Ivory Coast

"Forces loyal to presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara rest about 20 kilometres north of Abidjan on Friday." (Emmanuel Braun/Reuters)

Ivory Coast Massacre Kills 1,000: Agency
CBC News, April 2, 2011
"Aid agencies are reporting mass killings in the Ivory Coast city of Duekoue, captured by fighters supporting UN-recognized president Alassane Ouattara this week. The Red Cross on Saturday said at least 800 civilians were killed in inter-ethnic violence in a single neighbourhood of the city in recent days, while the Roman Catholic charity Caritas said the number exceeded 1,000. Red Cross spokeswoman Dorothea Krimitsas said delegates from the Ivorian Red Cross had visited Duekoue on Thursday and Friday to gather evidence and saw a 'huge number of bodies.' 'We are shocked by the brutality and scale of this act,' said Dominique Liengme, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in the African country. Caritas spokesman Patrick Nicholson said workers with his agency visited the city on Wednesday. He said they saw victims who died of gunshot and machete wounds. ... It's not clear whether the armed group trying to install Ouattara as president was involved. The mass killing brings the confirmed death toll from violence since the presidential election last November, in which Ouattara was the internationally recognized winner, to 1,300 people.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

"A rape vicitm in Livungi, Congo, 2010." (Michael Kamber/The New York Times)

Explaining Congo's Endless Civil War (Review of Jason K. Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters)
By Adam Hochschild
The New York Times, April 1, 2011
"[...] The fighting has left tens or even hundreds of thousands of women gang-raped and led to what may be millions of war-related deaths; at its peak, some 3.4 million Congolese (the only one of these tolls we can be remotely sure of) were forced to flee their homes for months or years. But it draws little attention in the United States. As Jason K. Stearns, who has worked for the United Nations in Congo, points out, a study showed that in 2006 even this newspaper gave four times as much coverage to Darfur, although Congolese have died in far greater numbers. One reason we shy away is the conflict's stunning complexity. 'How,' Stearns asks, 'do you cover a war that involves at least 20 different rebel groups and the armies of nine countries, yet does not seem to have a clear cause or objective?' 'Dancing in the Glory of Monsters' is the best account so far: more serious than several recent macho-war-correspondent travelogues, and more lucid and accessible than its nearest competitor, Gérard Prunier's dense and overwhelming 'Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe.' A fatal combination long primed this vast country for bloodshed.

Argentina / Operation Condor

"Former army intelligence operative Raul Guglielminetti, center, and former agent of Argentina's intelligence agency SIDE, Honorio Ruiz, sit in court before their sentencing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday March 31, 2011." (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Argentina: Ex-Agents Sentenced in Operation Condor 
Associated Press dispatch on Yahoo! News, April 1, 2011
"A court on Thursday sentenced a former army general to life in prison and three ex-state agents to 20 or 25 years for crimes against humanity committed in a notorious torture center during Argentina's military dictatorship. Ex-Gen. Eduardo Cabanillas was convicted of illegal imprisonment, torture and homicide involving 65 people held at Automotores Orletti, an auto body shop that served as an operations center for Operation Condor, a coordinated effort by South America's dictatorships to eliminate dissidents who sought refuge in neighboring countries. The crimes took place in 1976. Prosecutors says about 300 people passed through Automotores Orletti, including Uruguayans, Chileans, Bolivians and Cubans, most of whom were killed or disappeared. The federal Argentine court on Thursday also sentenced former army intelligence agent Raul Guglielminetti to 20 years in prison while former spies Honorio Martinez Ruiz and Eduardo Ruffo each received 25 years. A fifth suspect in the case, retired Col. Ruben Visuara, died in February. 'It is a glorious and historical day that we are living and that the "mothers" didn't think we'd live to see. This is legal justice,' said Tati Almeida of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, an Argentine human rights group.

Sudan / South Sudan

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

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

Czech Republic / Lidice Massacre / Porrajmos (Roma Genocide)

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

Libya

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

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

Libya

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

Kosovo / Serbia

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

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

France / Anti-Semitism

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

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

Argentina / National Tribunals

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

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

Bangladesh / National Tribunals

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

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

Philosophy & Psychology of Genocide

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

Libya

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

Sudan / Southern Sudan

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

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

Libya

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

Libya / United Nations / Genocide Intervention

"Distinguished Members of the Council, Madam President,

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

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

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

Libya / International Criminal Court

Photo: Getty Images

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

India / Gujarat Genocide

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

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

Israel / Palestine / Apartheid

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

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

Libya

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

Uganda

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

Israel / Palestine / Genocide Studies

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

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

Poland / Jewish Holocaust / Genocide Memorials

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

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

Greece / Germany / Nazism

"Greek civilians look on as the Germany army makes its way to Thessaloniki in April 1941." (Getty)

Athens Backs Villagers' Fight for German Compensation over 1944 SS Massacre
By Helena Smith
The Observer, February 13, 2011
"A Nazi massacre remembered by Greeks as one of the worst atrocities of the second world war is threatening to plunge relations between Athens and Berlin to a new low amid rising criticism of Germany's failure to pay compensation. The diplomatic dispute erupted last month after the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, pledged his government would support the compensation claims of survivors and relatives of the massacre in the village of Distomo in June 1944, which left 218 people dead. No previous administration has dared touch the case for fear of tensions with Germany. 'This is about history. This is not anti-German,' the Socialist leader told the Observer. 'It is about something that happened over 60 years ago, of honouring the memory of Greek citizens who were sacrificed for their country.' At a time when Athens is fighting off bankruptcy with austerity measures – demanded by international creditors after the biggest bailout in history -- Papandreou's move is popular. Under Nazi occupation from April 1941, more than 300,000 Greeks starved to death, 130,000 were executed in reprisals, and most of the Jewish community was sent to the gas chambers. The tragedy at Distomo, near Delphi, is ingrained in the national consciousness. Children are taught that on 10 June 1944 some 218 men, women and children were slaughtered by a Waffen-SS unit in reprisal for an ambush on German troops outside the village. It occurred on the same day as the SS massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane in France. Bodies were found dangling from trees by the road to the village when a Red Cross team visited days later.

United States / Switzerland / Universal Jurisdiction

Bush Trip to Switzerland Called Off Amid Threats of Protests, Legal Action
By Peter Finn
The Washington Post, February 5, 2011
"A planned trip to Switzerland next week by George W. Bush was canceled after human rights activists called for demonstrations and threatened legal action over allegations that the former president sanctioned the torture of terrorism suspects. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and several European human rights groups said they were planning to file a complaint against Bush and wanted Swiss prosecutors to open a criminal case against him once he arrived in the country. In what would have been his first European trip since leaving the presidency, Bush was scheduled to speak in Geneva on Feb. 12 at a dinner in honor of the United Israel Appeal. A lawyer for the organization said Bush's appearance was canceled because of the risk of violence, and that the threat of legal action was not an issue. 'The calls to demonstrate were sliding into dangerous terrain,' the lawyer, Robert Equey, told the Swiss daily Tribune de Geneve. A spokesman for Bush said the former president regretted that his speech was canceled. 'President Bush was looking forward to speaking about freedom and offering reflections from his time in office,' David Sherzer said in an e-mailed statement.

Rwanda / Media and Genocide

One Man's Rwanda: Philip Gourevitch Softens Some Hard Truths
By Tristan McConnell
"There had been ethnic massacres in Rwanda before, but nothing on the scale of the genocide that began in April 1994. The killing had been over for nearly a year when a young American reporter, Philip Gourevitch, set foot in Rwanda for the first time the following May. The bodies of the dead were reverting to bone but memories were still raw. Gourevitch wrote of accidentally crushing a skull beneath his foot, so thick were the dead at a massacre site, and of the eerie emptiness of a country where so many had died so violently and so recently. In his first dispatch from Rwanda for The New Yorker, seven months after arriving, he wrote, 'It almost seemed as if, with the machete, the nail-studded club, a few well-placed grenades, and a few bursts of automatic rifle fire, the quiet orders of Hutu Power had made the neutron bomb obsolete.' Over three years, Gourevitch spent months at a time in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, committing himself more wholly to the story of the genocide's aftermath than perhaps any other foreign journalist. The New Yorker ran eight of his lengthy articles during this period as he travelled tirelessly across Rwanda, to remote villages and regional towns as well as the capital. He met ordinary Tutsi survivors, imprisoned Hutu perpetrators, and the leaders of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, or RPF, the rebel army that had ended the genocide and taken control of the country. Gourevitch developed enduring contacts within the upper echelons of the RPF. He often interviewed Major General Paul Kagame, the head of the army, who would, years later, become president. From his first New Yorker article about Rwanda, Gourevitch portrayed Kagame as calm, intelligent, thoughtful, and questioning -- a man who, having stopped a great evil, was working against immense odds and in difficult circumstances to fix his broken country. That portrayal has remained fixed over the years. ...

Endorsing Denial of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi: Open Letters to Professor Noam Chomsky

By Roland Moerland
Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Maastricht University, Netherlands
February 3, 2011

Dear Professor Chomsky,

In 1967 you published a special supplement to The New York Review of Books in which you critically addressed the responsibility of intellectuals. Intellectuals, you wrote, have a deep responsibility “to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, […], through which the events of current history are presented to us.”

Although your article was written and published more than forty years ago, the argument is highly relevant, because abuses of power still lead to vast human suffering. I believe that much of what you have written after 1967 up to your recent publications reflects these ideas and principles.

I was therefore shocked and disappointed to find out that you, as a highly distinguished intellectual, should write the foreword to the book The Politics of Genocide, which in chapter 4 includes one of the most flagrant cases of denial of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi that I have ever seen. I find it extremely hard to understand why you would endorse such a gross denial of human suffering. [...]

[Read the full text of the open letters.]

Jewish Holocaust / Genocide Memorials

"This picture taken Jan. 28, 2011, shows people walking through the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland. The red brick barracks that housed starving inmates are sinking into ruin, and officials launched a global campaign to raise euro120 million ($165 million) to create a 'perpetual fund' whose interest can be drawn on indefinitely to repair barracks, watchtowers, crematoria and other structures at the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum and memorial in southern Poland." (Czarek Sokolowski/AP)

"Ravages of Time" Leave Auschwitz Decaying
By Vanessa Gera
Associated Press dispatch on MSNBC.com, February 3, 2011
"The red brick barracks that housed starving inmates are sinking into ruin. Time has warped victims' leather shoes into strange shapes. Hair sheared to make cloth is slowly turning to dust. Auschwitz is crumbling -- the world's most powerful and important testament to Nazi Germany's crimes falling victim to age and mass tourism. Now guardians of the memorial site are waging an urgent effort to save what they can before it is too late. Officials last week launched a global campaign to raise euro120 ($165 million) to create a 'perpetual fund' whose interest can be drawn on indefinitely to repair barracks, watchtowers, crematoria and other structures at the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum and memorial in southern Poland. The Nazis opened Auschwitz soon after invading Poland in 1939, the act that triggered World War II, using it first as a concentration camp for Poles and political prisoners. As they implemented a plan to exterminate Europe's Jews, Gypsies and others, they built the neighboring death camp of Birkenau. The Germans ended up transporting people in cattle cars from across the continent to the death camp in the heart of Europe, and murdered at least 1.1 million in gas chambers or through other acts of barbarity. Museum director Piotr Cywinski made an emotional appeal for help during ceremonies last week marking the 66th anniversary of the camp's liberation by Soviet troops, as he launched the fundraising campaign. Called 'Intervene Now,' the campaign's message has been spread on Facebook, in newspapers and elsewhere. 'There are no more remains of Treblinka, Kulmhof, Sobibor and Belzec,' Cywinski said, referring to extermination camps that the Nazis destroyed in an effort to hide their crimes. 'Let us not allow the biggest of these death camps -- and the only one that is still recognizable -- to fall into decay due to the ravages of time and our indifference.'

Spain / Spanish Civil War / Genocide and Memory

Francisco Franco. (Keystone/Getty)

Barcelona Topples the Final Reminder of Franco's Regime
By Alasdair Fotheringham
The Independent, February 1, 2011
"Almost 72 years to the day after Nationalist troops swept into Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, the city's last monument to General Francisco Franco and his dictatorship has finally been taken down. The removal of the four-metre-high bronze 'Victory' statue -- situated in the central Avenida Diagonal, the boulevard down which Franco's forces advanced on 26 January, 1939 -- was watched by a small crowd of about 200. Thanks to the law of Historic Memory passed in 2007 by Spain's socialist government, monuments of all kinds to the general who ruled Spain for nearly 40 years, from statues to street names, are gradually being removed. In fiercely nationalist Catalonia, where Franco outlawed the region's language and abolished local government, the town halls have been singularly thorough at weeding them out. And in a city like Barcelona, famous for its hard-headed entrepreneurs, only the risk of traffic jams for shoppers rushing to January sales provided a last-minute delay on the statue's removal. 'Franco's triumph represented a great defeat for Catalan culture and values,' said Barcelona's Mayor, Jordi Hereu, as 'Victory,' erected in 1940, came down. 'It was nothing to be proud of at all.' But he added: 'We've been one of the cities that's been fastest to apply the [2007] law.' ...

Remembering Ronald Reagan

"Of President Ronald Reagan, who directly sponsored the 'anti-communist' campaigns of terrorism and extermination in Central America, Robert Parry wrote that he 'found virtually every anti-communist action justified, no matter how brutal. From his eight years in the White House, there is no historical indication that he was troubled by the bloodbath and even genocide that occurred in Central America during his presidency, while he was shipping hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the implicated forces.' ... On the basis of the US orchestration of genocide in El Salvador and Nicaragua (c. 100,000 killed), and also considering the 'fundamental political support' ... that his government extended to Guatemala and other atrocious regimes throughout Latin America, there are grounds to regard Reagan as the single worst purveyor of mass atrocity in the western hemisphere during the twentieth century. Very little of this surfaced in the nauseating encomiums to Reagan in the US media following his death in 2004."

- Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2010), pp. 146-47 (n. 9). See also the excerpts from Robert Parry's article, "War Crimes and Double Standards" (1999).

Commemorating

Holocaust Remembrance Day

January 27, 2011

Auschwitz: Photo of Jewish couple with Star of David armbands

Video of the Month

Worse Than War

(2010, 114 mins.)

A companion documentary to his 2009 book, Worse Than War is Daniel Goldhagen's global but highly personal exploration of genocide and "eliminationism." Goldhagen visits Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cambodia, among other countries consumed by genocide; confronts Guatemalan génocidaire Efraín Ríos Montt with the cameras rolling; and in especially moving scenes, returns with his father to the Ukrainian village where he narrowly escaped being murdered by the Nazis, and where many of his family members lie buried in a mass grave. The film is too self-centred at times, and Goldhagen never engages with his own country's role as a supporter and perpetrator of mass atrocity. Nonetheless, it's a vivid, comprehensive, and up-to-date survey.

Uganda / Violence against Homosexuals

Ugandan Gay Rights Activist Bludgeoned to Death
By Tom Walsh
CNN.com, January 27, 2011
"A Ugandan gay rights activist whose name was published on a list of the nation's 'top homosexuals' was bludgeoned to death in his home near the capital, his lawyer said Thursday. A neighbor found David Kato dead and notified authorities, according to his lawyer, John Onyango. Kato's money and some clothes were missing after the attack, Onyango said. It was unclear whether Kato's killing was linked to his gay rights activism or a front-page story in a Ugandan tabloid that reignited anti-gay sentiments late last year. The story included a list of 'top 100 homosexuals' with their photos, addresses and a banner with the words 'Hang Them.' Kato's name and picture were on the list. Arrest warrants have been issued for two suspects: a taxi driver found near Kato's house and an ex-convict who was staying with Kato before the killing, Onyango said. Kato told CNN last year that he feared for his life after the list was released. His lawyer said he had informed authorities in Mukono, the town where he lived, of his fears. 'The villagers want to set my house ablaze,' he told CNN at the time. 'They want to burn my house. ... (They say,) "Can you go away before my house is burned?"' Authorities in the Mukono criminal investigations department declined to comment pending further investigation. Activists decried the attack, and urged authorities in the east African nation to investigate the killing. They called on the government to protect them from violence, and act on threats and hostility toward them.

"Evoking Genocide" Awarded "Outstanding Academic Title" Citation by Choice Magazine

 My (our!) edited volume, Evoking Genocide: Scholars and Activists Describe the Works That Shaped Their Lives, has been chosen as an "Outstanding Academic Title" for 2010 by Choice Magazine, the leading journal of librarians around the English-speaking world. The citation was announced in the magazine's January 2011 issue. The Choice review of Evoking Genocide appeared in their July 2010 issue, and is reproduced below.

---

Winner of Outstanding Academic Title

47-6326 HV6322 Can.CIP
Evoking genocide: scholars and activists describe the works that shaped their lives, ed. By Adam Jones. Key publishing House, 2009. 313 p index 9780978252694 pbk, $32.99 

This compilation has a simple yet fascinating premise: ask leading human rights scholars and activists to reflect on the art and literature that most influenced them. The result -- 60 two-to-three page essays meditating on a wide variety of sources, from the essential (Elie Wiesel’s Night, 1960) to the unexpected (Star Trek) -- is highly engaging and thoughtful. The beauty here is that these well-known intellectuals and activists are honestly writing about the things that move them, capture their imaginations, and propel them onward in their work. Reading the book is akin to talking to a favourite professor about why he or she chose a specific field of study. The essays, covering events ranging from genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Americas to the genocide in Darfur, are not traditionally academic, a fact that may make this book more accessible to students. An excellent starting place for those interested in developing classes on the art and literature of genocide. Jones includes a list of resources for further reading.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. –J.B. Edwards, University of Montana

Choice July 2010 Vol. 47 No. 11 Social & Behavioral Sciences

Genocide against Christians

Middle East Genocide of Christians?
By Doreen Abi Raad
National Catholic Register, January 26, 2011
"Religious cleansing, genocide and outright extermination are terms now used to describe the plight of Christians in the Middle East, particularly following recent horrific attacks on Christians in Iraq and Egypt. While attacks on Christians in the Middle East are nothing new, the situation has escalated. There was the Oct. 31 massacre in Baghdad’s Syriac Catholic Church of Our Lady of Salvation, for example, which killed 58 people, including two priests, and wounded 75. Then, on Jan. 1, an attack on the Orthodox Coptic Church of the Saints in Alexandria, Egypt, killed 21 people and wounded more than 100. 'Christians are scared and are continuing to leave,' said Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk, Iraq. 'They want to educate their children with security,' he said, noting that even when their children are in school, parents are afraid about their safety. 'They are very worried about their future.' While there are Christians who want to stay in Iraq, the bishop said, they are feeling more vulnerable and afraid with each day and want to flee their homeland. It is estimated that about half of Iraq's approximately 1.4 million Christians have fled the country since the American invasion in 2003. The exodus has brought hundreds of thousands to neighboring Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, and most recently Turkey. Archbishop Sako was instrumental in calling for the Synod of Bishops to address the plight of Christians in the Middle East, which they did this past October at the Vatican. 'Human bleeding is threatening the Christian presence in the area. It is a disaster that with their departure will go their history, heritage, liturgies, spirituality and witness,' the archbishop said of the descendants of the world's first Christians. In a Jan. 10 speech to diplomats accredited to the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI quoted a message from the synod, saying Christians in the Middle East are loyal citizens who are entitled to 'enjoy all the rights of citizenship, freedom of conscience, freedom of worship and freedom in education, teaching and the use of the mass media.' Religious leaders point to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism for the escalation of attacks.

Soviet Union / Gulag / Genocide and Film

"Ed Harris and Colin Farrell in 'The Way Back.'"

Based on a True Story ... The Way Back is Hollywood's First Film about the Soviet Gulag
By Anne Applebaum
Slate.com, January 24, 2011
"'It's based on a true story.' Or 'It's truth, but stranger than fiction.' Or even, 'You couldn't make it up.' When Peter Weir gets sent film scripts these days, most of them advertise themselves as 'true.' That wasn't always the case: Weir (who made Gallipoli, Witness, and Master and Commander, among other movies) dates the tilt away from fiction and toward fact back to Sept. 11, 2001, the day when reality suddenly seemed 'exactly like a Hollywood movie.' The growth of reality television surely explains the change, too. So does Hollywood's bottom line. 'Reality is a brand which people can sell' says Peter Morgan, who wrote the script for The Queen -- a movie based on the (true) story of Diana, Princess of Wales: 'If people need to explain what a film is about, the film stands very little chance of surviving.' ... But what about stories that are true but totally unfamiliar? Do we -- can we -- still watch people in real situations of a kind we've never thought about before? As it happens, Weir's latest movie, The Way Back, might answer this question. For The Way Back is a unique and groundbreaking film: It represents Hollywood's first attempt, ever, to portray the Soviet Gulag in meticulously researched detail. I know this to be true because I was a historical consultant to Weir. He asked me for advice because I wrote a book about the Gulag, but he did plenty of research on his own, as his questions reflected. Once, he called to ask whether the guards leading the prisoners off the train would have been wearing the same uniforms as the guards receiving them at the camp. (Answer: no.) The Way Back is based on a book called The Long Walk, by Slawomir Rawicz, a Gulag survivor who 'borrowed' his escape story: Three Poles crossed the Himalayas from Siberia into India in the 1940s; the Polish consulate recorded their arrival; one of them told his story to Rawicz. But the film is true in every way that matters. Many of the camp scenes are taken directly from Soviet archives and memoirs. The starving men scrambling for garbage, the tattooed criminals playing cards for the clothes of other prisoners, the narrow barracks, the logging camp, the vicious Siberian storms. Among the very plausible characters are an American who went to work on the Moscow subway and fell victim to the Great Terror of 1937, a Polish officer arrested after the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, and a Latvian priest whose church was destroyed by the Bolsheviks. These scenes and people are realistic. But they are definitely not familiar. ...

Zimbabwe / Gukurahundi (Ndebele Genocide)

"The work of the artist Owen Moseko was blocked from view. The artwork depicts atrocities committed a quarter century ago." (Robin Hammond/The New York Times)

Art Exhibit Stirs Up the Ghosts of Zimbabwe's Past
By Celia W. Dugger
The New York Times, January 23, 2011
"The exhibit at the National Gallery is now a crime scene, the artwork banned and the artist charged with insulting President Robert Mugabe. The picture windows that showcased graphic depictions of atrocities committed in the early years of Mr. Mugabe’s 30-year-long rule are now papered over with the yellowing pages of a state-controlled newspaper. But the government’s efforts to bury history have instead provoked slumbering memories of the Gukurahundi, Zimbabwe’s name for the slaying and torture of thousands of civilians here in the Matabeleland region a quarter century ago. 'You can suppress art exhibits, plays and books, but you cannot remove the Gukurahundi from people's hearts,' said Pathisa Nyathi, a historian here. 'It is indelible.' As Zimbabwe heads anxiously toward another election season, a recent survey by Afrobarometer has found that 70 percent of Zimbabweans are afraid they will be victims of political violence or intimidation, as thousands were in the 2008 elections. But an equal proportion want the voting to go forward this year nonetheless, evidence of their deep desire for democracy and the willingness of many to vote against Mr. Mugabe at great personal risk, analysts say. In few places do such sentiments about violence in public life run as deep as here, and in recent months the government -- whether through missteps or deliberate provocation -- has rubbed them ever more raw.

Israel / Palestine

"Palestinian firefighters try to assist after an Israeli missile strike in Rafah on the site of a security compound used by the Islamic group Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2008." (Associated Press)

Israel Aimed to "Cleanse" Gaza Neighbourhoods in 2008 Invasion
By Alex Thomson
The Telegraph, January 24, 2011
"Israel's controversial invasion of Gaza deliberately aimed to 'cleanse' Palestinian neighbourhoods, former soldiers have alleged, in claims that will reignite the debate over the legality of the three week military campaign. Israel invaded Gaza at the end of 2008 in a bid to halt rocket attacks from the territory it ceded in 2005. It says it focused on military targets controlled by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, and bitterly countered a 2009 United Nations report that stated civilians had been deliberately targeted. But in startling interviews with Israeli filmmaker Nurit Kedar, former soldiers have for the first time allowed themselves to be named while blaming their commanders for encouraging a 'disproportionate' response to Hamas's rockets. They said their commanders used to 'psych up' soldiers before an operation so they were ready to shoot indiscriminately. One soldier says he was told to shell every house in a neighbourhood. Richard Goldstone's report for the UN alleged that war crimes had been committed by both sides, but highlighted the moral and legal severity of the Israel's attacks. Israel has said its operational orders during the war emphasised 'proportionality' and 'humanity'. The importance of minimising harm to civilians was made clear to soldiers, it said at the time. By the end of the 22-day operation some 1,400 Palestinians had been killed and large areas of Gaza razed. Ten Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians also died. In a report to be shown on Channel 4 News on Monday, Ohad, a 24-year-old tank commander, remembers being told the night before the operation that the entry into Gaza was to be 'disproportionate'. Once into Gaza, he said his orders were unambiguous: 'The order was very clear that if a car came within 200 metres of me I could simply shoot at it. Shoot a shell at it.' He added: 'We needed to cleanse the neighbourhoods, the buildings, the area. It sounds really terrible to say "cleanse," but those were the orders. ... I don't want to make a mistake with the words.'

Israel / Srebrenica Genocide

"A woman prays during a mass burial for 775 newly identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre on July 11, 2010."

Israel Arrests Suspect in Srebrenica Massacre
CNN.com, January 18, 2011
"Israeli police arrested Tuesday an immigrant from the former Yugoslavia who is suspected of participating in the 1995 massacre in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. Aleksander Cvetkovic immigrated to Israel with his wife, who is Jewish, and children in 2006 and received Israeli citizenship, said a statement from the Israeli Justice Ministry. The Israeli state prosecutor's office received an extradition request for him last August from the Bosnian government. The decision to open an extradition process came after months of examining evidence. That evidence exposes shocking details of the massacre of Muslims at Braniewo farm, the ministry said. 'Hundreds of Bosnian civilians were bused to the farm handcuffed and blindfolded. They were led to the killing fields where firing squads made up of Bosnian-Serb soldiers shot them in cold blood,' the ministry said. Cvetkovic actively participated in the massacre and was one of eight soldiers in the firing squad, the state prosecutor's office said. The extradition process, it said, is part of 'an international legal action that investigates and prosecutes those responsible for planning and carrying out genocide.' About 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in Srebrenica in 1995. Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb president at the time, is accused of being responsible for the massacre. Srebrenica became an emblem for the dissolution of Yugoslavia -- once a multi-ethnic state of Serbs, Croats, Muslims and others -- into six countries during bloody and brutal conflicts in the early 1990s."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch. Thanks to Jo Jones for bringing it to my attention.]

Canada / Guatemalan Genocide

Guatemala War Crimes Suspect Arrested in Alta.
Canadian Press dispatch on cbc.ca, January 18, 2011
"Guatemala war crimes suspect arrested in Alta. A man wanted for war crimes in Guatemala nearly 30 years ago has been arrested in Alberta. Police in Lethbridge took Jorge Vinicio Orantes Sosa into custody Tuesday. Sosa, who has both Canadian and American citizenship, is charged in the United States with making a false statement relating to naturalization and unlawful procurement of citizenship or naturalization. Sosa was being transferred to Calgary, where he will be held in custody pending an extradition hearing to the U.S. The 52-year-old is also wanted by Guatemalan authorities in relation to war crimes dating back to 1982. It's alleged that Sosa participated in the attacks on Las Dos Erres in which 251 men, women and children were massacred."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]

Sudan / Southern Sudan

"A Dinka herdsman moves cattle in the southern Sudanese city of Juba ..."

Sudanese Rival Groups Strike Peace Accord
By Jody Clarke
The Irish Times, January 15, 2011
"The two Sudanese ethnic groups involved in deadly clashes in the disputed border region of Abyei last weekend have signed a deal to put an end to the fighting. Leaders of the Misseriya and Dinka Ngok have agreed to pay compensation for over 30 people killed in violence which began on January 7th and threatened to overshadow this week's independence referendum in the south. However, the deal does not address the future status of Abyei, which did not take part in the referendum because of a dispute over who is eligible to vote. Fighting began after the nomadic Misseriya, who believe Abyei should remain part of the north, claimed they were being prevented from bringing cattle to water sources during their annual migration into the area in search of grazing. However, the Dinka, who have ties to the south, alleged the Misseriya were trying to force them from their homes. Convoys of south Sudanese civilians leaving north Sudan were also attacked. Under the agreement, Dinka leaders agreed to allow the Misseriya to water their cattle as long as further compensation was paid for deaths in 2010. In return, the Misseriya agreed to guarantee security for southerners travelling through the region. The news came as the US signalled it would remove Sudan from a list of state sponsors of terrorism if it respected the results of this week's independence referendum in south Sudan.

Jewish Holocaust / Genocide Literature

20 Essential Works of Holocaust Literature
Mastersdegree.net, January 12, 2011
"Genocide, tragically, has existed as one of humanity's most disgusting, selfish and absolutely wrenching acts ever since its inception. No matter how many scholars research and debate the horrific reality, massive kills by hate-filled, greedy powers will perpetuate the cycle. The Holocaust, initiated by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in the early half of the Twentieth Century, left such a bloody, agonizing mark on world history that it spawned its own literary genre. Survivors and witnesses alike took to writing about their experience with the hopes of educating the populace on the terrifying human toll such actions truly take. Later generations of authors continue to use this historical period for myriad reasons -- some find themselves inspired by family or friends who bore witness to the events, while others read or hear eyewitness accounts from perfect strangers and feel compelled to explore their narratives. What all of them do, however, is remind the entire world of why it's absolutely necessary to stand up for social justice and protect innocents on the receiving end of harm. Powerful fiction and nonfiction alike imbue readers with the knowledge necessary to identify and actively work towards making the planet safer for all its peoples. [...]"