NOW AVAILABLE: Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, by Adam Jones (Routledge, 2006; 430 pp., US $33.95 pbk). See www.genocidetext.net. "The best introductory text available to students of genocide studies ... likely to become the gold standard by which all subsequent introductions to this enormously important subject will be measured" (Kenneth J. Campbell).
Friday, May 04, 2007
NOW AVAILABLE: Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, by Adam Jones (Routledge, 2006; 430 pp., US $33.95 pbk). See www.genocidetext.net. "The best introductory text available to students of genocide studies ... likely to become the gold standard by which all subsequent introductions to this enormously important subject will be measured" (Kenneth J. Campbell).
Genocide Studies Media File
April 25 - May 4, 2007
A compendium of news stories, features, and human rights reports pertaining to genocide and crimes against humanity. Compiled by Adam Jones. Please send links and feedback to adamj_jones@hotmail.com.
Consider inviting colleagues and friends to subscribe to Genocide_Studies and the G_S Media File. All it takes is an email to genocide_studies-subscribe@topica.com.
AFGHANISTAN
"Afghans Say U.S. Bombing Killed 42 Civilians"
By Abdul Waheed Wafa and Carlotta Gall
The New York Times, 3 May 2007 [Registration Required]
"Aerial bombing of a valley in western Afghanistan several days ago by the American military killed at least 42 civilians, including women and children, and wounded 50 more, an Afghan government investigation found Wednesday. A provincial council member who visited the site independently put the figure at 50 civilians killed. President Hamid Karzai said at a news conference in Kabul that the Afghan people could no longer tolerate such casualties. 'Five years on, it is very difficult for us to continue accepting civilian casualties,' he said. 'It is becoming heavy for us; it is not understandable anymore.' There have been several episodes recently in which civilians have been killed and foreign forces have been accused of indiscriminate or excessive force. That has prompted Afghan officials to warn that the good will of the Afghan people toward the government and the foreign military presence is wearing thin. The government delegation reported that three villages were bombed last week in the Zerkoh Valley, 30 miles south of the western city of Herat, and 100 houses were destroyed and 1,600 people were now homeless, Farzana Ahmadi, a spokeswoman for the governor of Herat Province, said by telephone. 'The report says that some women and children were drowned in the river, and it was maybe in the heat of the moment that the children and people wanted to escape and jumped into the water,' she said. 'This all happened just because of a lack of coordination between international forces and our forces.' A provincial council member from Herat, Naik Muhammad Eshaq, who went to the area independently, said he had visited the three bombing sites and produced a list of 50 people who had died, including infants and other children under age 10. People were still digging bodies out of the rubble of their mud-walled homes on Tuesday afternoon, he said. [...]"
ARGENTINA
"Life for Leaders of Argentina's Brutal Dirty War"
By Patrick McDonnell
The Sydney Morning Herald (from The Los Angeles Times), 27 April 2007
"Two ageing leaders of Argentina's former military junta must serve life terms in prison for 'grave violations of human rights,' a court ruled after throwing out pardons that had shielded the pair for years. The former president, Jorge Rafael Videla, and the naval chief, Eduardo Massera, were pivotal members of the military junta that oversaw a reign of terror during the 'dirty war' between 1976 and 1983 against left-wing 'subversives.' Both now 81, they were the best-known faces of the dictatorship. But Wednesday's ruling against them may be largely symbolic, since Videla is already under house arrest on charges related to the theft of hundreds of babies from murdered prisoners. Massera has been declared mentally incompetent after suffering a brain hemorrhage and is said to be in a near-vegetative state. Even so, human rights activists applauded the ruling as the latest step in finally punishing the abusers. 'This restores the route to justice and democracy,' said Andrea Pochak of the Centre for Legal and Social Studies, a human rights group that has followed dirty war cases. 'It is a gesture of vital importance for the future.' About 9000 people were killed or disappeared during the dictatorship, according to official statistics, although human rights groups say the number was closer to 30,000. Many bodies were never recovered, the victims were often tortured, shot and buried in mass graves, or drugged and dumped in the ocean from military aircraft. The brutality of the junta set a dark standard at a time when military regimes governed much of South America. The court ruling illustrates how Argentina, under the leadership of its centre-left President, Nestor Kirchner, has moved more forcefully than any Latin American nation to make the leaders of former military governments answer for the crimes they committed. [...]"
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
"U.S. Author Heckled by People Denying Armenian Genocide"
By James Barron
International Herald Tribune, 3 May 2007
"As a first-time author, Margaret Ajemian Ahnert hoped that her appearance at a Barnes & Noble store here would draw attention to her new book, 'The Knock at the Door,' which deals with the Armenian genocide. Her reading and question-and-answer session Tuesday drew attention, to be sure, but not the kind she expected. A man in the audience was arrested after he and several other people disrupted the reading by shouting and passing out leaflets denying that the genocide occurred. Ahnert's 209-page book tells, among other things, how her mother survived the genocide as a teenager during World War I and eventually came to the United States. Ahnert said Wednesday that she did not mean 'The Knock at the Door' to be a political narrative. 'Here I was trying to tell the story of my mother, not making a political statement,' she said. 'It's a mother-daughter story, it's how it affected my life. It's not just about the Armenian genocide, it's about my mother growing up, my life, and events in her life that affected me. It's a mother-daughter memoir. I'm not making any historical statements.' Many historians say that the Ottoman Empire was responsible for the death of more than one million people around 1915 in a campaign intended to eliminate the Armenian population throughout what is now Turkey. [...]"
"Recast Genocide Exhibit Opens at U.N."
By Lily Hindy
Associated Press dispatch on Yahoo! News, 1 May 2007
"An exhibit on the 1994 Rwandan genocide opened Monday at U.N. headquarters after organizers recast a section on the killings of 1 million Armenians in Turkey during World War I -- a reference that angered the Turks. The exhibit, originally set to open April 9, was postponed after a Turkish diplomat complained about the mention of the Armenian killings. The section now uses the term "mass killings" instead of 'murders,' does not include the number of people killed, and replaces 'Turkey' with 'Ottoman Empire.' Armen Martirosyan, Armenia's U.N. ambassador, said the reference still reflects the truth, 'to some extent.' 'This is a Turkish version of history which is not acceptable for us, but to avoid further postponement of the exhibition, we compromised,' Martirosyan said. Calls placed Monday to Turkey's U.N. Mission seeking comment on the changes were not immediately returned. [...]"
AUSTRALIA
"Aboriginal Health '100 Years Behind' Other Australians"
By Barbara McMahon
The Guardian, 1 May 2007
"The standard of health of Aborigines lags almost 100 years behind that of other Australians, with some indigenous people still suffering from leprosy, rheumatic heart disease and tuberculosis, according to a report for the World Health Organisation. The report said that Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, which make up about 2.5% of Australia's population, have an average life expectancy 17 years below their fellow countrymen. The average age of death for Aboriginal men in some parts of New South Wales is 33. 'On many levels, indigenous health remains unacceptably low and at levels experienced nearly a century ago by our non-indigenous peers,' said Dr Lisa Jackman Pulver, from the University of News South Wales indigenous health unit. The findings are similar to a survey released last month by Oxfam and the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation. It reported that Australia ranks last for health in a table of wealthy countries with indigenous populations. Commenting on the latest report, Australia's minister for health, Tony Abbott, acknowledged the gap between the life expectancy of Aborigines and other Australians and said his government had done more than its predecessors to try to find a solution. He said the situation was 'something which no one can be happy about but if it were easy to tackle it would have been tackled a long time ago.' He dismissed a suggestion in the report that the government should publicly acknowledge the 'stress, alienation, discrimination and lack of control' suffered by Aborigines which contributed to poor indigenous health. 'It's all very well to talk about formal apologies but I think indigenous people and the general population are much more interested in seeing better practical outcomes than in gestures, however meaningful those gestures might be to some,' said Mr. Abbott. [...]"
CANADA/INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
"Canada Probes TB 'Genocide' in Church-Run Schools"
By Debora Mackenzie
New Scientist, 5 May 2007
"Canada is to investigate claims that tens of thousands of native Indian and Inuit (First Nation) children died of tuberculosis at church-run residential schools in the early 20th century, and that their deaths were hushed up. Campaigners allege that school officials did nothing to halt the march of TB despite warnings, and charge that their inaction was tantamount to genocide. Christian churches ran up to 88 boarding schools for aboriginal children across Canada between 1874 and 1985. Their stated aim was assimilation; children were forbidden to speak their native languages. Some 200,000 children passed through the schools, attendance was mandatory and the Mounted Police rounded up truants. Their experiences were often brutal, and Canada is finalising a C$1.9 billion ($1.7 million) class-action settlement for 80,000 surviving former inmates, with extra payments for those who suffered physical and sexual abuse. So far there have been no lawsuits over deaths at the schools, although survivors tell of children disappearing and secret burials. Under pressure from campaigners, Indian Affairs minister Jim Prentice announced last week that his department would find out 'why [children] didn't return and where the bodies are.' Kevin Annett, who led the campaign, says he found reports of high rates of TB at residential schools in records, held at the University of British Columbia, which the government has since sealed. In 1907 Peter Bryce, a chief medical officer for the federal Department of Indian Affairs, recorded that 24 per cent of pupils at 15 schools had died of TB over 14 years. At one school, 63 per cent of the children died. Other documents show that officials knew death rates were high until the 1940s, Annett told New Scientist. They record children being admitted with active, contagious TB, with no quarantine or even ventilation in their rooms, the only ways to control TB before antibiotics. Former students say they slept in crowded dormitories with sick children, and were often hungry: hunger lowers immunity and exacerbates the spread of TB. ... The question now is whether methods such as quarantine could have prevented deaths, and whether the schools' inaction constitutes genocide. According to Annett, the University of British Columbia records reveal Bryce's thoughts on the matter: yes, on both counts."
[n.b. No reader interested in the issue of mortality in the Canadian residential schools should miss Ward Churchill's staggering chapter, "Genocide By Any Other Name," in my edited volume, "Genocide, War Crimes & the West: History and Complicity."]
ESTONIA/RUSSIA
[n.b. The following items are presented in chronological order.]
"Russia Threatens Estonia over Removal of Red Army Statue"
By Jenny Booth and agencies
The Times, 27 April 2007
"Russia is threatening to break off diplomatic relations with Estonia in the escalating row over the 'blasphemous' removal of the Red Army memorial in the centre of Tallinn. The statue of the Bronze Soldier was taken down and shifted to a secret location as an emergency measure at 3am this morning, after it became the focus of rioting last night in which one person died, 12 police officers and 44 protesters were injured, and more than 300 were arrested. Estonian police were forced to fire flash grenades and wield rubber batons to hold back the more than 1,000 pro-Russian demonstrators, many of them drunken youths hurling rocks and bottles, as six hours of rioting and looting unfolded, in the worst scenes of unrest since Estonia won its independence from the collapsed Soviet Union in 1991. To show its extreme displeasure that the statue has been moved, the Federation Council -- the upper house of the Russian parliament -- today voted unanimously to recommend withdrawing the Russian ambassador from Tallinn. ... The six ft (2m) statue of the Bronze Soldier inspires powerful and conflicting emotions. For Russia, and for the large Russian ethnic minority in Estonia, it is the symbol of liberation from Nazism and victory after the atrocities carried out by Nazi troops. The belief that dead Red Army soldiers are buried beneath the monument increases its mystique, and any attempt to remove it is described as fascist. For ethnic Estonians, however, the statue symbolises the horrors of nearly 50 years of Soviet occupation. 'In our minds, this soldier stands for deportations and murders, the destruction of our country, not liberation,' said Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the Estonian President. 'It is a monument to mass murder.' The Estonian Government voted last year to move the monument to a less prominent spot than at the centre of a square in the heart of Tallinn, the Estonian capital. The vote was prompted by scuffles around the memorial between pro-Russian and ethnic Estonian groups. [...]"
"Russian MPs Visit Estonia as Soviet War Statue is Re-erected"
Associated Press dispatch in The Guardian, 1 May 2007
"A statue commemorating Soviet soldiers killed during the second world war was re-erected in a military cemetery yesterday, three days after its removal from a square in central Tallinn provoked unrest from ethnic Russians. The so-called Bronze Soldier was immediately open for public viewing at the defence forces cemetery in the capital, said a defence ministry spokeswoman. Police clashed with Russian-speaking Estonians angered by the move to relocate the statue and nearby war grave, which some ethnic Estonians consider a bitter reminder of the Soviet occupation. One man was stabbed to death, more than 150 people were injured and some 1,100 detained in three nights of rioting, the worst violence since Estonia won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. A delegation of Russian MPs arrived in Estonia yesterday to try to defuse tensions between the two countries, which have traded harsh words, including Russian officials speaking of 'blasphemous' acts, and Estonia accusing Russian media of spreading lies. 'The main purpose of the visit is to create dialogue,' said an Estonian foreign ministry official. One member of the delegation, Nikolai Kovalyov, said he and others in Russia's parliament blame the Tallinn government. His comments were branded 'extremely regrettable' by Sven Mikser, an Estonian MP. Estonian Russians -- nearly one-third of the country's 1.3 million people -- view the monument as a shrine to Red Army soldiers who fought Nazi Germany, but ethnic Estonians consider it a painful reminder of Soviet rule. [...]"
GREAT BRITAIN/INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
"Queen Flies into PC War over Fate of American Indians"
By Sarah Baxter
The Sunday Times, 29 April 2007
"The Queen is being urged to apologise for the slaughter of American Indians and the introduction of slavery when she visits Virginia this week as guest of honour to mark the 400th anniversary of the first English settlement in the New World at Jamestown. She will be landing in the middle of a row over political correctness after officials in Virginia banned the use of the word 'celebration' for the anniversary. It is being called a 'commemoration' out of respect for the suffering of native Americans, who were attacked after the colonists arrived in 1607. Africans begin to appear in the English settlement’s records as indentured servants in 1619 and were later codified in Virginia's statutes as slaves. Virginia passed a resolution earlier this year expressing 'profound regret' for the enslavement of millions of Africans. 'Leaders and heads of state have a responsibility to set the tone and it would be a welcome move for the Queen to express regret,' said Virginia state representative Donald McEachin, a descendant of slaves, who sponsored the resolution. ... A Buckingham Palace spokesman said she would also meet 'native Americans and representatives of the African American community to recognise that they formed part of the early history of America and not necessarily in a particularly constructive way.' He added: 'It is not an entirely backwards looking gesture but is one that recognises the diversity of Virginia today.' [...]"
[n.b. This is really too precious. It's not "a row over political correctness," it is a "row" over genocide and massively destructive slavery. As for the Buckingham Palace spokesman's recognition that Native Americans and African Americans "formed part of the early history of America and not necessarily in a particularly constructive way," the less said, the better.]
IRAQ
"The Accursed: Widows of Iraq's Torn-Apart Society"
By Hala Jaber
The Sunday Times, 29 April 2007
"When Um Noor's husband was blown to pieces by a car bomb last year, she drew comfort from the thought that she and her five children could at least depend on their close-knit community for support. But Um Noor, a fragile figure barely 5ft tall, was a Sunni in the predominantly Shi'ite Baghdad district of Amil, and sectarian strife was taking the city by storm. Soon her brother was murdered by a Shi'ite gang that spotted him in the street and chased him into a neighbour's house where he was shot in cold blood. Then the death squad burst into Um Noor's own home and dragged away her eldest son and a nephew only six years old. They, too, were shot, just for being the sons of Sunnis. Um Noor fled to a Sunni area where she believed she would find sanctuary, only to be warned that her remaining children were at risk from hitmen on her side of the sectarian divide. The reason: her husband had been Shi'ite. That made her children Shi'ites -- potential targets for Sunni gunmen with a particular distaste for mixed marriages. She now keeps the children locked in a borrowed house: two sons and two daughters aged 11 to 22 who hardly dare to feel the sun on their faces, let alone go to school or earn some much needed cash. Um Noor has resolved to keep them there along with her late brother's children -- the eldest aged seven, the youngest a girl of six months -- until order is restored in Baghdad. The way the US-Iraq security plan for the city is going, they could be in for a long and perilous wait. [...]"
[n.b. The "collateral damage" of gendercide against civilian men.]
"UN Accuses Iraq of Covering Up Rise in Civilian Deaths"
By Julian Borger
The Guardian, 25 April 2007
"The UN yesterday accused the Iraqi government of trying to cover up a rise in civilian casualties from sectarian violence since the troop surge ordered by George Bush earlier this year. Iraq's government had withheld civilian casualty statistics because it feared the data would be used to depict a 'very grim' security situation, claimed the UN officials in Baghdad. Amid growing political sensitivity to death toll figures, it also emerged yesterday that Canadian scientists had complained that the British government last week denied a transit visa to an Iraqi colleague, Riyadh Lafta, an epidemiologist and co-author of a Lancet report that had estimated the Iraqi war dead at more than 650,000. The Foreign Office said yesterday that it was investigating his case. The availability of official numbers of the civilian dead and wounded seems to have declined since President Bush gambled with an increase in troops in Iraq -- a last-ditch effort to turn the tide on the insurgency and sectarian bloodshed. A human rights report published yesterday by the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (Unami) estimates that the death toll is rising, despite 30,000 American reinforcements being ordered into Baghdad and a security clampdown since February. ... In October, the Lancet medical journal published the epidemiological study that estimated that since the March 2003 invasion 655,000 Iraqis had died who would otherwise have lived, a number far in excess of any official estimates. The methodology behind the report, which was overseen by Johns Hopkins University in the US, was criticised by the American and British governments and questioned by other medical researchers. Dr. Lafta had arranged to present the findings of the report at the University of Washington last year but was denied a US visa. Last Friday he was due to present a paper at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, Canada. This paper looked at the rise in cancer levels among Iraqi children since the invasion. He was issued a Canadian visa, but British consular officials in Jordan refused last week to grant him a transit visa to pass through London, said Tim Takaro, an associate professor at the university. Dr Takaro said: 'Why would an academic physician not be granted a visa? I've grown accustomed to this from the US, but I was very disappointed the British would not even give him a transit visa to pass through an airport.' [...]"
[n.b. God forbid that the truth emerge: in this, the UK and US are bedfellows.]
JAPAN/SECOND WORLD WAR
"Chinese Forced Laborers Lose Japan Court Battle"
Reuters dispatch in The New York Times, 27 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"Japan's top court on Friday rejected two compensation claims by Chinese who suffered at Japanese hands during World War Two, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tried to soothe anger in Washington over his comments on wartime sex slavery. The Supreme Court rulings against forced laborers and women forced into sexual servitude will effectively halt a raft of wartime damages cases being fought mainly by Chinese and Koreans, because lower courts look to the top court for guidance. Two Chinese women who were kidnapped and forced to provide sex for Japanese soldiers during World War Two lost their Supreme Court appeal for damages. That claim had already been settled under a 1972 Japan-China joint statement, the court said. Their lawyer called on the government nonetheless to provide some form of damages to the surviving of the two women, who is 80 years old. 'I hope that the government admits to the truth and takes specific measures to compensate the victim while she is in good health,' said lawyer Sadahiko Sakaguchi. In another case, five Chinese who were forced to work for Japanese firm Nishimatsu Construction Co. Ltd. during World War Two lost their fight for compensation when the Supreme Court overturned a landmark ruling that had ordered the company to pay them. That claim had also been settled under the 1972 joint statement, the court said. 'The ruling is disgraceful in light of friendly relations between Japan and China,' said Shinzo Tsuchiya, a supporter of the former laborers. [...]"
"Japan's 'Atonement' to Former Sex Slaves Stirs Anger"
By Norimitsu Onishi
The New York Times, 25 April 2007
"Facing calls to compensate the aging victims of its wartime sexual slavery, Japan set up the Asian Women's Fund in 1995. It was a significant concession from Japan, which has always asserted that postwar treaties absolved it of all individual claims from World War II. But the fund only fueled anger in the very countries with which Japan had sought reconciliation. By the time it closed as scheduled last month, only a fraction of the former sex slaves had accepted its money. Two Asian governments even offered money to discourage more women from taking Japan's. Critics inside and outside Japan complained about the Japanese government's decision to set up the fund as a private one, making clear that the 'atonement' payments came from citizens. They saw this as another tortured attempt by Tokyo to avoid taking full responsibility for one of the ugliest aspects of the war. 'It was not directly from the Japanese government; that is why I did not accept it,' said Ellen van der Ploeg, 84, a Dutchwoman who was taken from a prisoner of war camp in Indonesia and forced to work in a Japanese military brothel for three months in 1944. 'If you have made mistakes in life, you must have the courage to say, "I'm sorry, please forgive me." But the Japanese government to this day has never taken full responsibility.' 'If this were a pure government fund, I could have accepted it,' Ms. van der Ploeg said in a telephone interview from Houten, the Netherlands. 'Why should I accept money from private Japanese people? They were also victims during the war.' [...]"
RWANDAN GENOCIDE
"French Troops Advised on Rwanda Genocide -- Author"
By Arthur Asiimwe
Reuters dispatch in The Mail & Guardian (South Africa), 4 May 2007
"French troops advised Rwandan Hutu extremists how to hide their gruesome work from spy satellites, the author of a new book on the central African nation's 1994 genocide said on Thursday. 'Silent Accomplice,' by British researcher and author Andrew Wallis, gives what the author says is new evidence of French complicity in the 1994 slaughter of Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus, by militias formed by the Paris-backed Hutu government. Kigali has broken ties with Paris in a nasty diplomatic spat, saying France has never admitted its role in helping foster the killing of 800,000 people. Paris, whose troops had a long military presence in Rwanda, vehemently denies abetting the genocide, saying it only acted in a humanitarian capacity as the murders unfolded. Wallis said some troops became aggravated by corpses floating on rivers -- images picked up by spy satellites. 'So the French soldiers were telling them you have to slit off the bellies of these Tutsi that you kill so that they sink and satellites do not see them,' Wallis told Reuters in Kigali. Rwanda's river Akagera feeds into Lake Victoria, and carried thousands of dead bodies into neigbouring Uganda at the time of the slaughter. Some Ugandans reported finding human teeth in fish they ate after the killings. Wallis said the French role went far beyond arms deals with the pro-Hutu government, saying that before and during the genocide, French special forces armed and trained soldiers who later become the militias that carried out most of the killing. [...]"
SERBIA/KOSOVO
"UN Ends Kosovo Tour, Says No Deadline for Decision"
By Matt Robinson
Reuters dispatch, 28 April 2007
"U.N. Security Council envoys wound up a mission to Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo on Saturday, saying they would deliberate on a disputed proposal for its independence without setting deadlines. The fact-finding mission visited Kosovo at the suggestion of permanent Council member Russia, which backs Serbia in opposing independence for its Albanian-majority province, as proposed by a U.N. mediator after a year of fruitless talks. 'Deciding on important issues should never be hostage to predetermined deadlines,' Belgian ambassador and mission head Johan Verbeke told a news conference. Negotiation is a natural process, he said. 'You have to give it natural space and time in order for all parties of the Security Council to feel at ease with the solution.' The tour by the states that may soon decide Kosovo's fate is a concession by NATO powers, which favor independence, to Russia, which supports Serb insistence that Kosovo, its cultural and religious heartland, must forever remain part of Serbia. The United States says it expects a decision in May, warning of unrest if Kosovo's limbo status continues much longer. But Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin said he believed the visit would force a rethink on Kosovo by some Council members. [...]"
SOMALIA
"How the War in Somalia Could Spread"
By Olivia Ward
The Toronto Star, 29 April 2007
"Starved and terrified civilians fleeing their homes. The stench of death hovering over the steaming streets. Tanks and missiles blasting through the night. Cholera victims dying in the dust. A plague of war has descended on the Somali capital, Mogadishu, claiming more than a thousand lives and displacing an estimates 300,000 people, as the country's transitional government, backed by Ethiopian troops, continues to battle for power with supporters of an ousted Islamist regime. It's one of those complex regional wars that attract little international attention -- but this conflict is closely watched in Toronto and other centres of the Somali diaspora. What much of the world doesn't realize is that this little war threatens a humanitarian catastrophe that could have spillover effects in the region, and the West, for years to come. 'It's a genocide in the making,' says Mohamad Elmi, an Ottawa-based partner in Mogadishu's independent HornAfrik broadcasting network. 'People are fleeing in every direction, but they're being wounded and killed and there's nobody to help them. Now, all the political agendas are merging, and everything we've feared is happening. If it continues this way the whole Horn of Africa will be in flames.' [...]"
"Mogadishu Slides Toward Chaos"
By Alex Perry
TIME Magazine, 25 April 2007
"If there is one lesson to be learned from Afghanistan and Iraq, it's not to invade a country without a plan for the aftermath. When the new Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi rode into Mogadishu behind a column of invading U.S.-backed Ethiopians in January, he did have a plan: build a new government as quickly as possible, and leave business well alone. Unfortunately, he hasn't stuck to it. And that may be why, a little over three months later, Mogadishu is engulfed in some of the most savage fighting it has ever seen. Eight days of firefights pitting Islamist and clan fighters against Ethiopian and Somali government troops has seen close to 400 killed. Earlier this month, 1,000 were killed in four days. And more than 300,000 residents have fled the city, leaving behind bodies in the streets. ... Gedi has given lucrative government jobs to members of his clan, tried to rein in private enterprise -- legitimate as well as illegitimate -- and imposed a 300% tax at the ports. Now reports filtering out of Mogadishu indicate that alongside Islamist rebels, the Ethiopians and Somali government troops are fighting private clan armies and even entrepreneur associations trying to protect their businesses. As the Ethiopians pounds insurgent positions in the city with tanks and artillery, the New York Times reports that businessmen are even buying up missiles to use in counterattacks. [...]"
[n.b. The summary of this article reads: "Blood flows in the streets of Somalia's capital because the Ethiopian and U.S.-backed government has failed to meet the standards of governance set by the Islamists they deposed." 'Nuff said; and hundreds of thousands more innocent people become victims of the "war on terror."]
SPAIN
"Spain Cracks Open Dictatorial Past"
By Lisa Abend
The Christian Science Monitor, 26 April 2007
"[...] In the 1940s, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards were arrested, tried, and in many cases summarily executed for having supported the democratically elected Republican government during the civil war. Well into the 1960s and '70s, Franco's Tribunal of Public Order punished thousands found guilty of 'rebellion.' With only one exception, the families of those political prisoners, many of whom lost their homes and businesses as a result of their affiliation with the persecuted, have never managed to have the sentences overturned. The original draft of the Law of Historical Memory, which among other things provides pensions for soldiers who fought in the Republican army and requires symbols of the Franco regime to be removed from public places, was opposed by parties on the left which felt it did not go far enough. As a result, the bill languished for more than four months. Now, with the Socialists' agreement to include a provision that denies the legitimacy of Franco's political trials, the United Left (IU), and the Catalan Green Initiative (ICV) have added their support, bringing with them enough votes to pass the law. ... Still the Socialists have stressed that the legislation does not automatically annul previous convictions. 'This is a law that neither breaks anything, nor dredges up the past,' said Vice President Maria Teresa Fernández de la Vega. 'It simply recognizes and extends the rights of those people whose rights were harmed during the civil war and the dictatorship.' But many are convinced that it will have a judicial impact. 'Our final objective is to nullify the sentences,' says a source within the leadership of the United Left party. 'We agreed to the legislation because we see the term "illegitimate" as the door that opens the way to annulment.' [...]"
SUDAN/DARFUR
"Hague Court Issues First Darfur War Crimes Warrants"
By Xan Rice
The Guardian, 3 May 2007
"The international criminal court announced yesterday that it had issued arrest warrants for a Janjaweed militia leader and a Sudanese government minister suspected of involvement in murder, torture and rape in Darfur. However, Khartoum said it had no intention of handing over the men -- Ali Muhammad al Abd-al-Rahman, known as Ali Kushayb, and Ahmad Muhammad Harun, the state minister for humanitarian affairs, who are accused of 41 and 50 counts respectively of crimes against humanity and war crimes. The men are alleged to have had lead roles in joint army and militia attacks on four West Darfur villages in 2003 and 2004, where hundreds were murdered. Human rights groups applauded the action, which was a first for Darfur. Presenting his case to the international court in February, the chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, had requested the two men be summoned to The Hague, a move that would have put pressure only on Sudan to ensure their appearance. But the three sitting judges yesterday chose to go further by issuing arrest warrants. This puts the onus on all countries that recognise the court to help apprehend the suspects. The court said yesterday there were 'reasonable grounds' to believe that Mr. Harun, 43, a former judge, encouraged attacks on civilians while he was government head of the Darfur security desk. Mr. Rahman, 50, described by the prosecution as a 'colonel of colonels,' is accused of personally participating in attacks by the Janjaweed, the mainly Arab militia sponsored by Sudan's government. Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said yesterday that the government had 'a legal duty' to arrest the two men. But Sudan's government, which fears that further prosecutions could hit ministers all the way up to the president, Omar al-Bashir, yesterday repeated its insistence that the court had no jurisdiction over it. [...]"
"UN Sees Gains in Darfur Refugee Crisis"
By Tarek El-Tablawy
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 1 May 2007 [Registration Required]
"The international community has made progress in easing the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, but those efforts could unravel because of the 'total failure' to bring lasting security to the Sudanese region, the top U.N. refugee official said Tuesday. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres' assessment came as he took stock of the refugee situation in Sudan and Iraq -- two of the world's biggest refugee challenges. Guterres, who recently returned from Darfur, applauded gains made in Sudan on the humanitarian front, saying the U.N. had assisted in the return of 30,000 refugees there in the first four months of the year, a figure that trumped repatriation levels for all of 2006. But for that level to be sustainable, security must be realized in the region, and this can only be accomplished through a comprehensive and effective peace agreement, Guterres said. 'It is crucial ... for the international community to be fully engaged in putting pressure for a comprehensive, effective peace agreement to be established as quickly as possible, involving all the parties,' Guterres told reporters, arguing that not enough attention has been paid to ongoing negotiations. The United Nations has been pushing hard to end the four-year conflict in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million displaced in fighting between ethnic African rebels and government forces and their allied Arab militia, known as the janjaweed. Attempts to broker peace have largely failed, with forces on both sides accused of abuses. [...]"
"Darfur Protests Draw Thousands in London, Washington"
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 30 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"Thousands of people protested Sunday outside Prime Minister Tony Blair's residence to demand decisive action to end the violence in Darfur, holding up a 7-foot hourglass filled with artificial blood. Protests also were held in the United States, Israel and other countries on what campaigners designated a global day of action. In London, protesters handed a letter to Gareth Thomas, a minister of state for international development, calling for the quick deployment of a strong peacekeeping force in Sudan's western region of Darfur, where a four-year war has left more than 200,000 people dead and more than 2 million displaced. The letter, addressed to Blair, urged the prime minister 'to use your influence to push the international community to call for action.' 'Time is running out for the people of Darfur, and we urge you to keep the pressure on the government of Sudan until there is an effective peacekeeping force on the ground protecting civilians,' the letter said. Organizers said 3,500 people attended the London rally. The United States and Britain have been working on a proposal calling for sanctions against Sudan if it does not agree to the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers to help a beleaguered African Union force. In Washington, actress Mia Farrow spoke to protesters in front of the White House. A large sign in the background read, 'Peace and Protection Now.' Celebrities including Farrow, Elton John, Mick Jagger and George Clooney issued a statement Sunday calling for an end to the bloodshed in Darfur and accusing the international community of failing to act. [...]"
"War without End"
By Steve Bloomfield
The Independent, 30 April 2007
"If Mohammed Izadein had met Elsadiq Elzein Rokero last year, he would have tried to kill him. Today, he calls him 'brother.' Sitting on a straw mat in a simple mud hut in the village of Sabun, deep in the heart of the Jebel Marra, a fertile mountainous region in the centre of Darfur, Mr. Izadein recounts how the two men -- one Arab, one Fur -- have become unlikely allies against the Sudanese government. Mr. Rokero, a Fur, is a general in the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA). Mr Izadein, an Arab from the Talba tribe in the Kass region of south Darfur, was a janjaweed fighter, attacking villages in SLA territory. 'Now, this man is my brother,' Mr. Izadein says, reaching out an arm towards Mr Rokero. It is an alliance that symbolises the changes taking place in Darfur's four-year-long conflict -- a war that has claimed the lives of at least 200,000 people and forced nearly three million from their homes. What began as a rebellion by three non-Arab tribes against perceived marginalisation by the Arab-dominated Khartoum government has escalated into a complex multi-layered conflict. Mr. Izadein signed a peace agreement with the SLA in Jebel Marra at the end of last year. He claims he now leads a group of 3,000 former janjaweed fighters from 12 different Arab tribes who have switched sides and taken up arms against the government they once served. There are Arabs fighting alongside the rebels and Africans siding with the government. Arab tribes are fighting other Arab tribes -- some are even fighting themselves. Desertification has increased tensions, between everybody, as tribes fight to gain control over precious water points. If it was ever as simple to describe the conflict as a 'genocide' of black Africans by an Arab government -- and few analysts in Sudan believe it was -- it certainly is not now. [...]"
"Britain Gives Sudan Days to Meet Demands or Face New Sanctions"
By Julian Borger
The Guardian, 30 April 2007
"Sudan has 'days not weeks' to curb military operations in Darfur and accept an international peacekeeping force or face tougher sanctions, the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, has warned. On a day of protests around the world to mark the fourth anniversary of the conflict and to call for UN intervention, Mrs Beckett sought to inject a sense of urgency into the diplomatic effort that has so far failed to contain the crisis. At least 200,000 people have been killed in the region and 2.5 million people displaced since 2003. A declaration last month by Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, saying he would no longer stand by an earlier agreement to accept a 22,000-strong UN force, triggered the move by the US and the UK to impose tougher sanctions on Khartoum. President Bashir has since relented, allowing 3,000 UN peacekeepers with six attack helicopters to reinforce 7,000 African Union troops already acting as observers. But Mrs. Beckett made clear the Sudanese leader would have to do more to fend off new punitive measures. She said the work on sanctions would 'give a little breathing space to see if there would be progress,' but thought there was 'a general feeling this must not be allowed to be a recipe for more deliberate delay.' She added: 'If we don't see progress in days rather than weeks, we will have to move ahead with a fresh sanctions resolution.' Scepticism has been reinforced by Sudan's continuing air raids, including an attack on a rebel meeting yesterday in north Darfur. [...]"
"I Fought As A Child Soldier in Sudan. And I Say Act Now on Darfur"
By Emmanuel Jal
CommonDreams.org (from The Independent), 29 April 2007
"[...] Today marks the fourth anniversary of the start of the genocide in Darfur, the perpetrators of which are members of the Janjaweed militia, known to be armed and funded by the Sudanese government. In four years as many as 400,000 civilians have been brutally killed, approximately three million forced to live in camps bereft of supplies or sanitation, and women and children raped on a daily basis. After Rwanda, the world leaders made a promise that nothing like this would happen again. Yet they have persistently ignored warnings that Darfur would become the greatest humanitarian disaster this century, allowing the violence to spread to neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic. As an African, I feel the international community has much to do to prove that black African lives are worth more than profitable oil and arms deals. It must do better than what it has achieved so far in Darfur. Sixteen resolutions, including the imposition of sanctions against the Sudanese government, have been passed, yet not one has been imposed. ... Eighteen months ago UN member states agreed that they had a 'responsibility to protect' victims of genocide, ethnic cleansing or war crimes. Yet the UN's excuse for not dispatching a hybrid force to protect the civilians of Darfur is that it awaits a written invitation from the very perpetrators of the crimes, i.e. the Sudanese government. This isn't good enough. [...]"
"Peacekeepers Alone Can't Help Darfur -- UNHCR Chief"
By Alaa Shahine
Reuters dispatch, 24 April 2007
"Even a force of 100,000 peacekeepers could not secure peace in the Darfur region of western Sudan, the head of the U.N refugee agency said on Tuesday. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said only a comprehensive political solution to the crisis would end the four-year-old conflict in Darfur, in which the United Nations say around 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million people displaced. 'Without peace, there is no miracle. No security force will be able to guarantee security in the whole of Darfur. Darfur is very big,' he said during a meeting with the so-called sheikhs of the displaced people at the Krinding Camp in El-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state. 'Even if you have 100,000 policemen in Darfur, they will not be able to cover the whole territory,' he told the men, who gathered inside a small hut. The Krinding camp is home to more than 30,000 people who live in small huts and complain about deteriorating security, abject poverty and the lack of educational services. Sudan recently agreed to a 'heavy support package' for the African Union peacekeeping troops in Darfur, to include some 3,500 military and police personnel. Khartoum, however, has rejected a U.N. demand to let in around 20,000 peacekeepers. U.S. President George W. Bush warned Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir last week he had one last chance to stop violence in Darfur or the United States would impose sanctions and consider other punitive options. Sudan said it would not respond to 'Western blackmail.' Guterres, speaking later in an interview with Reuters, said: 'There needs to be a political solution first. Of course we need peacekeepers, but peacekeepers can do only so much if there is no peace. In any humanitarian crisis, there is always behind it a political problem. If you don't solve the political problem, you will never solve the crisis.' [...]"
UGANDA
"Uganda War Victims Prefer Peace over Punishment"
By Tim Cocks
Reuters dispatch in The Mail & Guardian (South Africa), 30 April 2007
"Pasca Lakob doesn't see much point in punishing the Ugandan guerrilla leader whose fighters murdered many of her family and friends. 'His atrocities are so evil, there's no punishment that could fit the crime. They might as well pardon him,' she said of Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony. Many Ugandans living in the north agree, despite having borne the brunt of a vicious two-decade insurgency that killed tens of thousands of people and spawned 1,7-million refugees. Peace talks aiming to end one of Africa's longest wars restarted on Thursday in southern Sudan, but their success hinges on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. Kony and four other commanders are wanted for war crimes by the ICC and the fugitive rebel leader has said he will never make peace unless international tribunal drops the charges. ... Since peace talks started, a wave of popular opposition to the ICC amongst northern Ugandans -- the main victims of Kony's cult-like rebel group -- has dismayed rights groups. Northerners say only a lifting of the indictments will bring lasting peace. 'That is what is going to decide the future of Uganda,' northern politician and peace campaigner Norbert Mao told Reuters. 'The ICC ... must stay out of the process.' Traditional leaders from Kony's Acholi tribe want him and his henchmen to undergo a reconciliation ritual. Traditional, or Mato Oput, justice involves a murderer facing relatives of the victim and admitting his crime before both drink a bitter brew made from a tree root mixed with sheep's blood. The ICC has said it will not withdraw its warrants and United Nations officials have said those who blame the tribunal for holding up the peace process are engaging in revisionist history. [...]"
UNITED STATES
"Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps"
By Naomi Wolf
AlterNet.org, 28 April 2007
"Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down -- the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel and took certain activists into custody. They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy, but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps. As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated in the United States by the Bush administration. ... It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable -- as the author and political journalist Joe Conason has put it -- that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realize. [...]"
UNITED STATES/ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
"Armenian Genocide Dispute Erupts at LAT"
By Kevin Roderick
LAObserved.com, 24 April 2007
"A dispute that has been quietly bubbling in the Times newsroom went public today when the publisher of the California Courier demanded that LAT managing editor Doug Frantz be fired for blocking publication of an article on the Armenian genocide by senior staff writer Mark Arax, who is of Armenian origin. According to Harut Sassounian, a widely quoted leader of the Armenian American community, Frantz feels Arax is biased on Armenian issues. Arax has lodged a discrimination complaint and threatened a federal lawsuit, says Sassounian. Arax, who lives in Fresno and writes for West magazine, told me he couldn't comment, but I've confirmed there is an internal investigation at the paper. [...]"
UNITED STATES/INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
"Acknowledging A Massacre: Sand Creek Site Critical"
By Clint Talbot
CommonDreams.org (from the Boulder Daily Camera), 1 May 2007
"The initial judgment was that the Cheyenne and Arapaho people had it coming. It wasn’t a massacre but a 'battle.' There weren't victims, only 'savages.' And the butchers were heroes. That was the view of the Rocky Mountain News in 1864, shortly after Col. John Chivington led 700 members of the Colorado milita in the unprovoked slaughter of 160 Native Americans camped on Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. The feat of 'warfare' involved the wholesale slaughter of Native Americans, many of them elderly, women and children, who'd been told they would be safe encamped on this spot. Even when the Indians unfurled the American flag and the white flag of surrender, the militia men continued the killing. 'If there were any savages that day, it was not the Indian people,' said former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe, the Associated Press reported. On Saturday, Campbell was among those who gathered to dedicate the newly opened Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. That is fitting, as Campbell sponsored legislation that led to the official site's formation. The wonder is that it took so long. Even in the 1860s -- before Colorado attained statehood -- the attack at Sand Creek was recognized as a massacre. Congress launched an inquiry and later condemned Chivington. President Lincoln fired territorial Gov. John Evans, who sanctioned the massacre. But many Coloradans were loath to accept what really happened. Capt. David Nichols, who was instrumental in founding the University of Colorado at Boulder, joined Chivington at Sand Creek, yet Nichols' name was memorialized on a dormitory until 1989. (The dorm is now called Cheyenne Arapaho Hall.) At the state Capitol, a Civil War memorial listed Sand Creek as one of several 'battles.' A corrective plaque was not added until 2002. [...]"
UNITED STATES/SECOND WORLD WAR
"U.S. Troops Used Japanese Brothels after WWII"
Associated Press dispatch on MSNBC.com, 27 April 2007
"Japan's abhorrent practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops in World War II has a little-known sequel: After its surrender -- with tacit approval from the U.S. occupation authorities -- Japan set up a similar 'comfort women' system for American GIs. An Associated Press review of historical documents and records -- some never before translated into English -- shows American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution. The Americans also had full knowledge by then of Japan's atrocious treatment of women in countries across Asia that it conquered during the war. Tens of thousands of women were employed to provide cheap sex to U.S. troops until the spring of 1946, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur shut the brothels down. The documents show the brothels were rushed into operation as American forces poured into Japan beginning in August 1945. 'Sadly, we police had to set up sexual comfort stations for the occupation troops,' recounts the official history of the Ibaraki Prefectural Police Department, whose jurisdiction is just northeast of Tokyo. 'The strategy was, through the special work of experienced women, to create a breakwater to protect regular women and girls.' [...]"
ISSUE: "AID" AND "DEVELOPMENT"
"The Real Scandal At The World Bank:
The Bank is Killing Thousands of the Poorest People in The World"
By Johann Hari
CommonDreams.org (from The Independent), 26 April 2007
"While the world's press has been fixated on the teeny-weeny scandal over whether the World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz helped to get his girlfriend a $300,000-a-year gig next door, they have been ignoring the rancid stench of a far bigger scandal wafting from Wolfie's Washington offices. This slo-mo scandal isn't about apparent petty corruption in DC. It's about how Wolfowitz's World Bank is killing thousands of the poorest people in the world, and knowingly worsening our worst crisis -- global warming -- every day. ... These victims are not merely an anecdote soup; they are an accurate summary of the World Bank's effect on the poor. Don't take my word for it. The World Bank's own Independent Evaluation Group just found that barely one in ten of its borrowers experienced persistent growth between 1995 and 2005 -- a much smaller proportion than those who stagnated or slid deeper into poverty. The bank's own former chief economist, Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, says this approach 'has condemned people to death ... They don't care if people live or die.' Why? Why would a body that claims to help the poor actually thrash them? Because its mission to end poverty has always been mythical. As George Monbiot explains in his book The Age of Consent, the World Bank was created in the 1940s by US economist Henry Dexter White to be a further projection of US power. The bank's head is invariably American, the bank is based in Washington, and the US has a permanent veto on policies. It does not promote a sensible mix of markets and state action -- the real path to development. No: the World Bank pursues the interests of US corporations over the poor, every time. [...]"
ISSUE: GENOCIDE STUDIES/PREVENTION
"Talk But No Action on Genocide"
By Carol Goar
Toronto Star, 25 April 2007
"Every seat in the hall was filled despite the stirrings of spring outside. 'Even though it's a fine and lovely day, I will depress you deeply,' warned Gerry Caplan, who was about to deliver the annual public lecture at the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics. He was true to his word. The topic Caplan had chosen, 'The Swift, Painful Death of Genocide,' would have been grim in and of itself. But what was really disheartening was his conclusion. 'It has gotten worse in our lifetime. We don't seem to be able to prevent it at all. Those of us who believe in progressive liberal internationalism have great difficulty figuring out how to move ahead.' Caplan spent most of his 90-minute address showing how the great lesson of the Holocaust -- 'never again' -- has been systematically ignored. The phrase, once so powerful, has become meaningless. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, has become a testament to humanity's impotence in the face of profound evil. By Caplan's count, there have been between 30 and 50 mass exterminations since World War II. No continent has been spared. No violence-free interlude has lasted. 'This litany does not suggest we have seen the end of this scourge of scourges.' He dissected several of the more horrific slaughters -- the killing fields in Cambodia in the 1970s, the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia in the early 1990s, the massacre of Rwanda's Tutsi minority in 1994 and the current bloodbath in Darfur -- angrily impugning those who abetted the murderers, those who chose not to act out of self-interest and those who wrung their hands helplessly. He included the Catholic Church, the United Nations and the victims of past genocides on his list of the guilty, although he laid the greatest blame on the United States. Lest anyone was feeling complacent, Caplan pointed out that Canada had its own sins to answer for. [...]"
ISSUE: GENOCIDE TRIBUNALS
"Why Genocide is Difficult to Prosecute"
By Robert Marquand
The Christian Science Monitor, 30 April 2007
"As public consciousness of the grim situation in Darfur grows, the difficulty of prosecuting what is often popularly called genocide is becoming clearer. For years, the term genocide was used to describe the ultimate crime. But that crime was rarely -- if ever -- charged, since international courts were too weak. Now, the mechanics of international justice are modestly rising to confront man's inhumanity to man: take, for example, the International Criminal Court and the Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals here at The Hague. Yet at the same time, the political sensitivity surrounding a genocide charge, which requires nations to intervene under international law, is creating friction. The cases of Rwanda, Bosnia, and now Darfur demonstrate this. Sunday, protesters in 35 nations and more than 280 US cities marched against what a UN mission calls 'apocalyptic' scenes still emerging from the Darfur war, now spreading from Sudan to Chad. Protest groups, including Amnesty International, called on Britain and the US to help create a peacekeeping force. So is Darfur a genocide? A US Holocaust Memorial Museum committee and Colin Powell have said it is. So do at least two human rights reports. One French expert, Marc Lavergne, calls it 'worse than a genocide' since mass killings are not done out of racial hatred, but because Darfurians are simply 'in the way' of Sudan's plans to control land. Yet many Sudanese experts and an International Criminal Court (ICC) don't term it genocide. They say it doesn't fit the 1948 Geneva Convention definition to win a case. This requires absolute proof of 'mental intent' to kill or displace based on national, ethnic, or religious identity. Hence, an ICC prosecutor this winter did not charge a Sudanese interior minister and a rebel Janjaweed militia leader with 'genocide,' but crimes against humanity. [...]"
"Pol Pot Men To Be Tried"
Reuters dispatch in The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 April 2007
"The Cambodian Bar Association has removed the last barrier to the long-delayed trial of Pol Pot's top surviving henchmen for the 'Killing Fields' atrocities. The United Nations had balked at the $US4900 fee the association wanted to charge foreign defence lawyers, triggering a row that threatened to scuttle the UN-backed trial before it got under way. 'We decided to lower the legal fees to $US500 because we want to see foreign lawyers take part in the Khmer Rouge trials to seek justice for the victims,' a spokesman said. After nearly 10 years of tortuous negotiations, Cambodia and the UN agreed the outline of the joint court and donors gave $US53 million to pay for it. The trial is expected to last three years. The main defendants are likely to be 'Brother Number Two,' Nuon Chea; the former foreign minister, Ieng Sary; the former president, Khieu Samphan; and Duch, head of the Tuol Sleng interrogation and torture centre. 'Brother Number One,' Pol Pot, the architect of the ultra-Maoist regime, died in 1998."[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
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AFGHANISTAN
"Afghans Say U.S. Bombing Killed 42 Civilians"
By Abdul Waheed Wafa and Carlotta Gall
The New York Times, 3 May 2007 [Registration Required]
"Aerial bombing of a valley in western Afghanistan several days ago by the American military killed at least 42 civilians, including women and children, and wounded 50 more, an Afghan government investigation found Wednesday. A provincial council member who visited the site independently put the figure at 50 civilians killed. President Hamid Karzai said at a news conference in Kabul that the Afghan people could no longer tolerate such casualties. 'Five years on, it is very difficult for us to continue accepting civilian casualties,' he said. 'It is becoming heavy for us; it is not understandable anymore.' There have been several episodes recently in which civilians have been killed and foreign forces have been accused of indiscriminate or excessive force. That has prompted Afghan officials to warn that the good will of the Afghan people toward the government and the foreign military presence is wearing thin. The government delegation reported that three villages were bombed last week in the Zerkoh Valley, 30 miles south of the western city of Herat, and 100 houses were destroyed and 1,600 people were now homeless, Farzana Ahmadi, a spokeswoman for the governor of Herat Province, said by telephone. 'The report says that some women and children were drowned in the river, and it was maybe in the heat of the moment that the children and people wanted to escape and jumped into the water,' she said. 'This all happened just because of a lack of coordination between international forces and our forces.' A provincial council member from Herat, Naik Muhammad Eshaq, who went to the area independently, said he had visited the three bombing sites and produced a list of 50 people who had died, including infants and other children under age 10. People were still digging bodies out of the rubble of their mud-walled homes on Tuesday afternoon, he said. [...]"
ARGENTINA
"Life for Leaders of Argentina's Brutal Dirty War"
By Patrick McDonnell
The Sydney Morning Herald (from The Los Angeles Times), 27 April 2007
"Two ageing leaders of Argentina's former military junta must serve life terms in prison for 'grave violations of human rights,' a court ruled after throwing out pardons that had shielded the pair for years. The former president, Jorge Rafael Videla, and the naval chief, Eduardo Massera, were pivotal members of the military junta that oversaw a reign of terror during the 'dirty war' between 1976 and 1983 against left-wing 'subversives.' Both now 81, they were the best-known faces of the dictatorship. But Wednesday's ruling against them may be largely symbolic, since Videla is already under house arrest on charges related to the theft of hundreds of babies from murdered prisoners. Massera has been declared mentally incompetent after suffering a brain hemorrhage and is said to be in a near-vegetative state. Even so, human rights activists applauded the ruling as the latest step in finally punishing the abusers. 'This restores the route to justice and democracy,' said Andrea Pochak of the Centre for Legal and Social Studies, a human rights group that has followed dirty war cases. 'It is a gesture of vital importance for the future.' About 9000 people were killed or disappeared during the dictatorship, according to official statistics, although human rights groups say the number was closer to 30,000. Many bodies were never recovered, the victims were often tortured, shot and buried in mass graves, or drugged and dumped in the ocean from military aircraft. The brutality of the junta set a dark standard at a time when military regimes governed much of South America. The court ruling illustrates how Argentina, under the leadership of its centre-left President, Nestor Kirchner, has moved more forcefully than any Latin American nation to make the leaders of former military governments answer for the crimes they committed. [...]"
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
"U.S. Author Heckled by People Denying Armenian Genocide"
By James Barron
International Herald Tribune, 3 May 2007
"As a first-time author, Margaret Ajemian Ahnert hoped that her appearance at a Barnes & Noble store here would draw attention to her new book, 'The Knock at the Door,' which deals with the Armenian genocide. Her reading and question-and-answer session Tuesday drew attention, to be sure, but not the kind she expected. A man in the audience was arrested after he and several other people disrupted the reading by shouting and passing out leaflets denying that the genocide occurred. Ahnert's 209-page book tells, among other things, how her mother survived the genocide as a teenager during World War I and eventually came to the United States. Ahnert said Wednesday that she did not mean 'The Knock at the Door' to be a political narrative. 'Here I was trying to tell the story of my mother, not making a political statement,' she said. 'It's a mother-daughter story, it's how it affected my life. It's not just about the Armenian genocide, it's about my mother growing up, my life, and events in her life that affected me. It's a mother-daughter memoir. I'm not making any historical statements.' Many historians say that the Ottoman Empire was responsible for the death of more than one million people around 1915 in a campaign intended to eliminate the Armenian population throughout what is now Turkey. [...]"
"Recast Genocide Exhibit Opens at U.N."
By Lily Hindy
Associated Press dispatch on Yahoo! News, 1 May 2007
"An exhibit on the 1994 Rwandan genocide opened Monday at U.N. headquarters after organizers recast a section on the killings of 1 million Armenians in Turkey during World War I -- a reference that angered the Turks. The exhibit, originally set to open April 9, was postponed after a Turkish diplomat complained about the mention of the Armenian killings. The section now uses the term "mass killings" instead of 'murders,' does not include the number of people killed, and replaces 'Turkey' with 'Ottoman Empire.' Armen Martirosyan, Armenia's U.N. ambassador, said the reference still reflects the truth, 'to some extent.' 'This is a Turkish version of history which is not acceptable for us, but to avoid further postponement of the exhibition, we compromised,' Martirosyan said. Calls placed Monday to Turkey's U.N. Mission seeking comment on the changes were not immediately returned. [...]"
AUSTRALIA
"Aboriginal Health '100 Years Behind' Other Australians"
By Barbara McMahon
The Guardian, 1 May 2007
"The standard of health of Aborigines lags almost 100 years behind that of other Australians, with some indigenous people still suffering from leprosy, rheumatic heart disease and tuberculosis, according to a report for the World Health Organisation. The report said that Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, which make up about 2.5% of Australia's population, have an average life expectancy 17 years below their fellow countrymen. The average age of death for Aboriginal men in some parts of New South Wales is 33. 'On many levels, indigenous health remains unacceptably low and at levels experienced nearly a century ago by our non-indigenous peers,' said Dr Lisa Jackman Pulver, from the University of News South Wales indigenous health unit. The findings are similar to a survey released last month by Oxfam and the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation. It reported that Australia ranks last for health in a table of wealthy countries with indigenous populations. Commenting on the latest report, Australia's minister for health, Tony Abbott, acknowledged the gap between the life expectancy of Aborigines and other Australians and said his government had done more than its predecessors to try to find a solution. He said the situation was 'something which no one can be happy about but if it were easy to tackle it would have been tackled a long time ago.' He dismissed a suggestion in the report that the government should publicly acknowledge the 'stress, alienation, discrimination and lack of control' suffered by Aborigines which contributed to poor indigenous health. 'It's all very well to talk about formal apologies but I think indigenous people and the general population are much more interested in seeing better practical outcomes than in gestures, however meaningful those gestures might be to some,' said Mr. Abbott. [...]"
CANADA/INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
"Canada Probes TB 'Genocide' in Church-Run Schools"
By Debora Mackenzie
New Scientist, 5 May 2007
"Canada is to investigate claims that tens of thousands of native Indian and Inuit (First Nation) children died of tuberculosis at church-run residential schools in the early 20th century, and that their deaths were hushed up. Campaigners allege that school officials did nothing to halt the march of TB despite warnings, and charge that their inaction was tantamount to genocide. Christian churches ran up to 88 boarding schools for aboriginal children across Canada between 1874 and 1985. Their stated aim was assimilation; children were forbidden to speak their native languages. Some 200,000 children passed through the schools, attendance was mandatory and the Mounted Police rounded up truants. Their experiences were often brutal, and Canada is finalising a C$1.9 billion ($1.7 million) class-action settlement for 80,000 surviving former inmates, with extra payments for those who suffered physical and sexual abuse. So far there have been no lawsuits over deaths at the schools, although survivors tell of children disappearing and secret burials. Under pressure from campaigners, Indian Affairs minister Jim Prentice announced last week that his department would find out 'why [children] didn't return and where the bodies are.' Kevin Annett, who led the campaign, says he found reports of high rates of TB at residential schools in records, held at the University of British Columbia, which the government has since sealed. In 1907 Peter Bryce, a chief medical officer for the federal Department of Indian Affairs, recorded that 24 per cent of pupils at 15 schools had died of TB over 14 years. At one school, 63 per cent of the children died. Other documents show that officials knew death rates were high until the 1940s, Annett told New Scientist. They record children being admitted with active, contagious TB, with no quarantine or even ventilation in their rooms, the only ways to control TB before antibiotics. Former students say they slept in crowded dormitories with sick children, and were often hungry: hunger lowers immunity and exacerbates the spread of TB. ... The question now is whether methods such as quarantine could have prevented deaths, and whether the schools' inaction constitutes genocide. According to Annett, the University of British Columbia records reveal Bryce's thoughts on the matter: yes, on both counts."
[n.b. No reader interested in the issue of mortality in the Canadian residential schools should miss Ward Churchill's staggering chapter, "Genocide By Any Other Name," in my edited volume, "Genocide, War Crimes & the West: History and Complicity."]
ESTONIA/RUSSIA
[n.b. The following items are presented in chronological order.]
"Russia Threatens Estonia over Removal of Red Army Statue"
By Jenny Booth and agencies
The Times, 27 April 2007
"Russia is threatening to break off diplomatic relations with Estonia in the escalating row over the 'blasphemous' removal of the Red Army memorial in the centre of Tallinn. The statue of the Bronze Soldier was taken down and shifted to a secret location as an emergency measure at 3am this morning, after it became the focus of rioting last night in which one person died, 12 police officers and 44 protesters were injured, and more than 300 were arrested. Estonian police were forced to fire flash grenades and wield rubber batons to hold back the more than 1,000 pro-Russian demonstrators, many of them drunken youths hurling rocks and bottles, as six hours of rioting and looting unfolded, in the worst scenes of unrest since Estonia won its independence from the collapsed Soviet Union in 1991. To show its extreme displeasure that the statue has been moved, the Federation Council -- the upper house of the Russian parliament -- today voted unanimously to recommend withdrawing the Russian ambassador from Tallinn. ... The six ft (2m) statue of the Bronze Soldier inspires powerful and conflicting emotions. For Russia, and for the large Russian ethnic minority in Estonia, it is the symbol of liberation from Nazism and victory after the atrocities carried out by Nazi troops. The belief that dead Red Army soldiers are buried beneath the monument increases its mystique, and any attempt to remove it is described as fascist. For ethnic Estonians, however, the statue symbolises the horrors of nearly 50 years of Soviet occupation. 'In our minds, this soldier stands for deportations and murders, the destruction of our country, not liberation,' said Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the Estonian President. 'It is a monument to mass murder.' The Estonian Government voted last year to move the monument to a less prominent spot than at the centre of a square in the heart of Tallinn, the Estonian capital. The vote was prompted by scuffles around the memorial between pro-Russian and ethnic Estonian groups. [...]"
"Russian MPs Visit Estonia as Soviet War Statue is Re-erected"
Associated Press dispatch in The Guardian, 1 May 2007
"A statue commemorating Soviet soldiers killed during the second world war was re-erected in a military cemetery yesterday, three days after its removal from a square in central Tallinn provoked unrest from ethnic Russians. The so-called Bronze Soldier was immediately open for public viewing at the defence forces cemetery in the capital, said a defence ministry spokeswoman. Police clashed with Russian-speaking Estonians angered by the move to relocate the statue and nearby war grave, which some ethnic Estonians consider a bitter reminder of the Soviet occupation. One man was stabbed to death, more than 150 people were injured and some 1,100 detained in three nights of rioting, the worst violence since Estonia won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. A delegation of Russian MPs arrived in Estonia yesterday to try to defuse tensions between the two countries, which have traded harsh words, including Russian officials speaking of 'blasphemous' acts, and Estonia accusing Russian media of spreading lies. 'The main purpose of the visit is to create dialogue,' said an Estonian foreign ministry official. One member of the delegation, Nikolai Kovalyov, said he and others in Russia's parliament blame the Tallinn government. His comments were branded 'extremely regrettable' by Sven Mikser, an Estonian MP. Estonian Russians -- nearly one-third of the country's 1.3 million people -- view the monument as a shrine to Red Army soldiers who fought Nazi Germany, but ethnic Estonians consider it a painful reminder of Soviet rule. [...]"
GREAT BRITAIN/INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
"Queen Flies into PC War over Fate of American Indians"
By Sarah Baxter
The Sunday Times, 29 April 2007
"The Queen is being urged to apologise for the slaughter of American Indians and the introduction of slavery when she visits Virginia this week as guest of honour to mark the 400th anniversary of the first English settlement in the New World at Jamestown. She will be landing in the middle of a row over political correctness after officials in Virginia banned the use of the word 'celebration' for the anniversary. It is being called a 'commemoration' out of respect for the suffering of native Americans, who were attacked after the colonists arrived in 1607. Africans begin to appear in the English settlement’s records as indentured servants in 1619 and were later codified in Virginia's statutes as slaves. Virginia passed a resolution earlier this year expressing 'profound regret' for the enslavement of millions of Africans. 'Leaders and heads of state have a responsibility to set the tone and it would be a welcome move for the Queen to express regret,' said Virginia state representative Donald McEachin, a descendant of slaves, who sponsored the resolution. ... A Buckingham Palace spokesman said she would also meet 'native Americans and representatives of the African American community to recognise that they formed part of the early history of America and not necessarily in a particularly constructive way.' He added: 'It is not an entirely backwards looking gesture but is one that recognises the diversity of Virginia today.' [...]"
[n.b. This is really too precious. It's not "a row over political correctness," it is a "row" over genocide and massively destructive slavery. As for the Buckingham Palace spokesman's recognition that Native Americans and African Americans "formed part of the early history of America and not necessarily in a particularly constructive way," the less said, the better.]
IRAQ
"The Accursed: Widows of Iraq's Torn-Apart Society"
By Hala Jaber
The Sunday Times, 29 April 2007
"When Um Noor's husband was blown to pieces by a car bomb last year, she drew comfort from the thought that she and her five children could at least depend on their close-knit community for support. But Um Noor, a fragile figure barely 5ft tall, was a Sunni in the predominantly Shi'ite Baghdad district of Amil, and sectarian strife was taking the city by storm. Soon her brother was murdered by a Shi'ite gang that spotted him in the street and chased him into a neighbour's house where he was shot in cold blood. Then the death squad burst into Um Noor's own home and dragged away her eldest son and a nephew only six years old. They, too, were shot, just for being the sons of Sunnis. Um Noor fled to a Sunni area where she believed she would find sanctuary, only to be warned that her remaining children were at risk from hitmen on her side of the sectarian divide. The reason: her husband had been Shi'ite. That made her children Shi'ites -- potential targets for Sunni gunmen with a particular distaste for mixed marriages. She now keeps the children locked in a borrowed house: two sons and two daughters aged 11 to 22 who hardly dare to feel the sun on their faces, let alone go to school or earn some much needed cash. Um Noor has resolved to keep them there along with her late brother's children -- the eldest aged seven, the youngest a girl of six months -- until order is restored in Baghdad. The way the US-Iraq security plan for the city is going, they could be in for a long and perilous wait. [...]"
[n.b. The "collateral damage" of gendercide against civilian men.]
"UN Accuses Iraq of Covering Up Rise in Civilian Deaths"
By Julian Borger
The Guardian, 25 April 2007
"The UN yesterday accused the Iraqi government of trying to cover up a rise in civilian casualties from sectarian violence since the troop surge ordered by George Bush earlier this year. Iraq's government had withheld civilian casualty statistics because it feared the data would be used to depict a 'very grim' security situation, claimed the UN officials in Baghdad. Amid growing political sensitivity to death toll figures, it also emerged yesterday that Canadian scientists had complained that the British government last week denied a transit visa to an Iraqi colleague, Riyadh Lafta, an epidemiologist and co-author of a Lancet report that had estimated the Iraqi war dead at more than 650,000. The Foreign Office said yesterday that it was investigating his case. The availability of official numbers of the civilian dead and wounded seems to have declined since President Bush gambled with an increase in troops in Iraq -- a last-ditch effort to turn the tide on the insurgency and sectarian bloodshed. A human rights report published yesterday by the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (Unami) estimates that the death toll is rising, despite 30,000 American reinforcements being ordered into Baghdad and a security clampdown since February. ... In October, the Lancet medical journal published the epidemiological study that estimated that since the March 2003 invasion 655,000 Iraqis had died who would otherwise have lived, a number far in excess of any official estimates. The methodology behind the report, which was overseen by Johns Hopkins University in the US, was criticised by the American and British governments and questioned by other medical researchers. Dr. Lafta had arranged to present the findings of the report at the University of Washington last year but was denied a US visa. Last Friday he was due to present a paper at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, Canada. This paper looked at the rise in cancer levels among Iraqi children since the invasion. He was issued a Canadian visa, but British consular officials in Jordan refused last week to grant him a transit visa to pass through London, said Tim Takaro, an associate professor at the university. Dr Takaro said: 'Why would an academic physician not be granted a visa? I've grown accustomed to this from the US, but I was very disappointed the British would not even give him a transit visa to pass through an airport.' [...]"
[n.b. God forbid that the truth emerge: in this, the UK and US are bedfellows.]
JAPAN/SECOND WORLD WAR
"Chinese Forced Laborers Lose Japan Court Battle"
Reuters dispatch in The New York Times, 27 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"Japan's top court on Friday rejected two compensation claims by Chinese who suffered at Japanese hands during World War Two, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tried to soothe anger in Washington over his comments on wartime sex slavery. The Supreme Court rulings against forced laborers and women forced into sexual servitude will effectively halt a raft of wartime damages cases being fought mainly by Chinese and Koreans, because lower courts look to the top court for guidance. Two Chinese women who were kidnapped and forced to provide sex for Japanese soldiers during World War Two lost their Supreme Court appeal for damages. That claim had already been settled under a 1972 Japan-China joint statement, the court said. Their lawyer called on the government nonetheless to provide some form of damages to the surviving of the two women, who is 80 years old. 'I hope that the government admits to the truth and takes specific measures to compensate the victim while she is in good health,' said lawyer Sadahiko Sakaguchi. In another case, five Chinese who were forced to work for Japanese firm Nishimatsu Construction Co. Ltd. during World War Two lost their fight for compensation when the Supreme Court overturned a landmark ruling that had ordered the company to pay them. That claim had also been settled under the 1972 joint statement, the court said. 'The ruling is disgraceful in light of friendly relations between Japan and China,' said Shinzo Tsuchiya, a supporter of the former laborers. [...]"
"Japan's 'Atonement' to Former Sex Slaves Stirs Anger"
By Norimitsu Onishi
The New York Times, 25 April 2007
"Facing calls to compensate the aging victims of its wartime sexual slavery, Japan set up the Asian Women's Fund in 1995. It was a significant concession from Japan, which has always asserted that postwar treaties absolved it of all individual claims from World War II. But the fund only fueled anger in the very countries with which Japan had sought reconciliation. By the time it closed as scheduled last month, only a fraction of the former sex slaves had accepted its money. Two Asian governments even offered money to discourage more women from taking Japan's. Critics inside and outside Japan complained about the Japanese government's decision to set up the fund as a private one, making clear that the 'atonement' payments came from citizens. They saw this as another tortured attempt by Tokyo to avoid taking full responsibility for one of the ugliest aspects of the war. 'It was not directly from the Japanese government; that is why I did not accept it,' said Ellen van der Ploeg, 84, a Dutchwoman who was taken from a prisoner of war camp in Indonesia and forced to work in a Japanese military brothel for three months in 1944. 'If you have made mistakes in life, you must have the courage to say, "I'm sorry, please forgive me." But the Japanese government to this day has never taken full responsibility.' 'If this were a pure government fund, I could have accepted it,' Ms. van der Ploeg said in a telephone interview from Houten, the Netherlands. 'Why should I accept money from private Japanese people? They were also victims during the war.' [...]"
RWANDAN GENOCIDE
"French Troops Advised on Rwanda Genocide -- Author"
By Arthur Asiimwe
Reuters dispatch in The Mail & Guardian (South Africa), 4 May 2007
"French troops advised Rwandan Hutu extremists how to hide their gruesome work from spy satellites, the author of a new book on the central African nation's 1994 genocide said on Thursday. 'Silent Accomplice,' by British researcher and author Andrew Wallis, gives what the author says is new evidence of French complicity in the 1994 slaughter of Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus, by militias formed by the Paris-backed Hutu government. Kigali has broken ties with Paris in a nasty diplomatic spat, saying France has never admitted its role in helping foster the killing of 800,000 people. Paris, whose troops had a long military presence in Rwanda, vehemently denies abetting the genocide, saying it only acted in a humanitarian capacity as the murders unfolded. Wallis said some troops became aggravated by corpses floating on rivers -- images picked up by spy satellites. 'So the French soldiers were telling them you have to slit off the bellies of these Tutsi that you kill so that they sink and satellites do not see them,' Wallis told Reuters in Kigali. Rwanda's river Akagera feeds into Lake Victoria, and carried thousands of dead bodies into neigbouring Uganda at the time of the slaughter. Some Ugandans reported finding human teeth in fish they ate after the killings. Wallis said the French role went far beyond arms deals with the pro-Hutu government, saying that before and during the genocide, French special forces armed and trained soldiers who later become the militias that carried out most of the killing. [...]"
SERBIA/KOSOVO
"UN Ends Kosovo Tour, Says No Deadline for Decision"
By Matt Robinson
Reuters dispatch, 28 April 2007
"U.N. Security Council envoys wound up a mission to Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo on Saturday, saying they would deliberate on a disputed proposal for its independence without setting deadlines. The fact-finding mission visited Kosovo at the suggestion of permanent Council member Russia, which backs Serbia in opposing independence for its Albanian-majority province, as proposed by a U.N. mediator after a year of fruitless talks. 'Deciding on important issues should never be hostage to predetermined deadlines,' Belgian ambassador and mission head Johan Verbeke told a news conference. Negotiation is a natural process, he said. 'You have to give it natural space and time in order for all parties of the Security Council to feel at ease with the solution.' The tour by the states that may soon decide Kosovo's fate is a concession by NATO powers, which favor independence, to Russia, which supports Serb insistence that Kosovo, its cultural and religious heartland, must forever remain part of Serbia. The United States says it expects a decision in May, warning of unrest if Kosovo's limbo status continues much longer. But Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin said he believed the visit would force a rethink on Kosovo by some Council members. [...]"
SOMALIA
"How the War in Somalia Could Spread"
By Olivia Ward
The Toronto Star, 29 April 2007
"Starved and terrified civilians fleeing their homes. The stench of death hovering over the steaming streets. Tanks and missiles blasting through the night. Cholera victims dying in the dust. A plague of war has descended on the Somali capital, Mogadishu, claiming more than a thousand lives and displacing an estimates 300,000 people, as the country's transitional government, backed by Ethiopian troops, continues to battle for power with supporters of an ousted Islamist regime. It's one of those complex regional wars that attract little international attention -- but this conflict is closely watched in Toronto and other centres of the Somali diaspora. What much of the world doesn't realize is that this little war threatens a humanitarian catastrophe that could have spillover effects in the region, and the West, for years to come. 'It's a genocide in the making,' says Mohamad Elmi, an Ottawa-based partner in Mogadishu's independent HornAfrik broadcasting network. 'People are fleeing in every direction, but they're being wounded and killed and there's nobody to help them. Now, all the political agendas are merging, and everything we've feared is happening. If it continues this way the whole Horn of Africa will be in flames.' [...]"
"Mogadishu Slides Toward Chaos"
By Alex Perry
TIME Magazine, 25 April 2007
"If there is one lesson to be learned from Afghanistan and Iraq, it's not to invade a country without a plan for the aftermath. When the new Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi rode into Mogadishu behind a column of invading U.S.-backed Ethiopians in January, he did have a plan: build a new government as quickly as possible, and leave business well alone. Unfortunately, he hasn't stuck to it. And that may be why, a little over three months later, Mogadishu is engulfed in some of the most savage fighting it has ever seen. Eight days of firefights pitting Islamist and clan fighters against Ethiopian and Somali government troops has seen close to 400 killed. Earlier this month, 1,000 were killed in four days. And more than 300,000 residents have fled the city, leaving behind bodies in the streets. ... Gedi has given lucrative government jobs to members of his clan, tried to rein in private enterprise -- legitimate as well as illegitimate -- and imposed a 300% tax at the ports. Now reports filtering out of Mogadishu indicate that alongside Islamist rebels, the Ethiopians and Somali government troops are fighting private clan armies and even entrepreneur associations trying to protect their businesses. As the Ethiopians pounds insurgent positions in the city with tanks and artillery, the New York Times reports that businessmen are even buying up missiles to use in counterattacks. [...]"
[n.b. The summary of this article reads: "Blood flows in the streets of Somalia's capital because the Ethiopian and U.S.-backed government has failed to meet the standards of governance set by the Islamists they deposed." 'Nuff said; and hundreds of thousands more innocent people become victims of the "war on terror."]
SPAIN
"Spain Cracks Open Dictatorial Past"
By Lisa Abend
The Christian Science Monitor, 26 April 2007
"[...] In the 1940s, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards were arrested, tried, and in many cases summarily executed for having supported the democratically elected Republican government during the civil war. Well into the 1960s and '70s, Franco's Tribunal of Public Order punished thousands found guilty of 'rebellion.' With only one exception, the families of those political prisoners, many of whom lost their homes and businesses as a result of their affiliation with the persecuted, have never managed to have the sentences overturned. The original draft of the Law of Historical Memory, which among other things provides pensions for soldiers who fought in the Republican army and requires symbols of the Franco regime to be removed from public places, was opposed by parties on the left which felt it did not go far enough. As a result, the bill languished for more than four months. Now, with the Socialists' agreement to include a provision that denies the legitimacy of Franco's political trials, the United Left (IU), and the Catalan Green Initiative (ICV) have added their support, bringing with them enough votes to pass the law. ... Still the Socialists have stressed that the legislation does not automatically annul previous convictions. 'This is a law that neither breaks anything, nor dredges up the past,' said Vice President Maria Teresa Fernández de la Vega. 'It simply recognizes and extends the rights of those people whose rights were harmed during the civil war and the dictatorship.' But many are convinced that it will have a judicial impact. 'Our final objective is to nullify the sentences,' says a source within the leadership of the United Left party. 'We agreed to the legislation because we see the term "illegitimate" as the door that opens the way to annulment.' [...]"
SUDAN/DARFUR
"Hague Court Issues First Darfur War Crimes Warrants"
By Xan Rice
The Guardian, 3 May 2007
"The international criminal court announced yesterday that it had issued arrest warrants for a Janjaweed militia leader and a Sudanese government minister suspected of involvement in murder, torture and rape in Darfur. However, Khartoum said it had no intention of handing over the men -- Ali Muhammad al Abd-al-Rahman, known as Ali Kushayb, and Ahmad Muhammad Harun, the state minister for humanitarian affairs, who are accused of 41 and 50 counts respectively of crimes against humanity and war crimes. The men are alleged to have had lead roles in joint army and militia attacks on four West Darfur villages in 2003 and 2004, where hundreds were murdered. Human rights groups applauded the action, which was a first for Darfur. Presenting his case to the international court in February, the chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, had requested the two men be summoned to The Hague, a move that would have put pressure only on Sudan to ensure their appearance. But the three sitting judges yesterday chose to go further by issuing arrest warrants. This puts the onus on all countries that recognise the court to help apprehend the suspects. The court said yesterday there were 'reasonable grounds' to believe that Mr. Harun, 43, a former judge, encouraged attacks on civilians while he was government head of the Darfur security desk. Mr. Rahman, 50, described by the prosecution as a 'colonel of colonels,' is accused of personally participating in attacks by the Janjaweed, the mainly Arab militia sponsored by Sudan's government. Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said yesterday that the government had 'a legal duty' to arrest the two men. But Sudan's government, which fears that further prosecutions could hit ministers all the way up to the president, Omar al-Bashir, yesterday repeated its insistence that the court had no jurisdiction over it. [...]"
"UN Sees Gains in Darfur Refugee Crisis"
By Tarek El-Tablawy
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 1 May 2007 [Registration Required]
"The international community has made progress in easing the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, but those efforts could unravel because of the 'total failure' to bring lasting security to the Sudanese region, the top U.N. refugee official said Tuesday. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres' assessment came as he took stock of the refugee situation in Sudan and Iraq -- two of the world's biggest refugee challenges. Guterres, who recently returned from Darfur, applauded gains made in Sudan on the humanitarian front, saying the U.N. had assisted in the return of 30,000 refugees there in the first four months of the year, a figure that trumped repatriation levels for all of 2006. But for that level to be sustainable, security must be realized in the region, and this can only be accomplished through a comprehensive and effective peace agreement, Guterres said. 'It is crucial ... for the international community to be fully engaged in putting pressure for a comprehensive, effective peace agreement to be established as quickly as possible, involving all the parties,' Guterres told reporters, arguing that not enough attention has been paid to ongoing negotiations. The United Nations has been pushing hard to end the four-year conflict in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million displaced in fighting between ethnic African rebels and government forces and their allied Arab militia, known as the janjaweed. Attempts to broker peace have largely failed, with forces on both sides accused of abuses. [...]"
"Darfur Protests Draw Thousands in London, Washington"
Associated Press dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 30 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"Thousands of people protested Sunday outside Prime Minister Tony Blair's residence to demand decisive action to end the violence in Darfur, holding up a 7-foot hourglass filled with artificial blood. Protests also were held in the United States, Israel and other countries on what campaigners designated a global day of action. In London, protesters handed a letter to Gareth Thomas, a minister of state for international development, calling for the quick deployment of a strong peacekeeping force in Sudan's western region of Darfur, where a four-year war has left more than 200,000 people dead and more than 2 million displaced. The letter, addressed to Blair, urged the prime minister 'to use your influence to push the international community to call for action.' 'Time is running out for the people of Darfur, and we urge you to keep the pressure on the government of Sudan until there is an effective peacekeeping force on the ground protecting civilians,' the letter said. Organizers said 3,500 people attended the London rally. The United States and Britain have been working on a proposal calling for sanctions against Sudan if it does not agree to the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers to help a beleaguered African Union force. In Washington, actress Mia Farrow spoke to protesters in front of the White House. A large sign in the background read, 'Peace and Protection Now.' Celebrities including Farrow, Elton John, Mick Jagger and George Clooney issued a statement Sunday calling for an end to the bloodshed in Darfur and accusing the international community of failing to act. [...]"
"War without End"
By Steve Bloomfield
The Independent, 30 April 2007
"If Mohammed Izadein had met Elsadiq Elzein Rokero last year, he would have tried to kill him. Today, he calls him 'brother.' Sitting on a straw mat in a simple mud hut in the village of Sabun, deep in the heart of the Jebel Marra, a fertile mountainous region in the centre of Darfur, Mr. Izadein recounts how the two men -- one Arab, one Fur -- have become unlikely allies against the Sudanese government. Mr. Rokero, a Fur, is a general in the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA). Mr Izadein, an Arab from the Talba tribe in the Kass region of south Darfur, was a janjaweed fighter, attacking villages in SLA territory. 'Now, this man is my brother,' Mr. Izadein says, reaching out an arm towards Mr Rokero. It is an alliance that symbolises the changes taking place in Darfur's four-year-long conflict -- a war that has claimed the lives of at least 200,000 people and forced nearly three million from their homes. What began as a rebellion by three non-Arab tribes against perceived marginalisation by the Arab-dominated Khartoum government has escalated into a complex multi-layered conflict. Mr. Izadein signed a peace agreement with the SLA in Jebel Marra at the end of last year. He claims he now leads a group of 3,000 former janjaweed fighters from 12 different Arab tribes who have switched sides and taken up arms against the government they once served. There are Arabs fighting alongside the rebels and Africans siding with the government. Arab tribes are fighting other Arab tribes -- some are even fighting themselves. Desertification has increased tensions, between everybody, as tribes fight to gain control over precious water points. If it was ever as simple to describe the conflict as a 'genocide' of black Africans by an Arab government -- and few analysts in Sudan believe it was -- it certainly is not now. [...]"
"Britain Gives Sudan Days to Meet Demands or Face New Sanctions"
By Julian Borger
The Guardian, 30 April 2007
"Sudan has 'days not weeks' to curb military operations in Darfur and accept an international peacekeeping force or face tougher sanctions, the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, has warned. On a day of protests around the world to mark the fourth anniversary of the conflict and to call for UN intervention, Mrs Beckett sought to inject a sense of urgency into the diplomatic effort that has so far failed to contain the crisis. At least 200,000 people have been killed in the region and 2.5 million people displaced since 2003. A declaration last month by Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, saying he would no longer stand by an earlier agreement to accept a 22,000-strong UN force, triggered the move by the US and the UK to impose tougher sanctions on Khartoum. President Bashir has since relented, allowing 3,000 UN peacekeepers with six attack helicopters to reinforce 7,000 African Union troops already acting as observers. But Mrs. Beckett made clear the Sudanese leader would have to do more to fend off new punitive measures. She said the work on sanctions would 'give a little breathing space to see if there would be progress,' but thought there was 'a general feeling this must not be allowed to be a recipe for more deliberate delay.' She added: 'If we don't see progress in days rather than weeks, we will have to move ahead with a fresh sanctions resolution.' Scepticism has been reinforced by Sudan's continuing air raids, including an attack on a rebel meeting yesterday in north Darfur. [...]"
"I Fought As A Child Soldier in Sudan. And I Say Act Now on Darfur"
By Emmanuel Jal
CommonDreams.org (from The Independent), 29 April 2007
"[...] Today marks the fourth anniversary of the start of the genocide in Darfur, the perpetrators of which are members of the Janjaweed militia, known to be armed and funded by the Sudanese government. In four years as many as 400,000 civilians have been brutally killed, approximately three million forced to live in camps bereft of supplies or sanitation, and women and children raped on a daily basis. After Rwanda, the world leaders made a promise that nothing like this would happen again. Yet they have persistently ignored warnings that Darfur would become the greatest humanitarian disaster this century, allowing the violence to spread to neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic. As an African, I feel the international community has much to do to prove that black African lives are worth more than profitable oil and arms deals. It must do better than what it has achieved so far in Darfur. Sixteen resolutions, including the imposition of sanctions against the Sudanese government, have been passed, yet not one has been imposed. ... Eighteen months ago UN member states agreed that they had a 'responsibility to protect' victims of genocide, ethnic cleansing or war crimes. Yet the UN's excuse for not dispatching a hybrid force to protect the civilians of Darfur is that it awaits a written invitation from the very perpetrators of the crimes, i.e. the Sudanese government. This isn't good enough. [...]"
"Peacekeepers Alone Can't Help Darfur -- UNHCR Chief"
By Alaa Shahine
Reuters dispatch, 24 April 2007
"Even a force of 100,000 peacekeepers could not secure peace in the Darfur region of western Sudan, the head of the U.N refugee agency said on Tuesday. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said only a comprehensive political solution to the crisis would end the four-year-old conflict in Darfur, in which the United Nations say around 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million people displaced. 'Without peace, there is no miracle. No security force will be able to guarantee security in the whole of Darfur. Darfur is very big,' he said during a meeting with the so-called sheikhs of the displaced people at the Krinding Camp in El-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state. 'Even if you have 100,000 policemen in Darfur, they will not be able to cover the whole territory,' he told the men, who gathered inside a small hut. The Krinding camp is home to more than 30,000 people who live in small huts and complain about deteriorating security, abject poverty and the lack of educational services. Sudan recently agreed to a 'heavy support package' for the African Union peacekeeping troops in Darfur, to include some 3,500 military and police personnel. Khartoum, however, has rejected a U.N. demand to let in around 20,000 peacekeepers. U.S. President George W. Bush warned Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir last week he had one last chance to stop violence in Darfur or the United States would impose sanctions and consider other punitive options. Sudan said it would not respond to 'Western blackmail.' Guterres, speaking later in an interview with Reuters, said: 'There needs to be a political solution first. Of course we need peacekeepers, but peacekeepers can do only so much if there is no peace. In any humanitarian crisis, there is always behind it a political problem. If you don't solve the political problem, you will never solve the crisis.' [...]"
UGANDA
"Uganda War Victims Prefer Peace over Punishment"
By Tim Cocks
Reuters dispatch in The Mail & Guardian (South Africa), 30 April 2007
"Pasca Lakob doesn't see much point in punishing the Ugandan guerrilla leader whose fighters murdered many of her family and friends. 'His atrocities are so evil, there's no punishment that could fit the crime. They might as well pardon him,' she said of Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony. Many Ugandans living in the north agree, despite having borne the brunt of a vicious two-decade insurgency that killed tens of thousands of people and spawned 1,7-million refugees. Peace talks aiming to end one of Africa's longest wars restarted on Thursday in southern Sudan, but their success hinges on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. Kony and four other commanders are wanted for war crimes by the ICC and the fugitive rebel leader has said he will never make peace unless international tribunal drops the charges. ... Since peace talks started, a wave of popular opposition to the ICC amongst northern Ugandans -- the main victims of Kony's cult-like rebel group -- has dismayed rights groups. Northerners say only a lifting of the indictments will bring lasting peace. 'That is what is going to decide the future of Uganda,' northern politician and peace campaigner Norbert Mao told Reuters. 'The ICC ... must stay out of the process.' Traditional leaders from Kony's Acholi tribe want him and his henchmen to undergo a reconciliation ritual. Traditional, or Mato Oput, justice involves a murderer facing relatives of the victim and admitting his crime before both drink a bitter brew made from a tree root mixed with sheep's blood. The ICC has said it will not withdraw its warrants and United Nations officials have said those who blame the tribunal for holding up the peace process are engaging in revisionist history. [...]"
UNITED STATES
"Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps"
By Naomi Wolf
AlterNet.org, 28 April 2007
"Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down -- the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel and took certain activists into custody. They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy, but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps. As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated in the United States by the Bush administration. ... It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable -- as the author and political journalist Joe Conason has put it -- that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realize. [...]"
UNITED STATES/ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
"Armenian Genocide Dispute Erupts at LAT"
By Kevin Roderick
LAObserved.com, 24 April 2007
"A dispute that has been quietly bubbling in the Times newsroom went public today when the publisher of the California Courier demanded that LAT managing editor Doug Frantz be fired for blocking publication of an article on the Armenian genocide by senior staff writer Mark Arax, who is of Armenian origin. According to Harut Sassounian, a widely quoted leader of the Armenian American community, Frantz feels Arax is biased on Armenian issues. Arax has lodged a discrimination complaint and threatened a federal lawsuit, says Sassounian. Arax, who lives in Fresno and writes for West magazine, told me he couldn't comment, but I've confirmed there is an internal investigation at the paper. [...]"
UNITED STATES/INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
"Acknowledging A Massacre: Sand Creek Site Critical"
By Clint Talbot
CommonDreams.org (from the Boulder Daily Camera), 1 May 2007
"The initial judgment was that the Cheyenne and Arapaho people had it coming. It wasn’t a massacre but a 'battle.' There weren't victims, only 'savages.' And the butchers were heroes. That was the view of the Rocky Mountain News in 1864, shortly after Col. John Chivington led 700 members of the Colorado milita in the unprovoked slaughter of 160 Native Americans camped on Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. The feat of 'warfare' involved the wholesale slaughter of Native Americans, many of them elderly, women and children, who'd been told they would be safe encamped on this spot. Even when the Indians unfurled the American flag and the white flag of surrender, the militia men continued the killing. 'If there were any savages that day, it was not the Indian people,' said former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe, the Associated Press reported. On Saturday, Campbell was among those who gathered to dedicate the newly opened Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. That is fitting, as Campbell sponsored legislation that led to the official site's formation. The wonder is that it took so long. Even in the 1860s -- before Colorado attained statehood -- the attack at Sand Creek was recognized as a massacre. Congress launched an inquiry and later condemned Chivington. President Lincoln fired territorial Gov. John Evans, who sanctioned the massacre. But many Coloradans were loath to accept what really happened. Capt. David Nichols, who was instrumental in founding the University of Colorado at Boulder, joined Chivington at Sand Creek, yet Nichols' name was memorialized on a dormitory until 1989. (The dorm is now called Cheyenne Arapaho Hall.) At the state Capitol, a Civil War memorial listed Sand Creek as one of several 'battles.' A corrective plaque was not added until 2002. [...]"
UNITED STATES/SECOND WORLD WAR
"U.S. Troops Used Japanese Brothels after WWII"
Associated Press dispatch on MSNBC.com, 27 April 2007
"Japan's abhorrent practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops in World War II has a little-known sequel: After its surrender -- with tacit approval from the U.S. occupation authorities -- Japan set up a similar 'comfort women' system for American GIs. An Associated Press review of historical documents and records -- some never before translated into English -- shows American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution. The Americans also had full knowledge by then of Japan's atrocious treatment of women in countries across Asia that it conquered during the war. Tens of thousands of women were employed to provide cheap sex to U.S. troops until the spring of 1946, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur shut the brothels down. The documents show the brothels were rushed into operation as American forces poured into Japan beginning in August 1945. 'Sadly, we police had to set up sexual comfort stations for the occupation troops,' recounts the official history of the Ibaraki Prefectural Police Department, whose jurisdiction is just northeast of Tokyo. 'The strategy was, through the special work of experienced women, to create a breakwater to protect regular women and girls.' [...]"
ISSUE: "AID" AND "DEVELOPMENT"
"The Real Scandal At The World Bank:
The Bank is Killing Thousands of the Poorest People in The World"
By Johann Hari
CommonDreams.org (from The Independent), 26 April 2007
"While the world's press has been fixated on the teeny-weeny scandal over whether the World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz helped to get his girlfriend a $300,000-a-year gig next door, they have been ignoring the rancid stench of a far bigger scandal wafting from Wolfie's Washington offices. This slo-mo scandal isn't about apparent petty corruption in DC. It's about how Wolfowitz's World Bank is killing thousands of the poorest people in the world, and knowingly worsening our worst crisis -- global warming -- every day. ... These victims are not merely an anecdote soup; they are an accurate summary of the World Bank's effect on the poor. Don't take my word for it. The World Bank's own Independent Evaluation Group just found that barely one in ten of its borrowers experienced persistent growth between 1995 and 2005 -- a much smaller proportion than those who stagnated or slid deeper into poverty. The bank's own former chief economist, Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, says this approach 'has condemned people to death ... They don't care if people live or die.' Why? Why would a body that claims to help the poor actually thrash them? Because its mission to end poverty has always been mythical. As George Monbiot explains in his book The Age of Consent, the World Bank was created in the 1940s by US economist Henry Dexter White to be a further projection of US power. The bank's head is invariably American, the bank is based in Washington, and the US has a permanent veto on policies. It does not promote a sensible mix of markets and state action -- the real path to development. No: the World Bank pursues the interests of US corporations over the poor, every time. [...]"
ISSUE: GENOCIDE STUDIES/PREVENTION
"Talk But No Action on Genocide"
By Carol Goar
Toronto Star, 25 April 2007
"Every seat in the hall was filled despite the stirrings of spring outside. 'Even though it's a fine and lovely day, I will depress you deeply,' warned Gerry Caplan, who was about to deliver the annual public lecture at the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics. He was true to his word. The topic Caplan had chosen, 'The Swift, Painful Death of Genocide,' would have been grim in and of itself. But what was really disheartening was his conclusion. 'It has gotten worse in our lifetime. We don't seem to be able to prevent it at all. Those of us who believe in progressive liberal internationalism have great difficulty figuring out how to move ahead.' Caplan spent most of his 90-minute address showing how the great lesson of the Holocaust -- 'never again' -- has been systematically ignored. The phrase, once so powerful, has become meaningless. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, has become a testament to humanity's impotence in the face of profound evil. By Caplan's count, there have been between 30 and 50 mass exterminations since World War II. No continent has been spared. No violence-free interlude has lasted. 'This litany does not suggest we have seen the end of this scourge of scourges.' He dissected several of the more horrific slaughters -- the killing fields in Cambodia in the 1970s, the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia in the early 1990s, the massacre of Rwanda's Tutsi minority in 1994 and the current bloodbath in Darfur -- angrily impugning those who abetted the murderers, those who chose not to act out of self-interest and those who wrung their hands helplessly. He included the Catholic Church, the United Nations and the victims of past genocides on his list of the guilty, although he laid the greatest blame on the United States. Lest anyone was feeling complacent, Caplan pointed out that Canada had its own sins to answer for. [...]"
ISSUE: GENOCIDE TRIBUNALS
"Why Genocide is Difficult to Prosecute"
By Robert Marquand
The Christian Science Monitor, 30 April 2007
"As public consciousness of the grim situation in Darfur grows, the difficulty of prosecuting what is often popularly called genocide is becoming clearer. For years, the term genocide was used to describe the ultimate crime. But that crime was rarely -- if ever -- charged, since international courts were too weak. Now, the mechanics of international justice are modestly rising to confront man's inhumanity to man: take, for example, the International Criminal Court and the Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals here at The Hague. Yet at the same time, the political sensitivity surrounding a genocide charge, which requires nations to intervene under international law, is creating friction. The cases of Rwanda, Bosnia, and now Darfur demonstrate this. Sunday, protesters in 35 nations and more than 280 US cities marched against what a UN mission calls 'apocalyptic' scenes still emerging from the Darfur war, now spreading from Sudan to Chad. Protest groups, including Amnesty International, called on Britain and the US to help create a peacekeeping force. So is Darfur a genocide? A US Holocaust Memorial Museum committee and Colin Powell have said it is. So do at least two human rights reports. One French expert, Marc Lavergne, calls it 'worse than a genocide' since mass killings are not done out of racial hatred, but because Darfurians are simply 'in the way' of Sudan's plans to control land. Yet many Sudanese experts and an International Criminal Court (ICC) don't term it genocide. They say it doesn't fit the 1948 Geneva Convention definition to win a case. This requires absolute proof of 'mental intent' to kill or displace based on national, ethnic, or religious identity. Hence, an ICC prosecutor this winter did not charge a Sudanese interior minister and a rebel Janjaweed militia leader with 'genocide,' but crimes against humanity. [...]"
"Pol Pot Men To Be Tried"
Reuters dispatch in The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 April 2007
"The Cambodian Bar Association has removed the last barrier to the long-delayed trial of Pol Pot's top surviving henchmen for the 'Killing Fields' atrocities. The United Nations had balked at the $US4900 fee the association wanted to charge foreign defence lawyers, triggering a row that threatened to scuttle the UN-backed trial before it got under way. 'We decided to lower the legal fees to $US500 because we want to see foreign lawyers take part in the Khmer Rouge trials to seek justice for the victims,' a spokesman said. After nearly 10 years of tortuous negotiations, Cambodia and the UN agreed the outline of the joint court and donors gave $US53 million to pay for it. The trial is expected to last three years. The main defendants are likely to be 'Brother Number Two,' Nuon Chea; the former foreign minister, Ieng Sary; the former president, Khieu Samphan; and Duch, head of the Tuol Sleng interrogation and torture centre. 'Brother Number One,' Pol Pot, the architect of the ultra-Maoist regime, died in 1998."[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
NOW AVAILABLE: Men of the Global South: A Reader, edited by Adam Jones (Zed Books, 2006; 425 pp., US $29.99 pbk). "This impressive collection is a much-needed contribution to the visibility and understanding of diversity in the lives of men from the South" (Dr. Dubravka Zarkov, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague).
Genocide Studies Media File
April 12-24, 2007
A compendium of news stories, features, and human rights reports pertaining to genocide and crimes against humanity. Compiled by Adam Jones. Please send links and feedback to adamj_jones@hotmail.com.
Consider inviting colleagues and friends to subscribe to Genocide_Studies and the G_S Media File. All it takes is an email to genocide_studies-subscribe@topica.com.
ARGENTINA
"Argentina Ex-Leader Faces Kidnapping Charges"
Reuters dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 24 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"The last de facto president of Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship must stand trial on charges that he kidnapped children of those killed in the country's 'dirty war,' a judge ruled Monday. Reynaldo Bignone and six other high-ranking officers will face prosecution in a case investigating allegations that some children of slain dissidents were handed over to members of the military, federal Judge Guillermo Montenegro ruled. The charges include 'taking, retaining and hiding minors and changing their identities,' according to the ruling. No formal court date was set. A former army general, Bignone was the last of four de facto presidents and took power in mid-1982 after Argentina's defeat in the Falkland Islands war. Bignone has been under house arrest since March. Many of the junta's other top leaders, including Gen. Jorge Videla and Adm. Emilio Massera, are also facing similar charges. Last year, Bignone told a radio station that the child kidnapping charges are 'an invention.' The human rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo says it has traced about 90 children of missing political prisoners and reunited them with their biological families. The other officers to face trial include former army chief Cristino Nicolaides, former navy chief Ruben Franco and Jorge Acosta, a former marine. A government report says at least 9,000 people died or disappeared during the seven-year crackdown on leftist dissent. Human rights groups say the number is closer to 30,000. [...]"
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
"Congressional Resolution on Armenian Genocide Remains Uncertain"
By Richard Simon
The Los Angeles Times, 21 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"It was the year 2000, and Rep. George P. Radanovich was on his way to the Capitol, expecting the House to pass a long-debated resolution he was sponsoring to recognize the Armenian genocide almost a century ago. But just as the Republican from Mariposa prepared to step onto the House floor, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) called off the vote because President Clinton personally had warned him that the symbolic but emotion-charged resolution could damage national security. Turkey, an important U.S. ally, long has insisted that the deaths of about 1 million Armenians in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire were not acts of genocide. Seven years later, however, with Congress in the hands of Democrats, the resolution's backers believe they stand their best chance yet of winning passage -- even though the Bush administration, like previous Democratic and Republican administrations, is working hard to kill it. Radanovich is predicting that the resolution's fate once again will come down to a phone call between the president and the House speaker. This time the speaker is Democrat Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, who as a member of the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues has been a passionate supporter of the genocide resolution. But there's a rub: During almost 20 years representing the Bay Area, home to thousands of voters of Armenian descent, Pelosi has had a relatively free hand in deciding her position on the volatile issue. But today she comes at it as a leader of the Democratic Party and a high-profile player in the U.S. government. She has shown, by her maneuvering on Iraq war funding and her recent visit to Syria, that she is not reluctant to take on the White House. And she has learned that Republicans will be quick to seize any opportunity to brand her a lightweight in foreign affairs. Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Pelosi must now weigh the resolution 'through a perspective she never did before.' [...]"
"Armenian Genocide Sears Survivors' Memories"
By Joseph Ax
Bergen Record, 13 April 2007
"Hagop Bahtiarian was 5 years old when police came to his home near Ankara, Turkey, in 1915 and said the mayor wanted to speak to his father. That would be the last time Bahtiarian saw him. 'My father went and never came back,' the 97-year-old said on a recent afternoon at the Armenian Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Emerson. 'It's impossible to forget. I [was] 5 years old, but my memory is clear. They were selling his clothes at the market the same day.' Bahtiarian is one of a dwindling number of survivors of what is commonly known as the Armenian genocide. Most academics estimate that 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians died in Turkey during World War I and its aftermath, from 1915 to 1923. Armenians commemorate the killings every year on April 24. Like Bahtiarian, Anahid 'Annie' Boghosian, another resident at the Armenian home, was only a child when soldiers forced members of her family to leave their village home and march for days until they reached a Kurdish area, where they were taken in. Boghosian's father had gone to look for work in Istanbul; he was never heard from again. 'I saw on the road, in the field, people lying injured,' the 98-year-old said, her pink-rimmed glasses framing clear blue eyes that occasionally filled with tears as she tried to remember her experiences. Both Bahtiarian, a longtime watchmaker who has lived in several Bergen County towns since the 1960s, and Boghosian, who worked for a rubber company and lived in Cliffside Park, say that Turks and Armenians lived side by side in their communities before the Young Turks government began to persecute Armenians. 'We went to school together,' Boghosian said. 'How can you hate them?' [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to Rick Feingold for forwarding this link.]
COLOMBIA
"Colombia: Progress at a Price"
By Alice O'Keeffe
New Statesman, 23 April 2007
"[...] In November 2003, after 40 years of a civil war that involved a death toll of tens of thousands, Colombian television broadcast an extraordinary scene: ranks of uniformed troops from one of the country's biggest paramilitary organisations queuing up to hand in their arms in Medellín's central square. It was to be the first in a series of 'demobilisation' ceremonies across the country, and a coup for the right-leaning government of President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who had opened official negotiations with the paramilitaries following a ceasefire the previous year. ... Since then, more than 30,000 paramilitaries have demobilised, and under the terms of the agreement all of those who were not under investigation for human-rights abuses -- the vast majority -- were channelled straight into the 'reintegration' system. ... The process has, however, been hugely controversial. There have been widespread reports of non-paramilitaries 'demobilising' simply to claim the generous government package, and even of paramilitary groups recruiting civilians to 'demobilise' instead of actual combatants -- it was originally estimated that there were between 10,000 and 20,000 paramilitary troops, and to date 30,000 people have handed themselves in. In many areas, new groups have emerged, with similar structures and aims to the paramilitaries but with names such as 'the Black Eagles.' Colombian human-rights organisations report that the paramilitaries are responsible for up to 2,300 murders and disappearances since the deal was announced (official figures are much lower). Amnesty International has accused the government of promoting a culture of impunity. 'We would argue that the demobilisation process represents a de facto amnesty for paramilitaries, many of whom will have committed war crimes,' says Peter Drury, head of Amnesty's Colombia programme. 'The idea is to remove combatants from the conflict, but if they have not been held to account for their actions, what guarantees that they will not go on to do the same again?' [...]"
"Colombian Senator: Death Squads Met At Uribe's Ranch"
By Juan Forero
The Washington Post, 18 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"An opposition lawmaker on Tuesday alleged that paramilitary death squads met at the ranch of President Álvaro Uribe in the late 1980s and plotted to murder opponents, an explosive charge in a growing scandal that has unearthed ties between the illegal militias and two dozen congressmen. Basing his accusations on government documents and depositions by former paramilitary members and military officers, Sen. Gustavo Petro said the militiamen met at Uribe's Guacharacas farm as well as ranches owned by his brother, Santiago Uribe, and a close associate, Luis Alberto Villegas. 'From there, at night, they would go out and kill people,' Petro said, referring to the sprawling ranch owned by Álvaro Uribe, who served as a senator from 1986 to 1994. The allegations, made at a congressional hearing on the 'para-politics' scandal, were vigorously denied by the government. In a rebuttal, Interior Minister Carlos Holguín said that all manner of rumors have arisen about Uribe's farm. Holguín said Petro had 'abused' his position by using court documents selectively to make his points and was trying to portray Colombia 'as a country of assassins, a country of paramilitaries.' And he wondered aloud why Petro was not so aggressive about unearthing links between politicians and leftist guerrillas, noting that Petro had been a member of the M-19 rebel movement until his election to Congress in 1991. ... Uribe, since he first ran for office, has also been dogged by the fact that paramilitary groups grew dramatically during his term as governor in the northwestern state of Antioquia, from 1995 to 1997. During that time, he helped spearhead the creation of Convivirs, legal vigilante groups. Some were later denounced for having morphed into paramilitary death squads or for serving as fronts for paramilitary warlords. [...]"
CONGO
"Life after Rape in Congo"
By Stephanie Hanes
The Christian Science Monitor, 25 April 2007
"Eastern Congo has experienced atrocious levels of sexual violence over the past nine years -- first during a five-year war that ended in 2003 and killed 4 million people from violence and hunger, then during continued instability and ethnic fighting. Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, and many other organizations have decried the mass rapes here; most estimates put the number of Congolese rape victims in the tens of thousands. During the war, most women were raped by militia members, who wielded sexual violence as yet another weapon. Today, women and girls are more likely to be assaulted by the low-paid Congolese soldiers, who regularly extort and terrorize local villagers. Scores of aid organizations continue in their efforts to aid rape survivors. But more and more, there are also people like Pacuriema -- local women simply trying to help. They have formed organizations throughout eastern Congo, working with scant resources to arrange housing for survivors, persuade husbands to stay with their raped wives, and to find work for women supporting babies they never wanted. 'The Congolese themselves are really trying to do something,' says Madnodje Mounoubai, spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force in Bunia. 'But most of the time, they only have their goodwill.' [...]"
IRAQ
"Iraqis Turn to Tattoos as Indelible IDs"
By Christian Berthelsen
The Los Angeles Times, 20 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"The ghastly procession of decapitated corpses and mutilated bodies that has defined death in Iraq drove Firas Adil Saadi to do something that was once the province of convicts and degenerates here: He got a tattoo. The 28-year-old Shiite Muslim now has a marking on his right shoulder so his family may avoid the despair of not being able to identify his remains. In ornate Arabic calligraphy, it says 'My brother Husam,' after a cousin who suffered such a fate. Saadi also carries paper identification, but he believes it would be burned beyond recognition in a bombing. 'The idea came to me after seeing these daily incidents during which some corpses are mutilated and distorted, some were even headless, and the fact that the identity cards are either lost or destroyed,' said Saadi, a trader who works in Baghdad's Shorja market, which has suffered numerous bombings. 'Even the water of the firefighting equipment is destroying them, so I thought about an irremovable identity card, which is the tattoo.' In Iraq, it has come to this: Faced with the omnipresent specter of death, an increasing number of people, mainly Shiite men, are willing to contravene social taboo to accommodate it. ... 'I think the resort to using the tattoos by people now from all social classes is something like a return to barbarism, and this is exactly what the Americans want, getting Iraq to the pre-civilization times,' said Hashim Hassan, a Shiite professor at Baghdad University. 'Both the lower and middle classes are taking tattoo drawings on their bodies. It is more among the men than the women because of the feeling that the men are targeted so they do not want to lose the links with their families' even if they are killed, he said. 'I think a time will come when each family will choose a tattoo for itself and get recognized by it.' [...]"
ISRAEL/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"The Holocaust as Political Asset"
By Amira Hass
Counterpunch.org, 20 April 2007
"[...] The phrase 'security for the Jews' has been consecrated as an exclusive synonym for 'the lessons of the Holocaust.' It is what allows Israel to systematically discriminate against its Arab citizens. For 40 years, 'security' has been justifying control of the West Bank and Gaza and of subjects who have been dispossessed of their rights living alongside Jewish residents, Israeli citizens laden with privileges. Security serves the creation of a regime of separation and discrimination on an ethnic basis, Israeli style, under the auspices of 'peace talks' that go on forever. Turning the Holocaust into an asset allows Israel to present all the methods of the Palestinian struggle (even the unarmed ones) as another link in the anti-Semitic chain whose culmination is Auschwitz. Israel provides itself with the license to come up with more kinds of fences, walls and military guard towers around Palestinian enclaves. Separating the genocide of the Jewish people from the historical context of Nazism and from its aims of murder and subjugation, and its separation from the series of genocides perpetrated by the white man outside of Europe, has created a hierarchy of victims, at whose head we stand. Holocaust and anti-Semitism researchers fumble for words when in Hebron the state carries out ethnic cleansing via its emissaries, the settlers, and ignore the enclaves and regime of separation it is setting up. Whoever criticizes Israel's policies toward the Palestinians is denounced as an anti-Semite, if not a Holocaust denier. Absurdly, the delegitimization of any criticism of Israel only makes it harder to refute the futile equations that are being made between the Nazi murder machine and the Israeli regime of discrimination and occupation. [...]"
JAPAN/SECOND WORLD WAR
"Academics Claim Proof Japan Forced WW2 Sex Slaves"
By George Nishiyama
Reuters dispatch, 17 April 2007
"Japanese academics presented on Tuesday what they said was additional evidence to prove that the military kidnapped women to serve as sex slaves during World War Two, rejecting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's claims. The academics, belonging to a centre looking into Japan's war responsibility, also urged Abe's government to come up with a clearer apology to the women -- mostly from Asia -- and offer them compensation. Abe has come under fire for his remarks last month that there was no proof that the government or the military forced women to work in the wartime brothels as 'comfort women,' as the sex slaves are known in Japan. The Japanese leader has apologized for the sex slaves and has said he stands by a 1993 statement that acknowledged official involvement in the management of the brothels, but has also said he would apologize again even if U.S. lawmakers adopted a resolution seeking one. Hirofumi Hayashi, a professor at Kanto-Gakuin University, presented at a news conference several documents, submitted as evidence to the Tokyo war crimes tribunal, showing that the Japanese military had kidnapped women to work as sex slaves. 'It is a great mystery why the Japanese government ignores these documents,' Hayashi said, pointing out that Japan must acknowledge them as it accepted the rulings of the Allied-run tribunal when it signed peace treaties that ended the war. Hayashi said he had found the documents last year, but decided to disclose them now in response to remarks by Abe and others in government denying military involvement in kidnapping the women. [...]"
MACEDONIA
"Macedonia Minister 'Watched Police Killings'"
Associated Press dispatch on CNN.com, 16 April 2007
"Macedonia's interior minister watched from behind a wall as police allegedly rampaged through a Macedonian village in 2001, killing seven ethnic Albanian men, abusing dozens more and torching and blowing up houses, U.N. prosecutors said Monday. A video played on the opening day of the war crimes trial of former Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski and police official Johan Tarculovsky showed what prosecutor Dan Saxon described as Boskovski witnessing the attack on Ljuboten from several hundred meters (yards) away. The video, screened for judges at the U.N. Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, showed Boskovski sheltering behind a wall, with a view across several open fields to the rooftops of houses. No people in the village were visible on the video, but gunfire could be heard at times. Both Boskovski and Tarculovsky have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, wanton destruction and cruel treatment. The charges are linked to the brutal Aug. 12, 2001, alleged attack by 100 police on Ljuboten, 10 kilometers (six miles) north of the capital, Skopje. The indictment is the only one filed by the tribunal related to the six-month conflict between Macedonian forces and ethnic Albanians fighting for more political rights in the majority Slavic nation. Boskovski is held responsible for the attack as his ministry controlled all police. The video also appeared to demonstrate that he knew the attack happened. ... Tarculovsky allegedly masterminded the atrocities -- handpicking, arming and personally leading the force. 'The police unit led by the accused Tarculovsky deliberately chose unarmed civilians, wantonly burned and destroyed many homes without justification and cruelly treated a group of residents, seven of whom were killed,' said prosecutor Joanne Motoike. The attack 'clearly had a criminal design as demonstrated by the manner, method and results,' she added. [...]"
RWANDA/FRANCE
"Rwanda: France Promoting 'Double Genocide' Ideology -- Wallis"
By Godwin Agaba
The New Times (Kigali) (on AllAfrica.com), 22 April 2007
"France is continuously denying what happened in Rwanda and promoting the 'double genocide' ideology. The observation was made by Andrew Wallis, a British journalist and author of 'Silent Accomplice: The Untold Story of France's Role in the Rwandan Genocide', during the launch of Rwanda Center for Strategic Studies (RCSS) at Novotel Hotel in Kacyiru, a Kigali suburb. Wallis noted that it is a crime for France to keep on denying its role in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. He said the only way France can redeem its esteem and reinforce its relationship with Rwanda is by first accepting its past mistakes and asking for forgiveness, failure of which there will always be an impasse between the two countries. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Charles Murigande, presided over the launch. He noted that RCSS offers an opportunity to share knowledge and how to foster security in the region and the country. The Rwanda Centre for Strategic Studies was formed on 6th September 2006 at the initiation of African Centre for Strategic Studies (ACSS). The Rwanda Chapter aims at building and maintaining networks and relationships of trust among national, regional and the international community with shared values and a common vision for a stable and peaceful region in particular and the entire continent in general. Wallis said there is need to establish the real motive behind France's unwavering support for the genocidal regime. 'You should consider the major French operations in Rwanda between 1990-94 Operation Noroit, Amaryllis and Turquoise and some of the questions that remain to be answered as to French motivation behind their support of Habyarimana and the interim government,' Wallis said. [...]"
"Rwanda Takes France to UN Court"
BBC Online, 18 April 2007
"Rwanda has asked the International Court of Justice to quash French arrest warrants issued against nine associates of President Paul Kagame. The government cannot function properly, as officials like the army chief-of-staff are unable to travel abroad, says Rwanda's justice minister. The warrants were issued in November after a French judge implicated Mr Kagame in his predecessor's killing. Former President Juvenal Habyarimana's death sparked the 1994 genocide. More than 800,000 people died in the 100-day massacres of Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Mr. Kagame, who under French law has immunity as head of state, has denied involvement in the shooting down of Habyarimana's plane, but has said he does not regret the death. Rwanda broke off diplomatic relations with France after the accusation. French Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere is investigating the case because the crew of the plane were French and their families filed a case in France in 1998. Those he wants to arrest include armed forces chief James Kabarebe and army chief-of-staff Charles Kayonga. Judge Bruguiere has said that only Mr. Kagame's Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) forces had missiles capable of downing President Habyarimana's plane. [...]"
SERBIA/KOSOVO
"Russia Says UN Plan for Kosovo Independence 'Will Not Pass'"
By Maria Danilova
Associated Press dispatch in The Globe and Mail, 24 April 2007
"A senior Russian diplomat said a UN plan for the eventual independence of Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo will not pass, giving Moscow's strongest indication yet that it might veto the proposal, local news agencies reported. The proposal, drawn up by UN envoy for Kosovo Martti Ahtisaari, foresees granting Kosovo internationally supervised independence. It needs final approval from the UN Security Council, where Russia holds veto power. While Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority generally supports the plan, Belgrade has rejected it and wants to maintain some control over its southern province. 'We have said that we will not support a decision that will not be supported by both sides in the UN Security Council: a decision based on proposals by M. Ahtisaari will not pass,' Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov said, according to the Interfax news agency. Asked whether Russia could veto the proposal, Mr. Titov said: 'The threat of using a veto must stimulate the sides to come up with mutually accepted compromises,' the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. Kosovo, an impoverished province of two million people -- 90 per cent of them ethnic Albanians -- has been under UN and NATO control since a brief NATO aerial war in 1999 drove Serb forces out of the region after they cracked down on separatist ethnic Albanian rebels. [...]"
SOMALIA/ETHIOPIA
"Somalia Facing Humanitarian Crisis as Hundreds of Thousands Flee Capital"
By Salad Duhul and Elizabeth A. Kennedy
The Independent, 25 April 2007
"There are no more hospital beds available in this bloodstained capital, and barely enough bandages to patch up the wounded. Even the bottles of medicine are running dry. But still the patients keep pouring in -- and they are the lucky ones, having survived another day of gunfire and mortar shells as Islamic insurgents battle troops allied to Somalia's fragile government. ... Battles rocked Mogadishu for the sixth straight day Monday as Somalia heads toward one of the worst humanitarian crises in its history, with civilians getting slaughtered in the crossfire. A local human rights group put the death toll at 1,000 over just four days earlier this month, and more than 250 have been killed in the past six days. More than 320,000 of Mogadishu's 2 million residents have fled since heavy fighting started in February. ... The government and its Ethiopian backers have been facing mounting pressure from the US, European Union and United Nations over the mounting civilian death toll and appear determined to bring order to the city before a planned national reconciliation conference in June. But the fighting has decimated Mogadishu, already one of the most violent and gun-infested cities in the world. At least 18 civilians were killed Monday, said Sudan Ali Ahmed, the chairman of the Elman Human Rights Organization group. [...]"
[n.b. Remember a few months ago, when Mogadishu was peaceful and orderly under one of the more sane and moderate Islamist governments in the world? Who undermined that stability, and sparked the current devastating crisis?]
"Ethiopia in Somali 'Genocide' Row"
By Robert Walker
BBC Online, 13 April 2007
"A member of Somalia's transitional government has accused Ethiopian troops in the capital Mogadishu of committing genocide since arriving in December. The accusations came from Hussein Aideed - a former Somali warlord who is the deputy prime minister of the transitional government. Ethiopia dismissed Mr. Aideed's comments as an absolute fabrication. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands forced to flee since Ethiopian troops arrived in Mogadishu. The Ethiopians arrived at the request of the transitional government, to oust the Islamist militia that was then in control. The comments of Hussein Aideed underline not only the deep divisions within Somalia's transitional government but also the strength of opposition in the Somali capital to the Ethiopian forces backing it. [...]"
SUDAN/DARFUR
"Darfur Peacekeepers Understaffed, Underequipped and Now Under Fire"
By Steve Bloomfield
The Independent, 25 April 2007
"[...] The African Union Mission in Sudan (Amis) was heralded by the international community as an 'African solution to an African problem.' Its role is to protect civilians from attacks by government-backed militia and rebel groups. But Amis is not even able to protect itself. It is under-staffed, underequipped and increasingly under fire from rebel groups which believe it has become little more than an extension of the Sudanese government. Darfurians now refer to Amis as the 'African Mistake in Sudan' and senior Amis officials are openly asking whether they are serving any purpose being here. 'Amis is doing what it can within the limits of its capabilities,' said Brig General E Rurangwa, the deputy commander. 'We don't have enough personnel and we don't have enough equipment. It makes it difficult to intervene. You have to protect yourself.' As the security situation has deteriorated, Amis has been concentrating on protecting itself. Amis is supposed to carry out up to 50 patrols a day, protecting women while they collect firewood and go to markets. But patrols are down to as few as three a day across the whole of Darfur, and are optimistically referred to as 'confidence-building.' While the soldiers stay in their barracks, nearly four million people remain affected by the conflict. More than 100,000 people were displaced in the first three months of the year. Even those patrols Amis does carry out do not prevent violence. Those living in the camps refer to Amis as the 'report writers.' [...]"
"This May Look Like a UN Plane -- But It Was Used by Sudan to Bomb Darfur"
By Richard Beeston
The Times, 19 April 2007
"Britain and America threatened yesterday to impose new sanctions on Khartoum after a United Nations report accused Sudan of disguising its military planes and helicopters as UN aircraft and using them to attack villages in Darfur. The confidential report says that military aircraft were painted white -- a colour usually reserved for the UN -- and used to ferry arms to the janjawid militia, for reconnaissance flights and bombing missions. The 44-page document, prepared by a panel of experts and circulated to UN Security Council members this week, accuses the authorities in Khartoum of flagrant breaches of international law and calls for tougher sanctions. Last night Tony Blair warned the Sudanese authorities that American and British officials at the UN Security Council would begin consultations on a new resolution against Sudan if it did not stop its violations in the war-torn province. 'What is happening is unacceptable. It is appalling,' he said. 'The international community will not allow the scandal that is Darfur to continue.' ... The report's most astonishing revelation was the use by the Sudanese armed forces of white-painted military aircraft in Darfur. On March 7 a photograph was taken of an Antonov AN26 aircraft on the military apron of al-Fasher airport, the Darfuri regional capital. Guarded by soldiers and with bombs piled alongside, the plane was painted white and has the initials 'UN' stencilled on its upper left wing. Another Sudanese military aircraft was disguised in the same manner. The report said that white Antonovs were used to bombard Darfur villages on at least three occasions in January. A similar ploy was employed to conceal the identity of three Mi171 military helicopters which were painted white. The report said that from a distance the aircraft could be mistaken for similar helicopters operated by the UN and peacekeepers. [...]"
"Why Sudan Is Now Allowing UN Troops in Darfur"
By Howard LaFranchi
The Christian Science Monitor, 18 April 2007
"International pressure from the United Nations, Arab leaders, and the United States played a role in Sudan's concession this week to allow 3,000 UN peacekeepers into the country's troubled Darfur region. So, apparently, did the image concerns of China -- both one of Sudan's biggest commercial partners and an increasingly outgoing international power -- as it prepares to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. But while some international leaders are jumping to praise Sudan's uncustomary openness to international intervention in Darfur, the US and Britain are seizing the moment to increase pressure on Sudan. As the conflict that has left more than 200,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced continues unabated, questions are surfacing over which approach is likely to stem the crisis most quickly. Some experts say Sudan simply continues to play the international community by stringing out its concessions to make them appear to be major breakthroughs, even though they are unlikely to get at the heart of Darfur's strife. 'It isn't going to make a huge difference who in the international community has got the approach to this announcement right, or even how quickly the government of Sudan acts on it, because the whole issue of UN troops has been blown out of proportion compared to what they can really do,' says Alex de Waal, a Darfur expert and program director with the Social Science Research Council in New York. 'International troops are ancillary to a peace agreement for Darfur,' he adds. 'They are not going to be the main event of a conflict that requires a political solution.' While that may be true, international leaders -- ranging from Western officials facing domestic pressure to stop what the US has termed a genocide, to Arab and African leaders increasingly fed up with the inaction of a neighboring regime -- are hoping international intervention will help pave the way for a political settlement. [...]"
"Sudan Drops Objections to U.N. Aid in Darfur"
By Warren Hoge
The New York Times, 17 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"Sudan said Monday that it had dropped its objections to large-scale United Nations assistance to the overwhelmed African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, setting the stage for the possible assignment there of United Nations peacekeepers. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan has repeatedly defied United Nations requests and pressure from governments elsewhere in Africa and around the world to permit international intervention in Darfur, saying such action would violate his country's sovereignty. But on Monday, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, Sudan's ambassador to the United Nations, sent a letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the 15 member states of the Security Council saying that Sudan would accept what is known as the 'heavy support package' and that it hoped that it would 'proceed expeditiously.' The package calls for sending 3,000 well-equipped military police officers along with six attack helicopters and other aviation and logistics support to Darfur. The steps are the second stage of a much delayed three-stage proposal whose ultimate aim is to create a 21,000-member joint African Union-United Nations force to replace the 7,000-member African Union force there now. It is this force that most observers believe is necessary to curb the continuing violence in Darfur, but whether the agreement on Monday will lead to its creation is far from assured because of Mr. Bashir's record of resistance. More than 200,000 people have died in the Darfur region of western Sudan and 2.3 million have been uprooted from their land and subjected to repeated attacks from Arab janjaweed militias supported and equipped by the Khartoum government. [...]"
"Crisis Creeps Towards Catastrophe as Village after Village is Wiped Out"
By Julian Borger
The Guardian, 16 April 2007
"[...] The massacres in Tiero ... the neighbouring village of Marena, near the Sudanese border, killed about 400 people. The numbers are unclear because many of the bodies are still lying in the bush. The killings are a blood-red signal that the culture of mass murder as a weapon of war has found its way to Chad, after four years in Darfur uninterrupted by the global community. The widening of the conflict threatens, in turn, to trigger a new humanitarian disaster. The shock of the Tiero and Marena attacks sent more than 10,000 villagers from the immediate area fleeing into the bush, bringing to about 140,000 the number of Chadians uprooted by the violence. Many -- particularly women and children -- died of thirst on the road, having left in too much of a hurry to take water. Those that survived will have to share the available food aid with quarter of a million Darfuri refugees, and there may not be enough to go round. Pauline Bellaman, Oxfam's programme manager in the area, described the situation as 'catastrophic,' with barely two months left before the rainy season makes food delivery impossible. 'Even if the international community gets mobilised to provide the funds to bring in the food, it's going to be a logistical nightmare to get it to the right place at the right time,' she said. Oxfam is launching a public appeal today in the race to cope with the crisis, which is growing with every passing day. The massacres at Tiero and Marena took place two weeks ago but there are still stragglers arriving at the relief camps, after days walking in temperatures of 45C (113F). [...]"
"Sudanese Negotiators Back UN Helicopters in Darfur"
By Michael Georgy
Reuters dispatch in The Mail & Guardian, 13 April 2007
"Sudanese officials working to finalise a deal on United Nations support for the African Union (AU) mission in Darfur have recommended Khartoum permit the use of attack helicopters by peacekeepers, the Foreign Ministry said. 'They have made a positive recommendation and it is now up to the leadership. The president must decide,' Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ali al-Sadig told Reuters on Friday. The United Nations is nearing a deal with Khartoum to add 3 000 UN military personnel and equipment to the AU force but Sudan has so far objected to fielding six attack helicopters. Sudan also has not agreed to the next stage of an AU-UN Darfur operation, which would involve 25,000 troops and police. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stressed on Thursday the helicopters would not be used for offensive purposes but rather to help AU peacekeepers protect themselves. Some African countries with troops in Darfur have threatened to withdraw their forces if they are not better equipped. The underfinanced and underequipped AU force has been unable to stop violence in Darfur, where at least 200 000 people have been killed and 2,5-million forced to flee their homes, many to arid refugee camps. ... Signs that the interim plan would be implemented came as United States Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte met with Sudanese officials in Khartoum to make a fresh push for the deployment of UN troops in Darfur, where struggling AU forces have failed to ease violence hampering aid efforts. [...]"
"Darfur Collides With Olympics, and China Yields"
By Helene Cooper
The New York Times, 13 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"For the past two years, China has protected the Sudanese government as the United States and Britain have pushed for United Nations Security Council sanctions against Sudan for the violence in Darfur. But in the past week, strange things have happened. A senior Chinese official, Zhai Jun, traveled to Sudan to push the Sudanese government to accept a United Nations peacekeeping force. Mr. Zhai even went all the way to Darfur and toured three refugee camps, a rare event for a high-ranking official from China, which has extensive business and oil ties to Sudan and generally avoids telling other countries how to conduct their internal affairs. So what gives? Credit goes to Hollywood -- Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg in particular. Just when it seemed safe to buy a plane ticket to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games, nongovernmental organizations and other groups appear to have scored a surprising success in an effort to link the Olympics, which the Chinese government holds very dear, to the killings in Darfur, which, until recently, Beijing had not seemed too concerned about. Ms. Farrow, a good-will ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund, has played a crucial role, starting a campaign last month to label the Games in Beijing the 'Genocide Olympics' and calling on corporate sponsors and even Mr. Spielberg, who is an artistic adviser to China for the Games, to publicly exhort China to do something about Darfur. In a March 28 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, she warned Mr. Spielberg that he could 'go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games,' a reference to a German filmmaker who made Nazi propaganda films. [...]"
UNITED STATES/CUBA
"U.S. Releases Cuban Bombing Suspect, Angering Havana"
By Anthony DePalma
The New York Times, 20 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"A 79-year-old anti-Castro Cuban exile and former C.I.A. operative linked to the bombing of a Cuban airliner was released on bail yesterday and immediately returned to Miami to await trial on immigration fraud charges. The man, Luis Posada Carriles, was released from the Otero County Prison in Chaparral, N.M., after posting a $350,000 bond on the immigration charges. His release infuriated the authorities in Cuba and Venezuela, who have been trying to extradite him to stand trial over the 1976 airliner bombing, which killed 73 people, including several teenage members of Cuba's national fencing team. The United States Justice Department had tried unsuccessfully to prevent his release, arguing that his escape from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 increased the risk that he might flee before the scheduled start of his trial on immigration charges on May 11. The court rejected the Justice Department’s argument, but it increased security measures by ordering Mr. Posada to be fitted with an ankle bracelet to track his whereabouts. He was ordered to remain under house detention with his wife in Miami until the immigration trial begins. ... Cuban officials have accused the United States of hypocrisy in battling terrorists by not prosecuting Mr. Posada or deporting him to stand trial on terrorism charges in another country. They routinely refer to Mr. Posada as 'the bin Laden of the Americas.' Mr. Posada's shadowy past as a Central Intelligence Agency operative put the United States in a politically delicate position. In his early years, he had received military training in the United States and worked for the C.I.A. to bring down the Castro government. He participated in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Later he was involved in supplying arms to rebels in Nicaragua. The United States has acknowledged his long record of violent acts. In court papers filed in his immigration fraud case, the Justice Department described him as 'an unrepentant criminal and admitted mastermind of terrorist plots.' [...]"
[n.b. Well, I think that makes the parameters of the "war on terror" quite clear. It's worth noting that, proportional to population, the murder of 73 Cubans on the airliner bombed in 1976 was roughly equivalent to those murdered in New York and Washington on 9/11.]
UNITED STATES/KOREAN WAR
"Korean War Policy Let U.S. Troops Kill Refugees"
By Charles J. Hanley and Martha Mendoza
Associated Press dispatch in The Toronto Star, 15 April 2007
"Six years after declaring the U.S. killing of Korean War refugees at No Gun Ri was 'not deliberate,' the U.S. Army has acknowledged it found -- but did not divulge -- that a high-level document said the U.S. military had a policy of shooting approaching civilians in South Korea. The document, a letter from the U.S. ambassador in South Korea to the State Department in Washington, is dated the same day in 1950 when U.S. troops began the No Gun Ri shootings, in which survivors say hundreds, mostly women and children, were killed. Exclusion of the embassy letter from the army's 2001 investigative report is the most significant among numerous omissions of documents and testimony pointing to a policy of firing on refugee groups -- according to undisclosed evidence uncovered by Associated Press. South Korean petitioners say hundreds more refugees died later in 1950 as a result of the U.S. practice. The Seoul government is investigating one such large-scale killing, of refugees stranded on a beach, newly confirmed via U.S. archives. No Gun Ri survivors, who call the army's 2001 investigation a 'whitewash,' are demanding a reopened investigation, compensation and a U.S. apology. ... When asked last year, the Pentagon didn't say whether U.S. investigators had seen the document before issuing their No Gun Ri report. Former army secretary Louis Caldera suggested researchers may have missed it. After South Korea asked for more information, the Pentagon acknowledged that it examined Muccio's letter in 2000 but dismissed it. It said the letter 'outlined a proposed policy,' not an approved one, army spokesperson Paul Boyce argues in an email to the AP. But Muccio's message to assistant secretary of state Dean Rusk states unambiguously that 'decisions made' at a high-level U.S.-South Korean meeting in Taegu, South Korea, on July 25, 1950, included a policy to shoot approaching refugees. The reason: the Americans feared that disguised North Korean enemy troops were infiltrating their lines via refugee groups. 'If refugees do appear from north of U.S. lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot,' the ambassador told Rusk, cautioning that these shootings might cause 'repercussions in the United States.' Deliberately attacking non-combatants is a war crime. ... As 1950 wore on, U.S. commanders repeatedly ordered refugees shot, according to documents obtained by the AP. [...]"
ISSUE: GENOCIDE DENIAL
"E.U. Ministers Agree on Rules Against Hate Crimes, Racism"
By Molly Moore
The Washington Post, 20 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"European Union officials agreed Thursday to new regulations for combating hate crimes and racism at a time when xenophobia and concern over immigration have been increasing across the 27-country bloc. ... The proposed regulations are subject to the approval of national parliaments, and they allow individual countries latitude in defining some crimes and penalizing offenders. Even so, E.U. officials said Thursday's agreement represented a major milestone in persuading all member countries to fight incitement to hatred or violence based on skin color, race or national or ethnic origin. 'There are no safe havens in Europe for racist violence, for anti-Semitism, for people concretely inciting xenophobic hatred,' said the E.U. justice commissioner, Franco Frattini. The documents urge E.U. nations to impose prison sentences of up to three years for individuals convicted of denying genocide, such as the mass killing of Jews during World War II or the massacres in Rwanda in 1994.The rules would require countries to prosecute offenders in connection with killings that have been recognized as genocides by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. But some political figures said the regulations could undermine freedom of speech, expression and the press. 'Attempts to harmonize E.U. laws on hate crimes are both illiberal and nonsensical,' Graham Watson, a British member of the European Parliament, said in a statement. 'The proposed list risks opening the floodgates on a plethora of historical controversies -- like the crimes of the Stalinist regime or the alleged Armenian genocide -- whose inclusion could pose a grave threat to freedom of speech,' Watson said. 'The E.U. has no business legislating on history.' E.U. officials said the new regulations include protections for films, theater, art and historical research. [...]"
ISSUE: "HONOUR" KILLINGS
"Defying a Clan Code of Silence on Unspeakable Crimes"
By Isabel Kershner
The New York Times, 20 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"The Abu Ghanem women are buried just inside the main gate of the old Muslim cemetery, eight in the last seven years. Amama Abu Ghanem says her daughter Hamda had been beaten by her brother and complained to the police months before she was killed. Reem eloped with a lover to escape an arranged marriage. Her brothers, one a pediatrician, are on trial for murder. Sabrin rests under a bare concrete slab with her name roughly scratched on by hand. She is said to have been killed by a cousin whom she refused to marry. Shirihan, 15, the youngest of the dead women, is also said to have rejected a marriage. Her stepbrothers are suspected of having killed her. Others lie in crudely marked graves, covered with plain marble or a mound of earth marked with an oval of stones -- all a few minutes' drive from Israel's gleaming new international airport, here in this hardscrabble town of 64,000 Jews and Arabs. So-called honor killings among Muslims are a phenomenon across the Middle East, including in Israel, where Arabs, most of them Muslim, make up almost 20 percent of the population. The Israeli police and courts have caught and convicted some of the killers; unlike the laws in some Arab societies, Israel's do not make allowances for such acts. Yet among the Abu Ghanem clan here in Ramla -- where family honor can be tainted by a woman's desire to go study at a university or her use of a telephone -- the bloodletting has carried on. Some women's advocates have accused the police of a dismissive attitude toward Arabs, while a Jewish district police official speaks of the 'ambivalence' of Israel's Arab citizens, who do not always want to cooperate with investigations 'for nationalist or local reasons.' So far, the Abu Ghanem cases have ended without convictions, the police say, mainly because relatives maintained a conspiracy of silence and washed all the evidence away. [...]"
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ARGENTINA
"Argentina Ex-Leader Faces Kidnapping Charges"
Reuters dispatch in The Los Angeles Times, 24 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"The last de facto president of Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship must stand trial on charges that he kidnapped children of those killed in the country's 'dirty war,' a judge ruled Monday. Reynaldo Bignone and six other high-ranking officers will face prosecution in a case investigating allegations that some children of slain dissidents were handed over to members of the military, federal Judge Guillermo Montenegro ruled. The charges include 'taking, retaining and hiding minors and changing their identities,' according to the ruling. No formal court date was set. A former army general, Bignone was the last of four de facto presidents and took power in mid-1982 after Argentina's defeat in the Falkland Islands war. Bignone has been under house arrest since March. Many of the junta's other top leaders, including Gen. Jorge Videla and Adm. Emilio Massera, are also facing similar charges. Last year, Bignone told a radio station that the child kidnapping charges are 'an invention.' The human rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo says it has traced about 90 children of missing political prisoners and reunited them with their biological families. The other officers to face trial include former army chief Cristino Nicolaides, former navy chief Ruben Franco and Jorge Acosta, a former marine. A government report says at least 9,000 people died or disappeared during the seven-year crackdown on leftist dissent. Human rights groups say the number is closer to 30,000. [...]"
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
"Congressional Resolution on Armenian Genocide Remains Uncertain"
By Richard Simon
The Los Angeles Times, 21 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"It was the year 2000, and Rep. George P. Radanovich was on his way to the Capitol, expecting the House to pass a long-debated resolution he was sponsoring to recognize the Armenian genocide almost a century ago. But just as the Republican from Mariposa prepared to step onto the House floor, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) called off the vote because President Clinton personally had warned him that the symbolic but emotion-charged resolution could damage national security. Turkey, an important U.S. ally, long has insisted that the deaths of about 1 million Armenians in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire were not acts of genocide. Seven years later, however, with Congress in the hands of Democrats, the resolution's backers believe they stand their best chance yet of winning passage -- even though the Bush administration, like previous Democratic and Republican administrations, is working hard to kill it. Radanovich is predicting that the resolution's fate once again will come down to a phone call between the president and the House speaker. This time the speaker is Democrat Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, who as a member of the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues has been a passionate supporter of the genocide resolution. But there's a rub: During almost 20 years representing the Bay Area, home to thousands of voters of Armenian descent, Pelosi has had a relatively free hand in deciding her position on the volatile issue. But today she comes at it as a leader of the Democratic Party and a high-profile player in the U.S. government. She has shown, by her maneuvering on Iraq war funding and her recent visit to Syria, that she is not reluctant to take on the White House. And she has learned that Republicans will be quick to seize any opportunity to brand her a lightweight in foreign affairs. Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Pelosi must now weigh the resolution 'through a perspective she never did before.' [...]"
"Armenian Genocide Sears Survivors' Memories"
By Joseph Ax
Bergen Record, 13 April 2007
"Hagop Bahtiarian was 5 years old when police came to his home near Ankara, Turkey, in 1915 and said the mayor wanted to speak to his father. That would be the last time Bahtiarian saw him. 'My father went and never came back,' the 97-year-old said on a recent afternoon at the Armenian Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Emerson. 'It's impossible to forget. I [was] 5 years old, but my memory is clear. They were selling his clothes at the market the same day.' Bahtiarian is one of a dwindling number of survivors of what is commonly known as the Armenian genocide. Most academics estimate that 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians died in Turkey during World War I and its aftermath, from 1915 to 1923. Armenians commemorate the killings every year on April 24. Like Bahtiarian, Anahid 'Annie' Boghosian, another resident at the Armenian home, was only a child when soldiers forced members of her family to leave their village home and march for days until they reached a Kurdish area, where they were taken in. Boghosian's father had gone to look for work in Istanbul; he was never heard from again. 'I saw on the road, in the field, people lying injured,' the 98-year-old said, her pink-rimmed glasses framing clear blue eyes that occasionally filled with tears as she tried to remember her experiences. Both Bahtiarian, a longtime watchmaker who has lived in several Bergen County towns since the 1960s, and Boghosian, who worked for a rubber company and lived in Cliffside Park, say that Turks and Armenians lived side by side in their communities before the Young Turks government began to persecute Armenians. 'We went to school together,' Boghosian said. 'How can you hate them?' [...]"
[n.b. Thanks to Rick Feingold for forwarding this link.]
COLOMBIA
"Colombia: Progress at a Price"
By Alice O'Keeffe
New Statesman, 23 April 2007
"[...] In November 2003, after 40 years of a civil war that involved a death toll of tens of thousands, Colombian television broadcast an extraordinary scene: ranks of uniformed troops from one of the country's biggest paramilitary organisations queuing up to hand in their arms in Medellín's central square. It was to be the first in a series of 'demobilisation' ceremonies across the country, and a coup for the right-leaning government of President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who had opened official negotiations with the paramilitaries following a ceasefire the previous year. ... Since then, more than 30,000 paramilitaries have demobilised, and under the terms of the agreement all of those who were not under investigation for human-rights abuses -- the vast majority -- were channelled straight into the 'reintegration' system. ... The process has, however, been hugely controversial. There have been widespread reports of non-paramilitaries 'demobilising' simply to claim the generous government package, and even of paramilitary groups recruiting civilians to 'demobilise' instead of actual combatants -- it was originally estimated that there were between 10,000 and 20,000 paramilitary troops, and to date 30,000 people have handed themselves in. In many areas, new groups have emerged, with similar structures and aims to the paramilitaries but with names such as 'the Black Eagles.' Colombian human-rights organisations report that the paramilitaries are responsible for up to 2,300 murders and disappearances since the deal was announced (official figures are much lower). Amnesty International has accused the government of promoting a culture of impunity. 'We would argue that the demobilisation process represents a de facto amnesty for paramilitaries, many of whom will have committed war crimes,' says Peter Drury, head of Amnesty's Colombia programme. 'The idea is to remove combatants from the conflict, but if they have not been held to account for their actions, what guarantees that they will not go on to do the same again?' [...]"
"Colombian Senator: Death Squads Met At Uribe's Ranch"
By Juan Forero
The Washington Post, 18 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"An opposition lawmaker on Tuesday alleged that paramilitary death squads met at the ranch of President Álvaro Uribe in the late 1980s and plotted to murder opponents, an explosive charge in a growing scandal that has unearthed ties between the illegal militias and two dozen congressmen. Basing his accusations on government documents and depositions by former paramilitary members and military officers, Sen. Gustavo Petro said the militiamen met at Uribe's Guacharacas farm as well as ranches owned by his brother, Santiago Uribe, and a close associate, Luis Alberto Villegas. 'From there, at night, they would go out and kill people,' Petro said, referring to the sprawling ranch owned by Álvaro Uribe, who served as a senator from 1986 to 1994. The allegations, made at a congressional hearing on the 'para-politics' scandal, were vigorously denied by the government. In a rebuttal, Interior Minister Carlos Holguín said that all manner of rumors have arisen about Uribe's farm. Holguín said Petro had 'abused' his position by using court documents selectively to make his points and was trying to portray Colombia 'as a country of assassins, a country of paramilitaries.' And he wondered aloud why Petro was not so aggressive about unearthing links between politicians and leftist guerrillas, noting that Petro had been a member of the M-19 rebel movement until his election to Congress in 1991. ... Uribe, since he first ran for office, has also been dogged by the fact that paramilitary groups grew dramatically during his term as governor in the northwestern state of Antioquia, from 1995 to 1997. During that time, he helped spearhead the creation of Convivirs, legal vigilante groups. Some were later denounced for having morphed into paramilitary death squads or for serving as fronts for paramilitary warlords. [...]"
CONGO
"Life after Rape in Congo"
By Stephanie Hanes
The Christian Science Monitor, 25 April 2007
"Eastern Congo has experienced atrocious levels of sexual violence over the past nine years -- first during a five-year war that ended in 2003 and killed 4 million people from violence and hunger, then during continued instability and ethnic fighting. Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, and many other organizations have decried the mass rapes here; most estimates put the number of Congolese rape victims in the tens of thousands. During the war, most women were raped by militia members, who wielded sexual violence as yet another weapon. Today, women and girls are more likely to be assaulted by the low-paid Congolese soldiers, who regularly extort and terrorize local villagers. Scores of aid organizations continue in their efforts to aid rape survivors. But more and more, there are also people like Pacuriema -- local women simply trying to help. They have formed organizations throughout eastern Congo, working with scant resources to arrange housing for survivors, persuade husbands to stay with their raped wives, and to find work for women supporting babies they never wanted. 'The Congolese themselves are really trying to do something,' says Madnodje Mounoubai, spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force in Bunia. 'But most of the time, they only have their goodwill.' [...]"
IRAQ
"Iraqis Turn to Tattoos as Indelible IDs"
By Christian Berthelsen
The Los Angeles Times, 20 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"The ghastly procession of decapitated corpses and mutilated bodies that has defined death in Iraq drove Firas Adil Saadi to do something that was once the province of convicts and degenerates here: He got a tattoo. The 28-year-old Shiite Muslim now has a marking on his right shoulder so his family may avoid the despair of not being able to identify his remains. In ornate Arabic calligraphy, it says 'My brother Husam,' after a cousin who suffered such a fate. Saadi also carries paper identification, but he believes it would be burned beyond recognition in a bombing. 'The idea came to me after seeing these daily incidents during which some corpses are mutilated and distorted, some were even headless, and the fact that the identity cards are either lost or destroyed,' said Saadi, a trader who works in Baghdad's Shorja market, which has suffered numerous bombings. 'Even the water of the firefighting equipment is destroying them, so I thought about an irremovable identity card, which is the tattoo.' In Iraq, it has come to this: Faced with the omnipresent specter of death, an increasing number of people, mainly Shiite men, are willing to contravene social taboo to accommodate it. ... 'I think the resort to using the tattoos by people now from all social classes is something like a return to barbarism, and this is exactly what the Americans want, getting Iraq to the pre-civilization times,' said Hashim Hassan, a Shiite professor at Baghdad University. 'Both the lower and middle classes are taking tattoo drawings on their bodies. It is more among the men than the women because of the feeling that the men are targeted so they do not want to lose the links with their families' even if they are killed, he said. 'I think a time will come when each family will choose a tattoo for itself and get recognized by it.' [...]"
ISRAEL/JEWISH HOLOCAUST
"The Holocaust as Political Asset"
By Amira Hass
Counterpunch.org, 20 April 2007
"[...] The phrase 'security for the Jews' has been consecrated as an exclusive synonym for 'the lessons of the Holocaust.' It is what allows Israel to systematically discriminate against its Arab citizens. For 40 years, 'security' has been justifying control of the West Bank and Gaza and of subjects who have been dispossessed of their rights living alongside Jewish residents, Israeli citizens laden with privileges. Security serves the creation of a regime of separation and discrimination on an ethnic basis, Israeli style, under the auspices of 'peace talks' that go on forever. Turning the Holocaust into an asset allows Israel to present all the methods of the Palestinian struggle (even the unarmed ones) as another link in the anti-Semitic chain whose culmination is Auschwitz. Israel provides itself with the license to come up with more kinds of fences, walls and military guard towers around Palestinian enclaves. Separating the genocide of the Jewish people from the historical context of Nazism and from its aims of murder and subjugation, and its separation from the series of genocides perpetrated by the white man outside of Europe, has created a hierarchy of victims, at whose head we stand. Holocaust and anti-Semitism researchers fumble for words when in Hebron the state carries out ethnic cleansing via its emissaries, the settlers, and ignore the enclaves and regime of separation it is setting up. Whoever criticizes Israel's policies toward the Palestinians is denounced as an anti-Semite, if not a Holocaust denier. Absurdly, the delegitimization of any criticism of Israel only makes it harder to refute the futile equations that are being made between the Nazi murder machine and the Israeli regime of discrimination and occupation. [...]"
JAPAN/SECOND WORLD WAR
"Academics Claim Proof Japan Forced WW2 Sex Slaves"
By George Nishiyama
Reuters dispatch, 17 April 2007
"Japanese academics presented on Tuesday what they said was additional evidence to prove that the military kidnapped women to serve as sex slaves during World War Two, rejecting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's claims. The academics, belonging to a centre looking into Japan's war responsibility, also urged Abe's government to come up with a clearer apology to the women -- mostly from Asia -- and offer them compensation. Abe has come under fire for his remarks last month that there was no proof that the government or the military forced women to work in the wartime brothels as 'comfort women,' as the sex slaves are known in Japan. The Japanese leader has apologized for the sex slaves and has said he stands by a 1993 statement that acknowledged official involvement in the management of the brothels, but has also said he would apologize again even if U.S. lawmakers adopted a resolution seeking one. Hirofumi Hayashi, a professor at Kanto-Gakuin University, presented at a news conference several documents, submitted as evidence to the Tokyo war crimes tribunal, showing that the Japanese military had kidnapped women to work as sex slaves. 'It is a great mystery why the Japanese government ignores these documents,' Hayashi said, pointing out that Japan must acknowledge them as it accepted the rulings of the Allied-run tribunal when it signed peace treaties that ended the war. Hayashi said he had found the documents last year, but decided to disclose them now in response to remarks by Abe and others in government denying military involvement in kidnapping the women. [...]"
MACEDONIA
"Macedonia Minister 'Watched Police Killings'"
Associated Press dispatch on CNN.com, 16 April 2007
"Macedonia's interior minister watched from behind a wall as police allegedly rampaged through a Macedonian village in 2001, killing seven ethnic Albanian men, abusing dozens more and torching and blowing up houses, U.N. prosecutors said Monday. A video played on the opening day of the war crimes trial of former Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski and police official Johan Tarculovsky showed what prosecutor Dan Saxon described as Boskovski witnessing the attack on Ljuboten from several hundred meters (yards) away. The video, screened for judges at the U.N. Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, showed Boskovski sheltering behind a wall, with a view across several open fields to the rooftops of houses. No people in the village were visible on the video, but gunfire could be heard at times. Both Boskovski and Tarculovsky have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, wanton destruction and cruel treatment. The charges are linked to the brutal Aug. 12, 2001, alleged attack by 100 police on Ljuboten, 10 kilometers (six miles) north of the capital, Skopje. The indictment is the only one filed by the tribunal related to the six-month conflict between Macedonian forces and ethnic Albanians fighting for more political rights in the majority Slavic nation. Boskovski is held responsible for the attack as his ministry controlled all police. The video also appeared to demonstrate that he knew the attack happened. ... Tarculovsky allegedly masterminded the atrocities -- handpicking, arming and personally leading the force. 'The police unit led by the accused Tarculovsky deliberately chose unarmed civilians, wantonly burned and destroyed many homes without justification and cruelly treated a group of residents, seven of whom were killed,' said prosecutor Joanne Motoike. The attack 'clearly had a criminal design as demonstrated by the manner, method and results,' she added. [...]"
RWANDA/FRANCE
"Rwanda: France Promoting 'Double Genocide' Ideology -- Wallis"
By Godwin Agaba
The New Times (Kigali) (on AllAfrica.com), 22 April 2007
"France is continuously denying what happened in Rwanda and promoting the 'double genocide' ideology. The observation was made by Andrew Wallis, a British journalist and author of 'Silent Accomplice: The Untold Story of France's Role in the Rwandan Genocide', during the launch of Rwanda Center for Strategic Studies (RCSS) at Novotel Hotel in Kacyiru, a Kigali suburb. Wallis noted that it is a crime for France to keep on denying its role in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. He said the only way France can redeem its esteem and reinforce its relationship with Rwanda is by first accepting its past mistakes and asking for forgiveness, failure of which there will always be an impasse between the two countries. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Charles Murigande, presided over the launch. He noted that RCSS offers an opportunity to share knowledge and how to foster security in the region and the country. The Rwanda Centre for Strategic Studies was formed on 6th September 2006 at the initiation of African Centre for Strategic Studies (ACSS). The Rwanda Chapter aims at building and maintaining networks and relationships of trust among national, regional and the international community with shared values and a common vision for a stable and peaceful region in particular and the entire continent in general. Wallis said there is need to establish the real motive behind France's unwavering support for the genocidal regime. 'You should consider the major French operations in Rwanda between 1990-94 Operation Noroit, Amaryllis and Turquoise and some of the questions that remain to be answered as to French motivation behind their support of Habyarimana and the interim government,' Wallis said. [...]"
"Rwanda Takes France to UN Court"
BBC Online, 18 April 2007
"Rwanda has asked the International Court of Justice to quash French arrest warrants issued against nine associates of President Paul Kagame. The government cannot function properly, as officials like the army chief-of-staff are unable to travel abroad, says Rwanda's justice minister. The warrants were issued in November after a French judge implicated Mr Kagame in his predecessor's killing. Former President Juvenal Habyarimana's death sparked the 1994 genocide. More than 800,000 people died in the 100-day massacres of Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Mr. Kagame, who under French law has immunity as head of state, has denied involvement in the shooting down of Habyarimana's plane, but has said he does not regret the death. Rwanda broke off diplomatic relations with France after the accusation. French Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere is investigating the case because the crew of the plane were French and their families filed a case in France in 1998. Those he wants to arrest include armed forces chief James Kabarebe and army chief-of-staff Charles Kayonga. Judge Bruguiere has said that only Mr. Kagame's Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) forces had missiles capable of downing President Habyarimana's plane. [...]"
SERBIA/KOSOVO
"Russia Says UN Plan for Kosovo Independence 'Will Not Pass'"
By Maria Danilova
Associated Press dispatch in The Globe and Mail, 24 April 2007
"A senior Russian diplomat said a UN plan for the eventual independence of Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo will not pass, giving Moscow's strongest indication yet that it might veto the proposal, local news agencies reported. The proposal, drawn up by UN envoy for Kosovo Martti Ahtisaari, foresees granting Kosovo internationally supervised independence. It needs final approval from the UN Security Council, where Russia holds veto power. While Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority generally supports the plan, Belgrade has rejected it and wants to maintain some control over its southern province. 'We have said that we will not support a decision that will not be supported by both sides in the UN Security Council: a decision based on proposals by M. Ahtisaari will not pass,' Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov said, according to the Interfax news agency. Asked whether Russia could veto the proposal, Mr. Titov said: 'The threat of using a veto must stimulate the sides to come up with mutually accepted compromises,' the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. Kosovo, an impoverished province of two million people -- 90 per cent of them ethnic Albanians -- has been under UN and NATO control since a brief NATO aerial war in 1999 drove Serb forces out of the region after they cracked down on separatist ethnic Albanian rebels. [...]"
SOMALIA/ETHIOPIA
"Somalia Facing Humanitarian Crisis as Hundreds of Thousands Flee Capital"
By Salad Duhul and Elizabeth A. Kennedy
The Independent, 25 April 2007
"There are no more hospital beds available in this bloodstained capital, and barely enough bandages to patch up the wounded. Even the bottles of medicine are running dry. But still the patients keep pouring in -- and they are the lucky ones, having survived another day of gunfire and mortar shells as Islamic insurgents battle troops allied to Somalia's fragile government. ... Battles rocked Mogadishu for the sixth straight day Monday as Somalia heads toward one of the worst humanitarian crises in its history, with civilians getting slaughtered in the crossfire. A local human rights group put the death toll at 1,000 over just four days earlier this month, and more than 250 have been killed in the past six days. More than 320,000 of Mogadishu's 2 million residents have fled since heavy fighting started in February. ... The government and its Ethiopian backers have been facing mounting pressure from the US, European Union and United Nations over the mounting civilian death toll and appear determined to bring order to the city before a planned national reconciliation conference in June. But the fighting has decimated Mogadishu, already one of the most violent and gun-infested cities in the world. At least 18 civilians were killed Monday, said Sudan Ali Ahmed, the chairman of the Elman Human Rights Organization group. [...]"
[n.b. Remember a few months ago, when Mogadishu was peaceful and orderly under one of the more sane and moderate Islamist governments in the world? Who undermined that stability, and sparked the current devastating crisis?]
"Ethiopia in Somali 'Genocide' Row"
By Robert Walker
BBC Online, 13 April 2007
"A member of Somalia's transitional government has accused Ethiopian troops in the capital Mogadishu of committing genocide since arriving in December. The accusations came from Hussein Aideed - a former Somali warlord who is the deputy prime minister of the transitional government. Ethiopia dismissed Mr. Aideed's comments as an absolute fabrication. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands forced to flee since Ethiopian troops arrived in Mogadishu. The Ethiopians arrived at the request of the transitional government, to oust the Islamist militia that was then in control. The comments of Hussein Aideed underline not only the deep divisions within Somalia's transitional government but also the strength of opposition in the Somali capital to the Ethiopian forces backing it. [...]"
SUDAN/DARFUR
"Darfur Peacekeepers Understaffed, Underequipped and Now Under Fire"
By Steve Bloomfield
The Independent, 25 April 2007
"[...] The African Union Mission in Sudan (Amis) was heralded by the international community as an 'African solution to an African problem.' Its role is to protect civilians from attacks by government-backed militia and rebel groups. But Amis is not even able to protect itself. It is under-staffed, underequipped and increasingly under fire from rebel groups which believe it has become little more than an extension of the Sudanese government. Darfurians now refer to Amis as the 'African Mistake in Sudan' and senior Amis officials are openly asking whether they are serving any purpose being here. 'Amis is doing what it can within the limits of its capabilities,' said Brig General E Rurangwa, the deputy commander. 'We don't have enough personnel and we don't have enough equipment. It makes it difficult to intervene. You have to protect yourself.' As the security situation has deteriorated, Amis has been concentrating on protecting itself. Amis is supposed to carry out up to 50 patrols a day, protecting women while they collect firewood and go to markets. But patrols are down to as few as three a day across the whole of Darfur, and are optimistically referred to as 'confidence-building.' While the soldiers stay in their barracks, nearly four million people remain affected by the conflict. More than 100,000 people were displaced in the first three months of the year. Even those patrols Amis does carry out do not prevent violence. Those living in the camps refer to Amis as the 'report writers.' [...]"
"This May Look Like a UN Plane -- But It Was Used by Sudan to Bomb Darfur"
By Richard Beeston
The Times, 19 April 2007
"Britain and America threatened yesterday to impose new sanctions on Khartoum after a United Nations report accused Sudan of disguising its military planes and helicopters as UN aircraft and using them to attack villages in Darfur. The confidential report says that military aircraft were painted white -- a colour usually reserved for the UN -- and used to ferry arms to the janjawid militia, for reconnaissance flights and bombing missions. The 44-page document, prepared by a panel of experts and circulated to UN Security Council members this week, accuses the authorities in Khartoum of flagrant breaches of international law and calls for tougher sanctions. Last night Tony Blair warned the Sudanese authorities that American and British officials at the UN Security Council would begin consultations on a new resolution against Sudan if it did not stop its violations in the war-torn province. 'What is happening is unacceptable. It is appalling,' he said. 'The international community will not allow the scandal that is Darfur to continue.' ... The report's most astonishing revelation was the use by the Sudanese armed forces of white-painted military aircraft in Darfur. On March 7 a photograph was taken of an Antonov AN26 aircraft on the military apron of al-Fasher airport, the Darfuri regional capital. Guarded by soldiers and with bombs piled alongside, the plane was painted white and has the initials 'UN' stencilled on its upper left wing. Another Sudanese military aircraft was disguised in the same manner. The report said that white Antonovs were used to bombard Darfur villages on at least three occasions in January. A similar ploy was employed to conceal the identity of three Mi171 military helicopters which were painted white. The report said that from a distance the aircraft could be mistaken for similar helicopters operated by the UN and peacekeepers. [...]"
"Why Sudan Is Now Allowing UN Troops in Darfur"
By Howard LaFranchi
The Christian Science Monitor, 18 April 2007
"International pressure from the United Nations, Arab leaders, and the United States played a role in Sudan's concession this week to allow 3,000 UN peacekeepers into the country's troubled Darfur region. So, apparently, did the image concerns of China -- both one of Sudan's biggest commercial partners and an increasingly outgoing international power -- as it prepares to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. But while some international leaders are jumping to praise Sudan's uncustomary openness to international intervention in Darfur, the US and Britain are seizing the moment to increase pressure on Sudan. As the conflict that has left more than 200,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced continues unabated, questions are surfacing over which approach is likely to stem the crisis most quickly. Some experts say Sudan simply continues to play the international community by stringing out its concessions to make them appear to be major breakthroughs, even though they are unlikely to get at the heart of Darfur's strife. 'It isn't going to make a huge difference who in the international community has got the approach to this announcement right, or even how quickly the government of Sudan acts on it, because the whole issue of UN troops has been blown out of proportion compared to what they can really do,' says Alex de Waal, a Darfur expert and program director with the Social Science Research Council in New York. 'International troops are ancillary to a peace agreement for Darfur,' he adds. 'They are not going to be the main event of a conflict that requires a political solution.' While that may be true, international leaders -- ranging from Western officials facing domestic pressure to stop what the US has termed a genocide, to Arab and African leaders increasingly fed up with the inaction of a neighboring regime -- are hoping international intervention will help pave the way for a political settlement. [...]"
"Sudan Drops Objections to U.N. Aid in Darfur"
By Warren Hoge
The New York Times, 17 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"Sudan said Monday that it had dropped its objections to large-scale United Nations assistance to the overwhelmed African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, setting the stage for the possible assignment there of United Nations peacekeepers. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan has repeatedly defied United Nations requests and pressure from governments elsewhere in Africa and around the world to permit international intervention in Darfur, saying such action would violate his country's sovereignty. But on Monday, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, Sudan's ambassador to the United Nations, sent a letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the 15 member states of the Security Council saying that Sudan would accept what is known as the 'heavy support package' and that it hoped that it would 'proceed expeditiously.' The package calls for sending 3,000 well-equipped military police officers along with six attack helicopters and other aviation and logistics support to Darfur. The steps are the second stage of a much delayed three-stage proposal whose ultimate aim is to create a 21,000-member joint African Union-United Nations force to replace the 7,000-member African Union force there now. It is this force that most observers believe is necessary to curb the continuing violence in Darfur, but whether the agreement on Monday will lead to its creation is far from assured because of Mr. Bashir's record of resistance. More than 200,000 people have died in the Darfur region of western Sudan and 2.3 million have been uprooted from their land and subjected to repeated attacks from Arab janjaweed militias supported and equipped by the Khartoum government. [...]"
"Crisis Creeps Towards Catastrophe as Village after Village is Wiped Out"
By Julian Borger
The Guardian, 16 April 2007
"[...] The massacres in Tiero ... the neighbouring village of Marena, near the Sudanese border, killed about 400 people. The numbers are unclear because many of the bodies are still lying in the bush. The killings are a blood-red signal that the culture of mass murder as a weapon of war has found its way to Chad, after four years in Darfur uninterrupted by the global community. The widening of the conflict threatens, in turn, to trigger a new humanitarian disaster. The shock of the Tiero and Marena attacks sent more than 10,000 villagers from the immediate area fleeing into the bush, bringing to about 140,000 the number of Chadians uprooted by the violence. Many -- particularly women and children -- died of thirst on the road, having left in too much of a hurry to take water. Those that survived will have to share the available food aid with quarter of a million Darfuri refugees, and there may not be enough to go round. Pauline Bellaman, Oxfam's programme manager in the area, described the situation as 'catastrophic,' with barely two months left before the rainy season makes food delivery impossible. 'Even if the international community gets mobilised to provide the funds to bring in the food, it's going to be a logistical nightmare to get it to the right place at the right time,' she said. Oxfam is launching a public appeal today in the race to cope with the crisis, which is growing with every passing day. The massacres at Tiero and Marena took place two weeks ago but there are still stragglers arriving at the relief camps, after days walking in temperatures of 45C (113F). [...]"
"Sudanese Negotiators Back UN Helicopters in Darfur"
By Michael Georgy
Reuters dispatch in The Mail & Guardian, 13 April 2007
"Sudanese officials working to finalise a deal on United Nations support for the African Union (AU) mission in Darfur have recommended Khartoum permit the use of attack helicopters by peacekeepers, the Foreign Ministry said. 'They have made a positive recommendation and it is now up to the leadership. The president must decide,' Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ali al-Sadig told Reuters on Friday. The United Nations is nearing a deal with Khartoum to add 3 000 UN military personnel and equipment to the AU force but Sudan has so far objected to fielding six attack helicopters. Sudan also has not agreed to the next stage of an AU-UN Darfur operation, which would involve 25,000 troops and police. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stressed on Thursday the helicopters would not be used for offensive purposes but rather to help AU peacekeepers protect themselves. Some African countries with troops in Darfur have threatened to withdraw their forces if they are not better equipped. The underfinanced and underequipped AU force has been unable to stop violence in Darfur, where at least 200 000 people have been killed and 2,5-million forced to flee their homes, many to arid refugee camps. ... Signs that the interim plan would be implemented came as United States Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte met with Sudanese officials in Khartoum to make a fresh push for the deployment of UN troops in Darfur, where struggling AU forces have failed to ease violence hampering aid efforts. [...]"
"Darfur Collides With Olympics, and China Yields"
By Helene Cooper
The New York Times, 13 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"For the past two years, China has protected the Sudanese government as the United States and Britain have pushed for United Nations Security Council sanctions against Sudan for the violence in Darfur. But in the past week, strange things have happened. A senior Chinese official, Zhai Jun, traveled to Sudan to push the Sudanese government to accept a United Nations peacekeeping force. Mr. Zhai even went all the way to Darfur and toured three refugee camps, a rare event for a high-ranking official from China, which has extensive business and oil ties to Sudan and generally avoids telling other countries how to conduct their internal affairs. So what gives? Credit goes to Hollywood -- Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg in particular. Just when it seemed safe to buy a plane ticket to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games, nongovernmental organizations and other groups appear to have scored a surprising success in an effort to link the Olympics, which the Chinese government holds very dear, to the killings in Darfur, which, until recently, Beijing had not seemed too concerned about. Ms. Farrow, a good-will ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund, has played a crucial role, starting a campaign last month to label the Games in Beijing the 'Genocide Olympics' and calling on corporate sponsors and even Mr. Spielberg, who is an artistic adviser to China for the Games, to publicly exhort China to do something about Darfur. In a March 28 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, she warned Mr. Spielberg that he could 'go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games,' a reference to a German filmmaker who made Nazi propaganda films. [...]"
UNITED STATES/CUBA
"U.S. Releases Cuban Bombing Suspect, Angering Havana"
By Anthony DePalma
The New York Times, 20 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"A 79-year-old anti-Castro Cuban exile and former C.I.A. operative linked to the bombing of a Cuban airliner was released on bail yesterday and immediately returned to Miami to await trial on immigration fraud charges. The man, Luis Posada Carriles, was released from the Otero County Prison in Chaparral, N.M., after posting a $350,000 bond on the immigration charges. His release infuriated the authorities in Cuba and Venezuela, who have been trying to extradite him to stand trial over the 1976 airliner bombing, which killed 73 people, including several teenage members of Cuba's national fencing team. The United States Justice Department had tried unsuccessfully to prevent his release, arguing that his escape from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 increased the risk that he might flee before the scheduled start of his trial on immigration charges on May 11. The court rejected the Justice Department’s argument, but it increased security measures by ordering Mr. Posada to be fitted with an ankle bracelet to track his whereabouts. He was ordered to remain under house detention with his wife in Miami until the immigration trial begins. ... Cuban officials have accused the United States of hypocrisy in battling terrorists by not prosecuting Mr. Posada or deporting him to stand trial on terrorism charges in another country. They routinely refer to Mr. Posada as 'the bin Laden of the Americas.' Mr. Posada's shadowy past as a Central Intelligence Agency operative put the United States in a politically delicate position. In his early years, he had received military training in the United States and worked for the C.I.A. to bring down the Castro government. He participated in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Later he was involved in supplying arms to rebels in Nicaragua. The United States has acknowledged his long record of violent acts. In court papers filed in his immigration fraud case, the Justice Department described him as 'an unrepentant criminal and admitted mastermind of terrorist plots.' [...]"
[n.b. Well, I think that makes the parameters of the "war on terror" quite clear. It's worth noting that, proportional to population, the murder of 73 Cubans on the airliner bombed in 1976 was roughly equivalent to those murdered in New York and Washington on 9/11.]
UNITED STATES/KOREAN WAR
"Korean War Policy Let U.S. Troops Kill Refugees"
By Charles J. Hanley and Martha Mendoza
Associated Press dispatch in The Toronto Star, 15 April 2007
"Six years after declaring the U.S. killing of Korean War refugees at No Gun Ri was 'not deliberate,' the U.S. Army has acknowledged it found -- but did not divulge -- that a high-level document said the U.S. military had a policy of shooting approaching civilians in South Korea. The document, a letter from the U.S. ambassador in South Korea to the State Department in Washington, is dated the same day in 1950 when U.S. troops began the No Gun Ri shootings, in which survivors say hundreds, mostly women and children, were killed. Exclusion of the embassy letter from the army's 2001 investigative report is the most significant among numerous omissions of documents and testimony pointing to a policy of firing on refugee groups -- according to undisclosed evidence uncovered by Associated Press. South Korean petitioners say hundreds more refugees died later in 1950 as a result of the U.S. practice. The Seoul government is investigating one such large-scale killing, of refugees stranded on a beach, newly confirmed via U.S. archives. No Gun Ri survivors, who call the army's 2001 investigation a 'whitewash,' are demanding a reopened investigation, compensation and a U.S. apology. ... When asked last year, the Pentagon didn't say whether U.S. investigators had seen the document before issuing their No Gun Ri report. Former army secretary Louis Caldera suggested researchers may have missed it. After South Korea asked for more information, the Pentagon acknowledged that it examined Muccio's letter in 2000 but dismissed it. It said the letter 'outlined a proposed policy,' not an approved one, army spokesperson Paul Boyce argues in an email to the AP. But Muccio's message to assistant secretary of state Dean Rusk states unambiguously that 'decisions made' at a high-level U.S.-South Korean meeting in Taegu, South Korea, on July 25, 1950, included a policy to shoot approaching refugees. The reason: the Americans feared that disguised North Korean enemy troops were infiltrating their lines via refugee groups. 'If refugees do appear from north of U.S. lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot,' the ambassador told Rusk, cautioning that these shootings might cause 'repercussions in the United States.' Deliberately attacking non-combatants is a war crime. ... As 1950 wore on, U.S. commanders repeatedly ordered refugees shot, according to documents obtained by the AP. [...]"
ISSUE: GENOCIDE DENIAL
"E.U. Ministers Agree on Rules Against Hate Crimes, Racism"
By Molly Moore
The Washington Post, 20 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"European Union officials agreed Thursday to new regulations for combating hate crimes and racism at a time when xenophobia and concern over immigration have been increasing across the 27-country bloc. ... The proposed regulations are subject to the approval of national parliaments, and they allow individual countries latitude in defining some crimes and penalizing offenders. Even so, E.U. officials said Thursday's agreement represented a major milestone in persuading all member countries to fight incitement to hatred or violence based on skin color, race or national or ethnic origin. 'There are no safe havens in Europe for racist violence, for anti-Semitism, for people concretely inciting xenophobic hatred,' said the E.U. justice commissioner, Franco Frattini. The documents urge E.U. nations to impose prison sentences of up to three years for individuals convicted of denying genocide, such as the mass killing of Jews during World War II or the massacres in Rwanda in 1994.The rules would require countries to prosecute offenders in connection with killings that have been recognized as genocides by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. But some political figures said the regulations could undermine freedom of speech, expression and the press. 'Attempts to harmonize E.U. laws on hate crimes are both illiberal and nonsensical,' Graham Watson, a British member of the European Parliament, said in a statement. 'The proposed list risks opening the floodgates on a plethora of historical controversies -- like the crimes of the Stalinist regime or the alleged Armenian genocide -- whose inclusion could pose a grave threat to freedom of speech,' Watson said. 'The E.U. has no business legislating on history.' E.U. officials said the new regulations include protections for films, theater, art and historical research. [...]"
ISSUE: "HONOUR" KILLINGS
"Defying a Clan Code of Silence on Unspeakable Crimes"
By Isabel Kershner
The New York Times, 20 April 2007 [Registration Required]
"The Abu Ghanem women are buried just inside the main gate of the old Muslim cemetery, eight in the last seven years. Amama Abu Ghanem says her daughter Hamda had been beaten by her brother and complained to the police months before she was killed. Reem eloped with a lover to escape an arranged marriage. Her brothers, one a pediatrician, are on trial for murder. Sabrin rests under a bare concrete slab with her name roughly scratched on by hand. She is said to have been killed by a cousin whom she refused to marry. Shirihan, 15, the youngest of the dead women, is also said to have rejected a marriage. Her stepbrothers are suspected of having killed her. Others lie in crudely marked graves, covered with plain marble or a mound of earth marked with an oval of stones -- all a few minutes' drive from Israel's gleaming new international airport, here in this hardscrabble town of 64,000 Jews and Arabs. So-called honor killings among Muslims are a phenomenon across the Middle East, including in Israel, where Arabs, most of them Muslim, make up almost 20 percent of the population. The Israeli police and courts have caught and convicted some of the killers; unlike the laws in some Arab societies, Israel's do not make allowances for such acts. Yet among the Abu Ghanem clan here in Ramla -- where family honor can be tainted by a woman's desire to go study at a university or her use of a telephone -- the bloodletting has carried on. Some women's advocates have accused the police of a dismissive attitude toward Arabs, while a Jewish district police official speaks of the 'ambivalence' of Israel's Arab citizens, who do not always want to cooperate with investigations 'for nationalist or local reasons.' So far, the Abu Ghanem cases have ended without convictions, the police say, mainly because relatives maintained a conspiracy of silence and washed all the evidence away. [...]"
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