Bosnia and Herzegovina / Serbia / Rape in Genocide

Bosnian War Rape Victims Suffer in Silence, Wait for Justice
By Maja Zuvela
Reuters dispatch in The New York Times, December 19, 2012
"Fika was 15 years old, and her sister 17, when they were captured and repeatedly raped by Bosnian Serb soldiers who swept through eastern Bosnia early in the country's 1992-95 war. 'We were forced to watch each other being raped, and I still feel my pain and the pain of my sister,' she said. 'They wanted us to admit we were spies, so they beat us till they knocked out our teeth.' Twenty years on, Fika is among thousands of Bosnian Muslim women whose search for recognition and support from the Bosnian state is being blocked by Bosnian Serb leaders who fear a wave of compensation claims. Her sister died at the hands of their torturers. Rights groups are losing patience, warning that the psychological toll is only getting worse with time. 'The silence surrounding the wartime rape of women in the Serb Republic ... is deafening,' Amnesty International wrote in October. Fewer than 40 rape cases have been prosecuted in the 17 years since the war ended, and legislation at the state level to extend compensation and rehabilitation rights to rape victims of the war is gathering dust, hostage to ethnic politicking. The lesson of Bosnia has spurred a push by Britain to raise awareness of sexual violence in war when it takes over the chairmanship of the G8 group of industrialized nations next year. Under the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, the British government plans to send police officers, lawyers, psychologists and forensic experts to Bosnia and other conflict and post-conflict countries to work with local authorities on the issue. 'Bosnia and Herzegovina is seen as a priority country,' Ann Hannah, a spokeswoman for the initiative, told Reuters. She said a team would arrive in Bosnia early in 2013. 'We have a very strong feeling there is a window of opportunity to make a significant breakthrough on this issue,' Hannah said. 'Without its resolution, any peace process is incomplete.'

Iraq / United States

(Christian Werner/Der Spiegel)

Are US Munitions to Blame for Basra Birth Defects?
By Alexander Smoltczyk
Spiegel Online, December 18, 2012
"It sounds at first as if the old man were drunk. Or perhaps as though he had been reading Greek myths. But Askar Bin Said doesn't read anything, especially not books, and there is no alcohol in Basra. In fact, he says, he saw the creatures he describes with his own eyes: 'Some had only one eye in the forehead. Or two heads. One had a tail like a skinned lamb. Another one looked like a perfectly normal child, but with a monkey's face. Or the girl whose legs had grown together, half fish, half human.' The babies Askar Bin Said describes were brought to him. He washed them and wrapped them in shrouds, and then he buried them in the dry soil, littered with bits of plastic and can lids, of his own cemetery, which has been in his family for five generations. It's a cemetery only for children. Though they are small, the graves are crowded so tightly together that they are almost on top of one another. They look as if someone had overturned toy wheelbarrows full of cement and then scratched the names and dates of death into it before it hardened. In many cases, there isn't even room for the birth date. But it doesn't really matter, because in most cases the two dates are the same. There are several thousand graves in the cemetery, and another five to 10 are added every day. The large number of graves is certainly conspicuous, says Bin Said. But, he adds, there 'really isn't an explanation' for why there are so many dead and deformed newborn babies in Basra. Others, though, do have an idea why.

D.R. Congo / International Criminal Court

"Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui in the courtroom during his trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague on Tuesday." (Reuters)

UN Court Acquits Congo Rebel Leader of War Crimes
Associated Press dispatch in The New York Times, December 18, 2012
"The International Criminal Court acquitted a Congolese militia leader Tuesday of all charges of commanding fighters who destroyed a strategic village in eastern Congo in 2003, raping and hacking to death some 200 people, including children. The acquittal of Mathieu Ngudjolo on charges including rape, murder and pillage was only the second verdict in the court's 10-year history and the first time it had cleared a suspect. It also cast a shadow over ICC prosecutors' efforts to collect and present evidence of atrocities in complex conflicts thousands of miles from the court's headquarters in The Hague. Judges said the testimony of three key prosecution witnesses was unreliable and could not prove definitively that Ngudjolo led the rebel attack on the village of Bogoro, but they emphasized that Ngudjolo's acquittal did not mean that no crimes occurred in the village. 'If an allegation has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt ... this does not necessarily mean that the alleged fact did not occur,' Presiding Judge Bruno Cotte of France said. Eric Witte, an expert in international law at the Open Society Justice Initiative, said the judgment 'will send a worrying signal about the quality of ICC prosecutions.' He said Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda may now need to rethink the way her office builds its cases. 'A pattern of prosecution failures could undermine support for the court as a whole,' Witte warned.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

"A member of the Congolese M23 rebel group slept in the back of a truck as the rebels waited to withdraw on Dec. 1 from Goma, in eastern Congo." (Phil Moore/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

The World's Worst War
By Jeffrey Gettleman
The New York Times, December 15, 2012
"[...] Congo has become a never-ending nightmare, one of the bloodiest conflicts since World War II, with more than five million dead. It seems incomprehensible that the biggest country in sub-Saharan Africa and on paper one of the richest, teeming with copper, diamonds and gold, vast farmlands of spectacular fertility and enough hydropower to light up the continent, is now one of the poorest, most hopeless nations on earth. Unfortunately, there are no promising solutions within grasp, or even within sight. I didn't always feel this way. During my first trip, in July 2006, Congo was brimming with optimism. It was about to hold its first truly democratic elections, and the streets of the capital, Kinshasa, were festooned with campaign banners and pulsating with liquid Lingala music that seemed to automatically sway people's hips as they waited in line to vote. There was this electricity in the air in a city that usually doesn't have much electricity. In poor, downtrodden countries accustomed to sordid rule, there is something incredibly empowering about the simple act of scratching an X next to the candidate of your choice and having a reasonable hope that your vote will be counted. That's how the Congolese felt. But the euphoria didn't last -- for me or the country. [...]

Indonesia / Genocide and Memory

"An image taken from the film trailer for 'The Act of Killing.'" (YouTube screen shot)

"Act of Killing": In Small Screenings, By Word of Mouth, Indonesians Learn of Dark Past
By Sara Schonhardt
The Christian Science Monitor, December 13, 2012
"In a small screening room packed to capacity, young Indonesians sat riveted, their eyes glued to images of a village reenacting the massacre of suspected communists by a paramilitary youth group in the mid-1960s. At moments in the film 'The Act of Killing,' people laughed. At others they cringed. Some clasped their hands over their mouths in reaction to particularly chilling scenes. 'I'm still in shock,' says Handy Pernando, a 23-year-old who emerged from the showing trying to comprehend what he had just seen. 'I knew the government was lying to people, but now I've been awakened.' 'The Act of Killing' recounts the slaughter of up to 2 million people following an attempted coup in 1965. Then-general and later president Suharto blamed the coup on the Communist Party and proceeded to vilify anyone associated with it during his 32-year authoritarian rule. The killings are one of the darkest but least discussed parts of Indonesia's history, and 'The Act of Killing' has gotten praise internationally for its use of campy theatrics and testimony from some of the actual killers to shine new light on this part of the country’s past. In doing so, however, it also implicates many people still in power, as well as a politically connected paramilitary group, the Pancasila Youth. That explains the showings in small venues. Out of fear the film could be banned by the government, which requires all films to be vetted, its producers, director, and local collaborators have been showing it through underground, invite-only screenings rather than submit it to the national censorship board for approval.

Former Yugoslavia / International Tribunals

(Photo by Joachim Ladefoged/VII)

Selective Justice for the Balkans
By David Harland
The New York Times, December 7, 2012
"Too bad if you were a Serb victim of any crime in the former Yugoslavia. More Serbs were displaced -- ethnically cleansed -- by the wars in the Balkans than any other community. And more Serbs remain ethnically displaced to this day. Almost no one has been held to account, and it appears that no one will be. The United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague has acquitted Ramush Haradinaj, Kosovo's former prime minister, of war crimes. Last month, it acquitted on appeal the generals who led Croatia to victory over the Serbs. Altogether, almost all of the West's friends have been acquitted; almost all of the Serbs have been found guilty. These results do not reflect the balance of crimes committed on the ground. I have no sympathy with the Serbs who have been convicted. On the contrary. I lived through the siege of Sarajevo. I served as a witness for the prosecution in the cases against the former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, and, most recently, the Bosnian Serb military commander, Ratko Mladic, who is accused of ordering the massacre at Srebrenica. The Serbs committed many of the war’s worst crimes, but were not at all alone, and it is not right, or useful, for them to carry the sole responsibility. Convicting only Serbs simply doesn’t make sense in terms of justice, in terms of reality, or in terms of politics. The Croatian leaders connived in the carve-up of Yugoslavia, and contributed mightily to the horrors on Bosnia and Herzegovina. I witnessed for myself the indiscriminate fury of the Croatian assault on the beautiful city of Mostar. I lived in a town in Bosnia where the decapitated heads of captured Muslims were displayed in the marketplace. I saw for myself tens and tens of thousands of Serb civilian refugees fleeing Croatia in the wake of the 1995 Croatian offensive that ended the war. If the acquitted generals were not responsible for this ethnic cleansing, then somebody was, somebody who will presumably go free. Nor were the Serbs and Croats alone, though they must shoulder most of the judgment of history. The Bosnian Muslim leadership had deeply compromising links to the international jihahist movement, and hosted at least three people who went on to play key roles in the 9/11 attacks on the United States. I witnessed attacks by foreign mujahedeen elements against Croat civilians in the Lasva Valley. And the Kosovar Albanian authorities deserve a special mention, having taken ethnic cleansing to its most extreme form -- ridding themselves almost entirely of the Serb and Roma populations. Kosovo's ancient Christian Orthodox monasteries are now almost the only reminder of a once-flourishing non-Albanian population.

Burma / Violence against Rohingya

Homeless and Helpless: The Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine State
By Andrew Buncombe
The Independent, December 5, 2012
"What difference does a simple name make? For Mohammad Ali, a resident of this town’s last Muslim neighbourhood, a ghetto cut-off by barbed wire and military check-points, it matters to his very core. 'Look here. It asks "race" and then says "Rohingya",' says the 68-year-old, touching his chest with one hand while with the other pointing to a photocopied identity card dating from 1974. 'We have been here for a long time. My father, my grandfather, they were born here. We were Rohingya at the time.' For Shwe Maung, a member of a local political party with links to the Buddhist clergy and which wants to force most Muslims from the state, the matter of a name is equally important. These people are not Rohingya, he angrily insists, but Bengalis. 'They are trying to deceive the world,” he adds. 'They want the world to think they are natives of Rakhine.' Burma's western Rakhine state has for months been gripped by ethnic violence that has left scores dead and driven up to 100,000 people, the overwhelming majority of them Rohingya Muslims, into squalid refugee camps. The Buddhist community claims they are at risk of being 'swallowed up by outsiders' who they say migrated from neighbouring Bangladesh, while the Rohingya, who say they have lived here for centuries, claim they are the victims of nothing less than ethnic cleansing. To glimpse the scale of what has happened while the world largely looked away, take the airport road towards the village of Bumay. From there, a rutted track leads to a series of tented camps in which thousands of Muslims are living, having been driven from their communities. The largest is Borouda, home to 15,000 people. Many here fled here after their properties in Sittwe were attacked in June. Moniyan Khata, a 38-year-old woman wearing a floral print dress, said their neighbourhood had been surrounded by Buddhists and police. 'We had to hide in the lake,' she said, sitting outside her tent. And why were they attacked? 'We don't know,' she replied. 'They want our land, they want our properties. They want us to leave, to leave the country.'

Pakistan / Gendercide

"Many members of the Hazara Shiite community killed by Sunni extremists are buried in a graveyard in Quetta, Pakistan." (Declan Walsh/The New York Times)

Pakistan Reels With Violence Against Shiites
By Declan Walsh
The New York Times, December 3, 2012
"Calligraphers linger at the gates of an ancient graveyard in this brooding city in western Pakistan, charged with a macabre and increasingly in-demand task: inscribing the tombstones of the latest victims of the sectarian death squads that openly roam these streets. For at least a year now, Sunni extremist gunmen have been methodically attacking members of the Hazara community, a Persian-speaking Shiite minority that emigrated here from Afghanistan more than a century ago. The killers strike with chilling abandon, apparently fearless of the law: shop owners are gunned down at their counters, students as they play cricket, pilgrims dragged from buses and executed on the roadside. The latest victim, a mechanic named Hussain Ali, was killed Wednesday, shot inside his workshop. He joined the list of more than 100 Hazaras who have been killed this year, many in broad daylight. As often as not, the gunmen do not even bother to cover their faces. The bloodshed is part of a wider surge in sectarian violence across Pakistan in which at least 375 Shiites have died this year -- the worst toll since the 1990s, human rights workers say. But as their graveyard fills, Hazaras say the mystery lies not in the identity of their attackers, who are well known, but in a simpler question: why the Pakistani state cannot -- or will not -- protect them. 'After every killing, there are no arrests,' said Muzaffar Ali Changezi, a retired Hazara engineer. 'So if the government is not supporting these killers, it must be at least protecting them. That’s the only way to explain how they operate so openly.'

Hungary / Anti-Semitism

"Hungarians protest outside a parliament building against anti-semitic remarks by a far-right politician in Budapest November 27, 2012." (Bernadett Szabo/Reuters)

Outrage at "Jewish List" Call in Hungary Parliament
By Marton Dunai
Reuters dispatch, November 27, 2012
"A call in the Hungarian parliament for Jews to be registered on lists as threats to national security sparked international condemnation of Nazi-style policies and a protest outside the legislature in Budapest on Tuesday. The lawmaker, from the far-right Jobbik party, dismissed demands he resign, however, and said his remarks during a debate on Monday had been misunderstood -- he was, Marton Gyongyosi said, referring only to Hungarians with Israeli passports. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside parliament, many wearing the kind of yellow stars forced on Europe's Jews in the 1940s and some chanting "Nazis go home" at Jobbik members. 'I am a Holocaust survivor,' local Jewish leader Gusztav Zoltai said by telephone. 'For people like me, this generates raw fear.' Though he dismissed the comments by Jobbik's foreign affairs spokesman as opportunistic politicking, the executive director of the Hungarian Jewish Congregations' Association, added: 'This is the shame of Europe, the shame of the world.' The centre-right government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban issued a statement on Tuesday condemning the remarks by Gyongyosi, whose party surged into parliament two years ago on a campaign drawing on suspicion of Roma and Jewish minorities and attracting support from voters frustrated by economic crisis. But in Jerusalem, the Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized the government for a tardy response, more than 16 hours after the event, and called the failure to penalize Gyongyosi as 'a sad commentary on the current rise of anti-Semitism in Hungary'. About 500,000 to 600,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in the Holocaust, according to a memorial centre in Budapest. Some survivors reached Israel. Some 100,000 Jews now live in Hungary.

South Africa

"Susan Nortje, second left, marches with other families of murdered farmers and survivors of farm attacks." (Eva-Lotta Jansson/Telegraph)

South African Farmers Fearing for Their Lives
By Erin Conway-Smith
The Telegraph, December 1, 2012
"On Saturday, in an unprecedented move to mark the second anniversary of the slaughter of a farming family, survivors of farm attacks marched in Pretoria and called for attacks on South Africa's mostly white farmers to be designated a crime of national priority. Since the attack on Attie Potgieter and his family, the simple stone farmhouse where they lived has stood empty and crumbling, with nobody wanting to live in the home where one of South Africa's most disturbingly brutal crimes took place. Mr. Potgieter, a farm caretaker, was stabbed and hacked 151 times with a garden fork, a knife and a machete near Lindley in the Free State -- the agricultural heart of the country. His wife, Wilna, and two-year-old daughter, Willemien, were both made to watch him die, before being shot in the head, execution style. All for pocket money, and possessions of relatively little value -- a too-common story in South Africa's rural areas, where mostly white Afrikaner farmers feel they are being targeted in gratuitously violent attacks on their remote farms and smallholdings. They accuse police and government of failing to make these crimes a priority. And as the horrifying murders continue, they are growing increasingly angry. 'If you kill a rhinoceros in South Africa, you get more time in jail then if you kill a person,' said Susan Nortje, 26, Mrs. Potgieter's younger sister. 'I don't think people understand. We must show people what's really happening.' The murder last weekend of British engineer Chris Preece, 54, who was born in Southgate in north London and found his dream on a piece of rolling farmland bordering Lesotho's Maluti mountains, is the most recent farm killing to make headlines. Mr. Preece spent his weekdays working in Johannesburg before retreating to his beloved farm near the town of Ficksburg, where he and wife Felicity dreamed of starting a nature reserve to save raptor birds and cheetahs. He was stabbed and hacked to death by men who stole just £210 and a mobile phone. Felicity was left severely traumatised with a skull fracture, and has not yet been able to talk about the attack from the Bloemfontein hospital in where she is being treated.

United Kingdom / Rwanda / D.R. Congo

"A column of M23 rebels on the Goma to Rushuru road ." (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Britain Stops Rwanda Aid for First Time in Decades
By David Blair
The Telegraph, November 30, 2012
"Britain has stopped funding one of its closest African allies, cancelling £21 million for Rwanda's government because of President Paul Kagame's support for rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After two decades as one of Rwanda's most generous foreign donors, Britain reversed policy and withheld the next tranche of 'general budgetary support', due by Dec 15. Justine Greening, the International Development Secretary, explained that 'credible and compelling reports' showed that Rwanda was fuelling civil war in neighbouring Congo by arming the 'M23' insurgents, who captured the city of Goma last Tuesday. A United Nations investigation has documented Mr. Kagame's backing for the guerrillas, who have forced at least 500,000 people to flee their homes in eight months of fighting. Last week, the Daily Telegraph interviewed two men who served in the Rwandan army in eastern Congo, showing how Mr. Kagame had covertly deployed troops to fight inside his neighbour in alliance with M23. Ms. Greening said that Rwanda's help for M23 broke the 'partnership principles' set out in a Memorandum of Understanding signed by Mr. Kagame's regime. This binds Rwanda to respect human rights and international obligations. 'It's a really important decision in terms of UK policy towards Rwanda because, up until now, the UK government has tended to downplay the gravity of human rights abuses inside Rwanda as well as its support for abusive groups in Congo,' she said. 'With this decision, we hope the secretary of state is entering a new era where the UK government is going to stand by its principles.'

Palestine, the ICC, and Genocide Studies

by Adam Jones

The vote to grant Palestine upgraded nonmember status at the U.N. is described as "a stinging defeat for Israel and the United States": 138 countries in favour (including France, Spain, and Switzerland), 9 opposed (including the fawningly pro-Israeli Canadian government), with 41 abstentions. Israel's latest attack on Gaza may have factored in some decisions to support the resolution.

Perhaps some of you followed the cynical campaign by "Israel, the US and Britain in particular" to coerce the Palestinian authority to renounce accession to the International Criminal Court as an expression of its enhanced status. "Britain said it would abstain in the UN vote [as it did] unless it received assurances that the Palestinians would not seek to extend the jurisdiction of the ICC over the occupied territories. ..." Heaven forbid that the court's writ should extend where it is needed, when the results might be consequential for the powerful.

The possibility now exists for ongoing, recent, and distant mass atrocities by Israel and its allies to be placed for the first time before an international tribunal -- together with the issues of the Gaza blockade and the ever-spiralling Israeli colonization of the West Bank. It is far from certain that referrals, indictments, and prosecutions will result, given Palestine's and the ICC's vulnerability to great-power pressure. I would hope that all students and activists of genocide and crimes against humanity would support such investigations. Unfortunately, this too seems far from likely, given that many genocide scholars have exhibited classic bystander behaviour toward these crimes, when they have not vocally endorsed them.

Text may be considered final. November 30, 2012.

Kosovo / International Tribunals

UN Court Acquits Former Kosovo Prime Minister
Associated Press dispatch in The New York Times, November 29, 2012
"A UN war crimes tribunal on Thursday acquitted Kosovo's former prime minister for the second time of murdering and torturing Serbs and their supporters in Kosovo's war for independence, setting the stage for his return to political life in the deeply divided nation. The verdict was issued in the U.N. court's first ever retrial, which was ordered after appeals judges branded the 2008 acquittals of former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj and KLA fighters Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj a 'miscarriage of justice' because of widespread intimidation of prosecution witnesses. Brahimaj was convicted of torture at the first trial and that was not retried, but he has served his sentence and will be released with the others. The acquittals herald a political renaissance for Haradinaj, seen by the West before his 2005 indictment as a unifying force in Kosovo, but could complicate talks between Pristina and Belgrade on Kosovo's future. 'With the consent of the people, he will soon be resuming his rightful position as the political leader of the country,' his lawyer Ben Emmerson told reporters at the court. Emmerson said Haradinaj told him he wants to lead a government representing all ethnic groups in Kosovo. 'It is time, he says, for reconciliation.' Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said the ruling vindicated the ethnic-Albanian guerrilla force that fought Serbia in 1998-99. 'Our struggle for independence was just and sacred,' Thaci said in a statement.

Norway / Jewish Holocaust

Norwegian Police Apologize for Deporting Jews to Auschwitz
The Los Angeles Times, November 26, 2012
"Seventy years after Norway helped send hundreds of Jews to Auschwitz, the nation's police have apologized for their role in rounding up and deporting people to Nazi concentration camps. The sober words from the Norwegian national police commissioner mark the first such apology from Norwegian police. After being invaded and occupied by Germany, Norway deported 772 Jews on ships leaving Oslo during the war. Only 32 of the people survived. The vast majority were expelled from Norway on Nov. 26, 1942, when 532 Jewish people were loaded onto the Donau. It was the first leg of their journey to Auschwitz. 'Norwegian police officers participated in the arrest and deportation of Jews,' police commissioner Odd Reidar Humlegard was quoted by Reuters as saying Monday. 'It is fitting that I express my regret for the role police played in the arrest and deportation of these completely innocent victims.' Fourteen years earlier, the country acknowledged its role in the Holocaust and offered financial compensation for seized property, but its words at that time fell short of a full apology. That changed this year, when Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg formally apologized. 'The murders were unquestionably carried out by the Nazis. But it was Norwegians who carried out the arrests. It was Norwegians who drove the trucks,' Stoltenberg said in January.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

"Thousands flee the town of Sake, 16 miles west of Goma, following fresh fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo town." (Phil Moore/AFP/Getty Images)

Humanitarian Crisis Looming in Congo as Thousand[s] Flee Fighting
By Pete Jones and David Smith
The Guardian, November 22, 2012
"A humanitarian crisis is looming in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, aid agencies have warned, after another day of fighting sent thousands of people fleeing for safety. About half a million people have been displaced by a violent rebellion since April. With state control collapsing in large swaths of the east, there are severe food shortages and a heightened risk of cholera and other diseases. The rebel militia M23 -- widely believed to be backed by Rwanda -- holds the major city of Goma but was taken by surprise on Thursday in the village of Sake, 16 miles (26km) away, when government soldiers launched a counter-offensive, opening fire from surrounding hills. M23 sent four truckloads of reinforcements from Goma but reports indicated that the rebels were forced to pull back towards the city. M23 military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Vianney Kazarama said: 'It is war, of course there is fighting.' The violence in Sake forced thousands of people to take flight, a familiar pattern in recent days that has seen huge numbers of civilians on the move with whatever possessions they can carry. At Mugunga, a sprawling refugee camp halfway between Goma and Sake, the numbers of displaced seeking shelter have soared. 'Before [the fighting] we had 15,000 people here,' said Jean Sindi Dunia, the principal police commissioner in Mugunga's third camp. 'Now we have displaced people arriving from Kanyaruchina [another camp north of Goma]. We haven't yet worked out exactly how many are here but we think the numbers have tripled.' Those fleeing in terror find only overcrowded, unsanitary conditions in the poorly-supplied camps. 'There is famine in the camp since last Sunday,' Dunia added. 'We received many displaced with nothing to eat. Even to find shelter for them is very difficult. We ask the international agencies to come to help these displaced people. The problem is food. People don't have enough to eat.'

Poland / Jewish Holocaust / Genocide and Memory

"Photos of Jews who died during World War II adorn one of the few remaining buildings on Prozna Street in this picture taken during October of 2011 in Poland's Muranow district." (Courtesy of Adam Galica)

The Ghosts of Muranow: A Journalist's Mission to Illuminate Poland's Haunted Past
By Donald Snyder
MSNBC.com, November 23, 2012
"When Polish journalist Beata Chomatowska walks the streets of Muranow, she can't stop thinking about the horrible things that happened there. 'It's a daily trauma,' she said. Present-day Muranow, a district of Warsaw, Poland, is built on rubble and the remains of Jews who perished there during World War II, but many residents are ignorant of the area's past. So Chomatowska started a website to educate them called 'Stacja Muranow,' which means 'Muranow Stop.' And in October she published a book by the same name, chronicling the haunted past of the former Jewish ghetto. 'It's a metaphor for Poland after the war, which largely erased the memory of its Jews,' said Chomatowska, 35, who is not Jewish but has long been fascinated by the history of Jews in Poland. A native of Krakow, she moved to Muranow in 2005 to start working at Rzeczpospolita (The Republic), a leading Polish newspaper, and was shocked by the silence and emptiness of her new neighborhood. 'How do people live in houses made of ghetto bricks?' she asked. 'The houses looked artificial and so did the hills. It was scary.' During World War II, the Germans packed 400,000 Jews into the 1.3 square-mile area that became known as the Warsaw Ghetto, where Muranow is located. Some 300,000 Jews were deported to the killing center at Treblinka. The final deportation, on April 19, 1943, became the prearranged signal for an armed uprising against German forces. After the Jewish resistance was crushed on May 16, 1943, most of the remaining Jews were sent to death camps and the Germans razed the ghetto. Thousands were buried in the ruins. Many hid in cellars and were killed when the buildings were flattened. Poland's post-war communist rulers, who were faced with the challenge of building housing for its many citizens left homeless by the war, found the rubble of the ghetto too extensive to clear. Buildings were constructed on the ruins using bricks from the ghetto. Built on this rubble, the street levels are uneven and often hilly.

Rwanda / Congo / United Kingdom

"The Dom Bosco school in Goma which has been turned into a makeshift refugee camp." (Heathcliff O'Malley)

Future UK Aid to Rwanda in Doubt over M23 Congo Support
By Mike Pflanz
The Telegraph, November 22, 2012
"British aid to Rwanda is under threat because of 'credible and compelling evidence' of its support for rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo, ministers have warned. Fresh details of Rwanda's backing for the M23 movement were published in a final report to the United Nations Security Council that also accused Uganda of helping the rebels in Congo. In a joint statement, William Hague, the foreign secretary, and Justine Greening, the international development secretary, they said: 'We judge the overall body of evidence of Rwandan involvement with M23 ... to be credible and compelling. We will be studying the implications of this report in full, but these allegations will necessarily be a key factor in future aid decisions to the Government of Rwanda.' On Thursday night, Prime Minister David Cameron urged Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, to pressure the rebels to withdraw from the Congolese city of Goma. Mr. Cameron, who was attending a European Union summit in Brussels, also pressed Mr Kagame to prove that M23 had no links to the Rwandan government. Britain has already committed to giving £75 million to Rwanda this year. Another £21 million was due to be delivered next month. It joined other European nations and the US in suspending donor payments to the government of Paul Kagame, Rwanda's president, after the UN report's initial findings were leaked in July. But Andrew Mitchell, the former International Development Secretary, drew intense criticism when he reinstated £16 million of aid on his last day in office at DfID. Mr. Hague and Miss Greening called Rwandan and Ugandan support for the M23, 'unacceptable, damaging to the security of the region, and in direct contravention' of Security Council resolutions. The M23 was 'a creation' of Rwanda, said Steven Hege, coordinator of the 'Group of Experts' mandated to investigate breaches of international arms embargoes in Congo, which wrote the report to the UN. The government of Rwanda sent weapons, ammunition and uniforms to Bosco 'The Terminator' Ntaganda, the titular head of the movement, and helped to smuggle the supplies into Congo. Two units of Rwandan soldiers have been permanently based in eastern Congo since before the M23 was formed in April, and its special forces fought alongside the rebels in clashes in Rutshuru in July, the report continued. James Kabarebe, Rwanda's defence minister, was ultimately in charge of the rebels, giving orders to their commanders and funding recruitment drives to boost their ranks. The investigation's final publication came as fresh fighting erupted on Thursday around Goma, the provincial capital of eastern Congo that has been in rebel hands since Tuesday. Mortars and small arms fire were heard in the town of Sake, 20 miles northeast of Goma. There were reports that Congolese government troops had begun a counter-offensive. [...]"
[n.b. How legitimate is such use of "aid as a weapon," in the case of a poor country that is notable (indeed extraordinary) for its effective and transparent use of development aid? For me, this is an open and important question.]

Genocide and Memory / Jewish Holocaust / Cambodian Genocide

Experience of Genocide as Transmitted Trauma May Not Be Universal
Science Daily, November 21, 2012
"In the fields of human rights and memory studies, giving testimony about one's personal experience of genocide is believed to be both a moral duty and a psychological imperative for the wellbeing of the individual and the persecuted group to which she belongs. Accordingly, the coping strategies proposed to victims of genocide tend to be rather uniform: tell your story and do not let the violence you suffered be forgotten. The author of this study offers two persuasive case studies that suggest that this universalizing approach to genocide is misguided. In her interviews with Jewish-Israeli children of Holocaust survivors and Cambodian-Canadians whose parents were persecuted at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, Carol Kidron found that virtually all subjects rejected the pathologizing construct of transmitted PTSD. The author's research reveals key differences in the genocidal legacies of Cambodian-Canadian and Jewish-Israeli trauma descendants. While the Jewish-Israeli subjects felt that they bore some emotional scars that were passed on by their parents, they opposed the idea that they have been afflicted by these inherited traces of the Holocaust.

Germany / Jewish Holocaust / Restitution for Genocide

"German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has officially signed off on revisions to the original 1952 compensation treaty for holocaust survivors." (Getty Images)

Germany Expands Pension Scheme for Victims of the Holocaust 
The Daily Mail, November 15, 2012
"Germany has announced plans to increase pension payments to Holocaust survivors as they enter their final years. It comes sixty years after a landmark accord started German government compensation for victims of Nazi crimes. Most Holocaust survivors experienced extreme trauma as children, suffered serious malnutrition, and lost almost all of their relatives -- leaving them today with severe psychological and medical problems, and little or no family support network to help them cope. In acknowledgement of that, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble  has officially signed off  on revisions to the original 1952 compensation treaty. It will increase pensions for those living in eastern Europe and broaden who is eligible for payments. Contributions to home care for survivors have already been increased.

Croatia / International Tribunals

Court Overturns Convictions of Croat Generals
Al Jazeera, November 16, 2012
"Appeals judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) have overturned the convictions of two Croat generals for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against Serb civilians in a 1995 military blitz. Neither Ante Gotovina nor Mladen Markac showed any emotion at the decision in the Hague on Friday, but their supporters in the court's packed public gallery cheered and clapped as the judge ordered both men freed immediately. The appeals court entered a 'verdict of acquittal' for Gotovina and Markac, Judge Theodor Meron said at the ICTY. Considered heroes in Croatia, the two were sentenced in 2011 to 24 and 18 years, respectively, for crimes, including murder and deportation. Crowds in Zagreb erupted with joy at the acquittals, which were broadcast live by several Croatian TV stations, clapping and cheering. The two generals would appear at a public event in a downtown square after their arrival. 'It's already full with more than 5,000 people,' said Ivan Corkalo, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Zagreb. 'They'll be welcomed here in Croatia as heroes.' Prime minister Zoran Milanovic told a news conference Croatia would send a jet to pick up the pair: 'I think it is only fair to get the boys back home.' But he said Croatia, which joins the European Union next year, would fulfil its obligation to prosecute crimes from the Yugoslav wars, in which at least 100,000 people died. 'There were mistakes in the war, for which Croatia is responsible and for which it will do its debt to justice.'

Sri Lanka / United Nations

UN "Failed to Protect" Hundreds of Thousands of Civilians Caught Up in Sri Lankan Civil War

By Andrew Buncombe
The Independent, November 13, 2012
"The United Nations failed miserably to protect hundreds of thousands of civilians caught up in the last months of Sri Lanka's civil war, says an internal inquiry. According to the investigation, a draft of whose findings were obtained by the BBC, the organisation should in future be able 'to meet a much higher standard in fulfilling its protection and humanitarian responsibilities'. Chief among the findings of the review was criticism of the UN's decision to withdraw foreign and local staff from the war zone after September 2008 when the Sri Lankan authorities said they could no longer guarantee their safety. The review also questions why the UN failed to publish mounting civilian casualty figures that it obtained and was confident were accurate, and why -- under pressure from the Sri Lankan government -- it did not make clear that a 'large majority' of the civilian deaths were caused by government forces. Thousands of civilians lost their lives in the first five months of 2009 as government troops stepped up their operation to crush the last fighters of the once-powerful Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a movement of militant Tamil separatists. The UN later said there convincing allegations that both sides committed war crimes. The UN said at the time that 10,000 civilians may have been killed. The Sri Lankan authorities did everything they could to ensure what took place on the battlefields in the north-east of the country did so without independent witnesses.

Nigeria / Gendercide

Nigerian Forces Kill Dozens in Night Assault, Fueling Long Battle With Sect
By Adam Nossiter
The New York Times, November 2, 2012
"The spiral of violence in northern Nigeria took another deadly turn this week as security forces in the city of Maiduguri shot dead dozens of young men whom they accused of belonging to the radical Islamic sect Boko Haram, according to hospital staff members, local journalists and a human rights activist there. Nigeria has waged a grinding, low-intensity war with the sect since 2009, with nearly 3,000 people killed by Boko Haram or soldiers and the police, rights groups say. This week's violence in the war's center, Maiduguri, where Boko Haram was created, added to that toll. At least 39 people, and possibly as many as 70, were killed in raids by the Nigerian Army and the police late Wednesday and early Thursday, the second such deadly assault by security forces in less than a month. As in previous raids, security forces descended on the city's poorer neighborhoods under cover of darkness, entering houses and grabbing young men -- indiscriminately, critics contend -- and then shooting them. 'They accused the young persons of being Boko Haram members, with no evidence,' said Maikaramba Sadiq, an activist with Nigeria's Civil Liberties Organization. 'In the presence of parents, they killed the children,' he said. 'They told the parents to turn back and look in a different direction, then they killed the children. This is military criminality,' Mr. Sadiq argued. 'They killed people without any evidence of offense.' Mr. Sadiq said at least 70 people were killed, ranging in age from 18 to 25. Hospital workers in Maiduguri said about 39 bodies had been deposited at their hospital. There was no immediate comment from the Nigerian military on Friday.

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Former Yugoslavia / European Union / United States

"US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks next to Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic during a news conference following meetings at the Palace of Serbia in Belgrade, October 30, 2012." (Reuters/Saul Loeb/Pool)

US and EU Push for Progress in Troubled Balkans
By Andrew Quinn
Reuters.com, October 30, 2012
"Europe and the United States teamed up on Tuesday to press Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo to overcome the legacy of Yugoslavia's bloody collapse as a condition of closer integration with the West. 'If you do not make progress you will be left behind,' US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned at the start of a trip to the region with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. NATO member Croatia will follow Slovenia in joining the 27-nation EU next year, but accession is a very distant prospect for the other five countries carved from federal Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In Bosnia, where 100,000 people died in a 1992-95 war, Clinton urged rival Serb, Muslim and Croat leaders to overcome ethnic infighting that has stalled reforms sought by the EU and NATO, 'for the sake of the young people of this country'. In Serbia, Clinton and Ashton called on the government to mend relations with Kosovo, the former Serbian province where ethnic Albanians declared independence in 2008 with the backing of the United States and major European powers. 'This is good for Serbia and it is good for Kosovo,' said Ashton, who is leading a push for agreement in EU-mediated talks. Serbia rejects the secession, and some Serb leaders still hold out hope of retaining a small northern region of Kosovo populated by Serbs and controlled from Belgrade.

Rwanda / Genocide Legislation

"Ms. Ingabire was also accused of financially helping a banned Hutu rebel group, the FDLR." (Stephanie Aglietti/AFP)

Rwanda Hutu Opposition Leader Jailed for "Denying Genocide"
By Mike Pflanz
The Telegraph, October 30, 2012
"Rwanda's leading Hutu opposition leader, Victoire Ingabire, was Tuesday jailed for eight years for treason and 'denying genocide' after a lengthy court case that her lawyers said was politically motivated. Ms. Ingabire has boycotted the trial since April and was not in court to hear Mrs. Justice Alice Rulisa hand down the sentence. She was also convicted of 'belittling' the genocide. Her British lawyer, Iain Edwards, said that he intended to appeal the verdict. Ms. Ingabire returned to Rwanda in 2010 after 17 years in exile in Holland, and said she intended to run against Paul Kagame, the incumbent president, in elections that year. Security forces arrested her after she questioned why memorials to the 800,000 people who died in 100 days of killing in 1994 failed to include Hutu victims of the slaughter. Most of those who died were from the Tutsi tribe, but many Hutus who sheltered Tutsis or were seen as moderates opposed to the ethnic cleansing were also killed. Prosecutors said that this amounted to denying the genocide, a serious crime in Rwanda.

Russia / Stalinism / Genocide and Memory

Russians Gather against Totalitarianism
By Kathy Lally
The Washington Post, October 29, 2012

"The muddy slush numbed the feet. Voices trembled, not because of the freezing cold but because of the weight of their words. Russians gathered Monday in the shadow of the building where Stalin's secret police drew up their death lists, and they spoke the names of the murdered. This year, the reading had more than the usual resonance. Opponents of President Vladimir Putin have been saying that his crackdown on political opposition reminds them of those two years, the worst of Stalin's terror, when 1.7 million Russians were arrested and at least 725,000 of them were shot. Others were sent to the gulag. 'No,' said Vladimir Kantovsky, an 89-year-old survivor of the camps, after he had read four names of the dead and placed a candle next to the stone. 'It cannot be compared. You cannot even imagine what it was like.' He pointed across the square to the Lubyanka, the home of the Federal Security Service, successor to the KGB. 'There were guards there with knives,' he said. 'People wouldn’t even walk near the building, they were so terrified.' Even so, Kantovsky said, it was more important than ever to read the names. 'We must make people remember,' he said. 'We can't let them forget. If they do, it can happen again.'

Myanmar / Burma

"Thousands of Rohingya Muslims are believed to have fled Kyaukpyu, on Burma’s west coast, after their homes were destroyed in the latest clashes with Buddhists." (Human Rights Watch)

Burma's Junta Admits Deadly Attacks on Muslims
By Peter Beaumont
The Observer, October 27, 2012
"Burma's president, Thein Sein, has admitted his country's Rohingya Muslim population has been subjected to an unprecedented wave of ethnic violence. Whole villages and large sections of towns have been destroyed. Thein Sein's admission follows release of shocking satellite images showing the scale of the destruction in one coastal town, where most -- if not all -- of the Muslim population appears to have been displaced and their homes wrecked. The pictures, acquired by Human Rights Watch, show destruction to the town of Kyaukpyu on the country's west coast. They reveal 14.4 hectares (35 acres) of destruction, in which some 811 buildings and houseboats have been destroyed. The images confirm reports of massive violence in the town over 24 hours around 24 October, three days after the first wave of attacks. The incidents in Arakan province -- also known as Rakhine -- have displaced thousands of people in what appears to have been a wave of ethnic cleansing pitting Arakan Buddhists against Muslims. 'There have been incidents of whole villages and parts of the towns being burned down,' Thein Sein's spokesman said. A government official initially put the death toll at 112 but later revised it to 67. Thein Sein's comments follow a warning from the office of UN general secretary Ban Ki-moon that ethnic violence was endangering political progress in Burma. The latest violence in Burma comes as the government is struggling to contain ethnic and religious tensions suppressed during nearly a half century of military rule that ended last year. Inter-ethnic violence broke out earlier this year, triggered by the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by three Muslim men. Human Rights Watch said it had identified 633 buildings and 178 houseboats and floating barges destroyed, in an area occupied predominantly by Rohingyas.

Myanmar / Burma

Myanmar Gov't Pleads for End to Ethnic Strife
Associated Press dispatch in The New York Times, October 26, 2012
"Myanmar's government has appealed for peace in the western state of Rakhine, warning that ethnic violence there that has taken at least 56 lives in recent days risks harming the country's reputation as it seeks to install democratic rule. The mob violence pitting the Buddhist Rakhine community against the Muslim Rohingya has seen entire villages torched and has drawn international calls for government intervention. 'The army, police, and authorities in cooperation with local people will try to restore peace and stability and will take legal action against any individual or organization that is trying to instigate the unrest,' said a statement from the office of President Thein Sein published Friday in the state-run Myanma Ahlin newspaper. Since Sunday, 25 men and 31 women have been reported dead and 60 men and four women injured in the violence in four Rakhine townships, state government spokesman Win Myaing said Thursday. He did not break down the casualties by ethnic group. The government said 1,948 houses and 8 religious buildings had been destroyed through Wednesday. 'As the international community is closely watching Myanmar's democratic transition, such unrest could tarnish the image of the country,' the presidential statement said. In June, ethnic violence in the state left at least 90 people dead and destroyed more than 3,000 homes. About 75,000 have been living in refugee camps ever since. Curfews in place in some areas since then have been expanded due to the latest violence, but tensions have stayed high in part because the government has failed to find any long-term solution other than segregating the communities. The long-brewing conflict is rooted in a dispute over the Muslim residents' origin. Although many Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations, they are widely denigrated as intruders who came from neighboring Bangladesh to steal scarce land.

Namibia / Germany / Restitution for Genocide

"At a German military graveyard in Namibia's Waterberg national park, only a small plaque commemorates the Herero people." (Erin Conway-Smith/The Globe and Mail)

Memories of Genocide at the Hands of Germany Fuels Radicalism in Namibia
By Geoffrey York
The Globe and Mail, October 21, 2012
"The tattered ribbon from a German wreath hangs inside a nearly empty museum in the bleak capital of the Herero people. 'Forgive us our trespasses,' say the fading words. It's as close to an apology as the Herero have ever received from the German government. But today their militant leaders want more than just a vague expression of regret for the death camps and extermination orders. They want their land back -- and they’re threatening to use violence to take it. In the bush and scrub of central Namibia, the descendants of the surviving Herero live in squalid shacks and tiny plots of land. Next door, the descendants of German settlers still own vast properties of 20,000 hectares or more. It’s a contrast that infuriates many Herero, fuelling a new radicalism here. Every year the Herero hold solemn ceremonies to remember the first genocide of history's bloodiest century, when German troops drove them into the desert to die, annihilating 80 per cent of their population through starvation, thirst, and slave labour in concentration camps. The Nama, a smaller ethnic group, lost half of their population from the same persecution. New research suggests that the German racial genocide in Namibia from 1904 to 1908 was a significant influence on the Nazis in the Second World War. Many of the key elements of Nazi ideology -- from racial science and eugenics to the theory of Lebensraum (creating 'living space' through colonization) -- were promoted by German military veterans and scientists who had begun their careers in South-West Africa, now Namibia, during the genocide. The parallels between the Nazi era and the German tactics in Africa are documented by David Olusoga and Casper Erichsen in their recent book, The Kaiser's Holocaust. They list some examples: 'concentration camps, the bureaucratization of killing, meticulous record-keeping of death tolls and death rates, the use of work as a means of extermination, civilians transported in cattle trucks then worked to death, their remains experimented upon by race scientists, and the identification of ethnic groups who had a future as slaves and those who had no future of any sort.'

Germany / Roma and Sinti / Nazi Holocaust

"Every generation must confront its own history afresh. That is why we must have appropriate places where that is possible where people can also go in the future when the survivors are no longer alive." - Angela Merkel, German Chancellor (Photo: EPA)

Germany Unveils Roma Holocaust Memorial
Agency reports on AlJazeera.com, October 24, 2012
"German Chancellor Angela Merkel has opened a memorial in Berlin to the Roma victims of the Nazi Holocaust. Up to 500,000 Roma Gypsies were murdered by the Nazis during during World War II. Wednesday's unveiling comes after years of delays and disputes over the memorial's design and its cost. The long-delayed monument, consisting of a round pool of water and stele on which a single fresh flower will rest each day, sits opposite the Reichstag parliament building in central Berlin. Merkel stressed the crucial importance of living up to the crimes of history and providing a site to educate, to mourn the victims and to warn coming generations. 'Every generation must confront its own history afresh. That is why we must have appropriate places where that is possible where people can also go in the future when the survivors are no longer alive.' She was joined at the opening ceremony by German President Joachim Gauck and about 100 elderly survivors, as well as the leader of the Central Council of Sinti and Roma in Germany, Romani Rose, who heads a community of about 70,000. They observed a two-minute silence around the pool as the triangular plinth was raised from below the surface with a flower on it. The monument was designed by Israeli artist Dani Karavan and is located near two other memorials for victims of the Nazi years, a sprawling field of pillars for the six million murdered Jews and a smaller monument for gay victims.

Israel / Palestine / Apartheid

"Palestinians warn that the growing Jewish settler population in the West Bank means that the creation of a Palestinian state is looking increasingly unviable." (Dan Balilty/AP)

Israelis Favour Discrimination against Arabs -- Poll
By Adrian Blomfield
The Telegraph, October 23, 2012
"A majority of Israeli Jews favour introducing discriminatory policies against the country's Arab population and would support an 'apartheid' system in the West Bank if it were ever annexed, an opinion poll has shown. With three months to go before a general election, a survey reported in the Haaretz newspaper shows further evidence of a sharp tilt towards nationalism in Israeli society. More than two-thirds of those questioned by Dialog, an opinion pollster, said they would oppose suffrage for the 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank were it to be annexed to Israel. Nearly three-quarters -- 74 per cent -- say they also support a system of segregated roads for Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank, although the majority say they would view such a policy as 'necessary' rather than 'good'. Although favoured by some nationalist Jews, the prospect of Israel annexing the West Bank, which it has occupied since the Six-Day War of 1967, remains a distant one. But with little progress being made in resurrecting the Middle East peace process, the possibility of annexation is viewed by some as increasingly likely. Palestinians, as well as some liberal Israelis, warn that the growing Jewish settler population in the West Bank means that the creation of a Palestinian state -- the cornerstone of a 'two-state solution' -- is looking increasingly unviable. The survey found that a majority of the Jewish public -- 59 per cent -- say they want a system that gives preference to Jews applying for civil service jobs. Arabs, who constitute 20 per cent of the Israeli population, complain such a policy unofficially exists already.

Germany / Turkey / Armenian Genocide

"German and Turkish officers pose with the skulls of Armenian victims."

Photograph Links Germans to 1915 Armenia Genocide
By Robert Fisk
The Independent, October 21, 2012
"The photograph -- never published before -- was apparently taken in the summer of 1915. Human skulls are scattered over the earth. They are all that remain of a handful of Armenians slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks during the First World War. Behind the skulls, posing for the camera, are three Turkish officers in tall, soft hats and a man, on the far right, who is dressed in Kurdish clothes. But the two other men are Germans, both dressed in the military flat caps, belts and tunics of the Kaiserreichsheer, the Imperial German Army. It is an atrocity snapshot -- just like those pictures the Nazis took of their soldiers posing before Jewish Holocaust victims a quarter of a century later. Did the Germans participate in the mass killing of Christian Armenians in 1915? This is not the first photograph of its kind; yet hitherto the Germans have been largely absolved of crimes against humanity during the first holocaust of the 20th century. German diplomats in Turkish provinces during the First World War recorded the forced deportations and mass killing of a million and a half Armenian civilians with both horror and denunciation of the Ottoman Turks, calling the Turkish militia-killers 'scum'. German parliamentarians condemned the slaughter in the Reichstag. Indeed, a German army medical officer, Armin Wegner, risked his life to take harrowing photographs of dying and dead Armenians during the genocide. In 1933, Wegner pleaded with Hitler on behalf of German Jews, asking what would become of Germany if he continued his persecution. He was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo and is today recognised at the Yad Vashem Jewish Holocaust memorial in Israel; some of his ashes are buried at the Armenian Genocide Museum in the capital, Yerevan. It is this same Armenian institution and its energetic director, Hayk Demoyan, which discovered this latest photograph.

DR Congo / Rape and Sexual Violence

"M23 is not the only group blamed for the rise in rape numbers. Heal Africa says the 745 child victims it recorded in first half of 2012 marks a significant shift." (Junior D. Kannah/AFP/Getty Images

Congo Rape Numbers Rise Dramatically
By David Smith
The Guardian, October 19, 2012
"The number of women and children raped in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has risen dramatically because of a surge in rebel militia activity, according to a local health organisation report. Heal Africa, which runs a hospital for rape victims in the eastern city of Goma, said it had registered 2,517 cases in the first half of this year. The total comprised 2,339 females -- 105 of whom became pregnant -- and 178 males. The number of perpetrators was 2,134. There has been a sharp increase in sexual violence in recent months, Heal Africa added, although figures since June are not yet available. A six-month uprising by the rebel group M23, led by war crimes suspect Bosco 'the Terminator' Ntaganda, has caused fresh turmoil in eastern Congo and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. A UN report claims the rebellion is being supported by neighbouring Rwanda. Emmanuel Baabo, leader of Heal Africa's project dealing with sexual violence, said: 'The numbers are rising because several armed groups -- not only the M23 -- have increased their activities over several months. In times of fighting you usually see also rape, refugees, stealing, killing and the burning of houses going up. 'The staff of Heal Africa are frustrated to see all this. We are working for a change in Congo and now it is getting worse. And of course you are always thinking: "What has happened to this girl can happen tomorrow to my sister, daughter or wife."'

Iran

"Iranian exiles stage a mock hanging by Ayatollah Khomeini in Place de la Bastille, Paris, on 1 May 1982 in a protest at executions of prisoners." (Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images)

Tribunal to Investigate 1980s Massacre of Political Prisoners in Iran
By Owen Bowcott
The Guardian, October 18, 2012
"As political liquidations go, it is a massacre that ranks alongside some of the worst excesses of the 20th century: at least 20,000 Iranians executed in prison in the 1980s. Yet it received scant international attention. Unlike the carnage of Srebrenica or the purges of General Pinochet's coup in Chile, there was little worldwide outrage, and no opportunity for justice and legal redress. But this month the killings, perpetrated by then-Ayatollah Khomeini's regime, will be examined by an independent tribunal in The Hague in a process that exposes the shortcomings of the international justice system. The hearing, aimed at uncovering the truth of what occurred in Iran's jails, highlights the selective nature of what goes before the UN's courts and special tribunals. Founded in 2007 because no official judicial body would investigate complaints against Iran, it is a cross between a people's truth commission and a formal legal indictment. It is based on the model developed by a private international war crimes tribunal established in 1966 by Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre to investigate the US war record in Vietnam. The focus of the Iran tribunal is the mass executions carried out inside the country's jails from 1981-89 of political prisoners, men and women. About 4,500 people, many teenagers and from leftwing groups, died in summer 1988 alone, according to Amnesty International. Iranian exiles claim 20,000-30,000 prisoners died in total -- victims of a fatwa issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, then head of state. The extent of the killings has been largely ignored by the west.

Israel / Palestine

"Palestinians sit by the port in Gaza City, Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2012." (Adel Hana/Associated Press)

Israeli Army Calculated Calorie Needs for Gazans to Stave Off Malnutrition during Blockade
By Associated Press
The Washington Post, October 17, 2012
"The Israeli military meticulously calculated the number of calories Gaza's residents would need to consume to avoid malnutrition during a sweeping blockade imposed on the Palestinian territory between 2007 and mid-2010, according to a document the Defense Ministry released under a court order and that was made public Wednesday. The Israeli military insisted that it never used the 2008 guidelines to restrict the flow of food to Gaza. But critics disputed that, saying the calculations appear to have guided limits imposed on food imports at the time. They said the document provides further evidence that Israel used food as a weapon to put pressure on Hamas, the violently anti-Israel militant group that seized Gaza by force in mid-2007. The blockade was imposed shortly after Hamas took over Gaza. Israel declared Gaza a 'hostile territory' in September 2007, following the takeover. Seeking to weaken the militants, it called for 'severe restrictions' on civilians that included limitations on food. Israel maintained the blockade was necessary to weaken Hamas, but critics accused the government of targeting Gaza’s more than 1.5 million people in its ultimately unsuccessful effort to achieve that goal. Hamas remains firmly in control of the territory. Israel's military spokesman Maj. Guy Inbar said the mathematical formula was devised as a safeguard to identify food needs and avoid a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The Israeli rights group Gisha, which waged a lengthy legal to make the document public, contended that Israel calculated the calorie needs for Gaza's population in order to restrict the quantities of goods and basic products it allowed in during the three-year blockade. In the food calculation, Israel applied the average daily requirement of 2,279 calories per person, in line with World Health Organization guidelines.

Genocide Tribunals / Bosnia and Herzegovina / Srebrenica Massacre

"Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, began his defense against war crime charges at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, the Netherlands, on Tuesday." (Pool photo by Robin Van Lonkhuijsen)

Former Bosnian Leader Begins His Defense at Genocide Trial
By Marlise Simons
The New York Times, October 16, 2012
"He was once known for his virulent speeches throughout Bosnia, but on Tuesday as Radovan Karadzic began his defense in a new phase of his genocide trial, he told international judges that he was a 'mild and tolerant man' and that instead of standing accused, he should be 'rewarded for all the good things I have done.' It was Mr. Karadzic’s turn to have his say, after prosecutors had presented him as the architect of a brutal three-year war. 'Everybody who knows me knows I am not an autocrat, I am not aggressive, I am not intolerant,' Mr. Karadzic, 67, a former psychiatrist who became the Bosnian Serb wartime leader, told the court. 'On the contrary, I am a mild man, a tolerant man with great capacity to understand others.' He said he wrote children's poetry, did not hate Bosnian Muslims -- he added that he had a Muslim barber -- and did 'everything in his power to reduce the war.' From the public gallery at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, there were noisy cries of 'He's lying!' Other angry survivors of the war gathered outside. Among the close to 70 trials held at the tribunal, Mr. Karadzic's case involves perhaps its most famous chameleon. Indicted on charges of war crimes, he went into hiding in 1996, emerging 13 years later in the guise of a new-age healer, bearded and longhaired. These days, Mr. Karadzic spends long hours in the dock in a business suit, politely conducting his own defense. The list of charges against him include some of the worst episodes of violence in Europe since World War II.

Rwanda / Uganda / DR Congo

"The M23 rebels launched a mutiny against the government early this year after breaking away from the army." (Agence France-Presse)

UN Accuses Rwanda of Leading DR Congo Rebels
AlJazeera.com, October 17, 2012
"Rwanda's defence minister is commanding a rebellion in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo that is being armed by Rwanda and Uganda, both of which sent troops to aid the insurgency in a deadly attack on UN peacekeepers, according to a UN report. The UN Security Council's Group of Experts said in a confidential report that Rwanda and Uganda -- despite their strong denials -- continued to support M23 rebels in their six-month fight against Congolese government troops in North Kivu province. 'Both Rwanda and Uganda have been supporting M23,' said the 44-page report, which was seen by the Reuters news agency on Tuesday. 'Rwandan officials exercise overall command and strategic planning for M23,' the report said. 'Rwanda continues to violate the arms embargo through direct military support to M23 rebels, facilitation of recruitment, encouragement and facilitation of FARDC [Congolese army] desertions as well as the provision of arms and ammunition, intelligence, and political advice. While Rwandan officials coordinated the creation of the rebel movement as well as its major military operations, Uganda's more subtle support to M23 allowed the rebel group's political branch to operate from within Kampala and boost its external relations,' it said. Bosco Ntaganda, a former Congolese general wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, controls the rebellion on the ground and M23 leader Sultani Makenga is in charge of operations and co-ordination with allied armed groups, the UN report said. Both Ntaganda and Makenga 'receive direct military orders from RDF [Rwandan army] Chief of Defence staff General Charles Kayonga, who in turn acts on instructions from Minister of Defence General James Kabarebe,' it said.

Libya

"HRW accuses Misrata-based militias of capturing, brutalising and killing members of Gaddafi's convoy." (EPA)

Evidence of Mass Murder after Gaddafi's Death
AlJazeera.com, October 17, 2012
"New evidence implicates Libyan militias in an apparent execution of dozens of detainees in rebel custody following the capture and death of Muammar Gaddafi last year,  a watchdog has said. In a report released on Wednesday detailing Gaddafi's final hours on October 20, 2011, Human Rights Watch said it had gathered evidence that Misrata-based militias captured and disarmed members of the dictator's convoy and subjected them to brutal beatings. 'The evidence suggests that opposition militias summarily executed at least 66 captured members of Gaddafi's convoy in Sirte,' his home town, Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said on Wednesday. 'It also looks as if they took Mutassim Gaddafi, who had been wounded, to [the port city of] Misrata and killed him there,' he said of Gaddafi's son. 'Our findings call into question the assertion by Libyan authorities that Muammar Gaddafi was killed in crossfire, and not after his capture,' Bouckaert said of a Human Rights Watch report documenting the executions. The 50-page report, 'Death of a Dictator: Bloody Vengeance in Sirte,' also details the final hours of Gaddafi's life and the circumstances under which he was killed on the basis of witness testimony and mobile phone footage. HRW said its evidence suggested that Misrata-based militias captured and disarmed members of Gaddafi's convoy and, after bringing them under control, subjected them to brutal beatings. 'They then executed at least 66 captured members of the convoy at the nearby Mahari Hotel,' said the report, adding that some still had their hands bound behind their backs.

Nazism / Jewish Holocaust

Shlomo Venezia
(Victor Sokolowicz/Bloomberg)

Shlomo Venezia Dies at 88; Wrote of Auschwitz Horror
By Dennis Hevesi
The New York Times, October 6, 2012
"Shlomo Venezia was one of the first Jews to climb out of the freight car when it came to the end of the line at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland on April 11, 1944, his mother crammed behind him. Two blows from a German guard's baton struck him in the back of the neck. 'When I turned around to try to find my mother, she wasn't there anymore,' he recalled. 'I never saw her again, she wasn't there, and neither were my two little sisters, Marica and Marta.' Mr. Venezia, an Italian Jew who died at 88 on Oct. 1 in Rome, would enter what Primo Levi, the writer and fellow Auschwitz survivor, called 'the gray zone,' where terrorized victims survived on the fringe of collaboration. A sturdy 20-year-old, he was ordered into the Sonderkommando, a unit of prisoners forced to direct thousands of other victims of the Nazis into the gas chambers and to bear their bodies into the crematories. For nearly 50 years he remained haunted and virtually silent about his role in the horror. 'Not because I didn’t want to talk,' he said, 'but because people didn't want to listen, didn't want to believe it.' That changed in the early 1990s, when right-wing extremism reared again in Italy and, Mr. Venezia said, 'swastikas began to appear on walls.' He began to speak at conferences, to reporters, to schoolchildren -- and most notably to Beatrice Prasquier, a journalist with whom, in 2007, he published 'Inside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz.' The book offers a harrowingly matter-of-fact account in which he describes loading corpses into the ovens 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Originally published in French as an oral history in the form of an interview with Ms. Prasquier, 'Inside the Gas Chambers' has since been translated into nearly two dozen languages. ...