Reuters dispatch, 7 November 2008
"Holocaust survivors and their descendants will lobby Pope Benedict to stop the process of making his wartime predecessor Pius XII a saint, saying beatifying him would be a tragedy for Catholic-Jewish relations. The plan, involving appealing to the pope by lobbying his ambassadors around the world, was approved Thursday night in New York and will be announced formally Monday, a leader of an organization spearheading it told Reuters Friday. 'Beatifying Pius XII would be a tragedy for Catholic-Jewish relations, which have become so warm in recent years,' said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants (AGJHSD). Some Jews have accused Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked silently behind the scenes and helped save many Jews from certain death during World War Two. Steinberg, who is also executive director emeritus of the World Jewish Congress, said survivors' groups around the world would seek meetings with Vatican nuncios (ambassadors) to express their concern. This is believed to be the first time Holocaust survivors have organized a global campaign to lobby the Vatican. The American group has about 60,000 members. Thursday, Pope Benedict's deputy, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said Jewish accusations were 'outrageous' and that no one could tell the Vatican whether Pius should be made a saint. [...]"
ISSUE: INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS
"UN Court on Rwandan Genocide Expects Its Term to Be Extended"
By Sarah McGregor
Bloomberg.com, 12 November 2008
"The United Nations-backed war crimes court on the Rwandan genocide expects that its term will be extended until the end of next year to allow more time to handle a backlog of cases, spokesman Roland Amoussouga said. The Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has handed down 32 convictions and five acquittals, while one case is on appeal, Amoussouga said yesterday in an interview in Arusha, Tanzania. Another 37 detainees are on or awaiting trial, the ICTR said on its Web site. Thirteen people suspected of genocide-related crimes are still at large, Amoussouga said. 'The tribunal made a presentation to the Security Council in June and requested it be granted an extension in order to complete the cases,' Amoussouga said. 'We are waiting a final decision, but already there are indications that we should be granted such an extension at least until the end of December 2009.' As many as 800,000 people, or more than a 10th of Rwanda's population, died in the three-month long slaughter of minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus by ethnic Hutu militias, following the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994. Habyarimana died when a plane he was traveling in was shot down as it prepared for landing in Kigali, Rwanda's capital. The term of ICTR judges already has been extended to next year, Amoussouga said. The tribunal was established in 1994 with a mandate to conclude first instance cases by the end of this year and appeal trials by 2010. Verdicts on three cases, including that of Colonel Theoneste Bagosora who is an alleged mastermind of the killings, will be delivered next month, Amoussouga said. 'We have reached our cruising altitude and now many decisions are coming,' he said. Operating the Arusha-based tribunal and its offices at the Hague and in Rwanda have cost an average of $90 million a year, Amoussouga said."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
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