Africa

Burundi

IRIN 4 July 2005 Legislative elections held with only minor incidents [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] © BUJUMBURA, 4 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - Burundians took a major step on Monday towards ending the post-conflict transition period by electing the 100 members of the country's national assembly with only minor incidents. There were some irregularities, the head of the UN Mission in Burundi's (ONUB) Electoral Unit, Ahmadou Seck, said on Monday at a news conference in Bujumbura, the capital. He said unlike the 3 June municipal elections, no polling stations were disrupted. The chairman of the National Independent Electoral Commission, Paul Ngarambe, reported only minor problems which, he said, would not affect the outcome of the elections. Preliminary results are expected on Tuesday. Polls opened at 6 a.m. (04:00 GMT), although some stations did not begin until around 8 a.m. (06.00 GMT). By midday, turnout was still low, Seck said, with only around 11 percent of votes cast, except in Gitega Province where voting had already reached 40 percent. Many Burundians were staying away from fear of attacks by the sole rebel group still active in the country, the Forces of National Liberation (FNL). During the 3 June municipal elections, FNL fighters disrupted voting in several areas in the province of Bujumbura Rural, where they are most active, and Bubanza. However, speaking at a news conference on Sunday, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative to Burundi, Carolyn MacAskie, had assured Burundians that the legislative elections would be safe. She said the FNL had pledged it would not disrupt the polls and that the UN had deployed 2,000 troops throughout the country. Voting was observed by monitors from the European Union, the Francophonie organisation of French-speaking states, ONUB, the local coalition of civic society for the monitoring of elections known as COSOME, and other civic society groups. The creation of the new national assembly is a major milestone in ending the country's 11-year civil war. The assembly will be made up of 60 percent Hutus and 40 percent Tutsis in accordance with a power-sharing deal laid out in the 2000 Arusha peace agreement. In Burundi's next elections on 29 July, Burundians will elect the Senate. Then on 19 August, the newly-elected senators, together with the newly-elected assemblymen, will choose the country's new head of state. Speaking from his native province of Kayanza on Wednesday, Burundi's current interim president, Domitien Ndayizeye, appealed to "the winner to rule for all Burundians and to the loser to respect the people's choice.":

IRIN 11 July 2005 Head of former rebel group on track to be president [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] © IRIN Pierre Nkurunziza accepted on Sunday his party’s choice as presidential candidate in polls due on 19 August. BUJUMBURA, 11 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - The longtime leader of the former rebel movement that won Burundi’s recent municipal and legislative elections, Pierre Nkurunziza, accepted on Sunday his party’s choice as presidential candidate in polls due on 19 August, which some analysts say he is likely to win. "He is going to win," Elias Sentamba, a professor of political science at the National University of Burundi, told IRIN on Monday. He said Nkurunziza, who leads the Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie–Forces pour la defense de la democratie CNDD-FDD, already had the support of the majority of assemblymen and senator. "Even many who are not in the CNDD-FDD could vote for them," Sentamba said. Under the terms of Burundi’s post transition constitution, the next head of state will be elected in the legislature by assemblymen and senators. The senators will, themselves, be elected on 29 July by the communal councilors. The CNDD-FDD won the municipal and legislative elections with absolute majorities, clearing the way for an almost certain Nkurunziza victory in the presidential election. "The final election is a simple formality," Nkurunziza told the congress of CNDD-FDD party members held on Sunday in the capital, Bujumbura, at which he was elected presidential candidate by all but six votes. The presidential election will officially mark the end the current post-transition period that followed Burundi’s 11 year civil war. The previous presidential election, held in 5 June 1993, was a precursor to the start of the civil war. It elected the country’s first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, who was assassinated on October 21, 1993. Nkurunziza, 41, is a Hutu from the northern province of Njonzi. He had been a lecturer at the Sports and Physical Education Department of the University of Burundi before joining the CNDD-FDD and becoming its political leader.

Côte d'Ivoire

Reuters 30 Jun 2005 Ivorian pro-govt militia says it's ready to disarmBy Loucoumane Coulibaly ABIDJAN, June 30 (Reuters) - The leader of one of the main pro-government militia groups in divided Ivory Coast said on Thursday his fighters were ready to disarm before a late August deadline set as part of a revived peace effort. Rebels holding the north of the West African country since civil war grew out of a failed coup in 2002 have said they will not lay down their weapons until pro-government militias, mostly concentrated in the cocoa-rich west, disarm. "It all depends on the CNDDR (national disarmament commission). Between now and Aug. 20, we can disarm if (their) programme permits," Denis Glofiei Maho, head of the pro-government Great West Liberation Front (FLGO), told Reuters. Although government militias took part in a ceremony last month to mark the start of disarmament, no weapons were handed over. Under the programme, fighters are supposed to move into cantonment sites after handing over their guns. Ivory Coast's president, opposition leaders and the head of the rebellion ended talks in Pretoria on Wednesday to try to revive a peace deal brokered in April by South African President Thabo Mbeki. All sides agreed that government militias -- who call themselves "self-defence groups" -- should begin to disarm immediately and finish before Aug. 20. But hours after the talks ended, the rebels renewed accusations that armed men financed by the Guinean and Ivorian governments were planning to attack the rebel zone from neighbouring Guinea to undermine the peace initiative. Rebel spokesman Sidiki Konate said parties at the summit recognised that progress on disarming militias and on voting on new laws through parliament had to be met before the rebels could start to lay down their weapons. Previous peace deals have stalled as rebels refuse to lay down their arms before their demands for revised nationality laws and a reformed independent electoral commission are met. "The most important thing is that the mediator recognised ... that we can't talk about disarmament without looking at the evolution of the other points of the agreement," he said. (Additional reporting by Peter Murphy)

VOA 7 Juyly 2005 UN Report Links Ivory Coast Massacre to Liberian Mercenaries By Joe Bavier Abidjan 07 July 2005 An internal United Nations intelligence report has linked Liberian mercenaries to a massacre that killed dozens in Ivory Coast's volatile west last month. The report has surfaced as the UN's human rights chief is in the country to combat rights violations. The report focuses on the events surrounding massacres in the western villages of Petit Duekoue and nearby Guitrozon, where more than 40 people were shot, hacked to death with machetes, or burned alive in their homes in the early hours of June 1. All the victims were from the local Guere ethnic group. Western Ivory Coast has long been the scene of violence between indigenous ethnic groups and northern migrants. At the time, government officials, blamed the massacres on traditional hunters from the north, backed by the New Forces rebels. The rebels have controlled the northern half of Ivory Coast since civil war broke out nearly three years ago. The U.N. intelligence report gives a different version of events, stating that Liberian mercenaries, hired by pro-government militia groups in Ivory Coast, carried out the killings. The report says the mercenaries were from Liberia's Krahn ethnic group, who had been originally hired to attack northern immigrants. According to the report, they were offered money and the chance to take part in Ivory Coast's disarmament process in exchange for attacking an immigrant village. But when the money was not paid up front, the report continues, a dispute broke out between the Krahn mercenaries and the largely Guere militia group that hired them. In revenge, the mercenaries attacked the Guere villages of Guitrozon and Petit Duekoue. Ivorian soldiers in and around the nearby city of Duekoue, the document says, had been told to stand down. And security forces at a checkpoint only a few hundred meters from the scene of the killings never reacted. Officials at Ivory Coast's United Nations peacekeeping mission declined to comment on the intelligence report, which was never intended for release. The U.N.'s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, is due to visit Guitrozon Friday, as part of a trip intended to highlight widespread human rights abuses throughout the war-divided country. The United Nations has not opened an official human rights investigation into last month's massacres, which took place in government-held territory. Instead, U.N. officials say they are helping Ivorian authorities in their inquiry.

Congo, Democratic Republic of

IRIN 30 June 2005 Seven killed in demonstrations, hundreds arrested [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] © KINSHASA, 30 Jun 2005 (IRIN) - At least seven protestors were killed and hundreds more arrested in demonstrations on Thursday in various suburbs Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and in other urban areas. The protests are against a delay in national elections which were to have been held before Thursday. Last week the parliament of the transitional government extended the election timetable by at least six months. "A government made up of former belligerents [in the armed conflict in the DRC] is incapable of organising elections which it had promised to hold by 30 June 2005," said Tshibala Tshioma, a protestor and member of the opposition l’Union pour la democratie et le progres social (UDPS), the main political party which called the demonstration. The UDPS says the leaders of former armed groups who are now among President Joseph Kabila four vice-presidents have no interest in ending the transition process. "They are doing nothing but eating a lot of money while the population suffers," Tshioma said. In a broadcast on state television on Wednesday, and in anticipation of the demonstrations, Kabila appealed to the nation for calm. He reiterated his determination to end the transitional process and let the population freely choose their leaders. Voter registration for the elections began on 20 June but only in Kinshasa and donor countries are expressing concern that the process could drag on. In Kinshasa, some policemen beat up demonstrators and robbed them of their possessions. At least one person was killed and several injured when police fired bullets and tear gas to disperse the demonstrators. In Tshikapa, a town 700 km southeast of Kinshasa in the province of Kasai Occidental, six demonstrators were killed, a witness said. "The shots started right when we began protesting," Mulumba Mposhi, a local UDPS leader in Tshikapa, said. But these shots do not scare us from our goal of chasing out this government." In Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, heavy weapons were fired during a demonstration there. The number of causalities is not yet known. In Mbuji-Mayi, the capital of Kasai-Oriental, five people were killed in an exchange of gunfire between police and prisoners escaping from the local jail. "Many of the people arrested during demonstrations two days earlier were in the prison," Amigo Gonde, president of the Kinshasa-based human rights NGO l’Association africaine des droits de l’homme, said on Thursday. "They were amongst criminals who are now profiting from the political violence." So far, no government authority has confirmed that people have been killed, wounded and arrested.

Reuters 1 Jul 2005 D.R. Congo: Civilians killed as army factions clash(New York, July 1, 2005) - The Congolese army must prevent further violence among its rival factions that has caused unnecessary civilian casualties, Human Rights Watch said today. Yesterday, security forces in the eastern city of Goma fired mortars against soldiers based in a crowded neighborhood, killing two children and injuring 10 other civilians. The violence among army factions comes at a time when security forces across the country have been on high alert for weeks. Opposition parties had called for mass protests to force the Congolese transitional government to step down on June 30, the deadline originally set by the 2003 Sun City Accord. In towns around the country, security forces have responded to demonstrations with unnecessary force, killing at least four protestors. Opposition parties claim that 24 demonstrators have been killed. Yesterday in Goma, military police used indiscriminate and disproportionate force in an attempt to disarm the bodyguards of the regional military chief of staff. Military police fired mortars towards the home of the chief of staff, located in a crowded neighborhood. Two small children in a neighboring house were killed, and 10 other civilians were injured, including five children, two of whom are in critical condition. Several homes were damaged during an hour long firefight in which both parties repeatedly fired assault rifles. "Soldiers fired mortars into a crowded residential neighborhood," said Alison Des Forges, senior Africa advisor at Human Rights Watch. "The Congolese government must investigate and prosecute this indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force." In Goma, the local branch of the main opposition party canceled a march planned for yesterday, citing fears that their peaceful protest would be hijacked by forces opposed to peace. But special security measures remained in place in the city, adding to existing tension between different factions of the army. The failure to integrate dozens of former armed groups into a truly unified national army poses a major threat to Congo's transition process. In Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, the military police and the chief of staff's escort are drawn from factions that were opposed to each other during Congo's war. In December, at least 100 civilians were killed and scores of women and girls were raped in North Kivu during combat between the same factions. For months, opposition parties called for demonstrations on June 30, tapping into popular dissatisfaction with the slow pace of planning for elections and other critical tasks on the transitional government's agenda. Elsewhere in the country, opposition plans to protest moved forward, but were quickly quashed by security forces. In the Congolese capital Kinshasa, security forces killed at least two protestors yesterday; the main opposition party claimed that 10 were killed. . Police had erected barricades around the city to prevent the movement of demonstrators. An international observer witnessed police chasing and shooting at a small group of unarmed demonstrators whom they had already dispersed with tear gas. About 450 protestors were arrested. In Tshikapa, in Eastern Kasai province, opposition parties claimed up to six protestors had been killed yesterday. On June 25, mixed police and army patrols killed four protestors in Mbuji-Mayi, the capital of Western Kasai province and stronghold of the main opposition party. Security forces used disproportionate force against unarmed protestors, according to United Nations observers. On Wednesday night, at least two more people were killed in Mbuji-Mayi and nine people injured. "The events around June 30 highlight the ongoing potential for violence and human rights abuses in Congo's pre-election period," said Des Forges. "The Congolese government and security forces bear the ultimate responsibility for preventing violence. The security forces must not use disproportionate force when responding to protests by unarmed civilians." The U.N. Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials require that law enforcement officials, in carrying out their duty, shall as far as possible refrain from the use of force. Whenever force is unavoidable, law enforcement officials must use restraint and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offense. Firearms should not be used against persons except in select circumstances to preserve life. The legitimate objective should be achieved with minimal damage and injury, and with respect for the preservation of human life. In some towns, demonstrations and anniversary marches occurred without violent incident. The June 30 anniversary marks two years of the Congolese transition process as well as 45 years of Congolese independence from colonial rule.

UN News Centre 6 July 2005 UN peacekeepers pursue militias in eastern DR of Congo 6 July 2005 – The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) said today it has deployed forces to pursue rebel militia groups in eastern South Kivu province. Guatemalan special forces, Pakistani commandos and units of the DRC Army (FARDC), with Indian air support, were taking part in a series of raids called Operation Falcon Sweep from 4 to 11 July to establish control over the Walungu Territory, south of Bukavu, the UN Organization Mission in the DRC (MONUC) said. Among its aims was to "carry out effective search missions to flush out armed groups from the area," it said. When the Pakistani Quick Reaction Forces were dropped in the Kahuzi Bega National Park area, "a large number of FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), estimated at 150-plus personnel, immediately came out of the bush" and encircled the Pakistanis, but they retreated as the MONUC forces took a defensive stance and attack helicopters arrived, the mission said. "All MONUC forces returned to Kavumu Airbase safe and sound," it said. Rwandan Hutu rebels have been active in the jungles of the eastern DRC since Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in which they killed en estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Earlier this year, after secret negotiations in Rome, the FDLR leadership pledged that the group would lay down its weapons and return to Rwanda. MONUC chief William Lacy Swing designated six assembly and registration points for the estimated 13,000 to 15,000 Rwandan militiamen expected to want to take part in Rwanda's programme of disarmament, demobilization, repatriation, re-settlement and re-integration (DDRRR). MONUC had blamed some members of the FDLR for assaulting civilians in the eastern DRC and causing thousands to become internally displaced persons (IDPs).

IRIN 11 July 2005 Hutu rebels quit forest area under UN pressure [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] © KINSHASA, 11 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - The deployment of United Nations troops has forced Rwandan rebels to withdraw from several areas of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, including a national park. A UN spokeswoman in the eastern Congolese town of Bukavu, Sylvie van den Wildenberg, said on Friday about 1,000 UN troops have been sent to remove Rwandan rebels from several areas in South Kivu Province, including the Kahuzi-Biega park. "The result is that military pressure has borne fruit," she said. MONUC, the UN’s mission in the DRC, has not given further details of how many Rwandan rebels may have left, or where they went. Van den Wildenberg said the military operation, Operation Iron Fist, was launched at the same time as MONUC’s heliborne deployment, Operation Falcon Sweep. The objective of both was to force out Rwandan rebels, accused by human rights groups of looting, raping and killing Congolese civilians. "Our message is that they can put down their weapons immediately and accept the offer to return to Rwanda in a dignified manner," she said. MONUC’s military spokesman, Col Thierry Provendier, has said operations will continue until the last rebel fighter leaves. Most of these fighters come from Rwanda’s majority Hutu ethnic group. Some fled Rwanda after the 1994 genocide and are implicated in carrying it out. Others who are younger, were brought up as refugees in the Congo. Recently, one of two Rwandan Hutu groups in eastern DRC, announced it would abandon its war and return home. It has since, however, been since bogged down by internal dissent.

Reuters 11 July 2005 Rwanda rebels kill women, children by Monday 11 July 2005 6:07 PM GMT Hutu militias were blamed for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda Rwandan rebels have killed more than 30 civilians, mostly women and children, in a raid on a village in eastern Congo, burning young mothers alive in their huts in one of the worst massacres in the area for months, a medical charity has said. A Congolese government official, on Monday, quoted rebels as putting the death toll at 76 from the attack, saying it was carried out on Saturday to punish villagers for supporting UN troops seeking to expand their presence in the country's South Kivu province. About 50 people were said to be injured in the attack. The UN mission in Democratic Republic of Congo said it had sent peacekeeping forces by helicopter to verify reports of the killings in the village of Mtulumamba, which lies outside the town of Bukavu in lawless South Kivu. Freddy Mantchombe, the head of Congo section of the International Medical Corps charity, said local people told his staff that houses had been torched during the raid by rebels from neighbouring Rwanda based in eastern Congo. "Our teams were in the area yesterday and they were told by the district health authorities that 39 houses were burned down, 26 people were killed and another four are seriously injured," Mantchombe told Reuters by telephone from Bukavu. Disputed claim The attack was to discourage the locals from backing the UN forces The government official in Bukavu, who declined to be named, quoted survivors as saying Rwandan rebels had carried out the attack to discourage locals from supporting UN forces. "During the attack, the bandits told them to call on their UN saviours," he told Reuters by telephone. The main group of Rwandan rebels in Congo, the FDLR, denied responsibility for the attack, blaming it on a more recently formed faction of Rwandan rebels known as the Rastas, although many observers say the two groups maintain close links. "This is a lie. I spoke to my men on the ground and they confirmed that this attack was carried out by the Rastas," said Edmund Ngarambe, an FDLR spokesman in Bukavu. UN relief workers quoted the Congolese Red Cross as breaking down the death toll into 22 "young" women, three "older" women and one four-year-old boy. Massacres Rwandan Hutu militias, many of whom fled after conducting the 1994 genocide in their homeland, have long been active in eastern Congo, prompting Rwanda to invade its huge neighbour twice to try to neutralise them. Young mothers were said to be burned alive in their huts UN peacekeepers, long accused of doing too little to fulfil their mandate to protect civilians in eastern Congo, have stepped up operations this year, particularly after nine Bangladeshi soldiers were killed in February. The UN mission, known as MONUC, has mounted several operations to reinforce its presence in South Kivu in the past week, following a series of massacres blamed on Rwandan Hutu FDLR and Rasta rebels partly based in the province. "Military and civilian personnel in MONUC have been informed by numerous sources that there was a killing of about 30 people at Mtulumamba, 40 km west of Bukavu," said Sylvie van den Wildenberg, MONUC spokeswoman in Bukavu. "The civilian population is blaming the Rwandan Hutu rebels for this." Earlier this year, the FDLR had vowed to lay down its weapons and return to Rwanda. But none of the fighters has left and the group has been accused of collaborating with Congolese gunmen in kidnapping and extortion rackets in South Kivu.

Kenya

Nearly 4,000 illegal small arms destroyed [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] © IRIN Weapons go up in flames during destruction of illegal arms in Nairobi on 29 June, 2005. NAIROBI, 1 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - Kenyan authorities on Wednesday set on fire nearly 4,000 illicit small arms recovered by police over the past two years in an ongoing effort to curb the proliferation of illegal weapons in the Horn of Africa and Great Lakes regions. "The proliferation and movement of these fire arms within and across the borders have left a trail of agony and destruction," said Kiraitu Murungi, the justice and constitutional affairs minister, who lit the fire to destroy the guns in Nairobi. Kenya is a signatory to the Nairobi Declaration on the Problem of the Proliferation of Illicit Small Arms and Light Weapons in the Great Lakes Region and the Horn of Africa, which was signed in 2000. The destruction of the weapons was in line with the Nairobi Protocol for Prevention, Control and Reduction of Small Arms and Light Weapons signed in 2004 by states that had earlier initialled the Nairobi Declaration. On 21 June, signatories to the declaration and the protocol agreed to set up a centre on small arms to combat the proliferation and use of illicit light weapons and strengthen cooperation in the region. The Regional Centre on Small Arms and Light Weapons in the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa (RECSA) will be based in Nairobi. Signatories to the protocol include Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania.

BBC 12 July 2005 Kenyan children killed in ambush Conflicts over water and pasture are common in this barren region As many as 100 people, mainly children and women, may have died in an early morning armed raid in north-east Kenya, according to eyewitnesses. Police confirm 19 deaths, with locals describing bodies in the streets after an ambush on children going to school. The attack in the village of Turbi - populated mainly by the Gabra community - is blamed on the rival Borana crossing the border from Ethiopia. The two groups have feuded over water and pasture in the semi-arid region. Local people spoke of some 100 dead bodies lying on the streets after the raid. James Galgalo of the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission in Marsabit, the nearest town to Turbi told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme that he believed the raiders were seeking revenge for earlier attacks. "There have been clashes all around here in the past three months between the Gabra and Borana," he said. "They are massacring people - from what we saw they used a lot of spears and knives." He said the bandits were blocking roads and police were unable to get access to help people.

Rwanda

The New Times (Kigali) OPINION4 July 2005 Did the Speaker Blow the Genocide Trumpet? By Silver H. Rugondo Kigali There are times when people "warm" or sweet-talk their way to high positions irrespective of how many heads they step on. If in doubt just read on. In the early seventies of the last century Major General Juvenal Habyarimana jumped the jinx and landed on power. In the process fifty five senior members of a government he deposed and thousands of ordinary citizens were massacred. His bloodletting instincts went on throughout the eighties and reached their climax in his meticulously prepared and executed genocide of 1994. Remember the work of raison zero- the infamous committee he chaired in preparation of genocide? Well, fate got even with him on the evening of the 6th April 1994. Humanity did not moan for the departure of one of the greatest killers on earth. That is for sure! What it regretted was that the departure opened the gates of hell for devils to come to Rwanda- "There are no devils in hell!" exclaimed the priest after witnessing the horrors of genocide in April/ May 1994, "They all came to Rwanda and they brought hell with them!" concluded the priest. Obviously the priest was convinced that the Interahamwe were devil-possessed. It was, his opinion, that no rational human beings could kill or maim fellow human being the way the Interahamwe were doing. By extension of his reasoning, no rational human beings could plan, finance or identify with their devilish acts. Obviously the priest, like the rest of humanity, did not moan the departure of such a planner. Well, there was one notable exception - a journalist by name of Alfred Mukezamfura. In one of his article, passing as a characteristic blueprint of the time, he idolized the "fallen hero". "The Hero has departed" was the heading of the article! This translation does not bring up the fond memories, unreserved appreciation and profound respect invoked or implied by its Rwandan version of "Intwali Yaratabarutse". These were the sentiments expressed in Alfred Mukezamfura's article. Obviously, the article was idolizing Juvenal Habyarimana and idealizing the coup of 1973 and all the atrocities that followed it. A critical assessment of the journalist's frame of mind in 1994 opens three schools of thought about the journalist's character. The three must be analyzed for public consumption. The first school of thought is that the sentiments expressed in the article were a true reflection of the journalist's beliefs and convictions. If that is the case then his character is known. It fits in the category of Hitler's, Pol Pot's and co. Such a character should not be involved in the process of making the laws. He should be involved in the process of facing them. The second school of thought has it that the journalist was totally indifferent to the expressed sentiments. A bit of history will show that this school of thought has no bearing on existing evidence. The evidence shows a strong and passionate support of the sentiments. The journalist of note knew that humanity has never accepted mass murderers as heroes. History records Hitler as a killer of millions of Jews, Gypsies and Soviets. He has never been regarded as a hero. Pol Pot killed millions of people. So did General Amin Dada. The fact is: none of them have ever passed as a hero! Why then did Alfred Mukezamfura, a journalist of great standing, idolize one of the greatest killers on earth? Why did the renowned journalist romanticize the criminal deeds of one of the greatest killers on earth? It can be argued that the only reason was that he supported the fundamental philosophy behind the mass killing- the philosophy of genocide! Why then did he romanticize the deeds in a mass media? Is it not for the sake of creating a role model for the public to emulate? It can be argued that as a result of his passionate appeal the public obliged and the genocide went on and on! In essence, is there any difference between such implied appeal and that of RTLM or Kangura? If there isn't, which is the case, then we are dealing with a great believer in and a great preacher of the philosophy of genocide! Such a character is not fit to contest for any public office let alone holding one. Now, ten years after the publication of his article, the journalist lands in a public office despite the fact that his article got him entangled in suspicions of the genocide philosophy. If we assume that he wrote and published the story under duress then the court of law must establish beyond reasonable doubt that indeed he was forced into the act of propagating the Genocide. It is then and only then that he would be eligible to hold a public office. Before that is done it would be honorable for him to step aside and allow the legal process - the process of justice takes its course. If on the other hand, the journalist did not believe in the sentiments expressed in his article, as the third school of thought has it, then his intellect was used to propagate the theory of genocide. So, when everyone was called upon to stand up and fight for or against genocide, the journalist sat on a fence between right and wrong and watched them fight. Now the public can see and appreciate the outcome of his "cautious" strategy. He sat on the fence with expectation of calling it a frontline. He was ready to exploit that vintage position in such a way that whoever won he would win, whoever lost he would win. The gamble paid handsomely. As a matter of fact many people used the same gamble and recorded a resounding success. There is no reason to believe that the process of sitting on the fence has stopped. Now the August House, like many other sectors of public life, has respectable Gentlemen who, while thinking about "A", write B", when they mean "C" or any other letter of the alphabet. Such characters are not firm believers in justice yet the public expects them to make just laws. We are now witnessing the fourth beginning of our country- that is the beginning after a major civil war. The first one was initiated by Ruganzu. I. Ndoli about six hundred years ago. As a result of a selfless King, a thoroughly patriotic and selfless army and strong policy of national reconciliation, the country was reborn. The policy and the philosophy behind the rebirth were recorded in one of the most beautiful national poetry we have today. As the country was rebuilt on a sound moral foundation it took long and strenuous efforts to bring it to its knees. The second and the third beginnings were that of 1959 commonly known as aided revolution and that of the 1973 Coup d'Etat. Both of them were characterized by a weak moral foundation, tribal animosities and the phrase "national reconciliation" was nowhere in their vocabulary. The fourth beginning has to make consistent efforts to acquire the characteristics of a modern stable state.

IPS 5 July 2005 Mixed verdict for Rwanda's community courts Fawzia Sheikh | Kigali, Rwanda 05 July 2005 07:14 It is not the place where you would expect to find justice in Rwanda: at the end of a bumpy dirt road leading to a shantytown of red mud-brick homes, where children sit idly on verandas. Yet, deep within this labyrinth of buildings, streets and palm trees in the south of the capital, Kigali, a rudimentary courtroom has been set up. Thin wooden poles covered by a tarpaulin enclose a stretch of grass where community trials known as gacaca are held in an effort to clear the enormous number of cases that relate to Rwanda's 1994 genocide (the approximate meaning of gacaca is "justice on the grass"). Upwards of 800 000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were murdered by Hutu extremists over the three-month period when the genocide occurred. The massacres began after a plane carrying Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana and the Burundian head of state was shot down over Kigali on April 6 1994. On a recent Saturday morning, the courtroom -- in a neighbourhood called Akageri -- was packed with more than 100 Hutu and Tutsi residents. Eight men and women presided over the hearings, each of them wearing a sash inscribed with the word "inyangamugayo". This is the Kinyarwanda term for "wise men", also used to refer to people untainted by the 1994 massacres. Trials in Akageri have been a regular fixture for a month now, although the gacaca courts have been active elsewhere in Rwanda since March. But, while few would disagree that the country's conventional court system is unable to try the thousands who are accused of participating in the genocide, gacaca hearings have also come under criticism. Community courts have been condemned for failing to stem reprisals against witnesses who give evidence about those implicated in the killings -- although NGOs say this practice is not necessarily widespread. A suit-clad lawyer walking along a dirt road in Akagari notes that the Supreme Court is reviewing three cases relating to murders committed two years ago in the town of Kadvha. "They killed people because they thought they were going to testify," he says, declining to be named for fear of repercussions in this small neighbourhood, where "we know everybody". Clementine Claudine, a 25-year-old resident of Akagari, has been warned twice that her mother or father will be killed if she testifies against a Hutu. Nonetheless, she says community members continue to participate in the trials because they believe "people will eventually be punished". Police protection for genocide survivors is wanting, leaving local administrators -- or even the survivors themselves -- the task of assuring safety. At a workshop held in May on the gacaca process, a police officer claimed that intimidation was on the decline -- but refused to provide figures to support his case. "To me, it was a bit worrying as well that he kind of washed his hands of that," says a representative of an international NGO, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It doesn't really ... put a lot of confidence in people." During the past year, NGOs working in Rwanda have been accused of promoting divisions between ethnic groups. As a result, many now avoid speaking openly of their observations, for fear of inviting government reproach. Gacaca courts are also accused of focusing on Hutu misdeeds to the exclusion of atrocities allegedly committed by Tutsis. The Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) -- a rebel movement that seized control of Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide -- is accused of perpetrating abuses in the course of this campaign. "There's a clear communication among ... refugees that ... this gacaca is not going to succeed because it is trying only Hutus," says Irénée Bugingo, who works at the Kigali-based Institute of Research and Dialogue for Peace -- an organisation that sent researchers to Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania last month to interview about 700 Hutus who fled Rwanda after the genocide. Under the law, gacaca tribunals deal only with cases that relate directly to genocide. The crimes of rape and murder allegedly committed by the RPF must be handled by military courts, says François Mugabo, coordinator of the gacaca programme at the Lawyers without Borders NGO in Kigali. Rwanda's Military High Court claims that all guilty RPF soldiers have already been tried for their crimes, and either executed or imprisoned -- but was not able to give figures in this regard to news agency IPS. The court does not consider the offences of RPF troops as war crimes, because of the supposedly isolated nature of these acts. The gacaca system has also come under fire for offering limited financial compensation to genocide survivors. "Up to now, there's a problem of compensation because even the law is silent on that matter," says Mugabo. "There [are] only reparations for [stolen] property -- goats, cows, houses destroyed." A social fund contributes to health and education for widows, orphans and the disabled, though it is estimated that only 30% of the needs of genocide survivors are covered by this programme. Regular courts that initially tried genocide participants, between 1997 and 2001, ordered damages to be paid to the tune of billions of Rwandan francs for each person affected by the killings. However, "Most of the people who committed these atrocities are really very poor and they don't have any means to compensate. It became meaningless. Nothing has been paid," says Mugabo. Similarly, concerns have been voiced about the lack of compensation for community members who take charge of the gacaca trials, which are held once a week in certain areas. But, while judges in the proceedings are not paid, they do receive free education for their children and medical insurance. According to the government, 1 521 cases had been heard by last month in gacaca courts -- and 1 294 people sentenced from one to 30 years' imprisonment. The number of cases pending changes each day, but the figure stood at 63 447 last March. A new law enacted last year makes it mandatory for Rwandans to participate in gacaca by sharing information about those accused of involvement in the genocide. Community courts are not responsible for trying the ringleaders of the genocide, however, or those accused of perpetrating sexual abuse in the 1994 massacres. This duty falls to regular Rwandan courts -- and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Tanzania.

AP 14 July 2005 First Lady on Emotional Visit to Rwanda By JENNIFER LOVEN Associated Press Writer KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) - Overlooking this city's red, dusty hills where thousands were killed, Laura Bush on Thursday urged Rwandans not to lose hope as they try to heal the pain - ``still so fresh'' - of their country's genocide. She drew a parallel to U.S. history, saying, ``We haven't totally moved on'' from slavery 130 years after the Civil War. ``Of course there's no slavery any more,'' she told a group of Rwandan schoolgirls, one of whom had asked her how America dealt with the aftermath of its internal conflict. ``But I don't know that we've totally reconciled what it means to our history,'' the U.S. first lady said. Still, Bush sounded an optimistic tone for Rwanda, still reeling from the 100 days in 1994 when Hutu militias shot and hacked to death some 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Many men were killed or fled the country. Many women contracted the virus that causes AIDS when they were raped. Many children were left orphaned. ``Rwandans have done extraordinary work recovering from that devastation,'' Bush said at the FAWE School, where girls receive U.S. scholarships for their studies. ``Now this is a country with growing opportunity, with confidence in the future.'' Bush did not speak publicly about the violence in another part of Africa, the Darfur region of Sudan. More than two years of conflict in Darfur have left tens of thousands dead and more than 2 million displaced. Arab, pro-government militias have mounted a counterinsurgency against black African rebels; many have compared the situation to Rwanda's genocide. During a brief meeting with Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Bush did discuss Darfur. Before the session, the first lady had said she wanted Kagame's advice about how the U.S. should respond in Darfur. Her spokeswoman, Susan Whitson, said afterward that Bush wanted to keep private the substance of her conversation with Kagame. Paul Rusesabagina, the lifesaving hotel manager portrayed in the movie ``Hotel Rwanda,'' set at a hotel not far from where Bush's entourage stayed, recently accused the world of failing Darfur just as it did Rwanda. Instead of bolstering its peacekeeping force, the United Nations pulled troops. The massacre ended when Tutsi rebels led by Kagame ousted the ruling government. ``Some would call the tragedy in Rwanda unspeakable, but that's precisely the problem,'' Bush said. ``Too few people around the world spoke out about what was happening here. Too few people recognized the scale of suffering.'' Her first stop in Rwanda was at a genocide memorial where it is said that the remains of 250,000 victims are buried. Joined at the museum by Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush laid a wreath at one of the memorial's mass tombs set amid tranquil gardens and fountains. Graveside, members of the entourage bowed their heads in silence to coincide with observations in Britain marking one week since deadly bus and subway bombings in London. Blair said it was especially poignant to be honoring the British dead at a site that remembers those lost in Rwanda. ``I am very moved by what I have seen, also distressed that the world looked on while it happened,'' Blair said. The group took in the museum's haunting account of the genocide. Then Bush, daughter Jenna, Rwandan first lady Jeanette Kagame and Blair - their faces strained from holding back emotion - signed the visitor's book. Bush also spent time in Kigali promoting ways the U.S. is helping Rwanda, such as assisting with the treatment of AIDS patients and helping girls get an education. Bush began her day in Zanzibar, Tanzania, where she reached out to East Africa's large Muslim community by promoting U.S. efforts to help that often-disenfranchised population educate its children. After traveling this week through South Africa and Tanzania, Bush was heading back to Washington on Friday.

Mail & Guardian (Soth Africa) 14 July 2005 www.mg.co.za US first lady seeks advice on preventing genocide Jennifer Loven | Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 14 July 2005 12:38 United States First Lady Laura Bush says she is looking to Rwandan President Paul Kagame to suggest how the world can make sure that a genocide his country experienced more than a decade ago is not repeated in Sudan's Darfur region, or anywhere else. Bush was closing out a week-long trip through Africa with a visit on Thursday to Rwanda, where a 100-day slaughter in 1994 by Hutu militias killed nearly half a million minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. She was being joined there by Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "I look forward to talking with both the first lady of Rwanda, as well as the president of Rwanda, about what the rest of the world can do in situations similar to this, like in Darfur," Bush said on Wednesday to reporters. On the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide last year, Kagame criticised other nations and institutions for failing to halt the killing. Instead of strengthening its peacekeeping force, the United Nations pulled troops. Both former US president Bill Clinton and the UN have since apologised. The massacre ended when Tutsi rebels led by Kagame ousted the extremist government. Bush, in several events in Kigali, was promoting US-supported efforts to help Rwanda by supporting women in political life and helping girls get an education. "The healing process, the reconciliation that Rwanda has managed to have is really amazing considering how extensive the genocide was and how violent," she said. Her first stop, however, was the Kigali Memorial Centre -- Gisozi Genocide Memorial -- where she planned to lay a wreath and sign a visitors' book. "The genocide was recent enough that everyone still remembers it and no doubt many, many people are still grieving for their family members, their loved ones that they lost," Bush said. "How difficult it must be, to live with a genocide like that in your country, to live with it in your history, is really, really hard to imagine." There were no indications that Bush planned to make a direct public link between what happened in Rwanda and the situation now in Darfur. More than two years of conflict there have left tens of thousands dead and more than two million displaced in Sudan, mostly as the result of a counterinsurgency by Arab, pro-government militias against black African rebels. Paul Rusesabagina, the lifesaving hotel manager portrayed in the movie Hotel Rwanda, recently accused the world of failing Darfur now just as it did Rwanda in 1994. Before travelling to Rwanda, Bush was spending the morning in Zanzibar, Tanzania's Indian Ocean archipelago. She planned to reach out to its large Muslim community at a time when there are concerns the semiautonomous area could turn toward a stricter form of Islam. Mindful of the 1998 deadly truck bombings of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam and in Nairobi, the capital of neighbouring Kenya, Washington is keeping an eye on an area where anti-Western rhetoric increasingly has been a feature of Friday sermons. Bush was also to visit the US-funded school Al Rahma Madrasa Pre-Primary School to demonstrate the US's role in ensuring education for the community, and to a teacher-training school that is receiving 20 000 books donated through private and public money in the US. -- Sapa-AP

South Africa

DeHavilland Information Services 3 July 2005 www.dehavilland.co.uk G8 urged to end genocide against humanity 03/07/2005 Former anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela graced the Live 8 concert in South Africa on Saturday where he called for an end to the genocide of poverty. Helped onto stage by his wife Graca Michel, he was greeted by a five-minute ovation from the 8,000-strong crowd. The former South African president told the crowd in Johannesburg that defeating poverty was not just a gesture of charity but an act of justice against genocide. Failing to defeat needless poverty was a crime against humanity and one which history would judge world leaders on, he said. "It is within your power to prevent a genocide against humanity," he said. "We stand tall and await your direction." His words come ahead of the G8 meeting next week in Scotland, where leaders of the world's richest nations will discuss how to tackle poverty and climate change. Mr Mandela said the G8 had an historic chance to cancel the crippling debts of the world's most impoverished nations, scrap unfair trade barriers such as the common agricultural policy and plough more funds into aid relief for Africa. Meanwhile, United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, attending the Live 8 concert at Hyde Park in London on Saturday, urged leaders to meet the Millennium Development Goals which he said would alleviate poverty for millions of people in Africa. He said reaching the UN's goals would save many children from malaria or Aids. In a message to the Live 8 event, he praised the artists who had devoted their time and talents to such "a vital cause". In an upbeat message to music fans, Mr Annan said: "This generation - with its voice, with its votes, with its hard work - really can make poverty history."

Sydney Morning Herald 4 July 2005 Act now or it's genocide By James Button, Herald Correspondent in London July 4, 2005 Page Tools Email to a friend Printer format Birhan Woldu waves to the crowd at the Live 8 concert in London, in front of an image of her as a malnourished toddler in Ethiopia. Her life was saved, Sir Bob Geldof said, in part through donations from Live Aid viewers 20 years ago. Related Rock'n'roll will never be the same Ethiopia: From Live Aid to Live 8 London: Singing all the way to Gleneagles Philadelphia: Declaration of interdependence. Tokyo: Bjork rocks but few roll up Crowds mass for moral crusade Live 8 rocks the world Greatest music show ever Rock against poverty In a day of stars and global heroes, the one with the most credibility walked slowly to the stage and challenged human beings to "wipe poverty from the Earth". Speaking at the Live 8 concert in Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela told the 8000-strong crowd there: "History and the generations to come will judge our leaders by the decisions they make in the coming weeks. I say to all those leaders: Do not look the other way, do not hesitate … It is within your power to prevent a genocide. "Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity; it is an act of justice," said the the former South African president, 86, who was cheered for nearly five minutes before he could speak. In London, as Live 8's organisers tried to ensure the Saturday spectacular meant more than just the biggest rock gig the world has seen, the event's driving force, Bob Geldof, brought the computer billionaire Bill Gates to the Hyde Park stage, introducing him to the crowd of 200,000 as "the greatest philanthropist of our age", who had given away $US5 billion. "I have learnt that success depends on knowing what works and bringing resources to the problem," Mr Gates said, sounding as if he were launching new software. "Some day all people, no matter where they are born, will be able to lead a healthy life." Mr Gates and Mr Mandela, the rich man and the one-time revolutionary, typified Live 8's ambitions: to send a message to the world's most powerful leaders four days before the Group of Eight summit in Scotland. "Eight men in a room can change the world," said a huge message at Hyde Park, urging the crowd to text the eight leaders demanding action to wipe out Africa's debt, double aid and scrap trade barriers. A million people attended the 10 free concerts in Europe, North America, South Africa and Japan, while an estimated 3 billion watched on television. Geldof, dressed all in white with a black cap, shuffled on stage to present a video of African children with the words: "Most of these children will go to bed hungry tonight, and every night." The giant screen showed a child's ravaged face, her lips parched, her eyes half closed from the 1984 famine in Ethiopia. "See this little girl," Geldof said. "She has 10 minutes to live." But she not only survived, "she's just done her agricultural exams and is here with us today", said Geldof, as he was joined on stage by a radiant, highly nervous, young woman in a white dress. "Don't let them tell you that this stuff doesn't work." In 1984 Birhan Woldu became the "face of famine" after her image was broadcast worldwide. At the time a re-hydration shot had just saved her life. The 24-year-old had never heard of Paul McCartney or U2, but she grinned sheepishly as Madonna took her hand and sang Like a Prayer. It was a moment of perfect theatre, but will it change the world? In Britain, Live 8 has triggered a huge debate about the value of debt relief, with sceptics claiming that aid risked ending up in the Swiss bank accounts of corrupt leaders if it was not accompanied by political change. Moeletsi Mbeki, an academic and brother of South Africa's President, told a British newspaper: "Throwing money at African governments is not the answer. Give the money to the people for productive investment. Africans are perfectly capable of improving their own lot." The G8 leaders have already agreed on a plan that will virtually wipe out debt for 18 African countries, and a spokesman for the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said the goal of $25 billion more for aid was in sight. But critics say what matters most is removing trade barriers that will enable African farmers to sell their produce in Western markets. The G8 leaders are unlikely to consider serious trade reform - which would mean taking on powerful agricultural groups in their countries. Peter Kanans, 60, a Kenyan coffee farmer, had, "like many hardworking Africans", a "bone to pick with the G8". He said his crop this year netted him $US300 - less than his brother, a professor in the US, spends in two months on cappuccinos. "Even if they cancel the debt and give our governments aid money, ordinary Africans will not benefit," he said. But Live 8 organisers preferred to stress a message of hope, with banners announcing "This is the week poverty can be beaten". The crowd did too, with their mood summed up by one T-shirt slogan: "Bollocks to poverty".

AP 3 July 2005 Live 8 Stakes Claim As Best Concert Ever By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 3:55 p.m. ET LONDON (AP) -- Twenty years after a scruffy one-hit wonder first demonstrated his gift for lofty dreams and grandiose statements, hundreds of the world's top performers and more than 1 million fans united for 10 free concerts across the globe aimed at fighting African poverty. Bob Geldof claimed Saturday's shows would be ''the greatest concert ever,'' and it was hard to argue with him after the unprecedented gathering drew everyone from Snoop Dogg to Bill Gates, Mandela to Madonna. But the ultimate success of the Live 8 extravaganza will be judged by whether the world's most powerful leaders, gathering next week for the Group of Eight summit meeting, listen to Geldof's demands for debt forgiveness, trade concessions and $25 billion in aid for Africa. ''History and the generations to come will judge our leaders by the decisions they make in the coming weeks,'' former South African president Nelson Mandela said after taking the stage in Johannesburg, where the crowd of more than 8,000 people gave him a five-minute ovation. ''I say to all those leaders: Do not look the other way, do not hesitate ... It is within your power to prevent a genocide.'' ''This is our moment. This is our time. This is our chance to stand up for what's right,'' U2 frontman Bono told a crowd of 200,000 in London's Hyde Park. ''We're not looking for charity, we're looking for justice,'' Bono said. ''We cannot fix every problem, but the ones we can, we must.'' In Philadelphia, on the Independence Day weekend, actor Will Smith called the festivities a worldwide ''declaration of interdependence.'' ''Today we hold this truth to be self-evident: We are all in this together,'' Smith said. Beamed around the world by satellite, he led the audience in snapping their fingers every three seconds, signifying the child death rate in Africa. Neil Young performed rousing renditions of ''Keep on Rockin' In The Free world'' and ''O Canada'' before 35,000 roaring fans at Canada's event in Barrie, Ontario. Paul McCartney and U2 opened the flagship show of the free 10-concert festival with a rousing performance of ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.'' A thunderous roar erupted from the crowd of about 200,000 as icons McCartney and Bono belted out the first line: ''It was 20 years ago today...'' -- a nod to Geldof's mammoth Live Aid benefit that raised millions for African famine relief in 1985. Bono, dressed in black and wearing his trademark wraparound shades, wrapped the crowd around his finger, enticing tens of thousands to sing along to the anthemic ''One'' and ''Beautiful Day.'' The crowd cheered when a flock of white doves was released overhead. Geldof appeared onstage to introduce Microsoft billionaire and philanthropist Gates, whom the crowd greeted with a rock star's roar. ''We can do this, and when we do it will be the best thing that humanity has ever done,'' Gates said. The crowd joined in as REM sang ''Man on the Moon,'' then heard U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan declare: ''This is really the United Nations ... The whole world has come together in solidarity with the poor.'' Geldof's claim that 3 billion people around the world were watching Saturday seemed overblown, as did talk in Philadelphia that a million people were on hand. But Live 8 was huge nonetheless, with a mile-long crowd stretching from the front steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and America Online saying that more than 5 million people sampled its live video streams, which broadcast all 10 concerts in their entirety. The first concert kicked off in Japan, where Bjork and Good Charlotte joined local bands for a show that failed to generate much interest in Asia's only G-8 nation. Despite Bjork making her first live performance in two years, the crowd of 10,000 people was only half of what the hall in the Tokyo suburb of Makuhari could hold. Still, ''we believe passionately in what this is about,'' Bjork said. ''Just the acknowledgment of the problem is an important step.'' Live 8 then rolled on to Johannesburg. That show, plus one featuring African artists in southwestern England, were organized following criticism that African artists had been left out of an event aimed at their own continent. ''Africans are involved in helping Africa, which doesn't happen too often,'' Cameroonian singer Coco Mbassi said before the England show. ''We're presenting a different image of Africa.'' Near Paris, an eclectic lineup including Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and Goth-rockers The Cure played to a crowd of 100,000 at the 17th-century Palace of Versailles. Faith Hill and Duran Duran joined Italian stars in Rome for a concert at the ancient Circus Maximus, which was packed with about 200,000 fans. German crowd-pleasers Die Toten Hosen kicked off Berlin's show -- which attracted about 150,000 people -- with a string of power anthems while reminding revelers that helping Africa stood above the music. ''This is no rock concert, it's a reminder about next Wednesday,'' singer Campino told the crowds, referring to the G-8 meeting. Canadian favorite Tom Cochrane started that country's concert with ''Life is a Highway'' before 35,000 roaring fans on a crisp sunny morning in Barrie, Ontario. And in Moscow, where 20 years ago residents heard little or nothing about Live Aid because of tight Soviet information controls, tens of thousands jammed a square in the shadows of the Kremlin. In London, Madonna performed ''Like a Prayer'' hand-in-hand with Birham Woldu, an Ethiopian woman who as a malnourished toddler appeared in some of the most wrenching footage of the 1984-85 famine. Her life was saved, Geldof said, partly through donations from Live Aid viewers. As night fell, Sting performed ''Every Breath You Take'' as a message to the G-8 leaders -- ''We'll be watching you,'' he sang. The Who belted out their classic ''Who Are You?'' to a backdrop of images of the G8 chiefs. And the crowd went wild for the reunion of '70s supergroup Pink Floyd -- the first time guitarist David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason, keyboard player Richard Wright and bassist Roger Waters appeared onstage together since 1981. London concertgoer Tula Contostavlos, 19, said she was there to see Mariah Carey -- and to send a political message. ''Obviously some people are here for just music,'' she said, ''but they're forgetting what's important and what they're here for.'' ------ On the Net: http://www.live8live.com

Sierra Leone

IRIN 1 Jul 2005 UN troops to leave by the end of the year [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] © UNMASIL Photo/ Roland Ulreich, 2004 UNAMSIL troops are set to be out of Sierra Leone by the end of 2005 DAKAR, 1 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - The UN Security Council has voted to close down the UN peacekeeping operation in Sierra Leone by the end of December, with the next contingent of troops due to pull out in mid-August. About 3,400 peacekeepers remain in the West African nation, three and a half years after the official end to a brutal civil war, which shocked the world with its images of drugged-up youths hacking the arms, legs, ears and lips off civilians. The UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) was created in October 1999 to help restore peace to Sierra Leone. At its height, it boasted 17,000 troops and was the biggest UN peacekeeping operation in the world. The force was originally supposed to withdraw from Sierra Leone at the end of last year, but its mandate was extended because of security concerns in neighbouring Liberia and Guinea and delays in preparing the Sierra Leonean army and police to take over full responsibility for internal security. However, there have been no security incidents requiring UN support since the peacekeepers handed over primary responsibility for security to the Sierra Leone government last September. And by the end of 2005, all the blue helmets should have left. On Thursday, the 15-nation Security Council, in an unanimous vote, extended UNAMSIL's mandate for a final period of six months until 31 December. In his latest report to the Council on Sierra Leone, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended that the drawdown of troops should begin in mid-August, but warned that the situation remained fragile and that much remained to be done to address the underlying causes of conflict in the country. Annan also said that UNAMSIL needed to remain on its guard during the run-up to presidential and parliament elections in neighbouring Liberia on 11 October, since that country has also recently emerged from civil war. "The last (UNAMSIL) infantry battalion and air assets should remain fully operational until the end of November, by which time the results of the elections in Liberia will be known," Annan wrote. The UN chief said although the presence of UN troops in Sierra Leone would soon no longer be necessary, UN agencies must step up their efforts to help the country recover from its devastating 1991-2001 civil war. Sierra Leone is the poorest country in the world, according to the UN Human Development Index. About 70 percent of the country's six million people still live on less than a dollar a day. The Security Council called for a "seamless transition from peacekeeping to peacebuilding". UNAMSIL's drawdown comes as the United Nations is reinforcing other peacekeeping forces in the region. Last week, the Security Council voted to send an extra 850 peacekeepers to reinforce the 6,000 already on the ground in war-divided Cote d'Ivoire. It also raised the possibility of UN forces stationed in Liberia and Sierra Leone temporarily reinforcing the Cote d'Ivoire force.

Somalia

Reuters 1 Jul 2005 Print E-mail Save Somali president returns to his lawless homeland By Mohamed Ali Bile and Guled Mohamed MOGADISHU/NAIROBI, July 1 (Reuters) - President Abdullahi Yusuf returned to Somalia from Yemen on Friday, making his first visit to his lawless homeland since his government left its temporary base in neighbouring Kenya last month. Yusuf landed in the northern port of Bosasso in Puntland state, his powerbase in the lawless Horn of Africa country, on Somalia's 45th anniversary of independence, officials said. "He will stay in Bosasso for one or two days," presidential spokesman Yusuf Ismail Baribari said by telephone from Jowhar, one of the government's temporary bases in Somalia. The interim administration is the 14 attempt to re-establish government in the country since 1991, when a coalition of warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and Somalia descended into anarchy. Yusuf had been in Yemen since June 13, where he held talks with Yemeni officials and met Somalia's parliamentary speaker to try to heal a rift over where the transitional government should make its initial return. The reconciliation talks produced no agreement on where to base the government, formed in the relative safety of neighbouring Kenya last year. Yusuf, Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Gedi and allied lawmakers have made their base in the provincial town of Jowhar, 90 km (55 miles) north of Mogadishu, arguing they cannot return to the anarchic city until it is pacified. But Parliament Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, influential warlords in the government and other members of parliament have moved into Mogadishu, which they say must be the capital under an interim constitution. A university student in Mogadishu welcomed Yusuf's return to Somalia, but said it would be better if he were in the city. "The same weapons in Mogadishu are the same weapons in Bosasso. There is nowhere in Somalia that is safe," Hassan Gele Roto said by telephone. Baribari said it had not yet been decided if the president would go to an African Union summit in Libya or begin visiting other regions of Somalia. As of Friday, Gedi was due to lead the Somali government delegation to the summit either on Saturday or Sunday, stopping in Djibouti on the way, he said. Gedi led a delegation on Friday to Isaley Airport, 28 km (17 miles) north of Mogadishu, to collect generators and office equipment donated by the Italian government.

United Nations News Service 1 Jul 2005 Pirates seize UN food relief boat off Somali coastPirates have seized a boat off the coast of Somalia carrying United Nations food relief for some 28,000 victims of last December’s Indian Ocean tsunami and are asking for $500,000 to release it, the UN World Food Programme said today. The boat, the MV Semlow, with 10 crew members and 850 tons of rice on board, was seized on Monday between Haradhere and Hobyo, nearly 300 kilometres northeast of the Somali capital of Mogadishu, as it was on its way from the Kenyan port of Mombasa to Bossao in the Puntland region of Somalia. "The WFP has appealed to local authorities to help them impress upon the ‘pirates’ that the food was intended for humanitarian purposes," WFP spokeswoman Christine Berthiaume told a briefing in Geneva. The company hiring the boat indicated that the ‘pirates’ were asking for a $500,000 ransom. The boat, which was seized 60 kilometres off the coast, was now about five kilometres from shore, she added. Somalia has been rent by factional fighting for almost 15 years. In another African operation, Ms. Berthiaume said that since April 2004 WFP has only been able to distribute 50 per cent of the corn rations intended for thousands of Angolan refugees and displaced persons (IDPs). In July the agency will only be able to assist 800,000 people, compared to 1 million in June. WFP needs $17 million to feed this population through the end of the year and without new contributions it will have to make additional cuts in rations, she said.

BBC 6 July 2005 Somali march triggers war fears President Yusuf fears for his life in the Somali capital President Abdullahi Yusuf has told the BBC he is to head south through Somalia from his northern stronghold collecting troops and militia as he goes. He plans to go to the town of Jowhar, which is 90km north of the capital, Mogadishu, and is his preferred temporary base for the new government. The warlords in control of Mogadishu have threatened to attack Jowhar if the president establishes himself there. Observers say the president's announcement could trigger fighting. Since President Yusuf left his exiled home in Kenya last month he has been based in Bossaso in his home region of Puntland preparing to venture south to Jowhar. Mobilising "Without troops no government can work," the president told the BBC's Somali Service. "We are now recruiting troops in Puntland. They are also being recruited in Hayran, Bay, Bakul, Gedo and Juba regions. We will mobilise," he said. Somalia has not had a functioning government since the overthrow of President Siad Barre in 1991 and 13 previous attempts to end the anarchy have failed. The Somali government, which was established in Kenya, has been divided since May, with the speaker of parliament operating from the capital, and the president refusing to move there while it is still under the control of his rivals. The Mogadishu warlords were named as ministers in Mr Yusuf's cabinet but soon fell out with him, siding with the speaker. Last month, President Yusuf met the speaker, Sharif Hasan Shaykh Adan, in Yemen's capital, but they failed to agree on where the government should be based. Mr Yusuf is from the north-eastern region of Puntland and has little support in Mogadishu. He has also been criticised for his links to Ethiopia, distrusted by many Somalis for meddling in the long civil war. BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says that unless foreign powers, or Somali elders, can intervene to prevent a conflict erupting, the stage is now set for a confrontation between the president and his former associates in Mogadishu.

BBC 11 July 2005 Somali peace activist shot dead Abdulkadir Yahya Ali's death has shocked Mogadishu residents A prominent Somali peace activist has been shot dead by unknown gunmen at his home in the capital, Mogadishu. Through his Centre for Research and Dialogue, Abdulkadir Yahya Ali tried to resolve Somalia's 14-year civil war. Witnesses said about five attackers handcuffed his security guards, cut off the phone lines and shot him in front of his wife. The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu says the killing has shocked the city's residents. Al-Qaeda Switzerland-based charity Wartorn Societies Project International, which helped set up the Centre for Research and Dialogue (CRD), has downplayed any link between Mr Yahya's killing and a recent report, saying that Islamist terror groups were based in Mogadishu. Reuters news agency reports that the CRD works closely with the International Crisis Group think-tank, which over the weekend said that a group linked to al-Qaeda was working out of Mogadishu. Facts and figures about life in Somalia At-a-glance "Since 2003, Somalia has witnessed the rise of a new, ruthless independent jihadi network with links to al-Qaeda," the ICG report said. It said the group was suspected of involvement in the apparent assassination of four aid workers and 10 former police or military officers in the past two years. "In the rubble-strewn streets of the ruined capital of this state without a government... al-Qaeda operatives, jihadi extremists, Ethiopian security services and Western-backed counter-terrorism networks are engaged in a shadowy and complex contest waged by intimidation, abduction and assassination," the ICG said. 'Optimist' United Nations resident and humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Maxwell Gaylard, expressed shock at Mr Yahya's death. It is not known who killed Mr Yahya "Yahya was a committed advocate for peace and reconciliation, and his optimism never faltered," Mr Gaylard said in a statement from Kenya. "This is a great loss to Mogadishu and Somalia at this particular time when people of his courage and tenacity are most needed." A government set up after more than two years of talks in Kenya is deeply divided. President Abdullahi Yusuf says that Mogadishu is too dangerous and wants the government to be based in the town of Jowhar. But the speaker of parliament, Sharif Hasan Shaykh Adan, and the warlords who control Mogadishu and who have been named as government ministers, insist that the government must be based in the capital. Last week, Mr Yusuf told the BBC that he would soon start to head south from his northern stronghold collecting troops and militia as he goes, raising fears of fighting between the two sides.

www.crisisgroup.org 11 July 2005 Counter-Terrorism in Somalia: Losing Hearts and Minds? U.S. counter-terrorism efforts in Somalia threaten to destabilise the country further and provide a popular platform for the spread of jihadism. A quiet, dirty conflict is being fought out in the ruined capital, Mogadishu, by al-Qaeda operatives, jihadi extremists, Ethiopian security services and Western-backed networks. This shadowy and complex contest waged by intimidation, abduction and assassination has seen some American successes but is producing growing unease within the broader public. Ultimately a successful strategy requires attention to more than the military aspect alone. Containing and eliminating jihadism in Somalia demands patient, sustained support for the twin processes of reconciliation and peace building, until legitimate, functional government is restored. - Crisis Group reports and briefing papers are available on our website: www.crisisgroup.org

www.crisisgroup.org 12 July 2005 CONFLICT RISK ALERT: SOMALIA Brussels, 12 July 2005: Somalia faces a serious threat of greatly expanded violence if the UN Security Council creates an exemption to the arms embargo now applied to the country. On 14 July 2005, the Council will consider such an exemption in order to permit deployment of a peace support operation by the Horn of Africa regional organisation, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). This deployment has been endorsed by the African Union (AU) -- subject to Council authorisation and lifting of the arms embargo -- and would be followed by an AU mission. In letters last week to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and to the Permanent Representatives of UN Security Council members (full text below), Crisis Group President Gareth Evans urges the Council to defer consideration of the issue at this time. "Under the right circumstances and with adequate planning, the proposed mission could contribute to restoring peace and government", says Evans. "Right now, however, the exemption would be premature and counterproductive". The problem is that the interim president's appeal for foreign troops is very deeply divisive in Somalia, and has yet to receive the unambiguous approval of the Transitional Federal Institutions. An external military intervention in the Somali conflict at this stage would, in Crisis Group's judgement, undermine both the prospects for peace in the country and development of the AU's peacekeeping capacity. The success of any international deployment to Somalia hinges upon broad consensus among the Somali leadership and unambiguous approval by the Transitional Federal Government and Parliament. Neither exists. And there are neither agreed ceasefire arrangements nor a common plan for disarmament and demobilisation. The UN arms embargo on Somalia has been critical for limiting violence and its humanitarian consequences in Somalia. Lifting it for any reason at this critical time risks destabilising the transitional institutions, derailing the peace process and rekindling civil conflict.
8 July 2005 [UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Permanent Representatives of UN Security Council members] The Somali peace process is in deep crisis. The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) established in October 2004 is divided into two camps. Since its return to Somalia last month, tensions on the ground have escalated sharply as both have engaged in military preparations. In a 26 June 2005 radio address, the Prime Minister indicated his camp was prepared to use force if members of the government and parliament continued to challenge his leadership; on 7 July, interim President Abdullahi Yusuf told the BBC he was mobilising forces and procuring military equipment in anticipation of a confrontation. As the Secretary-General noted in his recent report on Somalia, such differences "could assume further divisions along clan and regional lines", threatening renewed armed conflict and the collapse of the peace process. At this delicate point, the Security Council has a critical role to play. On 14 July 2005, the Council will consider an exemption to the arms embargo established by Resolution 733 (1992), so as to permit deployment of an IGAD peace support operation (IGASOM). This deployment has been endorsed by the African Union -- subject to Council authorisation and lifting of the arms embargo -- and would be succeeded by an AU mission. Under the right circumstances and with adequate planning, that mission could contribute to restoring peace and government. At this time, however, the exemption would be premature and counterproductive. The interim president's appeal for foreign troops is deeply divisive in Somalia and has yet to receive the unambiguous approval of the Transitional Federal Institutions. It is clear from the statements of some ministers and parliamentarians, as well as public demonstrations and media commentary in Somalia, that any intervention force risks being perceived as partisan. That risk is increased by the IGASOM concept of operations, which envisions Chapter VIII "peace enforcement". For peacekeepers to become embroiled in the Somali conflict would undermine both the prospects for peace in the country and development of the AU's peacekeeping capacity. As I indicated in an earlier letter to IGAD heads of state (sent 9 February 2005), the success of any international deployment to Somalia hinges upon broad consensus among the Somali leadership and unambiguous approval by the TFG and Parliament. Neither exists. Further, there are neither agreed ceasefire arrangements nor a common plan for disarmament and demobilisation. Before deployment of a peace support operation, these preparatory steps are needed: revival of political dialogue between the two wings of the government within the context of the Transitional Federal Institutions; national ceasefire arrangements, incorporating the progress to date in Mogadishu; and broad consensus within the Transitional Federal Institutions on the mandate, scope, duration and membership of any peace support operation. The UN arms embargo on Somalia has been critical for limiting violence and its humanitarian consequences in Somalia. Lifting it for any reason at this critical time risks destabilising the transitional institutions, derailing the peace process and rekindling civil conflict. I urge you, therefore, to defer consideration of an exemption until these preconditions have been fulfilled and instead encourage the African Union to put in place a political initiative that would complement its efforts on the military side. At the same time, I hope the Council will take this opportunity to encourage the Somali leadership to engage in serious dialogue to salvage the peace process and lay the political foundation for a successful international mission. Sincerely, GARETH EVANS President The International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation covering over 50 crisis-affected countries and territories across four continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict.

Sudan

BBC 2 July 2005 Annan criticises Darfur response The US has called the crisis genocide, but the UN has not United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has criticised the developed world for being too slow to respond to the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region. "We were slow, hesitant, uncaring," Mr Annan said in a BBC interview. He said the international community had "learnt nothing from Rwanda" - a reference to the 1994 genocide there. At least 180,000 have died since 2003 in the western region of Darfur. More than two million people have been forced from their homes. Human rights groups, the US Congress and the US government say that genocide is taking place. However, a UN team sent to Sudan to investigate concluded that war crimes had been committed, but there had been no intent to commit genocide by the Sudanese government. Strongest comments The UN secretary general was heavily criticised at the time of the Rwandan genocide for failing to take heed of warnings from his staff on the ground. In the case of Darfur, Mr Annan has made a point of continuing to demand international action and his comments in an interview for the BBC's Panorama programme are the strongest yet, says the BBC's Fergal Keane. Asked by our correspondent whether the judgment on Darfur would be as damning as in the case of Rwanda, Mr Annan replied: "Quite likely". Darfur has become the first case referred by the UN Security Council to the International Criminal Court. ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo told the Security Council on Wednesday that his office had found evidence - including widespread rape and sexual assault - that warranted the bringing of the Darfur case to the court. He accused the Sudanese authorities of failing to take action against those responsible. Violence in Darfur has declined in recent months. Britain's Minister for International Development, Hilary Benn, believes that has much to do with the threat of prosecution by the ICC now hanging over the heads of Sudanese leaders, our correspondent says.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) 1 Jul 2005 AU Summit: Protect civilians across Darfur(New York, July 1, 2005) -- At the African Union summit next week, African leaders should put the protection of civilians in Darfur at the top of their agenda, Human Rights Watch said today. Leaders of the pan-African organization’s 53 member states will meet in Sirte, Libya on July 4-5. “The African Union deserves credit for leading the efforts to restore security to war-torn Darfur,” said Georgette Gagnon, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “More African Union forces need to be deployed across Darfur to protect civilians and help reverse ethnic cleansing.” Today, the African Union will begin its second phase of deploying troops to Darfur. Plans are well underway to increase AU forces in Darfur from some 2,700 to 7,700 by the end of September. Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Kenya are contributing the additional forces, including an estimated 4,000 troops and 1,000 civilian police. The European Union, NATO and the United Nations -- along with countries including the United States, France, Canada and Britain -- are providing the technical, financial and logistical support to deploy these AU forces. “There is no time to waste,” said Gagnon. “Violence and insecurity persists in Darfur, especially in areas where there are no African Union troops.” Human Rights Watch called on the African Union to ensure that its forces in Darfur are deployed speedily in many more villages and small towns throughout the region, which is roughly the size of France. AU troops should robustly protect civilians and proactively patrol and secure the main roads for humanitarian, commercial and civilian traffic. These forces should also do what is necessary to establish a safe and secure environment that will allow for the safe and voluntary return of refugees and internally displaced persons. Once the 7,700 AU forces are deployed, the African Union, NATO, the United Nations and other donors should move as quickly as possible to the next phase of deployment, which will boost the level of AU forces to 12,300 under current plans. “The status quo in Darfur is unacceptable. The inability of two million people to return home guarantees ongoing instability and retribution,” Gagnon said. “This current situation rewards the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing and war crimes.” Human Rights Watch called on the African Union, the United Nations, NATO, the European Union and other concerned members of the international community to continue their recently established partnership to provide protection and freedom of movement in Darfur. These efforts must ensure that two million displaced Darfurians can return home and, in a region where conflict has made 3.5 million people depend on food aid, can cultivate their land in safety. Donors must continue to provide the needed logistics and financial assistance to the African Union Mission in Sudan. Human Rights Watch urged members of the African Union -- particularly Nigeria, South Africa, Rwanda, Senegal and Kenya -- to maintain a high level of troop and police deployment until the crisis in Darfur is over. “Countries like Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa have shown leadership in contributing to the AU mission in Darfur,” said Gagnon. “Other African countries should follow their example by sending troops, military observers and police.”

IRIN 1 July 2005 Garang urges southern militias to reconcile [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] © IRIN Garang (right) and Moi at the meeting of southern Sudanese armed groups in Nairobi. NAIROBI, 1 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - The chairman of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), John Garang, appealed on Thursday to all militias operating in southern Sudan to put aside their differences and reconcile. "Maj Gen Gordon Kong and Maj Gen Paulino Matip Nhial [leaders of the government-aligned South Sudan Defence Force (SSDF)], I welcome you in the spirit of forgiveness and peace and as brothers," Garang told a conference of southern Sudanese armed groups in Nairobi, Kenya. Thursday's conference was part of an ongoing series of meetings on south-south dialogue. Garang focused on the SPLM/A's vision for stability in the region and security arrangements for the upcoming transitional government period. Under the provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed between the Sudanese government and the SPLM/A on 9 January, all armed groups and militias in the south will either be integrated into the Sudanese armed forces or into the SPLM/A. "I want to assure other armed groups who will decide to join the SPLA that they'll be treated the same way as other armed groups who joined the SPLA in the past," Garang said. "Your rightful place is in the south, you belong in the south." Sudanese civil-society organisations, church groups and 11 political parties attended the previous dialogue in April, which developed a consensus on issues ranging from security, democracy and good governance to human rights, gender equality and economic development. Chaired by former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, Thursday's conference was intended to bring together more than 20 armed groups from south Sudan who had been absent from the previous conference; some of these control oil-rich areas in the southern state of Upper Nile. Participants said disagreements among southern Sudanese leaders had, in the past, led to the creation of many splinter groups, several of them supported by the Khartoum government. Observers feared that once Sudanese government troops withdrew from their southern positions in August, militias could try to fill the gap. "I consider this a momentous occasion, key to the implementation of the peace agreement," Moi told the participants. "It is a demonstration of your honesty and your courage to be part of this historical chapter in the history of your country." "When you are involved in this fighting, you have to ask yourself: what am I fighting for," Moi added. He stressed that war should not be allowed to continue. In a statement read for him, Maj Gen Matip said: "Our presence here is to prove our political and military dedication to the CPA and the socio-cultural, political, military and security stability of our beloved country the Sudan." He noted that he was eager to maintain tranquillity in the Sudanese nation, and expressed his readiness to enter into discussions for the sake of a peaceful southern Sudan. "The SSDF demands its rightful place in the governance of southern Sudan, as well as within the general governance of the country," he said, and added that the SPLA and the SSDF should "equitably form the high command of the Southern Sudan Armed Forces". Garang said the conference was not a negotiation, but rather a dialogue to heal wounds, solve differences from the past, build trust, and "put our house in order". The CPA, he added, provided a fair framework for equitable governance, which would lead to the reconstitution and devolution of power in Sudan. Included in the CPA were provisions for pulling Sudanese government troops out of the south, self-determination, wealth-sharing and religious freedom. A transition period of six years - after which south Sudan's people would decide in a referendum whether or not to break away from the rest of Sudan - was also set out in the agreement. "It is essential to get all the militias on board, it is crucial for the implementation of the CPA," Kent Degerfelt, head of delegation of the European Commission in Sudan, told IRIN. "These are the people who actually have the guns in their hand. They should stop fighting, that's what it is all about," he added. Garang said the SPLM/A wanted peace in southern Sudan through the CPA, as well as peace in the western region of Darfur and eastern Sudan. It also wanted the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), out of the country in order to achieve sustainable peace. The LRA has fought the Ugandan government for 19 years, a brutal conflict that has displaced an estimated 1.6 million people. Some 20,000 children have been abducted for use as fighters, porters and sex slaves. "In the south, we also want to solve the differences with the other armed groups, so that there will be no fighting anywhere in the country," he said.

Xinhua News Agency Date: 03 Jul 2005 Print E-mail Save Death rate falls sharply in DarfurKHARTOUM, Jul 3, 2005 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Sudanese Minister of Health Ahmed Bilal Osman announced here Sunday that an initial survey showed a threefold decrease in death rates in the western region of Darfur. At a press conference, the minister said that death rate in Darfur was under emergency level and the health situation had apparently improved in the war-torn region. He added that the maximum death rate in Darfur has reached 0.8 out of 10,000 people per day. He added that it is a clear evidence that the relief support delivered by the Sudanese Ministry of Health and the international community has a tangible influence on the humanitarian situation in Darfur. It is also a result of the fast alert system and the proper investigation which have been adopted by the concerned sides to control the epidemics. Sudan's arid and impoverished western region of Darfur has witnessed over two years of civil war which pit two local rebel groups against Arab-led Sudanese government. Thousands of people have been killed and more than a million driven from their homes, most of them by government-backed militias. Peace talks are underway in the Nigerian capital of Abuja to end the conflict.

BBC 2 July 2005 Why 'never again' keeps happening By Fergal Keane BBC News Debt relief and the alleviation of suffering will be high priorities at the G8 summit, but it seems another crucial issue has been left off the agenda. Fergal Keane reflects on how the international community fails to learn lessons when it comes to reacting to genocide and crimes against humanity. To be honest it was a crisis to which I came late. I had been preoccupied with Rwanda. Ten years had passed since the genocide and I had travelled back to report on the anniversary. And perhaps, after the experience of Rwanda, I was also wary of becoming entangled in the horrors and complexities of another epic tragedy. Because, be assured, Darfur is an epic story. More than two million people have been uprooted. Hundreds of thousands, nobody really knows how many, have been killed. Thousands of women have been raped. And yet for all the epic quality of this tragedy, it feels like a very old script. Government denial We have been here before. A government threatened by rebellion turns on a segment of its own people. It uses militia, as well as its own military, to do the killing. I gave up having any faith in the phrase 'never again' after Rwanda There are mass graves and there is mass rape. Men and boys are taken away to be killed. Then the government denies the scale of the violence. It keeps journalists out, blocks aid workers. Many more die from hunger and disease. The world expresses concern but does too little, invariably too late. A handful of foreign troops are allowed to deploy, but they are too few and their mandate is too restrictive to allow them to intervene and fight the killers. Yes, we have been here before. Bosnia, Rwanda and those are only the ones that have happened in our own time. I gave up having any faith in the phrase "never again" after Rwanda. I now add another verbal formulation to the list of redundant phrases. It is the sentence "We must learn the lessons." It is of course invariably the precursor to the words "never again." "We must learn the lessons of the Holocaust, or of Cambodia, or of Bosnia, or of Rwanda... and make sure that things like this..." and you know how this sentence ends, ..."things like this never happen again." Refugees attacked As plastic bullets were being fired, the UN security advisers told their staff to leave. The situation was no longer safe Last November I was in a refugee camp in Darfur when it was attacked by the Sudanese police. They wanted to shift the displaced people to another camp where they would be easier to control. Many of these people had been driven from their villages by Sudanese soldiers and tribal militia. They had seen their fathers, brothers, sons murdered, their mothers, wives and sisters raped. The police beat and tear gassed them. The clubs and staves smashing into bodies already made weak by hunger. Stinging, choking gas sending infants into convulsions of coughing. The world knew about this. There were observers present from the United Nations and international aid agencies. At one point, as plastic bullets were being fired, the UN security advisers told their staff to leave. The situation was no longer safe. To their credit the UN staff stayed. But the Sudanese police regarded us all - unarmed Westerners with our notebooks and expressions of outrage - with contempt. They looked like men who knew that whatever I might report back on television, and whatever the UN workers would say to their bosses, none of it would be enough to bring the international cavalry charging over the hill to save the beaten down, terrorised people of the camp. Failure to act Since that visit, the UN Security Council has voted to forward the names of 51 Sudanese to the International Criminal Court. Many are thought to be senior figures in the military regime. The national interests of member states will usually take precedence over the suffering of people in Africa But that move came nearly two years after the violence erupted. The five permanent members of the Security Council - the US, Britain, France, China and Russia - collectively failed to act in time. Each had different reasons. The US and Britain did not want arguments over Darfur to get in the way of securing a peace deal for Sudan's other tragedy, the civil war in the south which had run for 30 years and claimed two million lives. And they were preoccupied with Iraq and in no mood for military adventures elsewhere, let alone an Arab state like Sudan. Sudan also had allies on the council, like the Chinese who resisted putting Darfur on the agenda. These are the diplomatic details but they speak to a fundamental crisis that has dogged the United Nations from its birth 60 years ago. The national interests of member states will usually take precedence over the suffering of people in Africa. I have no doubt that in a few years time there will be investigations by the United Nations and the EU and several others into why the world failed the people of Darfur. We already know why, just as we did in Rwanda. We cared, but we did not care enough. Fergal Keane is reporting on Darfur for the BBC's Panorama and From Our Own Correspondent.

BBC 5 July 2005 Sudan agrees Darfur peace outline Rebels began an insurrection in Darfur in 2003 The Sudanese government and two rebel groups have agreed on ground rules for efforts to resolve the conflict in the troubled Western region of Darfur. They signed a declaration of principles after four weeks of hard negotiations in the Nigerian capital, Abuja. The principles include democracy and devolution. But African mediators warn that formidable challenges remain. About 180,000 people have been killed and more than two million made homeless since the conflict began in early 2003. The Khartoum government and Arab militias have been accused of widespread atrocities against black Africans in Darfur. A recent United Nations report stopped short of saying the authorities and their militia allies carried out a genocide, but it did say war crimes had been committed. Some formidable challenges lie ahead Salim Salim African Union mediator Talks mediated by the African Union (AU) began in August of last year with the aim of finding a political solution. Tuesday saw the completion of the fifth round of the talks, which are due to resume on 24 August. Broad commitments The discussions are part of the AU's attempt to find African solutions to Africa's problems, the BBC's Anna Borzello in Abuja says.
DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES
Justice and equality for all
Democracy and regional devolution
Judicial independence
Equitable distribution of national wealth
AU chief mediator Salim Salim said the declaration would send a message for ending the conflict and the realisation of peace and stability in Darfur. "You have demonstrated your own determination that you will not let down the people of Darfur... and you will not let down our friends in the international community," he told the signatories. "Some formidable challenges lie ahead," he added. The head of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, Abdel Wahed Mohamed al-Nur, said the agreement marked "the beginning of the road to peace". Among the broad commitments agreed upon are the upholding of democracy, the independence of the judiciary and "justice and equality for all, regardless of ethnicity, religion and gender". The declaration also refers to "an effective devolution of powers" to regional authorities and the equitable distribution of national wealth.

crisisgroup.org 6 July 2005 INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP - NEW BRIEFING The AU's Mission in Darfur: Bridging the Gaps Bold new action is urgently required to safeguard the inhabitants of Darfur, many of whom are still dying or face indefinite displacement. If the African Union (AU), which plans only to have 7,700 troops and police on the ground by September, cannot deploy the larger, more capable force needed to protect civilians, NATO troops should help bridge the gaps. The EU and NATO already give significant financial and logistical support to the AU Mission (AMIS), but political sensitivities have kept non-African troops out of Darfur. The concept of African solutions for African problems should not trump the international responsibility to protect. More courageous thinking is needed by all sides to get an adequately sized, trained and equipped force on the ground with a strong mandate as quickly as possible: 12,000 to 15,000 within 60 days. Crisis Group reports and briefing papers are available on our website: www.crisisgroup.org

Reuters 9 July 2005 Darfur Action Key to Ending US Sanctions - Zoellick By REUTERS Filed at 5:26 p.m. ET KHARTOUM (Reuters) - U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said a new unity government in Sudan was a step toward improving ties with Washington, but action to end the conflict in Darfur was needed for sanctions to be lifted. Zoellick attended the swearing in on Saturday of former southern rebel chief John Garang as first vice president, marking a new era after two decades of north-south civil war. But he said a southern peace deal signed in January needed to extend to a separate conflict in the western region of Darfur. ``It's an important day in terms of the formation of the government of national unity,'' Zoellick said. ``But it's equally important that we connect it to the events in Darfur and indeed to the challenges of peace and stability throughout all of Sudan.'' Zoellick said the lifting of U.S. economic sanctions, imposed on Sudan in 1997 as a ``state sponsor of terrorism,'' had been brought up by his Sudanese counterparts in discussions. But he said Washington was not ready to accept an immediate end to the sanctions, despite the end of the southern civil war. ``The intensity of the opinion in the United States about first the events of the north-south trouble that killed over two million people but now most importantly the genocide in Darfur are so strong that, while I see a path for improving relations, we need to do so step by step,'' he said. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Darfur and more than two million forced from their homes since a rebellion broke out in early 2003. The rebels accuse the government of neglect and of arming Arab militia to loot and burn non-Arab villages, a claim which Khartoum denies. CEASEFIRE The International Criminal Court is investigating alleged war crimes in the region, but a U.N.-appointed commission stopped short of the U.S. assertion that the violence constituted genocide. Zoellick said he was happy with a 3,000-strong African Union force monitoring a shaky ceasefire in Darfur, and saw no need for Western troops to deploy there. ``The role of NATO is one of transportation and logistics (in Darfur),'' he told reporters in Khartoum. ``There's been no interest in NATO and no interest in my country of having Western forces on the ground.'' An international think tank has recommended the NATO alliance deploy up to 12,000 troops to stop violence in Darfur, to give the AU time to build additional forces. Sudan says it will only allow African forces to deploy in Darfur. NATO has said it would airlift extra African troops to the region, but has not said it would send its own forces. Frosty U.S. ties with Khartoum, which hosted Osama bin Laden from 1991 to 1996, reached a low in 1998 when Washington launched missiles at a pharmaceuticals plant it said was linked to bin Laden and making ingredients for chemical weapons. Zoellick, visiting Sudan for the third time this year, said a new coalition government, which should be agreed by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Garang within 30 days, was the next step toward normalising relations with Washington. ``I think the new government of national unity creates an opportunity for President Bashir and First Vice President Garang... to take the steps that will improve relations.'' But he warned that actions such as harassing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Darfur and the closure of newspapers would harm that process of normalisation.

BBC 12 July 2005 Sudanese unity is 'in jeopardy' Turabi used to be a close ally of President Bashir Sudan could disintegrate Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi has warned following his release from jail. He told the BBC after the inauguration of a new unity government that narrow party interests had been given precedence over Sudan's wider problems. The new constitution, brokered as part of a peace deal, shares power between northern and southern parties. The president's former ally said one of the new vice-presidents should have been from western war-torn Darfur. One-and-a-half million people died in the 21-year civil war between the mainly Muslim north and Christian south, but fighting continues in the western region of Darfur, while rebels in the east have resumed fighting in recent weeks. 'Deep crisis' Released from prison two weeks ago, where he was held in connection with involvement in a failed coup attempt, Mr Turabi said the country was in "deep crisis". Mr Garang's a soldier from a rebellion, so he's a bit more freelance and he's more educated than both of them Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi "It is very serious. It can break up. The whole country can disintegrate," he said. "The country is now in trouble and we have many neighbours. The trouble is over spilling into our nine neighbours." The BBC's Jonah Fisher in Khartoum says Mr Turabi, once a close colleague of President Omar al-Bashir and a proponent of Sharia law, has always been willing to speak his mind. Mr Turabi said his invitation to join the new administration was a sham, as 80% of the ministerial positions will be taken by the former southern rebels and the ruling National Congress Party "I know who's going to control the government, the president alone." 'Squeezed' Under the new constitution, there are two vice-presidents and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement leader John Garang was sworn in a vice-president on Saturday along with northerner Ali Osman Mohamed Taha. Sudanese greet ex-rebel leader In pictures "If they want a coalition presidency, at least have someone from the west, the east, the south and President Bashir from the north - and perhaps a lady," Mr Turabi said. Mr Garang, he said, would find himself "squeezed" between two northerners. "He's a soldier from a rebellion, so he's a bit more freelance. He tends to be more free and he's more educated than both of them," he said. His National Congress party, which he says represents northerners and southerners, would form the opposition and contest future elections. "It not that everything the government does we will be against, but we'll try to broaden freedom." Mr Turabi was critical of the president's hold over local government and the media, which he said would infringe the possibility of holding free elections. Under the peace deal, Sudan's new oil wealth will be shared between north and south, Islamic Sharia law will not be applied in the south and the south will hold a referendum on secession in six years' time. Fifty two per cent of government and parliament posts will be held by the ruling National Congress, while Mr Garang's SPLM has been given 28% of power.

washingtonpost.com 13 July 2005 Arab Genocide, Arab Silence By Joseph Britt Post Wednesday, July 13, 2005; A21 What responsibility do Arabs have to stop genocide being committed by Arabs? Genocide in the Darfur region of western Sudan, inflicted on mostly Muslim African tribespeople by the nomadic Arab militias called janjaweed with the enthusiastic assistance of the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, has been going on for over two years now. In response, nations from western and central Africa have sent peacekeeping troops; various Western countries, including the United States, have pledged many millions of dollars in aid. Western diplomats led by Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick have worked feverishly to stop the massacres, rapes and forced relocations that the Sudanese government has employed as its weapons of choice. Absent from the picture have been the other Arab states. This is exceedingly strange, and not just because most of Darfur's victims are Muslims. Darfur is thousands of miles away from any of the Western countries trying to stop the genocide there; even the African nations sending peacekeepers are remote. Meanwhile, Egypt, with a huge army, a modern air force and more contacts within Sudan than every Western country combined, has looked on while as many as 400,000 people have been slaughtered just beyond its southern border and has, in effect, done nothing. It's true that Egypt has put on a show of hosting peace conferences. Perhaps because Egypt is determined to take no action to which Sudan might object, these have produced no results (a separate conference sponsored by Nigeria has made some limited progress). Other Arab countries have not done even this much. Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states could pay for more aid out of petty cash than Darfur could use, but Canada, by itself, has pledged more aid than all the Arab countries combined. The number of Saudi, Kuwaiti or Syrian relief workers in Darfur is, as best one can tell, precisely zero. Arab press references to Darfur consist mostly of reprints from Western news services about official government statements, many of them from the Sudanese government itself. One might think this would be a subject worthy of comment or at least curiosity by the U.S. government and the Western media. One would be wrong. Virtually without exception, the Western reaction to Arab silence about genocide being committed by Arabs has been -- silence. The American government has said nothing about it; Western newspapers can write months of news stories and editorials about Darfur without mentioning Egypt or other Arab countries except in passing. It is as if Egypt and Sudan occupied different planets instead of sharing a common border. The Egyptian government acting alone could have, at any time during the past two years, forced Sudan to ground its air force and cease all other support to the janjaweed. While it was not doing this, and was not thinking of doing this, Western governments have made diplomatic efforts, plowing through one forum after another; have conducted aid campaigns; and have even talked earnestly about whether the United States and Canada should send troops. And no one appears to think there is anything odd about this discrepancy. It is a great mystery. Do we really expect indifference, or worse, from Arabs in the face of mass murder? Surely the contradictions between that indifference and President Bush's promotion of democracy and human rights in the Arab world speak for themselves. More important than what we think, though, is what Arabs think. We've heard a lot since Sept. 11, 2001, about how Arabs feel humiliated, ashamed, resentful at being regarded by the West as inferior in some way. Sometimes we ignore these feelings; sometimes we try to appease them. Perhaps it is time to say plainly that the way to earn respect is through deeds worthy of respect. The shameful course of indifference to the slaughter of the African Muslims of Darfur out of solidarity with their murderers is not the only one open to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states. In spite of their support for Sudan's government, diplomacy led by Nigeria and an aid effort led by the United States have reduced the level of violence and starvation in Darfur. Building on this real but exceedingly fragile achievement, and preventing genocide by Arabs in Darfur from resuming, is a task for the civilized world, one in which the Arab countries need to join. Joseph Britt is a writer in Kennesaw, Ga.

Uganda

IRIN 11 July 2005 LRA kills 14 in northern weekend ambush [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] KAMPALA, 11 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - At least 14 people were killed on Sunday when rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) ambushed them in the district of Kitgum, about 400 km north of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, officials said on Monday. "A group of rebels ambushed a pick-up vehicle between Potika and Paloga [60 km northwest of Kitgum town]. Fourteen people have been confirmed dead and more than ten were injured," Nahman Ojwee, Kitgum district council chairman, said. Army spokesman Lt Col Shaban Bantariza said the victims were going to the market in Patika when their vehicle was ambushed and set ablaze. He said the rebels, thought to number about seven, had looted the goods in the vehicle. The head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Kitgum, Mohammed Siryon, said some of the dead were burnt in the vehicle. "The victims' bodies were still lying at the scene of the incident 24 hours later," he added. The 19-year-old war in northern Uganda pits the LRA, led by self-proclaimed mystic Joseph Kony, against the government of President Yoweri Museveni. The brutal conflict has killed tens of thousands and forced some 1.6 million people into internally displaced persons’ camps in the north and east.

Zimbabwe

Reuters 1 July 2005 UN Envoy Meets Zimbabweans Homeless After Clearout By REUTERS Filed at 8:22 a.m. ET CALEDONIA FARM (Reuters) - A U.N. envoy met some of the 300,000 Zimbabweans left homeless by the government's demolition of their shanty homes, but had little to offer them on Friday other than bread and fruit juice. A crackdown on shanty towns the government says were a haven for illegal trade and crime has resulted in several deaths from falling rubble and accidents with vehicles involved in the operation, rights groups say. Anna Tibaijuka, sent by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, visited a camp at Caledonia Farm, a former commercial farm 25 km (16 miles) southeast of Harare, where 4,000 people have been moved after their homes were destroyed. Tibaijuka, a Tanzanian, walked among makeshift tents made from plastic bags as men, women and small children huddled around small fires, trying to keep out the winter morning chill. ``The challenges are quite enormous so we have to work together to improve the situation for everybody,'' said Tibaijuka, who met President Robert Mugabe on Wednesday for what she said afterwards had been constructive discussions. But meeting the homeless on Friday, Tibaijuka had little immediate relief except for bread and fruit juice her entourage brought the camp's residents for breakfast. ``It is very clear they all seem to be anxious to get ... things improved ... when I asked were they happy, I got a resounding 'No'. Definitely there are challenges that we have to work out,'' Tibaijuka said. ``HOMES NOT HANDOUTS'' A group of women sat away from where breakfast was on offer, saying they wanted a place to stay rather than food handouts. Ronia Nziramasanga wiped away tears as she told how her sister killed herself after her home was demolished, leaving five children now in the care of their aunt. ``A lot of people here are sick, some with HIV/AIDS. What is going to happen to them once they are thrown in the rural areas where they can't access help from aid groups?'' On Thursday, Amnesty International and Action Aid said at least three people, including a pregnant woman and a child, had been killed when police razed scores of houses at a squatter camp near Harare, which Tibaijuka visited late Thursday. Police could not be reached for comment on Friday. Two children died in early June as their home was bulldozed. Mugabe's ZANU-PF government, which extended its 25-year grip on power by another five years in March elections the opposition said were rigged, rejects criticism of the demolitions. It says the exercise is meant to rid Zimbabwe of settlements which are hives of illegal trade in scarce hard currency and food. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change says well over 1.5 million people have been displaced and that the crackdown its meant to punish its supporters in the urban strongholds where it kept most of its parliamentary seats. The United States and European nations raised Zimbabwe's housing demolitions in the U.N. Security Council for the first time on Thursday, using a debate on extreme hunger in southern Africa to get the issue on the agenda.

Cape Times ZA 1 July 2004 www.capetimes.co.za Mugabe's regime waging a campaign of genocide, activist warns July 1, 2005 By Melanie Gosling Zimbabwe's Operation Murambatsvina was a well- planned campaign designed by President Robert Mugabe's "genocidal regime" to kill the last of his opponents. Human rights activist and author Judith Todd, who was exiled by Ian Smith's Rhodesian government and returned to Zimbabwe after independence, said at the Cape Town Press Club yesterday that no one should be deluded about what was happening. "I do not use the word 'genocidal' lightly. Just as Gukuruhundi (the rape, killing, torture and beating of thousands of opposition Zapu supporters in Matabeleland in 1982 and 1983) was designed to kill, so is Operation Murambatsvina. "If, in bitter winter, you deprive people and their children of shelter and thus also their food and clothing and warmth - if you deprive them of their tools of trade and their means of survival, you do this for one reason only: you intend them to die." The number of deaths was outstripping the number of births by 4 000 a week. Operation Murambatsvina's goal was "to get rid of the last vestiges of perceived opponents now described by the head of police, Augustine Chihuri, as a 'crawling mass of maggots' ". Even before the unleashing of Operation Murambatsvina, it was estimated that four million Zimbabweans were in grave danger of starvation. If the population was 10 million, the deaths of four million people would reduce the number to six million, which Didymus Mutasa, a minister of state in the office of the president, had said publicly was desirable. Todd, quoting a statement made by Mutasa in 2002, said: "We would be better off with only six million people, with our own people who support the liberation struggle. We don't want all these extra people." Mugabe and Zanu-PF had been planning Operation Murambatsvina a long time. "As Mugabe was reported this morning on South African radio (as saying), it has been ... planned well in advance and ... 'a long-cherished desire'." Todd called on the international community to act. There should be no more solidarity with Zanu-PF and no more political cover. The meetings of the G8, AU and UN in the next weeks should be used to launch "very serious action ... against the genocidal regime", including collecting evidence of crimes against humanity since 1980. Total sanctions should be imposed. "Stop all arms sales, all sales of spare parts, all bank loans - everything that can extend the life of the regime. "(They) will not stop until they are stopped." The longer the regime survived, the greater the number of people who would die. Zimbabweans needed support because, with the destruction of the press, of the rule of law and of the economy, they could no longer drive change. Todd said Zanu-PF prolonged the "fiction" of having been allies of the ANC since Zimbabwe's liberation struggle. But the ties had been forged between the ANC and Zapu under Joshua Nkomo. Zanu, under Mugabe, had stood with the PAC, "lonely, rejected, on the outskirts of the OAU". Amnesty International and Action Aid said yesterday that at least three people, including a pregnant woman and a child, were killed during a "chaotic mass eviction" in the preceding 48 hours at the Porta Farm settlement near Harare. Ten thousand people were evicted.

Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) 30 Jun 2005 Zimbabwe: Mass clearances hit smallest towns While the spotlight has been on the destruction of homes in the cities, people are being displaced all across the country. By IWPR staff in southern Africa (Africa Reports No 37, 30-Jun-05) Most stories about Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's campaign to clear and destroy whole swathes of "illegal" housing have come out of the capital Harare and the other major city, Bulawayo. But Operation Murambatsvina (Drive Out the Rubbish) has been countrywide, affecting small towns as well as cities. An IWPR contributor who visited Victoria Falls in the northwest of the country heard the same kind of stories from dispossessed people now struggling to survive. In Victoria Falls, once a major attraction for foreigners, the owner of a tourist craft village who wante only to be known as "F" told IWPR of troops in armoured vehicles destroying homes and small businesses. "Some of you have heard about [Operation Murambatsvina] on the news, but others didn't realise it hit our little town too," said F. "On a Friday, our African townships were invaded by armoured vehicles and dozens of troops with metal helmets and batons, and they burnt every single house that was not concrete - wooden houses, lean-tos, shacks - smashing windows as they went," he said. In particular, F told how the authorities destroyed homes built for the traditional dancers who entertained tourists who once flocked to the region. He said that five years ago, the village had paid the local council to connect it to the water and sewerage networks and build wooden houses for the dancers, who had no homes of their own. Though they were able to halt the demolition after appealing to the council, and began repairing some of the damage, several days later the police came back. "One of the dancers rushed to the shop to say two armoured cars and 20 police were smashing... and burning everything," said F. "Naturally we couldn't get hold of the police chief or anybody in council, so we just took our truck and tried to salvage as much as we could. Now we sit with 80 or so people with no roof over their heads and nowhere to go." Commenting on the wider campaign of demolition he saw in the Victoria Falls area, F said, "I wept to see such utter destruction. To see thousands of homeless in this cold winter of ours, with their belongings piled up alongside somebody's home, mattresses, blankets, furniture, stoves, fridges, wardrobes and hundreds of small children all staring wide-eyed at what was happening - it was all too sad even to describe. "What is so sad is to buy a wooden home costs millions [of Zimbabwean dollars]. To replace the glass in windows smashed and the roofing asbestos sheets smashed - we are looking at about 80 million per home, which we don't have. "Why they had to smash and burn everything, nobody knows." F once again set about making repairs to his village, and soon everyone at least had a roof over their heads, though with some sharing. Some staff, however, had to be sent back to their rural homes, F said, and one older woman was put into a home for the elderly. If Operation Murambatsvina continues, F fears that everyone will eventually have to return to their native villages. "We will have no traditional village and no traditional dancing for the tourists, who we hope will return soon. Now we hear the police are chasing people away who are sharing accommodation, and even if you are staying in somebody's kitchen you have to go." Eight hundred kilometres away, high in the eastern highlands on the Mozambique border, Mutare provides another case-study of the many small towns where homes have been torn down and livelihoods destroyed. Mutare is one of the coldest areas in Zimbabwe and the Red Cross of Zimbabwe is setting up tents for the estimated 120,000 people who have been displaced there. The Standard, an independent weekly, described how ten-year-old Takudzwa Taroyiwa died of pneumonia after spending nights in the open following the destruction of his family home by police in Mutare. Enock Nhongo told the paper how his wife Chido also died of pneumonia, leaving behind a five-month-old baby, after her home was flattened. Nhongo said although his wife had not been feeling well, her illness worsened after she was exposed to the winter temperatures. "My baby son is now surviving on bottled milk and sleeping in the open like us grown-ups," he said.

AFP 1 Jul 2005 Zimbabwe's best known slum resembles battle scene after demolitions by Fanuel Jongwe PORTA FARM, Zimbabwe, July 1 (AFP) - Porta Farm, a well-known slum west of Zimbabwe's capital Harare, resembled a village hit by an aerial attack as it was visited late Thursday by UN special envoy Anna Tibaijuka. At least three people have been killed here, the latest target of a blitz against crime and squalor by Zimbabwean police, witnesses and Amnesty International have said. Mounds of brick rubble, plastic sheeting, broken asbestos and iron roofing and smashed furniture were all that remained of the homes of 1,500 families at Porta Farm, whose residents were moved here from various parts of the capital ahead of Queen Elizabeth II's visit in 1991. "We are dirt as far as the government is concerned," Samson Banda told Tibaijuka as she walked around the settlement pervaded by a mixture of anger, disillusionment and betrayal. "If you can, please ask our leaders what crime we have committed to deserve such punishment," one young woman requested the UN envoy in flawless English. "They brought us here saying they would build us houses. But we have known nothing but torture and harassment for all the 16 years we have been here," she said. Another woman asked the UN to "please help us or just bury us alive if they can't help us." Women were preparing food on open fires among the debris while some families were trying to piece together remnants of broken furniture when the UN envoy visited the shantytown, once home to some 10,000 people. Witnesses said at least three people were killed when police moved in with bulldozers to flatten the country's best known slum while a woman gave birth in the open after her shack was razed. A woman identified as Jane Peter showed the UN envoy a two-month-old baby who was abandoned by her mother in the ensuing melee. "This child has been crying since morning. We don't know where the mother is," she said. "Maybe she has been taken away by the police." Many complained that the police destroyed their furniture and were forcing them on to trucks heading to a transit camp called Caledonia, set up by the government for families displaced by the clean-up campaign. "Please help us because the police are just beating us up and forcing us to Caledonia," said Wilson Phiri. "We see on television there is no food. This morning they took away two children to force their mother to follow them to the camp." Tibaijuka told the residents: "I am sorry about this... situation but we are going to work together to find a permanent solution." The Zimbabwean government attempted to clear Porta Farm last September using tear gas and excessive force during which at least 11 people died, Amnesty International said in a statement reporting three new deaths. The United Nations estimates that 200,000 people have lost their homes since police started the two-pronged "Operation Restore Order" and "Operation Murambatsvina" six weeks ago, flattening backyard shops and stalls across the southern African country. The opposition says the number of homeless is closer to 1.5 million, while tens of thousands had been arrested and charged for various offences. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan last week sent Tibaijuka to Zimbabwe to assess the humanitarian impact of the demolitions and the clean-up campaign. She held talks with President Robert Mugabe on Wednesday and visited areas affected. Mugabe said afterwards that the demolitions had been planned well in advance, and the government was setting aside 333 million US dollars to build new homes. fj/jhe/mb Copyright (c) 2005 Agence France-Presse Received by NewsEdge Insight: 07/01/2005 07:37:39

BBC 3 July 2005 Clergy lament Zimbabwe 'tragedy' By Nick Miles BBC News, Johannesburg Demolitions have left hundreds of thousands homeless Methodist bishops from southern Africa have warned that a potential genocide could take place in Zimbabwe. The bishops, meeting in Johannesburg, also called on South African president Thabo Mbeki to do more to help the rights of refugees leaving Zimbabwe. The comments come six weeks after the start of mass demolitions of illegally built houses and stalls. According to the United Nations, the destruction of shanty towns has left at least 200,000 people homeless. The statement from the bishops was unequivocal: "We have on our hands a complete recipe for genocide; we're witnessing a tragedy of unprecedented enormity." It's one of the strongest statements yet from church leaders in the region on the human rights situation in Zimbabwe. It mirrors similar sentiments expressed last month by Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo, a leading critic of President Robert Mugabe. Quiet diplomacy At a meeting in Johannesburg, the Methodist bishops also called on Thabo Mbeki to do more to make it easier for people to come from Zimbabwe to claim refugee status and protect their rights. The bishops urged South Africa to do more for Zimbabwean refugees They also criticised the South African government for its quiet diplomacy approach to Zimbabwe which has fallen short of openly criticising President Mugabe. The statement came as a UN special envoy, Anna Tibaijuka, continues her visit to Zimbabwe to assess the impact of the government campaign against illegal structures and informal traders. Opposition groups there say the campaign was aimed at persecuting their supporters. A number of political leaders, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have spoken out against the campaign. But African leaders have remained silent. They consider the demolitions an internal matter for Zimbabwe.

Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) Date: 30 Jun 2005 Zimbabwe: Evicted urban poor held in campsWith their homes and livelihoods destroyed, the future looks bleak for the victims of the government's mass demolition project. By Absolom Chidzitsi in New Caledonia (Africa Reports No 37, 30-Jun-05) Twelve-year-old Russel Magodo waits in a queue for the single pit latrine shared by 100,000 people at New Caledonia, a temporary camp about 30 kilometres from the Zimbabwean capital Harare. The temperature is dipping towards zero in southern Africa's short but sharp winter, and it is drizzling with rain. Russel has ended up in this camp because like everyone else here, the Magodo family have seen their home demolished on the orders of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. Mugabe turned on the poorest of the poor in late May, bulldozing, sledgehammering and burning their homes on the margins of Zimbabwe's cities and towns before forcibly removing them to so-called "transit camps" in the countryside. These sites dot the entire country and, in another time and place, might have been described as concentration camps. A Zimbabwean reporter for IWPR evaded armed police guards to enter New Caledonia, established on a confiscated and now unproductive commercial farm, and spoke first to Russel Magodo as he stood patiently in the 40-metre toilet queue. Increasingly, the refugees do not bother to wait, relieving themselves in the surrounding bush and adding to the already imminent health hazards. There is no clean water at New Caledonia. For washing and drinking, the new residents have to make do with a small stream that runs past the camp. Russel Magodo and his three sisters are among 300,000 children who humanitarian organisations estimate have been forced out of school as a result of Mugabe's blitzkrieg on their homes in Operation Murambatsvina -- "Drive Out the Rubbish" in the Shona language. The Magodos and hundreds of others watched government bulldozers wreck their homes and trading stalls in Harare's working class suburb of Hatcliff, before they were herded on to government trucks and taken to New Caledonia, where they live under 24-hour police surveillance. Russel's father, 39-year-old Tonderai Magodo, is in tears as he describes how police and officials ordered the destruction of his house. He had used the proceeds of a retrenchment package from a once-permanent job to build the home. The houses destroyed by Mugabe's soldiers and police are described as shacks. But "shack" is sometimes too grand a term to describe the corrugated iron, plastic, asbestos and cardboard shelters that house the majority of Africans south of the equator, covering entire landscapes. Enter a shack and it is like walking through the looking glass. Interiors are immaculate, the dirt floors covered with lino, kitchens lined with units and gas-fired stoves, beds in the back rooms, the walls papered and lined with posters of footballs stars and religious icons. All of it - everything the owners possess from a lifetime of struggle - kept spotlessly clean by "mamas" who often spend their days working as domestic staff for better-off black and white people. "It was a nightmare," said Tonderai, putting the final touches to a primitive wood and plastic shelter for his young family at New Caledonia. "They demolished the house and they loaded us on to the trucks and took us here. There is no water, no school." The future looks bleak for Tonderai. The small food stall he ran was demolished at the same time as his house, which had brick and concrete foundations and five rooms. Police stole his entire stock, including precious cooking oil and sugar supplies. "We are not allowed to do any business here and soon we will run out of food," he said. "The nearest school is six miles away and there is no clinic or medical service." All the time, fresh arrivals are being dumped at New Caledonia and other camps after their homes have been wrecked. Women are giving birth on sheets of cardboard without medical attention. Another New Caledonia arrival, 67-year-old Never Panganga, is diabetic but can no longer attend hospital for regular check-ups, and his medicine will soon run out. "I can't walk seven miles [to the nearest hospital], I'm too old," he said. "Besides I have been too busy building the shack and trying to get food." Pangana survives on a pension which, because of Zimbabwe's rampant inflation, allows him to buy only one loaf of bread, a small sack of ground maize and a bottle of cooking oil each month. He compares his present situation with the days when the white government of Rhodesia established camps called "keeps" to stop people from supporting liberation fighters. "I lived in the keeps during [Prime Minister Ian] Smith's time. To me, it is the same life that we are living here, if not worse," he said. Like other people evicted from their homes, Pangana cannot understand the logic behind Operation Drive Out the Rubbish, nor does he know how or when it will end. Most analysts believe Mugabe is punishing urban dwellers for having supported the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, MDC, in the parliamentary election in March. By driving them into rural areas he can both punish and control them. There is no living for them in the countryside. Following Mugabe's destruction of Zimbabwe's mainly white-run commercial farming system, rural people are jobless and entirely dependent on food handouts, controlled through a system of chiefs and village headmen in government pay. The situation of the people of New Caledonia is hopeless. The MDC for which they voted is nowhere to be seen, and Mugabe has banned humanitarian organisations from distributing food, clothing and medicines in the camps. A group of Zimbabwean Catholic, Anglican and Evangelical church leaders has condemned the clearances as "dehumanising" for the whole nation. In a joint statement, the churchmen said, "A manmade humanitarian crisis has been created. People urgently need shelter, food, clothing, medicines and transport. Physically, these people suffer greatly. Deep within, a psychological scar has been created. Their essential nature as spiritual beings has been grossly denied and their humanity reduced to the rubble that surrounds them." An aid worker based in Harare, whose organisation has been denied access to New Caledonia, said, "I have been on many missions before, but this is the first time I have seen a government doing this to its own people. Our major worry is the small children and the sick. It's horrifying." Absolom Chidzitsi is the pseudonym of an IWPR contributor in Zimbabwe.

BBC 5 July 2005 'Callous' raids anger Mugabe ally President Mugabe says the operations is designed to remove criminals from cities A former director of Zimbabwe's secret police has told the BBC that he left the ruling party over the "callous" destruction of people's homes. Former Zanu-PF MP Pearson Mbalekwa contradicted President Robert Mugabe's assertions that the operation had been planned long in advance. "If there was a plan, we wouldn't have people sleeping under trees or next to rivers," he said. The shanty town demolitions have left 200,000 people homeless, the UN says. Operation Murambatsvina [Drive Out Rubbish] has been condemned by teachers, doctors, church groups, the UN and the opposition. At the weekend, Methodist bishops from Southern Africa warned of a potential genocide. Mr Mugabe says the six-week operation is aimed at ridding urban areas of criminals. 'Puzzled' Mr Mbalekwa, a former senior director of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), was a member of Zanu-PF's senior body, the central committee, until resigning last Friday. He said that neither the central committee nor MPs were consulted until the crackdown had already begun. See before and after images of township clearance in Harare. Enlarge Image "This thing was not planned, it was done haphazardly, thereby causing a lot of suffering to people," he told the BBC's Network Africa programme. He said he had no idea why the operation was being carried out. "It puzzles me and it puzzles all sane people," he said. The opposition says its urban supporters are being punished for voting against Zanu-PF in March elections. But many of the demolitions have also been of structures built by Zanu-PF supporters on previously white-owned farms. UN special envoy, Anna Tibaijuka, has extended by a week her visit to Zimbabwe to assess the impact of the government campaign against illegal structures and informal traders.

IRIN 8 July 2005 AU envoy leaves without completing mission [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] JOHANNESBURG, 8 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - The African Union (AU) envoy who arrived in Zimbabwe last week to evaluate the impact of the controversial demolition of informal settlements has left the country without completing his mission, according to official media. AU spokesman Adam Thiam confirmed that Bahame Tom Nyanduga, a member of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, Special Rapporteur Responsible for Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Internally Displaced Persons in Africa, left Zimbabwe on Thursday. He was unable to comment on the details of his mission or departure. However, the official Herald newspaper, quoting official sources, reported on Friday that Nyanduga's mission was "unprocedural", as diplomatic protocol had not been followed. During the cleanup campaign, launched in May, thousands of informal settlements have been demolished and at least 375,000 people left homeless; the authorities have claimed it was part of an urban renewal strategy that will eventually build 10,000 homes at a cost of US $300 million. According to Zimbabwean television, the demolition drive has been endorsed by Minister of Health and Child Welfare Dr David Parirenyatwa, who described the exercise as a "breath of fresh air". The minister was quoted as saying that prior to the cleanup operation he had been unable to implement the Public Health Act "because of the situation that there was in Harare and other cities in this country: the overcrowding, the degree of sewage, the danger to clean water supplies, the number of rodents that have sprouted up, the number of street children ..."

www.zimbabwesituation.com

Americas

Brazil

BBC 1 May 2005 Brazilian Indians free policemen The hostage takers oppose the creation of the reservation Amazon Indians in Brazil have freed four police officers they held hostage in protest at the creation of a huge indigenous reservation. They were kidnapped last week by Macuxi tribesmen in the northern state of Roraima, who fear the new reserve will leave them without jobs. The officers' release was secured after the government agreed to improve the Indian's living conditions. The Raposa Serra Do Sol reserve covers 17,000 sq km (6,500 sq miles). Called "the land of the fox and mountain of the sun" by the 12,000 the mainly Macuxi and other tribes who live there, it is the size of a small country. Its creation follows 30 years of campaigns by the Indians, which led to bitter conflicts with settlers and farmers. But a minority of Macuxi fear they would be left jobless once the reservation is established and non-Indian employers, principally rice producers, are forced to leave the area. The policemen were seized on 22 April from a village near the city of Boavista after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva approved the creation of the reserve. The hostage-takers demanded that the president revoke the decree. But they released the officers after accepting a government undertaking to improve living conditions for the tribes in the reserve, including access to schools and electricity. "The police have just been freed and are all well," federal police superintendent Francisco Mallman told news agency AFP.

Canada

BBC 4 July 2005 Pinochet hospital trip for tests Augusto Pinochet's family said he had suffered a stroke last month The former Chilean military ruler, General Augusto Pinochet, has made a brief visit to hospital for what doctors say were routine tests. It came two days before a hearing on whether to strip him of legal immunity. Gen Pinochet is accused of involvement in a secret operation in which more than 100 left-wing activists vanished. The Chilean Appeal Court hearing should have taken place last month but was delayed after the 89-year-old's family said he had suffered a minor stroke. Lawyers for the former president insist on his innocence in the case, known as Operation Colombo. Human rights campaigners have accused the general of exaggerating his health problems to try to win the sympathy of the courts. He was also treated in hospital in May after suffering what aides said was a suspected mild stroke.

Reuters 6 July 2005 Canada asked U.S. to intervene in Talisman case By Jeffrey Jones CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canada asked Washington to persuade a U.S. court to dismiss a lawsuit against Talisman Energy Inc. that alleges the Calgary-based oil company aided genocide in southern Sudan, documents show. The suit, filed in a New York district court in 2001 by the Presbyterian Church of Sudan, is dogging Talisman despite its exit from the Sudanese oil industry two years ago. The company has made at least two attempts to have the case thrown out of court and maintains the charges in the suit are "outrageous and absolutely without merit." The Canadian government's move to stop the case from going forward was made public in a Toronto Star newspaper report on Wednesday. The intervention could be troublesome for Ottawa, which has emphasized soft power and legal remedies over military strength in Sudan. Prime Minister Paul Martin made a show in May of pledging C$170 million ($137 million) in aid for Sudan's ravaged Darfur region. The six-page diplomatic note to the State Department from the Canadian embassy in Washington that was made public by the Star shows the Canadian government asked U.S. officials to intervene. The note followed a similar missive sent last summer. In the most recent, dated Jan. 14, the embassy stressed Canada's opposition to the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows lawsuits against foreign companies over actions alleged to have occurred outside the United States. It says the case is "problematic" for international relations because the "assumption of extraterritorial jurisdiction by a U.S., court constitutes an infringement in the conduct of foreign relations by the Government of Canada." In its position statement to the court, the State Department said it took no position on the question of genocide in the case, but that it shared Canada's concern over U.S. federal courts exercising wide extraterritorial jurisdiction. "Without getting into the details of this case, the principle is that we do not think a judge should be asked to essentially make foreign policy decisions, which is the responsibility of the government," a State Department official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters on Wednesday. The suit alleges Talisman helped Sudanese forces in a "brutal ethnic cleansing campaign" against civilians in the south of the country based on the civilians' ethnicity or religion. Talisman, it alleges, participated in the armed campaign to enhance its ability to explore and extract oil from areas of southern Sudan, site of a two-decade civil war. Talisman sold its 25 percent interest in Sudan's main oil project for $771 million in 2003. It has maintained its presence was positive because, as a public company reporting to its shareholders, it brought attention to the conditions in Sudan. It also points out it funded schools, hospitals and other public works projects and has continued to fund humanitarian causes there. Talisman spokesman Barry Nelson declined to comment on Canada's diplomatic efforts, which the Star reported came at the company's urging, citing constraints imposed by the court. Judge Denise Cote of the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, is expected to rule on arguments about foreign relations, although it is not clear when. In June, Cote rejected a second attempt by Talisman to have the suit dismissed on what it called "a purely legal issue." David Kilgour, independent member of Canada's parliament, sent a letter to Martin on Tuesday saying the government's intervention in the case raised doubts about its commitment to human rights. Spokesmen for Canada's foreign affairs department and Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew had no immediate comment. (With reporting by Randall Palmer in Ottawa and Saul Hudson in Washington)

PanARMENIAN.Net ( July 2005 MONTREAL NEWSPAPER WRITES ABOUT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE WITHOUT QUOTES 09.07.2005 03:57 / The Gazette newspaper being issued in Montreal stated about its intention to use the phrase «Armenian Genocide». «Historical facts show that what happened in Turkey in 1915 was a genocide. Reporters and editors have the right to use the word genocide freely and without quotes,» says a statement of the newspaper leaders. The statement also notes, «in case of need we can provide proof that Turkey denies Armenian claims, however each time speaking of the Armenian Genocide we are not obliged to remind that Turkey denies it.» Leading US newspapers – the Boston Globe and New York Times lately pursue such policy, reported RFE/RL.

Colombia

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 1 Jul 2005Thousands affected by fighting near Colombia-Ecuador borderBOGOTÁ, Colombia, July 1 (UNHCR) – Fighting in south-western Colombia has driven thousands of civilians out of their homes, including more than 100 into neighbouring Ecuador. Heavy fighting in recent days between irregular armed groups and the Colombian army has displaced more than 1,200 Awá indigenous people in the Ricaurte municipality of Nariño province. About 29 Awá families (some 116 people) have so far crossed into Ecuadorian territory. "We fear that hundreds more may be currently displaced in the area or find themselves trapped in their villages by the armed groups, unable to find enough food and living under extremely dangerous security conditions," UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva on Friday. "We are also concerned that the blockades against the movement of people and goods, the presence of anti-personnel mines and unexploded munitions, as well as heavy material damage and loss of livestock, could hamper the reintegration of the displaced in the event they return to their homes following the end of hostilities." The same area of Nariño province witnessed intense combat and massive internal displacement in February 2004. Redmond noted that UNHCR is monitoring the situation closely through its offices on both sides of the border. Meanwhile, in neighbouring Putumayo province, battles have broken out near the town of Teteyé following a June 25 attack by armed guerrilla groups against Colombian military forces that were protecting petroleum installations in the area. Twenty-one Colombian army soldiers were killed in the attack. An estimated 4,000 people in Teteyé, Nuevo Horizonte, La Cabaña and La Carmelita have been unable to move to safer areas inside Colombia due to the presence of armed groups and the destruction of several bridges during the fighting. The clashes have impeded the civilian population's ability to seek safety across the border. Communities further away along the Putumayo river have also been affected. "We urgently call for the respect of the rights of the civilian population as well as for the respect of the special protection measures for indigenous populations established under international and Colombian law," said Redmond.

Haiti

1-07-2005 Press Release 05/37 ICRC staff member abducted and found dead in Haiti Geneva / Port au Prince (ICRC) – Joël Cauvin, a Haitian staff member of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), was abducted in the evening of 29 June near his home. He was found dead yesterday morning. The ICRC is deeply distressed by the death of Mr Cauvin, who had been taking an active part in the organization's humanitarian activities for the past 10 years. It extends its heartfelt sympathy to his family, friends and colleagues. The ICRC is extremely concerned about the growing insecurity in Haiti. It will continue to conduct its neutral, impartial and independent humanitarian operations for the civilians who are suffering from the current violence in the country.

www.haitiaction.net 9 July 2005 Haiti Action Committee condemns UN massacre in Haiti, demands an end to the killing The Haiti Action Committee today condemned a July 6 massacre of Haitian civilians in Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince carried out by UN "peacekeepers". Dave Welsh, a delegate with the San Francisco Labor Council who was in Haiti as part of a labor/human rights delegation, said, "This full-blown military attack on a densely-populated neighborhood, which multiple sources confirm killed at least 23 people, is a crime." Published estimates indicate that upwards of 50 may have been killed and an indeterminate number wounded, and that more than 300 heavily armed UN troops took part in the assault on the neighborhood. The attack took place in Cite Soleil, an extremely poor area that is staunchly supportive of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Aristide was forced from office by the U.S. embassy in collusion with U.S.-backed paramilitaries on February 29, 2004 and is now in exile in South Africa. Seth Donnelly, a California teacher with the same delegation, visited the scene of the massacre and spoke to traumatized survivors of the attack. "This operation started early Wednesday morning at 3am, with Jordanian and other troops on foot and in tanks and helicopters with machine gun turrets. It was a full-scale attack. Survivors told us that when they saw UN troops they felt that, unlike Haitian police, they would not fire on civilians, but that the 'peacekeepers' soon began shooting into houses and at civilians. " The Labor/Human Rights Delegation from the United States, sponsored by the San Francisco Labor Council, had been in Haiti since late June to attend the Congress of the Confederation of Haitian Workers (CTH), the country's largest labor organization, and met with hundreds of Haitian workers, farmers and professionals, interviewing scores of them about the current labor and human rights crisis in Haiti. Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti Action Committee noted, "MINUSTAH [The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti] apologized to the Haitian police for its delayed arrival on the scene of an incident where two Haitian police officers were killed on May 22, but it has never once apologized for any of the many documented instances where UN troops killed Haitian civilians. This latest attack, in which people in their homes and on the way to work were killed for no reason, is beyond the pale. Such atrocities must not be accepted by the international community. Those responsible for these killings of civilians must be brought to trial." Labossiere concluded that the U.S.Embassy should immediately refrain from more statements which provide a "green light" for slaughter of civilians. "By recently calling grassroots activists 'gang members' and 'terrorists', U.S. Ambassador James Foley sent a signal that it's open season on civilians. This is especially Orwellian, since the real terrorists in Haiti are the UN troops, the Haitian police and the paramilitaries who are killing civilians. Under its most recent mandate, the UN has supervision of the Haitian police. But instead of stopping the killing of civilians, the UN is stepping up the slaughter," said Labossiere.

Mexico

Reuters 6 July 2005 Gunmen kill ex-official blamed for Mexico massacre ACAPULCO, Mexico, July 6 (Reuters) - A former Mexican official suspected of planning the massacre of 17 Indian peasants 10 years ago was shot to death on Wednesday in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco. Jose Robles Catalan was killed by two unknown gunmen who shot him from a passing car, state officials said. Police were still searching for the killers. Robles had been Guerrero state's interior minister in 1995, when a group of peasant activists was ambushed by police on a rural road in Aguas Blancas, up the coast from Acapulco. Rights groups have long charged that Robles and other high-ranking state officials were behind the massacre, in an example of powerful politicians using terror to silence opponents. Then-Gov. Ruben Figueroa, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico and Guerrero with an iron fist until recently, resigned soon after the massacre. Neither he nor Robles were ever charged, and Robles was considering running for Acapulco mayor in October on the PRI ticket. Some 53 state officials, including police, were arrested for the Aguas Blancas attack and 13 were convicted. Rights groups continued to call for the prosecution of former top state officials. President Vicente Fox ended the PRI's 71-year rule in historic elections in 2000, and this year the PRI was ousted from the governor's seat in Guerrero for the first time.

Peru

AP 6 July 2005 Peru judge orders 118 arrested in slayings RICK VECCHIO Associated Press LIMA, Peru - A Peruvian judge ordered the arrest of 118 current and retired military officials for their alleged involvement in the 1988 massacre of peasants in an Andean village, the court said Tuesday. The arrests were ordered in connection with the torture and killing of more than two dozen villagers in Cayara on May 14, 1988, and subsequent human rights violations in two neighboring hamlets in the area, about 250 miles southeast of Lima. The initial attack was in response to an ambush of an army patrol by Maoist Shining Path guerrillas. Judge Miluska Cano Lopez's order comes a month after another judge issued arrest warrants for 29 current and former military officials for a similar 1985 massacre of 72 peasants in Accomarca, another village in the Ayacucho region, where the Shining Path was founded. The arrest orders pit Peru's civilian courts against its military justice system, which historically has jurisdiction over its personnel implicated in human rights abuse cases. The military courts rarely mete out harsh punishment. In 1992, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concluded that the Peruvian army massacred at least 26 peasants in Cayara on May 14, 1988, then a week later executed three more peasants, before systematically killing eight witnesses. A ninth witness, a 22-year-old nurse, was slain in September 1989, human rights groups said. The woman's parents and neighbors said they watched, helpless, as eight men in army uniforms, faces hidden by black ski masks, broke down her front door, dragged her into the street and fired three bullets into her head and chest. The case was revived by Peru's government-appointed truth commission, which in its final 2003 report blamed state security forces for nearly half of an estimated 70,000 people killed during Peru's bloody insurgency between 1980-2000.

United States

GenocideInterventionFund.org 1 July 2005 BE A WITNESS www.BeAWitness.org Genocide is the ultimate crime against humanity. And a government-backed genocide is unfolding in the Darfur region of the Sudan. As the horror in Darfur continues, our major television news networks are largely missing in action. During June 2005, CNN, FOXNews, NBC/MSNBC, ABC, and CBS ran 50 times as many stories about Michael Jackson and 12 times as many stories about Tom Cruise as they did about the genocide in Darfur. Whether it is coverage of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, the Ethiopian famine in the 1980s, or recent coverage of the tsunami, television news can help stop grave injustices and end human suffering. Increased television coverage of the genocide in Darfur has the power to spur the action required to stop a devastating crime against humanity. Genocide in Darfur is happening right before our eyes. Ask our networks why we can't see it. http://www.beawitness.org/do_more

AFP WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush took aim at critics who say he has not done enough to help Africa, unveiling proposals to battle malaria and promote women's education a week from a key world summit. Bush -- who travels next week to Scotland for meetings with world leaders from seven rich countries plus Russia -- also defended his administration's policy on Darfur and sharply criticized Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe. "He is a terrible example," Bush said at a group interview with four news organizations, including AFP. "Zimbabwe was a bread basket, provided a lot of food on a continent that often needs food. And it's a country being wrecked." In the roundtable as well as a speech, the US president rejected criticisms that the United States is relatively stingy with humanitarian aid to Africa and announced steps to double such assistance by 2010. Bush said that, over the next four years, the United States would spend 400 million dollars to train a half-million teachers and to fund about 300,000 scholarships for young people, mostly girls. "We must give more girls in Africa a real chance to avoid exploitation and to chart their own future," said the president. White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley later said that total US aid to the impoverished continent would go from 4.3 billion dollars in 2004 to 8.6 billlion in 2010. Bush also urged Washington's Group of Eight partners -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia -- to join an international campaign to battle malaria when they meet in Gleneagles, Scotland, July 6-8. Bush said the disease claimed about one million lives in Africa last year, "and in the overwhelming majority of cases, the victims are less than five years old, their lives suddenly ended by nothing more than a mosquito bite." "In the next five years, with the approval of Congress, we'll spend more than 1.2 billion dollars on this campaign," the president declared. White House officials say some proportion of that money will go to the existing international fund to battle widespread communicable diseases in Africa. Bush said the funds would first go to help with indoor spraying, anti-mosquito netting, and anti-malarial drugs in Tanzania, Uganda, and Angola, and would broaden to another four countries in 2007 and five more in 2008. The US president had already announced earlier this month, as he welcomed British Prime Minister Tony Blair, that the United States would provide 674 million dollars in emergency aid to Africa. Blair, who hosts the G8, has made aid to Africa one of the central themes of the summit. Bush has been cool to calls for industrialized countries to provide 0.7 percent of their gross domestic income in aid to Africa, and has repeatedly said that US funds ought to come with strings like requiring good governance. "Overcoming extreme poverty requires partnership, not paternalism. Economic development is not something we do for countries, it is something they achieve with us. Their leaders, by definition, must play the main role as agents of reform and progress, instead of passive recipients of money," he said. "Over the decades, we've learned that without economic and social freedom, without the rule of law and effective, honest government, international aid has little impact or value," Bush said in his speech. "But where there's freedom and the rule of law, every dollar of aid, trade, charitable giving, and foreign and local investment can rapidly improve people's lives," he said. In the media roundtable, Bush focused on upheaval in Zimbabwe and urged urged countries in the region, especially South Africa, to pressure him to change. "Next door to you is a person that is destroying a country because of bad policy, and it's not right. And the nations in the neighborhood must be strong," He said. On Sudan's violence-wracked Darfur region, Bush defended his policy of not sending US troops and fiercely denied that he was softening on what he again called "genocide" there because of counterterrorism cooperation with Khartoum. "That's a preposterous claim. It's not even close to the truth," Bush said. "Ours is the nation that called this a genocide and we take this situation in Darfur very seriously." The best way to keep the warring parties separate is to use African Union forces, he said.

Independent UK 2 July 2004 US described Darfur as 'genocide' to please Christian right - Danforth Destinator : (enter destinator's email address) From (enter your name) (enter your email) By Anne Penketh, The Independent LONDON, July 2, 2005 -- The Bush administration described the Darfur atrocities as genocide in order to please the Christian right ahead of the American presidential elections, according to a senior US official. Bush, Powell & Danforth America's former ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth, made the admission in an interview in which he confirmed that the Bush administration's stance was dictated by domestic considerations. The Bush administration aligned its position last year with that of the US Congress, which urged President Bush in a vote in July to call the mass killings and ethnic cleansing in western Sudan 'by their rightful name: genocide'. At that time, more than one million black Africans had been forced from their homes by militias allied to the Islamist government in Khartoum, and 60,000 people had been killed. The UN had described Darfur as 'the worst humanitarian disaster in the world' but declined to call it genocide. Mr Danforth was asked by the BBC's Panorama programme whether the characterisation of genocide by President Bush and the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, had hindered a resolution to the Darfur conflict because of the loaded nature of the word. 'I didn't think it had much of an effect one way or another. I just thought that this was something that was said for internal consumption within the US. I did not think it would have very much effect within Sudan,' Mr Danforth said. Asked whether 'internal consumption' referred to the kind of language that would have appealed to the Christian right, he replied: 'Right.' In the same programme, the Development Secretary, Hilary Benn, admits that in Darfur, 'we haven't got it right in this instance.' The conflict is still simmering, more than 2 million people have fled their homes and the UN Security Council is divided on what to do. 'Panorama " 'Never Again': Darfur and The Promise Broken' will be broadcast on BBC1 tomorrow at 10.15pm

NYT July 1, 2005 Next: Spielberg's Biggest Gamble By DAVID M. HALBFINGER LOS ANGELES, June 30 - On Wednesday, Steven Spielberg's apocalyptic thriller "War of the Worlds" invaded movie theaters worldwide. But the director had already moved on. That night in Malta, Mr. Spielberg quietly began filming the most politically charged project he has yet attempted: the tale of a secret Mossad hit squad ordered to assassinate Palestinian terrorists after the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Mr. Spielberg has taken risks before: he said he feared being seen as trivializing the Holocaust when he directed "Schindler's List" in 1993, at a time when he was best known for blockbuster fantasies like "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark." And with "Saving Private Ryan," he gambled successfully on audiences' tolerance for prolonged and bloody combat scenes. But with the as-yet-untitled Munich film, already scheduled for Oscar-season release by Universal Pictures on Dec. 23, Mr. Spielberg is tackling material delicate enough that he and his advisers are concerned about adverse effects on matters as weighty as the Israeli-Palestinian peace process if his project is mishandled - or misconstrued in the public mind. Indeed, the movie's terrain is so packed with potential land mines that, associates say, Mr. Spielberg has sought counsel from advisers ranging from his own rabbi to the former American diplomat Dennis Ross, who in turn has alerted Israeli government officials to the film's thrust. Mr. Spielberg has also shown the script to Mr. Ross's old boss, former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton's aides said Mr. Spielberg reached out to him first more than a year ago and again as recently as Tuesday. Mr. Spielberg is also being advised by Mike McCurry, Mr. Clinton's White House spokesman, and Allan Mayer, a Hollywood spokesman who specializes in crisis communications. The film, which is being written by the playwright Tony Kushner - it is his first feature screenplay - begins with the killing of 11 Israeli athletes in Munich. But it focuses on the Israeli retaliation: the assassinations, ordered by Prime Minister Golda Meir, of Palestinians identified by Israeli intelligence as terrorists, including some who were not directly implicated in the Olympic massacre. By highlighting such a morally vexing and endlessly debated chapter in Israeli history - one that introduced the still-controversial Israeli tactic now known as targeted killings - Mr. Spielberg could jeopardize his tremendous stature among Jews both in the United States and in Israel. He earned that prestige largely for his treatment of the Holocaust in "Schindler's List" and for his philanthropic efforts, through the Shoah Foundation, to preserve testimonies of survivors of the concentration camps. Until now, though, he has been relatively quiet on Middle East politics compared with more vocal American supporters of Israel. Making matters more complicated, an important source for Mr. Spielberg's narrative is a 1984 book by George Jonas, "Vengeance," based largely on the account of a purported member of the Mossad's assassination team, whose veracity was later widely called into question. Friends of Mr. Spielberg said he was keenly aware that admirers of his Holocaust work could misunderstand his new film and regard it as hurtful to Israel. And they noted that he had never before courted controversy so openly. "A lot of people around him never thought he'd make the movie," said one associate, who asked not to be identified, in keeping with Mr. Spielberg's preference for secrecy. Typically, Mr. Spielberg keeps a tight lid on information about coming projects, and he has been especially careful to do so this time. He has revealed that the film will star Eric Bana as the lead Israeli assassin, along with Daniel Craig, Geoffrey Rush, Mathieu Kassovitz, Hanns Zischler and Ciaran Hinds. The director released a short statement simultaneously this week to The New York Times, the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv and the Arab television network Al Arabiya, but he turned down requests for an interview and declined through a spokesman to answer written questions. In the statement, Mr. Spielberg called the Munich attack - which was carried out by Black September, an arm of the P.L.O.'s Fatah organization - and the Israeli response "a defining moment in the modern history of the Middle East." Mr. Spielberg's interest in the question of a civilized nation's proper response to terrorism deepened, aides said, after the 9/11 attacks, as Americans were grappling for the first time with similar issues - for instance, in each new lethal strike on a suspected terrorist leader by a C.I.A. Predator drone aircraft. In Mr. Kushner's script, people who have read it say, the Israeli assassins find themselves struggling to understand how their targets were chosen, whether they belonged on the hit list and, eventually, what, if anything, their killing would accomplish. "What comes through here is the human dimension," said Mr. Ross, formerly the Middle East envoy for Mr. Clinton, who has advised the filmmakers on the screenplay and helped Mr. Spielberg reach out to officials in the region. "You're contending with an enormously difficult set of challenges when you have to respond to a horrific act of terror. Not to respond sends a signal that actions are rewarded and the perpetrators can get away with it. But you have to take into account that your response may not achieve what you wish to achieve, and that it may have consequences for people in the mission." Mr. Spielberg's statement indicated that, despite the implications for other conflicts, his movie - to be shot in Malta, Budapest and New York - was aimed squarely at the Israeli-Palestinian divide. "Viewing Israel's response to Munich through the eyes of the men who were sent to avenge that tragedy adds a human dimension to a horrific episode that we usually think about only in political or military terms," he said. "By experiencing how the implacable resolve of these men to succeed in their mission slowly gave way to troubling doubts about what they were doing, I think we can learn something important about the tragic standoff we find ourselves in today." That Mr. Spielberg has a daunting task ahead - and the degree to which his film will be scrutinized, interpreted and debated - can be seen in the way a few prominent Israelis responded to the mere mention of doubts on the part of the assassins. "I don't know how many of them actually had 'troubling doubts' about what they were doing," said Michael B. Oren, the historian and author of "Six Days of War." "It's become a stereotype, the guilt-ridden Mossad hit man. You never see guilt-ridden hit men in any other ethnicity. Somehow it's only the Jews. I don't see Dirty Harry feeling guilt-ridden. It's the flip side of the rationally motivated Palestinian terrorist: you can't have a Jew going to exact vengeance and not feel guilt-ridden about it, and you can't have a Palestinian who's operating out of pure evil - it's got to be the result of some trauma." And Efraim Halevy, a veteran Mossad agent who headed the organization, Israel's intelligence agency, from 1998 to 2002, warned against reading too much into the misgivings of Israel's hit men. "I know some of the people who were involved," he said. "Maybe people have doubts. If they have doubts, I think it's to their credit. It's not an easy thing to do. But it doesn't mean it's wrong. I'd be very happy to see the doubts on the other side, the fierce debates going on about whether they should or should not do it." Yet Mr. Spielberg's advisers say he is studiously avoiding the most glaring potential trap: drawing a moral equivalency between the Palestinian attack and the Israeli retaliation. While people who have read various versions of the script praised Mr. Kushner, the author of "Angels in America" and "Homebody/Kabul," for humanizing the film's hunted Palestinians and giving a fuller sense of their motivation, they said the terrorists would hold little claim to the audience's sympathies. One scene added by Mr. Kushner, who was commissioned last year to rework an earlier draft by the writer Eric Roth, places an Israeli assassin, posing as a terrorist sympathizer, at a safe house where he listens as Palestinians give voice to their anger but also to their hatred of Jews, two people connected with the film said. Moreover, Mr. Spielberg is making sure to provide enough historical context to explain what impelled Israel to make killers of its sons, as Golda Meir was said to have lamented at the time. "It's easy to look back at historic events with the benefit of hindsight," he said in his statement. "What's not so easy is to try to see things as they must have looked to people at the time." Mr. Spielberg's movie will not be the first dramatic telling of this story. In 1986, HBO adapted Mr. Jonas's book as a television movie, "Sword of Gideon," starring Steven Bauer as the lead assassin, "Avner," along with Rod Steiger and Colleen Dewhurst. Mr. Spielberg became interested more recently, after learning that Barry Mendel, the producer of "The Sixth Sense" and several Wes Anderson films, including last year's "Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou," had acquired the feature rights to the book for Universal several years ago. Anticipating questions about the authenticity of the book's source, Mr. Spielberg has sought to distance the movie from "Vengeance," insisting in his statement that the film is based on multiple sources, "including the recollections of some who participated in the events themselves." But one of them, people involved in the film confirmed, is Juval Aviv, a New York-based security consultant identified years ago as Mr. Jonas's Avner character, whose claims to a career in the Mossad have been disputed by experts on Israeli intelligence. Mr. Aviv did not respond to phone and e-mail messages. Mr. Spielberg originally announced that he would begin production last summer of the script by Mr. Roth, the writer of "Forrest Gump" and "The Insider," but hired Mr. Kushner to humanize what he felt was too procedural a thriller in Mr. Roth's telling, people familiar with both scripts said. In Mr. Roth's script, for instance, the Munich killings dominated the first 15 minutes of the movie. Mr. Spielberg, the readers said, was still weighing how to depict the massacre without minimizing its power, but also without overpowering the audience.

BBC 3 July, 2005 Life on Tennessee's 'Body Farm' All the bodies are from people who donated for scientific research A two-acre spot in East Tennessee known as the "Body Farm", littered with human corpses, has become a popular spot for real-life crime scene investigators. The Body Farm - part of the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility - was set up in 1971, by forensic anthropologist Dr Bill Bass. Dr Bass is proud of the success of the unit. "We have certainly helped a lot of people, solved a lot of crimes, and put some bad people in prison," he told BBC World Service's Outlook programme. Maggots The Body Farm receives around 50 bodies a year, which are placed in the woods and other environments around the facility. Intensive 10-week courses are run on the farm for investigators from police agencies around the US. They learn the proper way to dig up and retrieve a buried body. You get so involved in your project, you don't even really realise there's another body lying on the ground, just right beside you Body Farm student "We teach them archaeological techniques so that they can recover evidence and bone in context," says Dr Lee Meadows-Jance, the co-ordinator of the Body Farm and one of the trainers. A typical storyline of the CSI TV show might be that, when a human body is found, the forensic scientists try to establish how - and how long ago - the victim died. Some of the methods of doing this have been pioneered by the Body Farm. Prime among them is identifying the time of death through the presence of maggots, the recently-hatched larvae of blowflies. "The police don't ask you 'who is that?', they ask you how long they've been there," Dr Bass says. "I thought, 'if I'm going to be talking to police about maggots and how long people have been there, I'm going to have to know something about it'." Research at the farm is ongoing. One current faculty project has seen a body left in a car for two months. The intention is to study changes in hair that have been noticed on decaying bodies. Cub scout tours The intense concentration of bodies in the area means that the smell of death hangs heavily in the air, and leads to some rather unusual working conditions. "You get so involved in your project that you don't even really realise there's another body laying on the ground, just right beside you," one student says. "You just forget about it." The research unit caught the imagination of the general public in 1995, when crime writer Patricia Cornwell published her bestselling novel The Body Farm - based on her own experiences of the facility. The Body Farm pioneered the use of maggots in determining time of death "We were an obscure little research facility in the hills of Tennessee until then," Dr Bass says. "Then the phone started ringing. In one week, we had calls from two cub scout den mothers, who wanted to bring the cub scouts down here for a tour. "That's not what this is, this is a research facility with which we're trying to help police, morticians and society. It's not a tourist attraction." Dr Bass adds that some day his own body may be donated - but he will leave that decision to his wife and children. And he said he had a tremendous amount of respect for the 50 or so people who donate their bodies each year. "I hate death, I hate mourning, I hate funerals - I really do hate that whole scene," he says. "But I never see a forensic case as a dead body. I see it is as a challenge to see whether I have the knowledge and ability to figure out who that individual is, and what happened to them."

NYT 4 July 2005 OPINION The Church-State Wall Is the Best Protection Against Religious Strife By ADAM COHEN The wall of separation between church and state is in real danger of falling now that Sandra Day O'Connor is retiring. The Supreme Court narrowly reaffirmed its commitment to that wall last week in its Ten Commandments rulings, but only because Justice O'Connor voted to maintain that wall. If her replacement votes the other way, there may soon be more crosses, Ten Commandments monuments and prayers on government property. There is a growing debate about what impact that would have on American life. That debate subtly found its way into last week's decisions. The justices generally focus more on what they think the Constitution means than on how their decisions are likely to be received. But two of last week's opinions made oblique reference to the rise of the religious right and its increasing anger over the court's religion rulings. Justice Stephen Breyer, who was a key swing vote, suggested - in an argument that may be gaining strength nationwide - that being less strict about the separation of church and state might appease religious activists and reduce the nation's religious tensions. But Justice David Souter made the more compelling argument that the nation's growing religious divisions only underscore the need for the government to remain neutral in religious matters. The Ten Commandments cases were decided against a backdrop of extraordinary attacks from religious activists. Shortly after the cases were argued, they staged "Justice Sunday," a rally addressed by the Senate majority leader that was beamed to hundreds of churches across the country. Speaker after speaker denounced the judiciary. On his radio show, James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, has compared the "black-robed men" on the Supreme Court to the "men in white robes" of the Ku Klux Klan. It appears, from last week's decisions, that this heated rhetoric may have had an effect on the court. The swing vote in the two cases was Justice Breyer, who usually sides with the court's four-member liberal bloc. In one case, he joined with the liberals - and Justice O'Connor - to strike down Ten Commandments displays on the walls of county courthouses in Kentucky. But in the other, he joined conservatives in upholding a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol. Justice Breyer felt that because there were so many displays like the Texas monument around the country, ordering it removed could "encourage disputes" and "create the very kind of religiously based divisiveness that the Establishment Clause seeks to avoid." But it is not clear that as a practical matter, allowing more religious displays would reduce religious tensions. In fact, Justice Souter, writing for the majority in the Kentucky case, argued just the opposite. Although America is "centuries away from the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre," he wrote, "the divisiveness of religion in current life is inescapable." Given that, Justice Souter warned, "this is no time to deny the prudence of understanding the Establishment Clause to require the government to stay neutral on religious belief." It would be a mistake to make too much of Justice Breyer's brief comment about keeping the religious peace, especially since he also signed on to Justice Souter's opinion, which took the opposite position. But the argument has been made in other places, too. In his new book, "Divided by God," Noah Feldman, a prominent New York University law professor, uses similar reasoning to argue that the courts should "loosen up on religious talk and symbols." There is undeniably a need for more common ground between conservative Christians and the rest of the country. But injecting more religion in public life is the wrong way to go about achieving it. If government forums are opened to religious expression, we can look forward to bitter fights about what kind to permit. The City Council in Boise, Idaho, hardly a hotbed of secularism, voted to move a Ten Commandments monument off city property a while back after a right-wing minister insisted on his right to put up his own religious monument - one denouncing homosexuality and saying that Matthew Shepard, the slain gay Wyoming college student, was in hell. Opening up government forums to religion would almost inevitably prompt more fighting over exactly which religion gets to participate. A narrow view of which religion should be intertwined with government was on display last month in Guilford County, N.C., where the presiding judge ruled that Muslim witnesses cannot take their oaths on the Koran. If that were allowed, he said, someone who worshiped brick walls might want to swear on a brick. When Justice O'Connor's successor joins the court, the church-state wall is very likely to weaken. If Justice Breyer is right, yielding ground to religious advocates could reduce "religiously based divisiveness." But if Justice Souter is right, it would only make things worse. The early response to last week's decisions was not encouraging. The day the rulings came down, the Christian Defense Coalition announced a campaign to place more Ten Commandments monuments in communities across the country. One community the group has taken aim at is Boise - which all but guarantees there is plenty more divisiveness yet to come.

Asia-Pacific

Afghanistan

BBC 4 July 2005 US air strike 'killed 17 Afghans' The air strike by US forces in eastern Afghanistan last week killed 17 civilians including women and children, a provincial governor has said. US planes had bombed Chechal village as part of a search for four missing US special forces servicemen. Assadullah Wafa, governor of Konar province, said the bombing was a "mistake" and called for a US inquiry. One of the missing US soldiers has been found safe and the search is continuing for the other three. There should be an investigation so this should not happen again Assadullah Wafa, Konar governor Concern grows for troops Nightmare mission A US helicopter that was sent to look for the missing men was shot down by suspected Taleban militants, killing 16 US soldiers. Mr Wafa told the BBC he thought the air strike on the village was not intentional, but said: "We would ask for an answer from the American military." QUICK GUIDE Afghanistan He said US planes were still flying in the area but there was no further bombing. He could not give more details on the civilian casualties. A US military spokesman said of the bombing: "We don't have any information on that but we are still assessing the situation." At the weekend US military sources said some civilians may have been killed in the raid. 'Lucky shot' US soldiers rescued one of the missing servicemen on Saturday. There has been no word on the fate of the remaining three members of his team, who have reportedly not made radio contact since their disappearance. A Chinook sent to search for the US soldiers was shot down A US military spokesman said that a search operation to find the other unit members was going on despite bad weather, mountainous terrain and the continued threat of militant attacks. The BBC's Andrew North, in eastern Afghanistan, says the rescued soldier reportedly pointed the US search team in the direction where other members of the team had gone, but their whereabouts and condition still remains unclear. The downing of the helicopter was the biggest single US combat-related loss of life in Afghanistan since the overthrow of the Taleban government in late 2001. Claims by a Taleban spokesman that they had captured the men have been denied by the US. Names and details of the 16 troops who died on board the Chinook have already been released by the US military. US officials said it had been a "lucky shot" by the suspected Taleban fighters that brought down the helicopter. Escalating violence in southern and eastern Afghanistan has seen some 500 people killed in recent weeks, mainly suspected militants. The US has sent additional troops to Konar as part of a new operation - Operation Flier - against militants in the region, ahead of parliamentary elections due in September.

BBC 5 July 2005 US Afghan tactics 'need rethink' US forces search for the Taleban close to the Pakistan border The Afghan government has called for a rethink in the US-led fight against the Taleban and their allies. Seventeen people, including women and children were killed in a US bombing raid in the eastern province of Konar last week, the local governor says. President Hamid Karzai is "extremely saddened" by the deaths, his spokesman told reporters on Tuesday. The US military has now confirmed that it has found the bodies of two elite special soldiers missing in the region. 'Our people suffer' "The president is extremely saddened and distressed to hear the report that recent military operations in Konar by the coalition forces resulted in the death of civilians," Mr Karzai's spokesman, Jawed Ludin, told a press conference in the capital, Kabul. QUICK GUIDE Afghanistan "We cannot explain to our own people that they should suffer in our fight against terrorism." He then went on to call for new ways of conducting the US-led fight against insurgents in Afghanistan. "Together with our coalition partners, the government of Afghanistan would like to emphasise that we do need to rethink some of our strategies, especially those that can produce tragic results like the death of civilians." Taleban benefit from enemy disagreements Mr Ludin said the government had opened an investigation into the incident. The US military has said it regrets that civilians were killed in the air strike but maintains that it struck a valid target, and that enemy "terrorists" were among those killed. The bombing was part of an operation in Konar province in which US forces were attempting to rescue a number of colleagues stranded in inhospitable terrain where they had been under fire from militants. A US Chinook helicopter was shot down in the operation, with all 16 soldiers on board killed. The Taleban say they brought it down. It was the heaviest number of deaths US forces have suffered in a single incident in Afghanistan since toppling the Taleban in 2001. 'Whereabouts unknown' On Tuesday the US military confirmed BBC reports from Monday that it had found the bodies of two of the special forces soldiers it had been trying to rescue. A Chinook sent to search for the US soldiers was shot down A terse statement issued in Kabul said: "The whereabouts of one service member remains unknown." On Sunday the US military said troops had rescued a fourth member of the team. Recent months have seen an sharp rise in activity by the Taleban and their allies in south-eastern and eastern Afghanistan. They have vowed to disrupt parliamentary elections due to be held in September. www.afghangovernment.com

BBC 6 July 2005 Call for Afghan war crimes court By Andrew North BBC correspondent in Kabul Gen Dostum - critics want him put on trial Afghan President Hamid Karzai should set up a court to try people accused of past war crimes, New York-based campaign group Human Rights Watch says. Several people it names in a new report are now serving in or advising his government, including veteran northern militia commander, Abdul Rashid Dostum. Tens of thousands died in the civil war that erupted in April 1992 after the Soviet-backed government fell. There were widespread atrocities but no one has been brought to justice. QUICK GUIDE Afghanistan Talk to any resident of Kabul in their late teens or older, and chances are they or their relatives will have a terrible story to tell from the early 1990s - of family members or friends killed in the bloody internecine fighting that swept the city. And public opinion surveys have shown a majority of people here still want to see those accused of involvement held accountable. 'Impunity' This detailed Human Rights Watch report - based on two years of research - names some of those facing such allegations, including Abdul Rashid Dostum - who currently holds a senior defence ministry position. Another man named is Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf, leader of an Islamist group who often advises President Karzai, as well as one of his deputies. The Afghan leader has in the past said he supports some kind of accountability process, but no decision has yet been taken. But Human Rights Watch says the current situation amounts to impunity for perpetrators of past abuses. Its concern is that these allegations are being overlooked in the interests of stability - especially with parliamentary elections coming up in September. A spokesman for President Karzai said the government wanted to study the report further before making a response.

The Age 13 July 2005 www.theage.com.au Editorial: The sorry state of black Australia The Government has, until recently, sat on its hands while preaching "practical reconciliation". For nearly a decade, the Howard Government has invoked the mantra of "practical reconciliation" in defining its policy agenda on indigenous affairs. The philosophy was sold as representing a radical break from the Hawke-Keating legacy with its supposedly undue emphasis on "symbolic" measures, such as land rights, as a means of tackling Aboriginal disadvantage. The divide between white and black Australia, we're told, will be bridged by improving outcomes in Aboriginal communities - not by endlessly compensating for perceived historical wrongs. And yet all report cards demonstrate the shameful reality that the Government's record to date has been scarcely less miserable than that of its predecessor. The latest damning instalment comes in the second Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report commissioned by the Council of Australian Governments to track the effectiveness of indigenous policies. It showed that Aborigines still lag behind the rest of the population on key social indicators, such as life expectancy and infant mortality, while in other cases the gap has even widened. An increase in the number of Aborigines imprisoned over the past five years is among the report's grim statistics. While confronting such entrenched social ills is admittedly an enormous, long-term task, Aboriginal welfare has, until recently, been conspicuously absent from the public agenda and this report testifies to the sorry consequences. There are some encouraging signs that suggest the Government's efforts to engage with Aboriginal issues in more recent years may be bearing early fruit. This comes in the form of increased school retention rates for last year and a rise in indigenous employment from 57 per cent in 1994 to 64 per cent in 2002. Both school attendance and workforce participation are central planks in the Government's new social contract with Aboriginal Australia, based on mutual obligation and an end to passive welfare. Indeed, the willingness of the federal and state governments to co-operate on improving outcomes by commissioning such reports is evidence of a dissatisfaction with the status quo. We agree with Indigenous Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone that the report underlines the need for a dramatically different policy approach. We've been waiting far too long for the promise of practical gains to be delivered.

China

BBC 6 July, 2005 Japan 'war orphans' lose case The plaintiffs say they plan to appeal the ruling A Japanese court has ruled that 32 Japanese citizens abandoned as children in China at the end of World War II are not entitled to compensation. Their parents were killed or forced to abandon them when they fled China for Japan at the end of the war in 1945. The plaintiffs said Japan failed to repatriate them early enough and that they are now entitled to compensation. But an Osaka court has ruled that it had no obligation to help the former orphans achieve financial independence. Thousands of Japanese children were left behind in north-east China amid the fighting and confusion of the war's end. They were looked after by Chinese parents and grew up as though Chinese nationals, before the Japanese government started repatriating them in the 1980s. Wednesday's court decision was the first ruling in a series of lawsuits brought by the repatriated individuals. It affected 32 of 111 plaintiffs who brought a 2003 case before the Osaka court. Appeal Lawyers for the group said they planned to appeal against the decision. One of the plaintiffs, Toshio Matsuda, vowed to "continue our fight". "The decision ignores the reality that we face," he said. The group, who are seeking 33m yen (£168,336, $295,700) each, argued that because Tokyo encouraged their families to leave north-eastern China, it had a responsibility to repatriate them. Other groups of people left behind have filed suits in Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara and Hiroshima. More than 2,400 have returned to Japan since the 1980s following the normalisation of ties between the two countries in 1972. But most have found integration into Japanese society difficult. Many were shunned by their relatives and now survive on welfare.

Xinhu 2 July 2005 Newly discovered toxic gas plant tells Japanese wartime atrocity in China www.chinaview.cn 2005-07-02 19:54:55 HOHHOT, July 2 (Xinhuanet) -- Chinese experts have discovered new evidence of the Japanese wartime atrocity in China -- a toxic gas experiment plant in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The plant, known to the locals as "Bayanhan", is located on the grassland of the Ewenki Autonomous Banner in Hulun Buir city, said Xu Zhanjiang, a researcher on the history of Japanese biological war with the Harbin Municipal Academy of Social Sciences in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. "The site covers more than 110 square kilometers, extending nine kilometers from east to west and 13 kilometers from north to south," said Xu. "Pits big and small are seen on the grassland even today." The Inner Mongolia-based researcher said the Japanese soldiers used to conduct biological tests here during the World War II, by blasting gas bombs in pits buried with live human beings and animals. He said a veteran Japanese soldier also gave a vivid account of his army's biological tests in Inner Mongolia in a biography about the Japanese chemical warfare in China. Abide, a native Mongolian born in 1920, said a friend of his witnessed such tests in 1940. "In the spring of 1941, local herders still smelt a suffocating smell at the site. Many men and cattle were later infected with pestilence." Xu said the Japanese had set up the toxic gas plant here because the outlying grassland was sparsely populated and therefore other people were unlikely to find out about their atrocity. "On the other hand, the Japanese army was planning to attack the former USSR from here, because Hulun Buir resembles Russia very much in terms of climate and other natural conditions." Cultural heritage authorities in Hulun Buir city say they plan to include the plant as a heritage site for better preservation.

India

SANA 3 July 2005 DFP leader alleges genocide of Kashmiris SRINAGAR, July 3 (SANA): Secretary General of Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), Maulana Mohammad Abdullah Tari has said that the government of India has given a free hand to the security forces for carrying out a genocide of Kashmiris. According to a spokesman of DFP, Tari stated this while reacting to the Arin-Bandipora incident where the security forces fired indiscriminately upon a group of people in which a 25 year old youth identified as Abdul Gani Lone was killed. Some other people were injured in this incident. "There is no let up in the killings of Kashmiris and people are being killed on regular basis. This is quite unfortunate as both India and Pakistan have come closer in the recent months and there is bonhomie between both these countries. People are being killed, maimed, tortured and arrested by the security forces and there is no end to this ordeal of Kashmiris", said the secretary general of DFP, a KT report said on Sunday. Tari said that both the governments of India and Pakistan are making headway in the solution of Kashmir issue, but the principal party which is the Kashmiris are being killed mercilessly. He added that there are many agencies which are trying to subvert the ongoing peace process and one way of subverting this would be by carrying out a genocide of Kashmiris.

PTI 30 June 2005 Court drops Behmai massacre case against Phoolan Press Trust of India Kanpur, Four years after she was gunned down outside her MP flat in New Delhi, a court closed the case against bandit queen-turned-politician Phoolan Devi in the infamous Behmai massacre of 1981. Names of five other members of her gang are also to be dropped pending police verification of their deaths during the trial proceedings. Judge Naresh Jain of the Special Anti-Dacoity court on Wednesday ordered the name of the late Samajwadi Party MP to be dropped from the Behmai massacre case. He asked the prosecution to get police verification of the deaths of five other accused - Ramkesh, Baladin, Ramavtar, Shivpal and Mata Prasad - who died during trial proceedings. Phoolan Devi and her gang stormed Behmai in Kanpur Dehat district on the night of January 30, 1981, killing 20 Thakurs of the village after rounding them up at gunpoint. Two years later in February 1983, she came out of the Chambal ravines and surrendered to then Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Arjun Singh. After a commuted stay at Gwalior jail, she took to politics, joined the SP and won ticket from Mirzapur Lok Sabha constituency in Uttar Pradesh. On July 25, 2001, Phoolan Devi was gunned down by three assailants while walking home after a morning session of Parliament.

washingtonpost.com 5 July 2005 Attackers Storm Temple Complex in India 6 Assailants Die At Disputed Site Of Razed Mosque By John Lancaster Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, July 6, 2005; A11 NEW DELHI, July 5 -- Six men thought to be Islamic radicals stormed a disputed temple complex that is the main flash point for Hindu-Muslim tensions in India, and five of them died in a gun battle with police, authorities said Tuesday. The sixth man apparently blew himself up. The attack on the temple complex in the town of Ayodhya, about 345 miles east of New Delhi, sparked fears of communal violence of the sort that occurred after Hindu extremists destroyed a mosque on the same site 13 years ago, triggering riots that left more than 2,000 people dead. Security forces across the country were placed on alert after Tuesday's attack. The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) called for nationwide protests over what it said was the failure of the government, led by the Congress Party, to provide adequate security for the temple complex, known to Hindus as Ram Janmabhoomi. Hindu nationalists associated with the BJP have long campaigned for the construction of a temple on the ruins of the mosque. "Tomorrow all over the country we will protest and express anguish over the incident," the BJP's president, L.K. Advani, said at a news conference. "Ram Janmabhoomi is a very sacred place, and the response to the attack over it should be equally fitting." Advani has been accused of encouraging the Hindu mob that tore down the 16th-century Babri mosque in 1992. Many Hindus revere the temple complex as the birthplace of the god Ram and believe the mosque was built on the site of an ancient Hindu temple. Authorities said Tuesday's incident in the state of Uttar Pradesh began about 9:15 a.m. when five of the attackers drove up to the site in a car. Another man then detonated explosives inside a jeep, killing himself and opening a hole in the iron fence that surrounds the 80-acre complex. The five others then entered through the breach and began firing at police, authorities said. "It looked like very powerful explosives were used to create a passage into the complex," a witness told the Reuters news agency. "All the attackers were wearing black trousers and shirts, which made them look like commandos." Police prevented the gunmen from entering the innermost part of the complex, which contains a makeshift, tent-like structure used by Hindu priests and pilgrims. Alok Sinha, the interior secretary of Uttar Pradesh, said that the gun battle lasted nearly two hours and that all five gunmen had been killed, according to Reuters. Three security officers were injured. Authorities said they had not yet identified the attackers, although some of the country's more extreme Hindu nationalist leaders were quick to blame Pakistan for the incident. Pakistan in the past has supported Islamic militant groups fighting Indian forces in the disputed Himalayan province of Kashmir, but relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors have greatly improved since the start of a peace process last year.

BBC 6 July 2005 Hindus protest at Ayodhya attack Protesters tried to break through barricades in Delhi Hindu nationalists in India have held angry protests, a day after an attack on a bitterly disputed religious site. Police fired water cannon to disperse about 1,000 activists in Delhi. Six people were injured in Hindu-Muslim clashes in the eastern city of Ranchi. Police are on high alert across India to prevent religious unrest. No group has claimed Tuesday's attack on the Ayodhya holy complex. One gunman blew himself up and police killed the others in a two-hour gun battle. India won't tolerate an attack on the birthplace of Ram Protester's placard In pictures: Ayodhya protests Advani faces Ayodhya trial The BBC's Sanjeev Srivastava in Ayodhya says there is a mood of uneasy calm in the town, where a strike has closed most shops and businesses. He says the consequences would have been disastrous if civilians had been harmed or the religious site damaged. In 1992 Hindu nationalists tore down the Babri mosque in Ayodhya in northern Uttar Pradesh state, sparking Hindu-Muslim riots in which at least 2,000 people were killed. 'Symbol' attacked The authorities have appealed for calm and security has been stepped up at government and military facilities and religious sites all over India as a precaution. Protests briefly shut the airport in the central city of Indore. Police made about 30 arrests after 30 Hindu activists damaged an airport lounge. The wreckage of the jeep used to blow a hole in the Ayodhya fence A strike called by India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was being observed in Ayodhya on Wednesday, but the response was patchy elsewhere. BJP leader LK Advani told demonstrators in Delhi that the Ayodhya site had been attacked because it was "a symbol of cultural nationalism". He accused the government of security failures. "Down, down Pakistan," the crowd shouted, before they were dispersed by police firing tear gas and water cannon. Hindu activists blame Islamic militants who they say were supported by Pakistan for Tuesday's attack. The authorities have yet to say who they suspect the gunmen were, although the government has called them "terrorists". Pakistan has denied any role in the raid and India says the incident should not affect talks with its neighbour. Tinderbox Police say they have recovered three AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades at the site. One of the attackers apparently blew himself up in a jeep laden with explosives in order to blow a hole in the fence of the complex. The five other attackers poured through the gap, before being surrounded by armed police. The bloodshed that followed the destruction of the Babri mosque was viewed as the most serious threat to India's secular identity since independence in 1947. Hindu hardliners say the mosque was built on a temple to the Hindu god Ram. The site is now one of the most heavily guarded in the country. The BJP has called demonstrations to push for the construction of a permanent Hindu permanent temple at the Ayodhya complex. Mr Advani is one of a number of Hindu leaders accused of inciting the mob which destroyed the mosque. On Wednesday, the High Court in Allahabad ruled he should stand trial for his alleged role in the violence. A lower court had earlier exonerated him.

Indonesia

BC 7 July 2005 Jakarta court clears 12 soldiers The soldiers had argued the killings were an accident The convictions of 12 Indonesian soldiers found guilty of killing Muslim activists in a notorious 1984 incident have been overturned on appeal. The men were sentenced by a human rights court last year, though their superiors were acquitted. A lawyer for the 12 soldiers welcomed the High Court verdict, which he said proved the shooting was an accident. As many as 23 protesters were killed when troops opened fire on them in Jakarta's Tanjung Priok port area. The decision is likely to stoke the concerns of human rights activists, following a string of previous acquittals of members of the security forces accused of violence. The Tanjung Priok demonstrators were protesting against moves by then President Suharto to clamp down on Muslim activists. President Suharto headed an authoritarian regime which brooked no opposition. Two other soldiers accused of taking part in the incident were acquitted last year, including the head of the Indonesian special forces, or Kopassus, Major-General Sriyanto Muntrasan, who was the North Jakarta military commander at the time. The human rights tribunal which originally handled the cases is the same legal body which held a series of trials in connection with the violence which marred East Timor's independence vote. Of the 18 people put on trial, all but one have been acquitted.

HRW 12 July 2005 Indonesia: Acquittals Show Continuing Military Impunity 1984 Massacre of Demonstrators Goes Unpunished (New York, July 12, 2005)—The recent appeals court acquittal of twelve soldiers convicted last year of the 1984 massacre of demonstrators in Jakarta shows the almost complete failure of Indonesia’s human rights courts, Human Rights Watch said today. The latest decision means that no one has been convicted for the so-called “Tanjung Priok” massacre, in which security forces killed at least 33 civilians in 1984. Human Rights Watch said that the appeals court decision was not made public, but was reported by the BBC, last Thursday, July 7. The Tanjung Priok trials had represented Indonesia’s most robust attempt to date to hold perpetrators accountable for Suharto-era abuses. But following the acquittals, Human Rights Watch said that victims and their families have no judicial redress for the 22-year-old killings in Jakarta. The acquittals followed trials by the ad hoc human rights court on East Timor, which finished appeal hearings in 2004. All but one of the 18 defendants were acquitted for crimes against humanity. Only Eurico Guterres, an East Timorese militia commander, stands convicted at present, and he remains free pending final appeal to the Supreme Court. “Whether it is a massacre from the Suharto era or killings in East Timor, these verdicts show that the Indonesian military continues to get away with murder,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “There is clearly no political will in Indonesia to address this kind of impunity.” Fourteen active and retired military officers originally stood trial over the Tanjung Priok incident. Two other soldiers accused of taking part in the incident were acquitted last year, including the head of Indonesia’s special forces, Major-General Sriyanto Muntrasan, who was then North Jakarta military commander. Human rights activists in Indonesia have long criticized the attorney general’s office for not including in the original indictments two retired generals, Try Sutrisno, then-Jakarta military commander (and later vice-president), and Benny Moerdani, then-armed forces commander, whom many believe were implicated in the violence. The Tanjung Priok killings took place on September 12, 1984, when government security forces fired at civilian protestors during anti-government demonstrations in the Tanjung Priok harbour area of north Jakarta. The protests followed the arrests of several individuals who were accused of giving anti-government sermons at Tanjung Priok Rawa Badak Mosque. In 2000, Komnas HAM (Indonesia’s National Commission on Human Rights) completed its inquiry into extrajudicial executions and disappearances which took place in Tanjung Priok. The inquiry listed 23 suspects, including many who are now senior Indonesian military officers. “Because President Yudhoyono was elected democratically, many now wrongly believe that Indonesia’s military has been reformed,” said Adams. “This is not the case. The military remains above the law, apparently too powerful for the courts to tame.” Based on a law passed by the Indonesian parliament in 2000 establishing special human rights courts on April 23, 2001, Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid enacted a presidential decree establishing an ad hoc human rights court to try gross violations of human rights in East Timor in 1999 and in Tanjung Priok in 1984. Four regional human rights courts were also established by the 2000 law, including one in Makassar, Sulawesi. The Makassar court is expected to issue a ruling soon in the cases of two police officers on trial for the 2000 Abepura case, in which Indonesian police shot dead one student, tortured to death two more, and arbitrarily detained, tortured and ill-treated approximately 100 others.

Iraq

IRIN 28 June 2005 Focus on forthcoming trial of Saddam Hussein [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] © IRIN Victim of mutilation by Saddam Hussein's security police - this man had his left ear sliced in half BAGHDAD, 28 Jun 2005 (IRIN) - A'amel Abdul Juad, 33, held a photo of her parents and recalled the tragic day when the men from the regime of former president, Saddam Hussein broke into her house and shot her father and brothers. Her mother was raped and later died leaving her an orphan, alone in the world. "I lost all the members of my family when I was 10 years old. I saw all of them being assassinated," Juad said. Her horror dates from the attack in July 1982, when her family's village, Dujail, a Shi'ite town 80 km north of the capital, Baghdad, was stormed by Saddam's men. More than 145 Iraqis in Dujail were assassinated by the last regime, according to the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) which was set up in late 2003 to investigate such atrocities. The people of Dujail were accused of being conspirators against the former president and of trying to kidnap and kill him. As summary punishment, dozens of women, children and men were killed in their houses or endured months of torture in prison. The Dujail case is one of the main charges Hussein will have to answer when he goes on trial in September, according to Iraqi government officials. The former leader, who is being held in a US detention facility at Baghdad airport, was captured in Tikrit city in December 2003. The IST will now try him and 11 of his top lieutenants. CHARGE SHEET The Iraqi government announced in late June that the former dictator would only answer 12 charges of crimes against humanity, although there are more than 500 confirmed cases against him. "The 12 chosen charges are more than enough to give him the maximum sentence applicable," Leith Kubba, an Iraqi government spokesman, said. According to a list obtained by IRIN from the IST in Baghdad, six of the 12 charges relate to the most barbaric incidents initiated by Hussein during his reign of terror. These six episodes are: the execution of more than 145 Iraqis in 1982 in Dujail; the murder by gassing of nearly 5,000 people in the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988; the execution of key political and religious leaders during the 35 years in power; the killing and deportation of more than 10,000 members of the Kurdish Barzani tribe; the 1991 suppression of a Shi'ite uprising in southern Iraq; the illegal occupation of Kuwait in 1991. Dujail's Special Committee of Freed Prisoners (SCFP), which has submitted powerful evidence to lawyers preparing Saddam's prosecution, said it had found documents listing 148 inhabitants executed by a special decree signed by Saddam, dated July 23, 1985. TIMING OF THE TRIAL According to Salam Adel, a senior official in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the Iraqi government is pushing for the trial to end before elections slated for December of 2005. But those involved believe the process of collecting evidence and witnesses will inevitably be a long one. "Interrogations have taken place with the ex-president and it will take a long time, because there are so many charges against him and it is not something easy to collect evidence but 12 of them are nearly fully complete," he added. In the new Iraq, suspects, even those accused of such heinous crimes, are entitled to a fair trial and remain innocent until proven guilty. At least 22 lawyers are currently working as the defence team for Hussein, they say they have a job to do as advocates on his behalf. "If you go deep, you will find that Saddam was just defending himself as in the Dujail case. All actions by him were just a way to prevent destabilisation in the country," Khalil al-Duleimi, one of Hussein's defence lawyers, said. Duleimi added that many charges against his client were unfounded because senior government officials, during the last regime, were acting without his knowledge or consent. HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS Amnesty International (AI), has said the trial of Saddam Hussein should proceed according to international laws on human rights but highlighted that the use of the death penalty was not an appropriate form of retribution. "The death penalty is just a way to increase criminality in Iraq and not to correct it," Middle East spokeswoman for AI, Nicole Choueiry, told IRIN from their London headquarters. Choueiry added that the organisation was monitoring Iraqi government preparations for the trial, to ensure it is conducted according to international standards. In a report released in February, Human Rights Watch (HRW) outlined the details of known executions, torture, mass arrests and other human rights crimes carried out by the former Iraqi government and Baath Party officials in southern Iraq in early 1999. The report blames the massacres there, as well as of that in Halabja, to Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali" for his willingness to use gas and chemical weapons on civilians. He is scheduled to be the first one to be tried by the IST. "Justice must be done through the trial in respect to the victims, their familiars and for a future in Iraq based on respect for human rights," Hania Muffi, Middle East spokeswoman for the HRW, told IRIN from the Jordanian capital, Amman. A HRW investigation team has been compiling evidence in southern Iraq which points to the massacre of hundreds of people during the uprising there in 1990, adding that the documents would be used against Saddam Hussein's regime. Muffi said that HRW objected to the death penalty and trials in absentia. She added that the trial of Hussein and the other accused, should be conducted fairly to make the process credible. "I wish that I was the judge of Saddam because I would make him pay for our suffering. It is a matter of days and justice will be present in Iraq finally," said Um Hussein, the only survivor of her family of eight, speaking to IRIN in Dulail. All the rest of her relations were murdered by the former dictator's regime.

www.aljazeera.com 11 July 2005 Iraqi parliament seeks shake up of Saddam’s court "We want to speed up the date of Saddam's trial" Though it's been 18 months since Saddam Hussein’s capture, Iraq’s parliament is desperate to put him on trial and so will debate a bill some time this month to reorganise the U.S. created court given the task of trying the former leader. Deputy speaker Hussein Shahristani told lawmakers on Monday that the first reading of the draft legislation will take place on July 20. "The proposed legislation will be really comprehensive," Mariam al-Rayes, a Shiite deputy sitting on parliament's judicial committee, told a news agency. "We want to speed up the date of Saddam's trial, we hope it can be held before the referendum on the new constitution in October." According to Rayes, the new legislation deals with potential loopholes in the tribunal's bylaws or elements that may contradict Iraqi law, but gave no further details. Many Kurdish and Shiite MPs, who are the majority in the national assembly, have charged that the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) is controlled by the Americans and believe that this factor has slowed up the process of bringing Saddam to trial. Furthermore, the MPs also want all judges sitting on the tribunal vetted for links to Saddam's former ruling Baath party. According to Rayes, the bill is aimed at silencing those questioning the authority of the court which was first set up by former U.S. administrator Paul Bremer before the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis in June 2004. "The tribunal needs to derive its legitimacy from the ultimate legislative authority, which is parliament," she said. The tribunal's statute signed by Bremer in October 2003 gives the current Iraqi government "powers to establish other rules and procedures." Rayes said the credentials of the tribunal's judges, prosecutors and administrative staff need to be reexamined. A former judge knowledgeable about the court and its workings told a news agency on condition of anonymity that the tribunal's 30 investigating judges were largely inexperienced and that some were former Baathists including Raed Juhi, the lead judge questioning Saddam. Several attempts to reach Juhi for comment were unsuccessful. The tribunal's statute precludes Baathists from being involved in the trials. Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, a Shiite who fought Saddam's regime for years, has blamed the judges for the delay in starting the trial.

weekly.ahram.org.eg 7 - 13 July 2005 Issue No. 750 An Iraqi powderkeg Recent kidnappings in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk have increased sectarian strife, reports Nermeen Al-Mufti from Baghdad Over the past two years, in joint US-Iraqi military raids, hundreds of Iraqi Turkoman and Arabs have been taken from their homes or seized from the streets of Kirkuk and secretly sent to prisons in Kurdish held northern Iraq. Turkoman political parties and NGOs have lobbied for their release, but neither the local authorities nor the American forces were ready to hear their plight until the Washington Post published a report on 15 June exposing these detentions. According to the report, "Police and security units, forces led by Kurdish political parties and backed by the US military, have abducted hundreds of minority Arabs and Turkoman in this intensely volatile city and spirited them to prisons in Kurdish-held northern Iraq." The report cited American and Iraqi officials, government documents and families of the victims. A source close to the Iraq Turkoman Front, a political party, told Al-Ahram Weekly on condition of anonymity that Kurdish authorities began searching for the person responsible for giving the information to the Washington Post in order to punish him. The source added, "For the last two years hundreds of Turkoman have been abducted from Kirkuk, Tuz, Tel Afar, Khanaqeen and other Turkoman towns and were taken to unofficial detention centres. They were and are still being tortured to confess to crimes they did not commit. We've heard that many detainees have died." The Post article cited a confidential US State Department cable addressed to the White House, Pentagon and the US Embassy in Baghdad that raises concerns about the unlawful detentions and transfers. The cable described the detentions as part of a "concerted and widespread initiative" by Kurdish political parties "to exercise authority in Kirkuk in an increasingly provocative manner". According to the cable, the abductions had "greatly exacerbated tensions along purely ethnic lines" and endangered US credibility. In the offices of the Iraqi Turkoman Front, the Iraq Turkoman Council, the Iraqi Institute of Human Rights and other NGOs and parties, long lists of the names of the "missing" are being posted. In the meantime, those lucky enough to escape their unlawful detention are providing information about those who shared the jails with them. Yashar Fadhil, a civil worker, was taken from his house along with his father and younger brother. He was released, but his father and brother remain in jail. In an interview with the Weekly, Fadhil said "Kurdish speaking gunmen forced themselves into our house, arresting my father, younger brother and I. They cuffed our hands, blindfolded us and forced us into their car. They did not give us a chance to ask them why. We were taken to a detention centre in Erbil, then Aqra, then back to Erbil, then to Kurdish security force offices in Sulaimaniya. We were tortured and forced to admit that we are terrorists, that we've killed people. I do not know how I was released. Hundreds of Turkoman and Arabs are still there." Yilmaz Sami, who was kidnapped from his shop in Kirkuk's Qala'a bazaar, told the Weekly, "They forced themselves into my shop, one put his gun to my head, the others cuffed my hands and pushed me into their car. I was taken to Erbil, then to Sulaimaniya." After being tortured, he signed a document admitting being a terrorist and that his commander was a well- known Turkoman officer. He was later released, and the named officer was arrested. Mulla Aydin was taken on the charge of "occupying a house". Despite the fact that he had all the documents proving his rights to the home, a Kurdish official claimed that he had bought the house from Aydin, though Aydin claims never to have seen the Kurdish official before. Aydin was arrested, tortured and released only to empty the house of his belongings. Aydin commented, "Under Saddam Hussein, Baathists used to take the houses of Turkoman, but at least they compensated the owners." The situation in Kirkuk continues to deteriorate, not only between Turkoman, Arabs, and Kurds, but among the Kurds themselves, as clashes between followers of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and those of the new President of the Kurdish region, Masoud Barzani, take place. Two weeks ago, Talabani received a delegation of ten Turkoman notables in Baghdad. They visited him to congratulate him as the new transitional Iraqi president, and to present him with the issue of the suffering of Kirkuk's Turkoman and Arab residents, questioning him about the missing people taken to Kurdish detention centres in Erbil, Sulaimaniya and Zakho. Nawzad Awchi, a member of the delegation, told the Weekly, "Talabani told us that he was a high school student in Kirkuk in 1953 and he is aware that the majority of the city is Turkoman." Talabani took a first step towards solving the problems peacefully by appointing a Turkoman adviser to address Turkoman concerns in the city. However, Awchi remains sceptical, saying, "We should wait and see." Meanwhile, violence continues, and thousands of Turkoman and Arabs have been demonstrating all week in Kirkuk. Dr Modhaffer Arslan, the Iraqi President of Turkoman Affairs told the Weekly, "Kirkuk is the key to solving all of Iraq's problems." Indeed, it is at the core of the conflict. If Kirkuk is successfully annexed by the Kurdish region, while the majority of the population of the city is non-Kurdish, the partition of Iraq along sectarian lines may indeed take place. Meanwhile, in Baghdad, fears of increased sectarian strife mounted as a top aide to Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani was shot dead with two others on his way to Friday prayers. The aide, Kamal Ezzuddin Al-Ghuraifi, had been an aide to Al-Sistani for a decade and was the third aide to Al-Sistani killed recently. In another incident in the same Baghdad neighbourhood, five masked gunmen stormed a Sunni mosque and abducted Imam Sheikh Amer Al-Tikriti. It was not immediately clear if the shooting and the kidnapping were connected. Caption: US troops secure the scene of a car bomb detonated in western Baghdad that killed two civilians and wounded four on Monday, 4 July C a p t i o n 2: US troops secure the scene of a car bomb detonated in western Baghdad that killed two civilians and wounded four on Monday, 4 July

NYT 13 July 2005 Suicide Bomber Kills 27 in Baghdad By THAIER ALDAAMI and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 13 - Twenty-seven people, many of them children, were killed by a suicide truck bomb today as the children gathered around an Army vehicle where troops were handing out chocolates and other gifts. The blast was so powerful it set a nearby house on fire. The attack, which killed an American soldier and wounded three others, occurred about 10:50 a.m. in east Baghdad, according to the United States military. As service members in a Humvee were giving presents to a group of children, a vehicle filled with explosives detonated. "There were some American troops blocking the highway when a U.S. Humvee came near a gathering of children, and U.S. soldiers began to hand them candies," a man named Karim Shukir told The Associated Press. "Then suddenly, a speeding car showed up and struck both the Humvee and the children." After the bombing, The A.P. reported that charred remains of an engine block wrapped in barbed wire sat in the road and a smashed child's bicycle lay beside the street, which was splattered with pools of blood. Last September, 35 Iraqi children who had gathered around United States soldiers who were handing out candy at the opening of a sewage plant in Baghdad died after suicide bombers drove their cars into the crowd that had gathered for the ceremony. The name of the deceased soldier is being withheld pending notification of relatives. In other violence during the past 24 hours, several men opened fire on Baghdad police, injuring two police officers, according to the Ministry of the Interior. An assassination attempt was made this afternoon on Abdul Karem Altalakani, the mayor of Rashidiya district in Northern Baghdad. He survived the attempt, but four of his guards, all policeman, were injured, an officer in the Ministry of Interior said. And Tuesday night in Jalawlaa in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, a man with explosive belt detonated himself at the gate of the town's largest mosque, killing two others and wounding 16, according to the Interior Ministry.

Israel

AP 6 July 2005 Israel won't extradite Polish Jew accused of WWII genocide By The Associated Press Israel has refused for a second time to extradite to Poland a Jewish man accused of crimes against German prisoners just after the end of World War II, prosecutors said Wednesday. Polish prosecutors received the refusal in a letter from the Israeli Justice Ministry saying "there was no basis whatsoever to extradite" Solomon Morel, an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor, prosecutor Ewa Koj told The Associated Press. Morel commanded a communist-run camp for German prisoners in southern Poland in 1945 after Soviet troops had occupied the country. Polish authorities accuse him of genocide by seeking to exterminate German prisoners by starving them to death, depriving them of medical care as well as carrying out torture and sanctioning torture by his subordinates. Advertisement Polish prosecutors charge that Morel is responsible for the deaths of at least 1,500 prisoners in the Swietochlowice camp. Koj, a prosecutor with the government-run National Remembrance Institute in Katowice, said the Israeli ministry argued that the statute of limitations against Morel had run out. The institute investigates communist and Nazi-era crimes. Koj quoted the letter as saying: "In light of the facts, there appears to be no basis to charge Mr. Morel with serious crimes let alone crimes of 'genocide' or 'crimes against the Polish nation.' If anything, it would seem to us that Mr. Morel and his family were clearly victims of crimes of genocide committed by the Nazis and the Polish collaborators. Koj criticized Israel's decision, saying: "How can a statute of limitations run out on crimes against humanity?" "There should be one measure for judging war criminals, irrespective whether they are German, Israeli, or any other nationality," she added. Israel, which has no extradition treaty with Poland, in 1998 refused an extradition request based on charges of torture; the current request broadened the charges to genocide, for which there is no statute of limitations in Polish law. Polish historians generally agree that the communist government imprisoned 100,000 Germans, mostly civilians deemed threats to the state after World War II. At least 15,000 died due to ill treatment, and the rest were freed by 1950. Morel left Poland for Israel in 1994, after accusations against him surfaced.

BBC 11 July 2005 Israel's Jews 'set to exceed US' By Lucy Williamson BBC News, in Jerusaelm Average Jewish birthrates are higher in Israel than abroad Israel will soon be home to the largest Jewish community in the world for the first time in two millennia, according to an independent report. The findings suggest that while the US still has a slightly more Jews - 5.28 million - intermarriage and low birth rates mean numbers are declining. Israel's by contrast, is predicted to grow by some 50,000 in the coming year. The report was issued by the Jerusalem-based think tank the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. According to the report, Israel is one of very few countries where Jewish populations are growing. Each Jewish woman in Israel has an average of 2.7 children - and most would like to have more. JEWISH POPULATIONS United States - 5,280,000 Israel - 5,235,000 France - 494,000 Canada - 372,000 United Kingdom - 298,000 Russia - 235,000 Source: JPPPI Annual Assessment for 2005 This, rather than immigration, is the reason behind the community's growth, researchers say. Jewish immigration to Israel has fallen from 70,000 a year in the early 1990s to about 20,000 in the last couple of years. The JPPPI has suggested the Israeli government take a more creative approach to further expand the country's Jewish population - for example, by offering "gradual immigration". This would allow Jews living in other countries to become non-resident Israeli citizens in return for some basic military training and a small investment. Demography is seen as politically important in the Middle East. The Arab population in Israel and the Occupied Territories is approaching the size of the Jewish community, and growing faster. This is something many in the Israeli government see as a threat to the country's Jewish identity. www.jpppi.org.il

BBC 12 July 2005 Bomber strikes Israeli coast town Rescue services rush to the scene of the bombing A suicide bomber has killed two people at the entrance to a shopping centre in the Israeli coastal town of Netanya, Israeli police say. Rescue services say they are treating 40 people, some with serious injuries. One report says Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for the attack. It is the first suicide attack in Israel since a bombing outside a Tel Aviv nightclub on February 25, carried out by Islamic Jihad. Eyewitnesses say the bomber tried to get inside the shopping mall but was pushed away by security guards before blowing himself up. Schools in Israel have broken up for the summer and it appears that a number of teenagers were among the injured. BBC Jerusalem correspondent Lucy Williamson says the explosion in Netanya follows four months of relative calm in Israel. Netanya has been a target in the past but that was before Israel began building its barrier around the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has consistently called for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to launch a crackdown on militant groups. Attack condemned The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack. "All factions must abide by the truce," Jibril Rajoub, a security aide to Mr Abbas, said. "These acts only cause harm to Palestinian unity and serve the right wing in Israel." Earlier, a large explosion was reported near a Jewish settlement in northern West Bank, near the city of Nablus. It is not clear if it was an intentional car bombing. Israel Radio later reported that a vehicle was transporting gas canisters and may have exploded by accident. "I can confirm there was an explosion at Shavei Shomron a short while ago and we are checking the source of it," a military spokesman told AFP.

Japan

http://www.kimsoft.com/2003/kanto-1923-massacre.htm The 1923 Kanto Massacre of Koreans in Japan: A Japanese Professor Reveals the Truth Source Dong-a Ilbo: Eighty years ago, on September 1, 1923, a large earthquake, the Kanto Quake, hit many parts of Japan including Tokyo. During the week following the Quake, some 6,000 Koreans resident in Japan were murdered. Many Japanese blamed falsely the Koreans for the calamity. Recent studies show that the Japanese military was directly involved in the killing spree, and evidence is mounting for the Japanese government's sanction of the massacre. We believe that the whole truth about this incident should be bared for the sake of Japan-Korea friendship. Photo. Matzuo Shoich, Professor Emeritus, Hosei University. Courtesy of Dong-a. "The massacre of Koreans and Chinese in the aftermath of the Kanto Quake was the darkest chapter of Japan's modern history." So said Prof. Matzuo Shoich (???, 73), professor emeritus at the Hosei University, famous for his research on the Quake. Prof. Shoich asserts that the Japanese government and people must repent their sins and take responsibility for the massacre. The military started the massacre and incited the citizenry into a killing frenzy by spreading false rumors. According to Prof. Matzuo, the massacre has been blamed on misguided Japanese citizens but the fact of the matter is that the massacre was perpetrated by the army troops and police in charge of civil security under a martial law. His book, "The Kanto Quake and the Martial Law:, is to be released on this September 1st. His book includes documentary evidence of the army's involvement in the massacre. Prof. Matzuo believes that the root cause of the massacre was the racism against fellow Yellow man, instilled by the government as part of the Meiji Revolution. Photo: Kaihara Hakuko, a noted artist, had witnessed the Kanto Massacre when she was 27 and sketched a masscre scene of Koreans being killed by uniformed soldiers and civilian mobs. Courtesy of Dong-a. Immediately after the Quake, anti-Korean rumors spread among the Japanese victims of the calamity: "The Koreans poisoned our drinking water wells," "The Koreans are rioting, stealing and setting things on fire," and so on. Many Japanese believed in these claims and formed armed bands and the military to hunt down and kill Koreans. Thus more than 6,000 of the 30,000 Koreans resident in Japan at the time were killed off for the simple reason that they happened to be Koreans. The indiscriminate killings began on September 1st and lasted six long days. Japanese history books would have us believe that the massacre was perpetrated by irate civilians only, but recently uncovered documents indicate otherwise. Those Koreans who went to police stations seeking protection were killed by the police and those captured by the military were killed off at military posts -- all in the name of suppressing a Korean riot. The corpses were thrown into water ways or buried in unmarked mass graves by the killers in order to cover up their crimes. Some 700 Chinese laborers at Yokohama met the same fate. Kanto Martial Law documents include more than 20 reports of 'arms use' from 6 PM of September 1st till 7 AM next mporning. "Arms use' is an euphonium for murdering Koreans. In particular, one of the reports states that a group of 83 artillery and cavalry executed 200 Koreans at Ohshima (Tokyo) at about 3 PM of September 3rd. Photo: A Japanese police and a civilian are poking a dead Korean. Courtesy of Dong-a. The report states: "When we arrived at the location, a police unit of 40-50 surrounded a group of 200 Koreans. While discussing what to do with the Koreans, 3 of the soldiers beat 3 of the Koreans with a rifle butt, which started a general commotion, and the soldiers decided to kill them all." Mizuo Rentaro, the interior minister at the time, who had served in Korea during the March 1st Movement of 1919, feared that the Koreans might rise up again in the chaos of the Quake and imposed a martial law specifically to prevent a Korean uprising. Some scholars believe that, in view of the martial law, it is plausible that the rumors were spread by the government in order to justify the martial law. Professor Matzuo believes that the Japanese government wanted to firm up its power by eliminating, in one swoop, troublesome Koreans, many of whom were Communists, socialists and Korean nationalists. After the massacre, the police and the military went through the motion of prosecuting some of the perpetrators. Their intent was to blame civilian mobs for the massacre. Yamad Shoji, professor emeritus of the Rikgyo University states that in Kumadani of the Saitama Prefecture, 68-79 Koreans, including women and children, were murdered, but the authorities out the figure at 15 victims and tried 35 of the killers, of which 34 were released and only one was jailed for one year. Prof. Yamada laments that the Japanese people are hung up on the case of a handful Japanese kidnapped to North Korea, but this crime pales in comparison to the forced labor and military services tens of thousands of the Koreans had to endure and the Kanto Massacre. The Basic Facts of the Kanto Massacre. The Kanto Massacre sites: 1) Tokyo -- 32 locations, 2) Kanakawa -- 23 locations, 3) Chiba -- 12 locations, 4) Saitama -- 8 locations, 5) Tojiki -- 2 locations, 6) Kunma -- 2 locations, 7) Ibaraki -- 2 locations, and 8) Nagano -- 1 location At 11:58 AM, September 1, 1923, a giant earthquake of 7.9 (Richter scale) shoot the Kanto region that includes Tokyo. About two thirds of the buildings in Tokyo burned down. Photo: Some of the Koreans murdered by the Japanese during the Kanto Massacre of 1923. Courtesy of Dong-a. Some 6,000 men, women and children were killed in cold blood by the Japanese military, police and armed civilians. Photo: A city devastated by the Quake. Courtesy of Dong-a. Officially, the Quake claimed 99,331 dead, 43,746 missing, and 3.4 million left homeless. More than 6,000 Koreans, including women and children, were killed systematically by the Japanese military, police, firemen, and civilians. Photo: Koreans being herded into trucks headed to the killing fields. Courtesy of Dong-a.

Sri Lanka

tmilnet.net Tenth anniversary of Navaly church massacre observed [TamilNet, July 09, 2005 19:51 GMT] Tenth death anniversary of 147 Tamil civilians including men, women and children who were killed in the indiscriminate bombing by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) and artillery attack by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) on Navaly St Peters Church and Navaly Murugamoorthy Kovil in the Jaffna district on 09 July 1995 was observed Saturday. "The massacre of hundreds of civilians who sought refuge in places of worships was a gross human rights violation by the government security forces," said Rt.Rev Thomas Soundaranayagam, Jaffna Bishop at the Holy Mass held at the Navaly St.Peter's Church Saturday evening, sources said. Relatives of the victims at the memorial event Memorial photos Photographs of those civilians massacred ten years ago were displayed in front of the church for paying homage. At the commencement of event a wreath was taken to the venue with band music. Rev.Fr Nesarajah, Chief Parish Priest of St.Peter's Church presided over the event. Brammasiri S.Gowreeswara Kurukkal of Navaly Murugamoorthy Kovil, Rev.Fr Bernard, President of the Goodwill Mission for Justice and Peace and Rev.Fr. A.S.Gunanandan of the South Indian Church also spoke at the event, sources said. Ten lamps were lit to mark the tenth death anniversary of the victims. Thousands of Tamil civilians fled from their villages in Valigamam division when the Sri Lanka Army supported by the Sri Lanka Air Force launched a military operation named "Leap Forward" on 9th July 1995 early morning around 5 a.m.The SLA launched indiscriminate bombing and the SLA artillery attack on residential areas, government offices, temples and other buildings in the Valigamam southwest, Valigamam west, Valigamam south and Valigamam north divisions. People ran for safety. As the bombing and artillery fire became fierce, people fled from their dwellings by foot, cart and push cycles leaving their belongings. Several civilians, old and young, were injured in the aerial attack and some died on their way. Because of economic embargo at that time no motor transport was available to take the injured to the hospital. Few hundred people sought refuge in the Navaly St Peters Church and Navaly Murugamoorthy Temple. Around 5.45 p.m. on 9th July, 1995 SLA bombers, which came from Jaffna town, dropped about thirteen bombs on these two temples killing 147 innocent civilians on the spot. Both temples were completely damaged and people inside were trapped. Several lost their limbs. More than four hundred people were injured in the attack. Of the dead 48 were volunteers who were helping the refugees providing water and food, civilian sources recalled the Navaly bloody massacre.

Thailand

AP 6 July 2005 Hmong Forced Out Of Homes In Thailand By Rungrawee C. Pinyorat Associated Press Wednesday, July 6, 2005; A09 HUAY NAM KHAO, Thailand, July 5 -- Soaked by rain, thousands of poor ethnic Hmong refugees from Laos were living without shelter in northern Thailand on Tuesday, forced from their homes under a Thai campaign to pressure them to return to their native land. Landlords in this village said the government set a Monday deadline for them to evict the estimated 6,500 refugees from their bamboo shelters, threatening locals with prison or fines of up to $1,200 for sheltering the Hmong, considered by Thailand to be illegal immigrants. Thai officials also instructed vendors not to sell food to the refugees, including children, camped out since late Monday by the roadside in Huay Nam Khao, village leaders said. "They have no place to stay, no place to cook. How can they stand the heat and rain?" asked Sawai Leeprecha, a Thai-Hmong village leader. Some of the Hmong demonstrated Tuesday outside a government office near the village, located in Phetchabun province about 185 miles north of the Thai capital, Bangkok. But most clustered in groups along the road carrying reed mats and plastic sheeting. "The Hmong would like to call for the United Nations to help us survive," said Jongli Saeloh, 43. "I would rather die here than be sent back to Laos." A sign on a fence read: "Please help, we're very hungry." During the Vietnam War era, the Hmong in Laos helped U.S. forces fight communist insurgents. After the communists took control of Laos in 1975, many Hmong fled, fearing persecution. Although pressure on the Hmong has eased, military operations against small bands of Hmong insurgents in Laos continue and tensions persist.

Uzbekistan See United Kingdom

www.mosnews.com 30 June 2005 Uzbek Journalist Reports Details of Andijan Massacre to U.S. Helsinki Commission Created: 30.06.2005 16:14 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:16 MSK MosNews An Uzbek journalist has told the U.S. Helsinki Commission she saw for herself the “merciless” Uzbek troops open fire at thousands of Andijan citizens on May 13. “I was there. I was on Bobur Square in Andijan among thousands of Andijan citizens, when at 5:20 p.m. local time on May 13 the merciless authorities of Uzbekistan opened fire on their own people,” Galima Bukharbaeva, a journalist from Uzbekistan, told the U.S. Helsinki Commission. Bukharbaeva has worked as a country director of IWPR in Uzbekistan since 2000. The authorities had not warned unarmed protesters of their plans, she said. “Thousands of people were unarmed and they were not forced by rebels to stay on the square. ”It was not an Islamic uprising. I did not hear any cries of ’Allah akbar’, or any demands to build an Islamic state. People demanded justice, human rights, economic and social reforms,“ she said. According to the witness, the protesters did not make any political demands, such as Islam Karimov’s resignation. There were no foreign mercenaries, neither Chechen militants nor those from Afghanistan. Those who carried arms belonged to the group of friends and relatives of the 23 businessmen, who were arrested a year before and were put on trial in an Andijan city court in February 2005, the journalist said. The government attacked unexpectedly, she said. ”The shooting of Andijan citizens, everyone who was on the square at that time — children, teenagers, women, the elderly, journalists. It took place in cold blood, without mercy or pity. It was simply professional mass murder. “The soldiers shot at the backs of people running in terror from the APCs, shooting from automatic weapons… One of the soldiers tried to kill me. A bullet from his weapon hit the backpack which was on my back, and went through it, passing through my notebook and my journalist identity card…” “It seemed that all of Andijan had been turned into a slaughterhouse, and all its inhabitants turned to cannon fodder,” the reporter said. “As I understand, this unrest was closely connected with the trial of 23 businessmen charged with belonging to the religious organization Akromiya. The hearing of this case finished at the Andijan city court on May 11, and the court withdrew to deliver its sentence. All journalists were waiting for the announcement of the verdict, we expected it on May 13.” According to the witness, these 23 businessmen were arrested in summer 2004, and for one year they were detained in the cellar of the National Security Service in Andijan and were tortured.

HRW 2 Jul 2005 Uzbekistan: Shanghai Group should condemn massacreRegional Group Should Defend Member State Kyrgyzstan From Uzbek Pressure (New York, July 2, 2005) - A regional security group of Central Asian countries along with Russia and China, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization should condemn the Andijan massacre committed by government forces of its member state Uzbekistan, Human Rights Watch said before the group meets on Tuesday in the Kazakh capital Astana. Human Rights Watch has documented how Uzbek forces on May 13 massacred hundreds of unarmed demonstrators in the city of Andijan. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization's member states -- Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan -- should call on Uzbekistan to allow an independent, international investigation into the violence in Andijan, as has been urged by the United Nations, European Union, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the U.S. government and others. Representatives of member states will meet in Astana on Tuesday and Wednesday. "The Shanghai Cooperation Organization should hold member-state Uzbekistan to account for the violence committed by government forces in Andijan," said Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "If the Shanghai group ignores such a gross violation of fundamental rights, it undermines its own credibility in the region." The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, was founded in 1996 as the Shanghai Five to meet the need for regional security cooperation and confidence-building. The group adopted the name Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2001 when it admitted Uzbekistan as its sixth member. The Shanghai group has pledged to forward the goals of political and economic cooperation in the region and collective security interests, including counterterrorism. In an attempt to cover up the events of May 13, the government of Uzbekistan has put extensive pressure on fellow Shanghai group member Kyrgyzstan to forcibly return individuals who fled the massacre in Andijan and sought refuge across the border. The Uzbek government has conducted a relentless campaign to secure the return of these asylum seekers. Their return to Uzbekistan would be a violation of international law, as they are likely to be subjected to torture and even possible extrajudicial execution. To date, the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization have failed to condemn the massacre of hundreds of unarmed protestors in Andijan and they have failed to address the threat to regional stability posed by Uzbekistan's pressure on Kyrgyzstan. During a June meeting of Chinese and Uzbek officials in Beijing the group's secretary-general, Zhan Deguang, stressed that the Shanghai group does not interfere in the internal affairs of its member states. He expressed his confidence that the Uzbek government would be able to solve its internal problems. "Uzbekistan is putting pressure on Kyrgyzstan to violate its international legal obligations," said Cartner. "The Shanghai group should defend its member state Kyrgyzstan and assist it in upholding its obligation not to return anyone to a place where they will be tortured." Kyrgyzstan is a party to the Convention Against Torture, which forbids a state party to return a person to a country where he or she would face risk of torture. In violation of that agreement, and in an apparent effort to appease its neighbor Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan handed over four asylum seekers to Uzbek law enforcement agents on the night of June 9-10. The four men have since "disappeared" in custody and their fate is unknown. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the U.N. high commissioners for human rights and for refugees, and others have called on Kyrgyzstan not to carry out additional forcible returns of asylum seekers to Uzbekistan.

Agence France-Presse 11 Jul 2005 Uzbekistan raises toll from Andijan massacre to 187 ANDIJAN, Uzbekistan, July 11 (AFP) - Authorities in Uzbekistan's eastern Andijan province raised the death toll Monday from a massacre in May to 187. Andijan's prosecutor, Bakhadyr Dekhanov, announced the rise from the previous official figure of 176, saying that the authorities had only recently learnt of some secret burials of victims by their relatives. Dekhanov said that 295 people had been injured in the violence. He again pinned the blame on armed Islamists who took over the town following a series of demonstrations and denied accounts by human rights activists and journalists indicating that armed forces opened fire on hundreds of civilian protestors. International and local rights groups have said between 500 and 1,000 people were killed in the crackdown. "The attacks were thoroughly planned outside the country and were connected to international terrorist groups such as the Islamic Movement of Turkestan and Hizb ut-Tahrir, which has its offices in London," Dekhanov said. The former organisation is an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which launched armed raids into Uzbekistan from 1999 to 2001, he added. Hizb ut-Tahrir has said it aims to establish an Islamic state in the terroritory of the Central Asian former Soviet republics, but has said it does not advocate the use of force. Dekhanov was speaking during a visit by representatives of a number of foreign embassies that have been monitoring Uzbek authorities' investigation into the Andijan violence. The invitation to diplomats has fallen short of Western demands for authorities' to allow an independent, international investigation. "It is becoming clear that the official Uzbek version of the events, criticised by Western media, is correct," Yuri Lebedev, a councillor at Russia's embassy in Tashkent, said. The foreign diplomats visiting Andijan were from Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, India, Iran and Pakistan.

Europe

Bosnia

washingtonpost.com 30 June 2005 10 Years After Bosnia Massacre, Justice Not Yet Served Experts Doubt Top Suspects Will Be Tried Before U.N. Court Is Scheduled to Expire By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, June 30, 2005; A20 SREBRENICA, Bosnia -- Nearly 10 years after Serb troops massacred close to 7,000 Muslim prisoners around this mountain town, war crimes investigators have all but wound up their probe into the killings, but express doubts that all major suspects will be brought to justice before a U.N. tribunal's scheduled closure in 2008. As forensic experts complete the examination of a newly discovered mass grave, the two main targets of the war crimes manhunt remain at large. Ratko Mladic, who commanded the military forces of the breakaway Bosnian Serb state during the 1992-95 war, and Radovan Karadzic, its political leader, have been wanted men for a decade. Preparations are underway in the town of Potocari near here for a July 11 ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II. Serbian President Boris Tadic has announced that he will attend the event, to be held at a cemetery where 2,000 of the victims lie. Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica recently issued a statement denouncing the "massive crime" of Srebrenica. Serbia has surrendered close to a dozen other war crimes suspects to the U.N. court this year, and this month, a half-dozen people in the part of Bosnia dominated by ethnic Serbs were arrested for alleged involvement in the massacre. Despite gestures like these, deep suspicions remain. The Serbian parliament has refused to issue a condemnation of the massacre. And some Bosnian Muslims have called for Tadic to stay away from the ceremonies, saying his presence would signal that Serbia considers Srebrenica part of its territory. So far, the U.N. court in The Hague has convicted several Serb perpetrators, some of whom are appealing the verdicts. Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic is on trial, and several other suspects await hearings. Bosnian Muslims also committed atrocities, investigators say. Naser Oric, the Bosnian Muslim military commander for Srebrenica, is on trial for overseeing the killing and expulsion of Serb civilians in the years before the massacre. But for now, the wait for the two big names continues. Carla del Ponte, the chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor, has said she will not attend the anniversary event unless Mladic and Karadzic are captured. Fears that the tribunal might shut down before Mladic, Karadzic and other suspects come to trial prompted the court president, Theodor Meron, to call for an extension. "I can already predict that trials will have to run into 2009," he told the U.N. Security Council in a report this month. Today, Srebrenica looks eerily the same as a decade ago. Gutted buildings dominate the winding main road. A pair of new mosques replace a couple that the Serbs razed. About 6,000 Serbs live in the town and nearby villages, along with 4,000 Muslims. Members of the two groups barely speak to each other, townspeople say. The sum of information on Srebrenica points to a methodical killing campaign. The deaths took place not in a single orgy of destruction and bloodletting, but in a step-by-step process of capture, transfer, distribution and execution of thousands of detainees in multiple places around the town over four days, and by some accounts longer. The killings took place two months before the end of the war. The United Nations had declared the town a "safe area" and stationed Dutch troops in it. But on July 11, 1995, Serb forces backed by tanks defied the United Nations and pushed straight into the town. Hussein Karic, a Muslim who retired as a gamekeeper, returned from Sarajevo two years ago. He recalls being at his home above Srebrenica that day, when Serb forces started to descend from the mountains. He walked with a granddaughter to the town center, where hundreds of Muslims gathered. "I saw Mladic just a few feet away. He was trying to calm people. No one believed him," Karic said. Karic joined a column of civilians heading for Potocari, down the valley. Occasionally, Muslim men were pulled out of the crowd and confined to buildings; there were screams and shots. "I kept circulating in the crowd. I didn't let anyone's eyes meet mine," Karic recalled. Videos shot during the invasion showed Mladic moving about, patting little boys on the head and telling mothers not to wail. But at one point, he told Serbian television: "The time has come to take revenge on the Turks." Turks is the dismissive Serb label for Bosnian Muslims. On July 13, buses arrived and a two-day evacuation began. Serb guards separated men from women and boys. Karic sneaked onto a bus for women and boys and stayed silent. He remembers looking into the eye of the driver. The driver did nothing. "I don't know why. It must be said some Serbs among the drivers knew there were men on board, but did not throw them off. It was God's will," Karic said. Elsewhere, Serb guards were directing men and boys off the road, and women toward the trucks and buses. Sabaheta Fejzic recalls trying to shield her 16-year-old son. "The guards told me to go to the right, where the white buses were. 'Your son goes left.' . . . They grabbed him. I could not even cry, but my son was crying. I will never forget the tears falling from his eyes, his olive-colored eyes," she said, speaking slowly and pausing to recover from a sob. "I knelt down and yelled out, 'Kill me.' One aimed a rifle at me. I said, 'Kill me.' But they said, 'Why waste the bullets?' And they threw me into a truck. It was all a haze after. I just see his olive eyes." Captives were transported all over eastern Bosnia, war crimes investigators said: some just down the road to villages near the Drina River, others as far as 45 miles north, west as far as the outskirts of Sarajevo and several miles to the south. Today, there are plenty of vivid traces of the operation. In the agricultural warehouse in Kravica, a few miles from Potocari, tribunal investigators say that scores of men and boys were packed into a long, white building and killed with bullets and grenades. Investigators have a photo of bodies piled up at the broad front doors. Currently, the building is empty except for an occasional wandering goat. Bullet and shrapnel holes on the outside have been covered over. Inside, the walls are blackened by smoke and the bullets holes remain. Similar remnants are visible in Pilica, 40 miles north, in a building called the Dom Kultura. Blackened flooring underneath a stage and pocked walls indicate shooting and fire within. There, on July 16, Serb soldiers killed prisoners, investigators say. Drazen Erdemovic, a solder in the Serb army, confessed to shooting dozens of men in Pilica. In his defense, he said, "I had to do this. If I had refused, I would have been killed together with the victims. When I refused, they told me: 'If you are sorry for them, stand up, line up with them and we will kill you too.' " He was sentenced to five years in prison, his sentenced mitigated by his willingness to help investigators. Investigators have identified numerous other places where prisoners were assembled and killed: a soccer field, a warehouse and a school in Bratunac, a warehouse in Konjevic Polje, a riverside at Drinjaca, a bend in the road at Nova Kasaba and a school and nearby dam at Petkovci. One of the worst mass executions occurred at a place called Branjevo farm, where more than 1,200 men and boys were shot down in a field. Using aerial photographs, tribunal investigators have uncovered numerous grave sites filled with hundreds of bodies. Some of the bodies had been buried first at other sites, then dug up and moved in an attempt to hide evidence after the war ended. Many victims had their hands manacled or were blindfolded. In addition to the 2,000 corpses buried at the cemetery at Potocari, about 3,500 bodies remain in storage in Tuzla, Bosnia, where forensic experts are trying to identify them. Last month, Serbian human rights campaigner Natasa Kandic, who has been investigating war crimes, provided a videotape of a unit of Serb soldiers called the Scorpions gunning down six Muslim men and boys at a house near Sarajevo. A vivid documentary account of an execution like this had never been found and shown before. It briefly set off a wave of soul-searching inside Serbia. Nura Alispahic, a survivor of the killings, watched the tape at her home in Sarajevo. She later told reporters that her son Azmir was one of the prisoners: "I recognized his face, his shoes. That was my Azmir. They chased him, he turned around. I saw my enemies killing my child." Azmir had left the family house in Srebrenica in an attempt to escape the town, but returned in a few minutes. "I forgot to kiss you, mother," Alispahic recalled him saying. That was the last time she saw him, or knew what happened to him, until the broadcast of the video in early June.

Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey 5 July 2005 www.turkishweekly.net Explosives Found at Site of Srebrenica Massacre in Bosnia By Stefan Bos Budapest 05 July 2005 Bosnian Serb police have discovered explosives at the site of a memorial to the up to 8,000 victims of the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica. The explosives were uncovered early Tuesday as preparations were underway for commemoration services to mark the 10th anniversary of the killings. The discovery of a large cache of explosives at the Potocari memorial site comes just days before about 50,000 people are expected to gather to commemorate Europe's worst single atrocity since the World War II. As many as 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed when Bosnian Serb troops overran the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995. Organizers say some 570 victims of that bloodshed, between 14 and 75 years old, will be re-buried at the cemetery during the ceremony. Their bodies were exhumed from over 60 mass graves which have been found around Srebrenica. An official from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe tells VOA that Bosnian Serb police are cooperating with the international community to secure the area. More than 1,000 Srebrenica victims are already buried in the Potocari memorial cemetery. The alleged architects of the massacre, Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his top general, Ratko Mladic, have been indicted by the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal. Both men are still at large. U.N. Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte says she will not attend the Srebrenica commemorations unless they are captured. The government of the Serb entity in Bosnia recently apologized to the victims. But the federal parliament of the divided nation failed to adopt a resolution condemning the atrocity, after Serb lawmakers objected to the word "genocide."

Reuter s 6 July 2005 Elusive Karadzic keeps hunters guessing By Nedim Dervisbegovic CELEBICI, Bosnia (Reuters) - Nestled high on a plateau between thickly-forested mountain ridges whose rocky tops are covered with snow, this sleepy, remote village looks like a dream destination for trekkers and nature lovers. However, Celebici is known not for its tourist attractions but as a possible refuge for Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader charged with genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of some 8,000 Muslims. Karadzic has been on the run from international justice for almost a decade, supposedly protected by a network of hardline supporters in Serbia-Montenegro and Bosnia's Serb Republic. The West's failure to arrest him or his military chief Ratko Mladic is back in the headlines as Bosnia prepares to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the massacre on July 11. Celebici villagers say they have never seen Karadzic. NATO intelligence indicated the 60-year-old former psychiatrist was here in 2002 but a two-day search operation failed to find him. "But even if he is around they can never catch him," Celebici's only grocer Milivoje Brkovic said wryly, looking out through his shop window where a faded Karadzic poster was hanging. "They would have done that by now if they could." On July 11, 1995 Bosnian Serb troops overran the U.N. "safe area" of Srebrenica as U.N. Dutch troops stood by helplessly. The slaughter over the next seven days was Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two. Karadzic and Mladic are also charged with the wartime siege of Sarajevo in which 10,000 people were killed. Some 200,000 people died in the 1992-95 Bosnian war, most of them Bosnian Muslims. NATO IN THE DARK "The ongoing failure of NATO forces to apprehend Radovan Karadzic, and its failure to arrest Ratko Mladic when he was in Bosnia, compounds the international community's dereliction of duty to protect the inhabitants of Srebrenica," New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch said in a report last month. Mladic lived in Serbia until 2002 but kept a low profile. The United Nations war crimes tribunal in the Hague says he is still being sheltered by the military or police there, but Belgrade says it cannot find him. Karadzic's whereabouts have been a mystery for the last eight years. The U.N. court's chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte says he is hiding in eastern Bosnia and Montenegro and has chided NATO for not doing enough to catch him. An official at the Sarajevo headquarters of NATO, which handed over its peacekeeping mantle to the European Union in December to concentrate on the war crimes hunt, admitted the alliance was in the dark about Karadzic's current location. "We don't know where he is exactly, he could be in Serbia or Bosnia or travelling in between," the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters. NATO's last arrest operation based on a credible sighting was in September 2003, when troops searched an Orthodox monastery in the eastern Bosnian town of Cajnice, some 20 km (12 miles) from Celebici. Both locations are in a vast area neighbouring Serbia and Karadzic's native Montenegro, where he can count on porous borders, thick forests and support from local residents. TIME RUNNING OUT The military alliance's last confirmed sighting of Karadzic was in mid-2001 at a Belgrade restaurant. Montenegrin journalist and Karadzic watcher Seki Radoncic says Serbia is still his most likely hideout. "All his logistics, Yugoslav Army generals, policemen from Serbia, the Serbian Orthodox Church, all of that is in Belgrade," Radoncic said. "These three ... coordinated the break up of Bosnia and the creation of Bosnia's Serb Republic". Karadzic's most vocal supporters are based in Belgrade, where they have published and promoted his wartime letters, poetry, children's stories and memoirs. But even they say they have no idea of his whereabouts. In Bosnia, international peace administrators have cracked down on his supposed support network in the last two years, sacking officials and raiding the homes of family and friends. They have little to show for it. Sarajevo-based newspaper editor Senad Avdic said NATO was often "indecisive and slow" when it needed to act quickly to arrest Karadzic, instead devoting too much time to preparations to prevent the loss of soldiers' lives. The NATO official dismissed this, saying troops had detained 29 war crimes suspects since 1997. "We are not going to put people's lives at risk if we don't have to, but we will do what we have to do to get Karadzic," the official said. "Obviously he's a smart guy, well protected. If he wasn't we would have gotten him a long time ago." The U.N. court, under pressure to complete all trials by 2010, has said it won't shut down until top suspects are tried. But even del Ponte, who has publicly never given up hope of seeing Karadzic and Mladic on trial, hinted earlier this year that time for their capture may be running out. "I think that 2005 is the last year that we can expect their arrest," she said in Sarajevo in February.

Telegraph UK 8 July 2005 Nato troops seize Karadzic's son on eve of massacre anniversary By Patrick Bishop in Pale (Filed: 08/07/2005) International troops arrested the son of the indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic yesterday in a raid designed to show the world's determination to bring Bosnia's biggest killers to justice. Aleksandar "Sasa" Karadzic, 32, was picked up after being gulled into a meeting with Nato officers who pretended that they wanted to return material seized from his home in Pale, near Sarajevo, in an earlier raid. Radovan Karadzic: wanted by the ICTY He was handcuffed, blindfolded, and flown away in a helicopter. "Aleksandar Karadzic is suspected of rendering support to an indicted war criminal and may have information vital to the goal of locating indicted war criminals or identifying their supporters," Nato said in a statement. The operation was presented as being part of a relentless campaign to capture a man whose name, along with that of his army commander, Gen Ratko Mladic, has become synonymous with the horrors of the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. But local Serbs wondered why it had taken so long for the security forces to act against the younger Karadzic, who has been living openly in Pale for years. Some claimed that the arrest was a publicity stunt in advance of the memorial ceremonies planned for Monday to mark the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre in which up to 8,000 Muslim males were killed by Serbs. "Sasa has been kidnapped," said his sister, Sonja. "He has not committed any crime. It was a demonstration of force. It's a sick way to impose pressure on my father." She claimed that the family had no contact with their father and had no idea of his whereabouts. The continued freedom of Radovan Karadzic, a former psychiatrist who became leader of the Serb statelet, is a severe embarrassment for the international authorities who have overseen Bosnia for the last decade. In the early post-war years he lived semi-publicly in Pale, his political and military base. International peacekeepers were reluctant to move against him for fear of damaging political reconstruction or sparking violence against themselves from the local Serbs. As the first arrests of suspects indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) began in July 1997, he went into hiding. Despite several arrest attempts he is still at large. He is rumoured to be living in the wilds of Montenegro, occasionally crossing its south-eastern border with Bosnia for brief visits, during which he is protected by diehard nationalists who regard him as a hero. Mladic, his partner in the Srebrenica killings, is believed to be in Serbia. Political will has not been strong enough to trigger his arrest, despite the fact that handing him over is a vital pre-requisite of the country's further progress towards European membership. Maj Gen David Leakey, the head of the European Union Force, which keeps the peace in Bosnia, urged Mladic yesterday to give himself up. "If he thought what he was doing was right he should have the courage to defend his convictions," he said. "It is not the conduct of a courageous general to hide like a rat under a rock." Nearly 30 indicted war criminals have been arrested in Bosnia since the war. But the architects of the ethnic cleansing and mass murders are still free. This situation will cast a pall over the Srebrenica service when the remains of a further 610 victims of the massacre will be buried. Only 2,070 of the dead have been identified. About 4,500 body bags filled with human remains still await DNA identification. The ceremony will be attended by the presidents of the Bosnian Serb Republic and Serbia.

IWPR 9 July 2005 Nuremberg-Style Trial Planned for Bosnia’s Worst Atrocity Hague prosecutors want a joint trial for nine Bosnian Serbs accused over Srebrenica, but opinion is divided whether it can be fair or even practical. By Janet Anderson in The Hague (TU No 414, 09-Jul-05) For generations of Europeans brought up since the Second World War, the image of 21 Nazi leaders seated on the long wooden benches of Courtroom 600 in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice remains an example of how a single “mega-trial” can help deal with the legacy of years of horrendous crimes. Five decades on, legal minds faced with the atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda looked back to Nuremberg for lessons and inspiration. But the tribunals they set up to try war crimes cases have deliberately avoided copying the scale of the Nazi trial. Until now, that is. Ten years after the Srebrenica massacre, prosecutors at the Hague tribunal for the former Yugoslavia - urged on by a completion strategy that would have the court close its doors in less than three-and-a-half years - have asked for nine senior Bosnian Serb army and police officers to face a joint trial on charges related to the gravest crime committed in Europe since Nuremberg, the Srebrenica genocide. If this proposal is adopted by the judges, one of the three Hague tribunal courtrooms will have to be refitted to make space for them all: Vujadin Popovic, Ljubisa Beara, Drago Nikolic, Ljubomir Borovcanin, Zdravko Tolimir, Radivoje Miletic, Milan Gvero, Vinko Pandurevic and Milorad Trbic. Eight of them were high-ranking officers in the Bosnian Serb army, VRS, while Borovcanin was deputy commander of the Special Police Brigade deployed in the area. Prosecutors want the group to face a revised, common indictment that encompasses the whole of the complex murder and clean-up operation that took place in eastern Bosnia in the summer of 1995. All but one of the accused are already in The Hague, following a wave of "voluntary surrenders" from Serbia earlier this year. The only one missing is General Zdravko Tolimir, who is still on the run, much like the two men seen as the principal organisers of the massacres, Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and his commander-in-chief General Ratko Mladic. But these two most senior leaders are likely to have their own separate trial – if and when they come to The Hague. Apart from Tolimir, all of the group have pleaded not guilty to the charges laid against them in a new indictment revealed this week. One of the few comparable trials held by any of the United Nations courts so far is the so-called Butare trial in Arusha, Tanzania, where six people have stood trial since 2001 on charges of genocide, in connection with the killing of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994. But instead of being the example of swift-paced justice it was conceived as, the Butare case looks likely to become one of the Rwandan tribunal’s longest trials ever. Marred by procedural difficulties, bitter wrangling between defence counsels, and overall slowness, the trial is “a case-study in what not to do”, according to one long-term trial observer. The proposed Srebrenica mega-trial would dwarf Butare and indeed any other proceedings at the Yugoslav and Rwanda tribunals. And while Hague prosecutors, and some observers too, insist the trial could be a major opportunity for Srebrenica survivors and the world at large to see justice done swiftly, efficiently and in one big judicial process, others warn it could descend into a “managerial nightmare”. The process, they say, could be beset with delays and disappointments, as legal motion piles on legal motion and witnesses spend weeks on the stand enduring multiple cross-examination. These procedural difficulties could eventually reach a point where they cloud the essence of the case. BATTLE LINES DRAWN The new indictment, filed on June 28 and made public only on July 6, depicts for the first time in legal terms the full scale of the Serb operation that started in early July 1995 and ended only a month later, after two out of three UN "safe zones" in eastern Bosnia had been emptied of their Muslim inhabitants. NATO air strikes that began after the fall of Zepa (although not for reasons directly related to it) are assumed to have stopped the Serb army from advancing on the third and southernmost Muslim enclave, Gorazde. Originally, the nine accused were mentioned in six separate indictments. But the prosecution has now moulded these into one, and in the process it has made several significant alterations to the charges that each faces. The main change is that all the accused now face charges of genocide, and conspiracy to commit genocide, in Srebrenica, and of planning to remove the Bosnian Muslim population of Zepa. The prosecution has added charges of genocide against Trbic and Tolimir, who were previously charged only with the cleansing operation in the Zepa enclave. They, plus Popovic, Nikolic and Borovcanin, have had conspiracy to commit genocide added to the charges against them. Charges relating to the deportation of people from the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Zepa, which earlier figured in the indictments of only three of the nine accused, have now been laid against all nine. These changes are likely to become one of the key points in the defence’s objections when the hearing is held to decide whether to join the cases is held. So far, no date has been set, although the judges have said they hope to render a decision before the summer recess, which begins on July 23. Longstanding tribunal observers see the new indictment as a clear indication that the prosecution hopes to prove there was a large-scale conspiracy surrounding events at Srebrenica and Zepa. Some believe this may be more difficult that it looks from the outside. When Radislav Krstic, the commander of the Drina corps, the largest Bosnian Serb army unit to participate in both events, was tried and found guilty for his role in events at Srebrenica, the judges agreed that genocide had taken place there. But they were not convinced by prosecutors’ claims that General Krstic personally organised and planned it, and therefore found him guilty of only aiding and abetting genocide. The genocide was planned, they said, by people much higher up the chain of command. "There is no evidence that the Drina corps devised or instigated any of the atrocities that followed the take-over of Srebrenica in July 1995,” said the verdict in Krstic’s appeal. “The evidence strongly suggests that the criminal activity was being directed by the VRS Main Staff under the direction of General Mladic." Four of the nine accused were serving within the VRS Main Staff. Dutch lawyer and international trial observer Heikelina Verrijn Stuart says that up until now, no convincing evidence of a conspiracy – which would requires premeditation - has yet been presented. Finding this kind of evidence and demonstrating it will be the main challenge in the new case, she said. Several defence counsels have responded to the joinder motion by arguing against changes to the original indictments, saying that instead of being based on facts, these amendments are merely a way of justifying the joint indictment. The response of Zoran Zivanovic, defence counsel for Popovic, who was assistant commander for security with the Drina corps, indicates this is an area he will be exploring in the trial. Zivanovic says there is “no evidence in supporting material that he was in a position to make any conspiracy with the highest-ranking military persons of VRS”. CONSPIRACY OR NOT? Independent of the issue of whether there existed a conspiracy to execute thousands of Srebrenica men – and if it did, whether it was forged before or shortly after the fall of the enclave - the first question the judges will need to look at in deciding whether to allow the joinder is whether the alleged crimes were committed as a part of a common transaction – meaning a “common scheme, strategy or plan” and whether the accused therefore “acted in concert”. According to the court’s Rule 48, this is the first criterion that needs to be satisfied before judges move on to assess other factors for or against the joinder. At least one of the accused is going to challenge this notion. Djordje Sarapa, counsel for Vinko Pandurevic, the former commander of the Zvornik brigade - one of the key units present at Srebrenica – says there is “not a single circumstance that would point to a connection with the other accused and to his participation in joint action”. SERVING THE INTERESTS OF JUSTICE None of the experts IWPR spoke to questioned the basic applicability of Rule 48 to this case. Once the judges have made their ruling on whether the rule applies, they will face another complex task: weighing up whether such a trial would in fact be in the interests of justice. The prosecutors argue that a joint trial would avoid duplication of evidence including from forensic experts; that it would minimise the hardship of victims and witnesses who might otherwise be called to give the same evidence in numerous trials; that it would be “in the general interests of judicial economy”; and finally, that it would ensure consistency of verdicts. For the prosecution, “the entire factual basis of all these cases is identical” as regards Srebrenica, and so would be the majority of the evidence. Thierry Cruvellier, editor of International Justice Tribune, a newsletter covering international justice issues, believes the joinder “makes initial sense in terms of presenting the whole picture”. Edgar Chen, the Hague representative of the Coalition for International Justice, agrees that the fact there is the same crime base lends weight to the prosecution argument that a joint trial would run more efficiently by streamlining production of documents and witnesses, and by introducing material that has already been proved in other cases concerning Srebrenica such as the Krstic and Erdemovic trials. Even some of the defence lawyers agree, too – Popovic’s lawyer Zivanovic says he “fully accepts the arguments regarding duplication of evidence, minimising hardship to victims and witnesses, judicial economy and consistency in verdicts”. But other observers warn of other potential dangers that may scupper the case. “My first reaction was of course it makes sense,” says legal observer Verrijn Stuart. However, she warns, “it may seem more effective and efficient, but knowing how the tribunal works – with so much time taken up with procedure – I doubt that”. What happens if one of the accused is ill? Or if one of the defendants is determined to “throw sand in the machine” – as Verrijn Stuart put it - delaying the whole process for everyone. “Managing such a trial could be a nightmare for the court”, agreed Judith Armatta, a long-term Hague observer. The pure logistics of trying several defendants in the UN court’s limited space have not yet been dealt with, although the tribunal’s statute places no limit on the number of accused who can be tried together. There are currently three courtrooms, covering a maximum of six trials daily, with the average length of trial being two and a half years. In one of the courtrooms there is barely any room for the public, who end up at an uncomfortable stone’s throw from the accused. The two others are significantly larger, but again not large enough to fit the nine accused and full-blown defence teams for each. A representative of the registry confirmed to IWPR that they “have been looking at the practical and logistical measures that might be needed if the joinder were allowed”. Verrijn Stuart says other joint trials at The Hague – for instance the Celebici case, where four people were tried together for killing, torturing and raping detainees at a prison camp in central Bosnia - was “sometimes chaotic”, partly because there were just too many people in the courtroom. The prosecution argues that separate trials would potentially have serious negative consequences for the health, welfare and security of witnesses, and could even result in prosecutors "losing valuable and perhaps critical witnesses”. A joint trial, says Prosecutor Peter McCloskey - who has the job of writing and presenting the case for it - would minimise trauma and hardship to victims and witnesses who have already testified twice at the other trials related to the Srebrenica massacre. However, Jelena Nikolic, the defence counsel for Drago Nikolic, argues the opposite: that “to go through nine cross examinations [at the same time] can be a traumatising experience” for any witness. He goes further, saying this may affect his own client’s rights, because balancing the rights of the accused with welfare of witnesses is likely to be very difficult for the judges. DEFENCE STRATEGIES Even if the judges accept all the arguments of the prosecutor’s office, and order a joint trial, there are still many uncertainties surrounding how the trial itself would play out – not least, what each of the nine different defence teams would decide as its best strategy. Chen describes this as “the wild card” for all the parties concerned. Finding ways to block the prosecution could lead to any number of defence strategies, some of these possible clashing with each other. However, what Chen sees as the “most obvious fissure” within the group is between those who were part of the security apparatus and those were military personnel. Careful reading of Srebrenica-related judgements rendered so far reveals that the military below Main Staff were mainly engaged in providing the infrastructural support for the killing operation, while military police and special police units were more likely to be engaged in the actual executions. “The military men may argue along the lines, ‘we had nothing to do with this sinister operation and we were only concerned with the military operation to over-run Srebrenica’,” said Chen. Verrijn Stuart agrees that there could be huge conflicts of interests among the accused if they go into a joint trial. “Every proper defence would be aimed at shifting the responsibilities to others, and thus undermining each other’s defence”, she says. Drago Nikolic’s lawyer Jelena Nikolic addresses this point in her response, arguing that “significant differences exist between each of the accused and their alleged involvement in the events of 1995”. The most important difference is “probably that some of the accused would have allegedly conceived the joint criminal enterprise while others allegedly had a role to play of lesser importance in the execution of the joint criminal enterprise”, she said. Jelena Nikolic also argues that, in deciding for or against a joint trial, the trial chamber should be considering not only which evidence would be the same, but how much will be different; and whether, because there are nine accused, some pieces of evidence relevant to only one of them could get missed out. “It may very well be that a witness knows of significant exculpatory evidence for one accused, but that such evidence will not come out due to the presence of other accused,” she said. Djordje Sarapa, defending Pandurevic, is already arguing that his client should be given a separate trial because, he says, there is a conflict of interests. In his response to the joinder motion, Sarapa suggests that Pandurevic “was undertaking reasonable actions in order to save the people of both sides in the conflict, even though it was contrary to the orders of the superiors”. The prosecutors themselves recognise that there is already a conflict of interest between Trbic and some of the other accused. In the testimony he gave at the trial of Bosnian Serb army officers Vidoje Blagojevic and Dragan Jokic, and also in his statements to the prosecutors, Trbic has already “implicated several of his current co-accused in the Srebrenica crimes”, according to the prosecution. However, McCloskey argues that the danger of such conflicts of interest would only work as an argument against a joinder if the case evidence were to be heard by a jury rather than professional judges. There is considerable speculation that one or more of the accused may be prepared to do a deal with prosecutors so as to testify about the others in return for receiving a lower sentence. “It is not beyond reasonable expectation”, commented Chen. Some observers even suggest that the joinder motion is a way of encouraging those accused who were lower down the military hierarchy to consider testifying. Chen points to lower-ranking officers like Trbic, who he says may ask themselves, "why should I bear the same responsibility as Beara [the former security chief] who was higher up the chain? “These are the pressure points”, says Chen, Others like Beara and Popovic “are the lynchpins, where there would be no deal”, he added. COMPLETION STRATEGY The tribunal faces a deadline of 2008 by which time it is required by the United Nations to have finished the all trials except those that have gone to appeal. The prosecutor's office argues that a joint trial will help achieve that target. The Hague tribunal “cannot possibly try two or more Srebrenica trials within the dates of its current mandate,” warned prosecutor McCloskey, noting that individual trials would each “take a minimum of one year, and likely longer”. Armatta suggests that the trial chamber is likely to agree to the joinder because of the time pressures and associated resource limitations, “as long as they don’t feel it significantly impinges on any of the accused’s rights”. Cruvellier, though, expresses doubt that the joint trial could be completed in the three years officially left to the tribunal. The defence counsel for Nikolic, Jelena Nikolic, argues along similar lines, saying that one big trial could in fact use more resources, while the large number of defendants would probably make objections and motions more frequent. The big trial “is not likely to be shorter than two or three trials held separately”, she says. In the nearest parallel case – that in Arusha - 61 separate motions have been filed and ruled upon by the trial chamber over the last four and a half years. Cruvellier, a long-term observer of the Arusha court, also says that the experience there shows that “the whole argument about gaining time thanks to common witnesses in a joint trial has never been proved right”. Other observers see the joint trial as potentially part of a longer prosecution strategy, which, because it is unlikely to be completed by the end of 2008, would provide an extra argument for keeping the tribunal going beyond the deadline set by the UN. Already both the president and the chief prosecutor of the tribunal have told the UN that they will have to carry on trials until 2009 at least. “The OTP [Office of the Tribunal Prosecutor] has hardly shown a strong and clear strategy to complete trials before 2008. So there might be some further concern that by going for a joint trial, they know they could be stuck in the middle of the trial when the deadline comes,” said Cruvellier. If that were the case, it would run contrary to the arguments that the chief prosecutor and the tribunal president have put to the UN Security Council: that joint trials would provide judicial economy. What is curious is that the two sister tribunals are choosing different strategies as the deadline approaches for their winding down. In Arusha, the next three years will be dominated by new, short trials of individuals – no new joint trials are envisaged – while it continues slogging through a number of extremely long joint trials which have already started. The Hague, on the other hand, is looking to hold an all-new mega trial. In part, that choice is explained by the huge increase in detainees from Serbia who have arrived at The Hague in recent months –simple arithmetic makes joint trials look inevitable. However, the judges deciding on the Srebrenica joinder motion may want to pause for a moment and consider how far the Butare trial has got four years after it began. It was only in January of this year that the first and most senior of the defendants, a former minister, was able to start presenting her case. There are five more defendants to go, and each of their lawyers is following a different strategy. The president of the Rwanda tribunal told the Security Council recently that the Butare trial might finish its initial proceedings during 2006. But five years after the trial started, nobody can be sure any more how much longer it will really take. Janet Anderson is a freelance editor with IWPR in The Hague.

NYT 10 July 2005 10 Years Later, Tormenting Memories of Srebrenica By DAVID ROHDE SREBRENICA, Bosnia and Herzegovina, July 9 - A decade ago here in eastern Bosnia, Camila Omanovic tied a rope around an iron pipe in an abandoned factory. She asked God to forgive her and tried to hang herself. Days earlier, Bosnian Serb soldiers had overwhelmed 370 poorly armed Dutch peacekeepers protecting Srebrenica, a pocket of 40,000 Bosnian Muslims that had been declared a "safe area" under United Nations protection. In the final and most brutal chapter of four years of ethnic war - and the worst massacre in Europe since World War II - the Serbian forces rounded up and killed more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys. Ms. Omanovic's husband was among them. Convinced that she faced rape, torture and death, Ms. Omanovic decided on suicide. But two teenage boys saw her, called for help, and peacekeepers came and pulled her to the ground. With as many as 50,000 people expected to gather here on Monday to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the killings - which war crimes judges ruled genocide - and the forced expulsions of more than 30,000 Muslim women and children, three lives reflect how Srebrenica has changed, and how the effects of its horror live on. A Bosnian Serb who arrived in Srebrenica the day after the town fell and helped save two Srebrenica Muslims has sunk into a life shadowed by an anemic economy, criminal mafias and a stubborn denial of the scope of the slaughter here. A Dutch soldier still serves his unit but remains haunted by Srebrenica. Ms. Omanovic and 2,900 other Muslims have returned to the town, intent on reversing the Serbian goal of creating an "ethnically pure" Serbian state in Bosnia. "No one said we would ever be able to come back," said Ms. Omanovic, her face flushed with pride. "I'm not afraid." The Pull of a Husband's Grave Today, Ms. Omanovic is a woman transformed. A shaken and fragile figure when interviewed just after the town's fall a decade ago, she was assertive and animated on a recent Friday night as she sat in her brother's new Srebrenica guesthouse. She laughed, waved her hands in the air and shook her head in disbelief as she explained how she found the courage to journey home. "Everyone is afraid to come back because everyone has bad memories," she said, surrounded by old Muslim friends. "I thought I would never return." Her homecoming is part of a $21 million American, European and Canadian effort to move Muslims back to the Srebrenica area and rebuild the town. Progress has been slow, and some Srebrenica survivors accuse the United States and Europe of making a tepid effort. Muslims are returning, they say, because they are impoverished and have nowhere else to go. The two Serbian leaders indicted on charges of genocide in the killings, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, remain free. For Ms. Omanovic, every Muslim who returns here is a victory. The area's population is now 40 percent Muslim. The town's mayor is a Muslim. Forty percent of its police force is Muslim. Forty Muslim children attend high school with 600 Serbs. Ms. Omanovic works as a bookkeeper in the same factory where she tried to kill herself. Now it holds the administrative offices of the sprawling local memorial to Srebrenica's dead. One of the teenage boys who helped save her is a town policeman; the other is a guard at the memorial. After being expelled from Srebrenica, Ms. Omanovic lived in Muslim-controlled central Bosnia. Last year, she was offered the bookkeeping job at the memorial. She could not sleep for three nights. Visions of the war, as well as an unexpected longing for Srebrenica, filled her. Something else also drew her back: her husband's grave. DNA tests have identified the remains of 2,070 Muslims found in forests and mass graves. Searchers discovered the body of Ms. Omanovic's husband, an engineer she calls "my beloved Ahmet," at an ambush site. His head and one of his hands were missing. "It's the contentment of the soul," she said. "I feel close to him. I go to the grave." Ms. Omanovic lives on a street of mostly abandoned houses. Her neighbors are eight other Muslim widows. Ignoring rumors that the town is haunted, the women have restarted a competition from before the war that honors Srebrenica's most beautiful garden. Amid the abandoned houses of the dead, pockets of carefully nurtured red roses, white lilies and yellow carnations bloom. "I would like this town to be like it used to be," Ms. Omanovic said. When she met her husband's former assistant, a Serbian woman, they embraced. The Serb trembled and wept. In line at the local bank, Serbs wave Ms. Omanovic to the front. But she and other residents say the town's Muslims and Serbs inhabit parallel worlds. They rarely socialize. Both sides, they say, hide their true emotions. "They are very polite, they kiss me," she said. "After everything that happened, I know it's just acting." Muslims' Savior Is Bitter About a mile north of the Omanovic family's new guesthouse is the home of a former Serbian soldier who grew up in Srebrenica. The former soldier, a middle-aged man, asked to speak on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation if Serbian nationalists learned that he saved two Muslims after the town's fall. At the time of the massacre, he was an army soldier who was ordered to separate a group of mostly elderly Muslim men from a crowd of refugees and load them onto a truck, he said. He spotted two elderly Muslim men who had treated him kindly as a youth: the longtime maître d'hôtel of the local hotel restaurant and his favorite high-school teacher. Defying a Serb who outranked him, he told the two they could stay with the women. In a separate interview, the Muslim teacher confirmed that the man had saved his life and that of the hotel worker. Today the former soldier is more bitter and less confident. He complained that Muslims have more jobs in the town's government, police force and factories. Like other local Serbs, he begrudges the changes in Srebrenica and minimizes the massacre, and Serbian responsibility for it. He dismisses the vast amounts of forensic evidence and two confessions from Serbian military officers in war crimes trials, and questions the number of dead. "Islam is financing all that," he said. In interviews a decade ago, he expressed confidence that Bosnia's Serbs would have a separate country. But while the Muslims have returned to Srebrenica, the Serbian population has dwindled to 4,000, just a third of what it was after the war. He said the international community was forcing Serbs to live with Muslims. "We all are aware what is imposed," he said. "We are not that stupid. We understand." He says peacekeepers will have to stay in Bosnia until a strong economy eases tensions. But he is cynical, too, about Serbian nationalists. At one point after the war, he was shot when he tried to break up a fight involving a Serb. Western diplomats have said the Serb is a member of one of the Serb nationalist mafias flourishing in the country. The former soldier predicted that the man would never be punished. "We were fighting for a system," he said, meaning a well-governed Serbian state. "This is what we get." Dutch Soldier Can't Forget Eight hundred miles northwest of Srebrenica, in the Netherlands, Sgt. First Class Theo Lutke, 34, thinks about the fall of the town "almost every day." "I think I have a rucksack of experiences," he said. "This experience will always stay in the backpack." He and other Dutch peacekeepers tried to serve as unarmed escorts for the busloads of Muslim women and children expelled from the area. But Serbian soldiers stole their blue United Nations helmets and flak jackets at gunpoint and used them to trick Muslims into surrendering. One Dutch peacekeeper was forced to climb onto a stolen United Nations vehicle, was given a rifle and taken "Muslim hunting" by the Serbs. No Muslims were found. "I didn't know if I would come home ever," said Sergeant Lutke, who is one of a few dozen Srebrenica veterans still in the Dutch Army. After the scale of the massacre emerged, Srebrenica became a national scandal in the Netherlands. An exhaustive investigation forced the resignation of the country's prime minister in 2002. The commander of the Dutch battalion said he moved to Spain because people in the Netherlands shouted "coward" at him on the street. Sergeant Lutke went through his own soul-searching. "I looked in the mirror and asked myself, 'Did I do everything I could?' " He believes he did. He blames Serbian nationalists. The Dutch government has continued deploying peacekeepers, sending troops to Macedonia, Albania, Ethiopia, Liberia, Afghanistan and Iraq. In June 2004, the Dutch unit that served in Srebrenica was sent to southern Iraq. Four Apache attack helicopters backed the unit, firepower that Dutch military officials say could have slowed or stopped the Serbian advance on Srebrenica. A Srebrenica veteran commanded; Sergeant Lutke led a squad. "You feel like a soldier again," he said. Yet after his patrol killed two suspected suicide bombers, flashbacks of Srebrenica filled his mind. He returned home early. "It exploded inside me," he said, referring to the reawakened memories. "I wanted to sleep. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't." Nicholas Wood contributed reporting from Bosnia for this article.

fena.ba 11 July 2005 TIHIC: DENYING THIS GENOCIDE IS THE LAST PHASE OF GENOCIDE SREBRENICA/POTOCARI, July 11 (FENA) – In the beginning of his address to the commemoration in Potocari on Monday, BiH Presidency member Sulejman Tihic welcomed the bystanders, especially the families of the victims and survivors from UN safe haven Srebrenica and Zepa. “For the sake of the truth about the past, which is the foundation for a better future, with this occasion and on this place I must say – the UN did not to manage to preserve the population of the safe haven and left them to the Serb forces, which committed genocide, by killing at least 7.808 Bosniaks”, said Tihic. To the respected families, he added, I have no words for your pain and suffering. Nobody can bring your dearest back. “The only thing that we can do on this occasion is to commit ourselves one more time and do our utmost to discover and properly bury all missing and murdered persons, and punish the culprits for the crimes, especially the most wanted – Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic”, said Tihic. He stressed that Srebrenica indeed is the greatest crime against the population in Europe since the Second World War. Unfortunately, he added, apart from Srebrenica, other crimes were committed throughout BiH. He added that trust and good relations among the peoples and states could only be built on the foundations of the truth and justice. “We shall not and we cannot forget the past. This is important for the sake of the future so that Srebrenica would never ever happen to anybody again. I am pleased that times are coming in which we will gather in Srebrenica for different, happier occasions, such as return, opening new factories, jobs, etc. I hope that we will have more similar occasions in the future”, said Tihic. “The truth about the past and sanctioning the persons responsible for crimes represent the foundations of new relations in the region. This is the best path towards the joint future within the united Europe and other integration”, said Tihic

France

AP 7 July 2005 Paris Court Fines Book Editors For Armenian Genocide Denial (AP) - A Paris court on Wednesday ordered the editors of a French reference book to pay a small fine for an unbalanced portrayal of the killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians during World War I, which Armenians say was genocide. The court said the Quid reference book favored Turkey's position and only briefly described the Armenian point of view. The court issued a fine of $1.19 and ordered the publication of its verdict in three daily newspapers, three weekly newspapers and on the Quid internet site. The committee for the defense of the Armenian cause filed a complaint against the encyclopedia in 2003. Defense lawyers for the reference book underlined its editorial freedom and pointed out that the book mentions a 2001 French law that recognizes the killings as genocide. Armenians say some 1.5 million of their people were killed as the Ottoman Empire forced them from eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1923 in a deliberate campaign of genocide. Turkey says the death count is inflated and insists that Armenians were killed or displaced in the civil unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

zaman.com 11 July 2005 French Report: Bosnians were Blindly Sacrificed By Ali Ihsan Aydin Published: Monday July 11, 2005 zaman.com A research report prepared by the French national assembly that was accused by The Netherlands for underestimating the massacre committed in Srebrenica in 1995 brings to light some prominent points regarding the event. Since, the incidents that occurred are beyond mental capacity, the French Assembly Research Commission tried to find answers to the questions that did not leave the European conscious for 10 years, as the French took some responsibility for the massacre in 2000: Why did the Dutch soldiers who were responsible for Srebrenica not defend it? Why did the French General, Bernard Janvier who was the commander of the United Nations (UN) forces in Bosnia not begin an air attack even though he was authorized to do so? Did France make a secret agreement with the Serbians? Was gathering Bosnians to the UN-constructed security areas part of the plan for the mass massacres? The commission published the 1200-page report at the end of its research. The report provides significant clues to understanding the barbarism in Srebrenica during the nine months, but failed to give any definite answers for many questions since the UN, North Atlantic Treaty Organizations (NATO) and French Ministry of Defense were not approached for their cooperation. Dutch soldiers simplified the massacre by collecting the Bosnians' weapons The French report also indicated that Janvier cannot accept all the blame and drew attention to the Dutch soldiers who were responsible for protecting Srebrenica not to make any show of defense against the Serbians. Determining that situation provided a great psychological advantage for the Serbs, the commission noted that the Dutch soldiers had seized the guns of Bosnians and surrendered them to the Serbians thereby dispersing their weak defense system. The report also reminded that the Dutch soldiers also floundered in Tuzla and criticized the Dutch authorities for their witnessing of the massacre in Srebrenica and then keeping it a secret. One of the commanders from the international forces, British Commander Rupert Smith, is also accused implicitly in the report. Reminding that as Janvier's deputy the British officer, responsible for the links with NATO took a vacation in the critical period, it is emphasized the fact that FORPRONU officials' did not make any reactions during the crises still remains as an important unanswered question. Reminding that Smith had met with Mladic who undertook the massacre in Srebrenica twice on 15-19 July 1995, the commission informs that they wanted to ask him directly about the content of the talks; however, Smith did not respond to their request for a meeting. The French Commission report stresses that the UN's Bosnian Envoy Yasushi Akashi presented reports to the UN Security Council containing incorrect information. Emphasizing the UN took action to "protect peace"' in the middle of the war, the report informs that due to the "neutrality" of the officials, they did not show even a single display of retaliation to the Serbians who hindered the UN convoys. Claiming that although the international force was in Bosnia "physically", it never had a 'military' existence there, the commission underlines that the cause of the massacre should be looked at as the unwillingness of French, British, and US politicians to intervene. Were Srebrenica and Zepa left to the Serbians as part of a peace agreement? French parliamentary members noted that the weakness of United Nations (UN) is clearly seen in its policy for establishing "security zones" and they emphasized the insufficient protection in these areas where Bosnians had been gathered up. The reasons behind the Srebrenica genocide should be looked at from this perspective, they claimed. The commission said in the report's conclusion: "A shocking question, but not asking it will be even more shocking. Was Srebrenica the result of a policy that aims t easing the negotiations in order to reshape the Ethnic Map of Bosnia and Herzegovina? Was the city lost as a result of a decision taken in Paris, London, Washington and even in Sarajevo?" The report also noted thatsin order to figure this out one needs to look at the maps of Bosnia and Herzegovina made before July 1995 and after July 1995 and also the chronology of the events. The report emphasizes from this perspective that the enemy brothers made an agreement to share Bosnian territory only four months after the fall of Srebrenica. The silence of Western leaders regarding the fall of Zepa, another security zone, following the fall of Srebrenica despite claims that Serbians were undertaking ethnic genocide in Srebrenica hardens this thesis. The report by the French Parliament notes, there is not enough evidence to claim that there is an international plan regarding this issue. Paris

Germany

Italy

DPA 5 July 2005 Italian judge indicts two ex-Nazis for massacre 5 July 2005 LA SPEZIA, ITALY - A military court in the northern Italian city of La Spezia on Tuesday indicted two German nationals for their role in the wartime massacre of Marzabotto, considered the largest massacre of civilians by the Nazis during their World War II occupation of Italy. Alfred Piepenschneider and Franz Stockinger, 84 and 79 years old respectively, are to face murder charges in a trial scheduled to begin on December 1, the Ansa news agency reported. The two are likely to be joined by several other defendants whose judicial position is still being analysed by magistrates. The Marzabotto massacre, which took place between September 29 and 30, 1944, in a village near Bologna, left nearly 800 Italians dead. The slaughter, which also involved some 200 children and the local priest, came as a response to clashes between Italian resistance fighters and German troops. On June 22, the La Spezia court handed down life sentences to 10 former Nazi officers found guilty of taking part in another wartime massacre near Florence that left 560 civilians dead. Most of the evidence backing the prosecution only emerged after wartime archives were reopened a few years ago.

Netherlands

zaman.com 11 July 2005 Netherlands Reluctant to Take Responsibility Published: Monday July 11, 2005 zaman.com Journalist Raymond van den Boogaard, famous for his research on Srebrenica, noted during his explanation to Agency France Press (AFP) that the fear of taking the blame prevents discussions about the issue in Netherlands. The report, which was completed in 2002 by the Netherlands War and Documentation Center, had decided that it was an incorrect decision to send Netherlands soldiers to the region to carry out an impossible mission. After the report, which also accuses United Nations (UN), which was reluctant to help at that, said the then government of Netherlands under the presidency of Wim Kok had resigned over the issue. The Netherlands Parliament made a similar conclusion after an investigation. The relatives of the Srebrenica victims, who reacted to the report, launched a case in a court in Lahey against Amsterdam as a last resort. Netherlands' absence in all of the ceremonies for the genocide so far was also criticized. Netherlands Foreign Minister Ben Bot is expected to participate into the ceremony marking the anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide.

Netherlands - ICTY

NYT 4 July 2005 Details of Srebrenica Emerge as Hague Prepares for a Trial By MARLISE SIMONS THE HAGUE - To carry out the most notorious massacre of the Bosnian war, the organizers devised an elaborate ruse. They stole the blue helmets and white vehicles of United Nations peacekeepers so they could trick and capture their victims. They blocked access roads to keep away outsiders like Red Cross workers and journalists. On July 11, 1995, as gunshots rang in the night, the Bosnian Serb military leader, Gen. Ratko Mladic, met in a local hotel with a man summoned to speak for the frightened people in the mountain town of Srebrenica. "I guarantee that all those who surrender their weapons will live," the general said. "I need a clear answer so I can decide both as a man and as a commander." But the next morning, a five-day killing frenzy began. By the time it was over, the Bosnian Serb Army and police forces had systematically tracked down and executed close to 8,000 boys and men. General Mladic and the Bosnian Serb political leader, Radovan Karadzic, who were indicted as the main architects of Europe's worst massacre since World War II, have evaded capture. But many men from their inner circle are now in jail. Prosecutors at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague are preparing a joint trial of nine of the highest-ranking officers accused of playing integral roles in the Srebrenica killings. Such a large joint trial would dwarf any other proceedings the court has held. All nine men face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and five of them are accused of complicity to commit genocide. A joint trial is possible because eight of the generals and senior officers from the Bosnian Serb Army have arrived in The Hague in recent months, their "voluntary surrender" largely a result of international pressure on the Serbian authorities. One remains at large. Judges at the tribunal that deals with the former Yugoslavia must still approve prosecuting the men as a group, and no trial date has been set. Some lawyers who follow the court have said they fear that a joint trial could become a management nightmare, involving at least 18 defense lawyers and many prosecutors. Several defense lawyers have already objected to a joint trial. But prosecutors argue that trying the men together would avoid much duplication, minimize hardship for victims and witnesses and ensure consistency in dealing with crimes committed during the same campaign. Prosecutors also say their case has been strengthened by a cache of documents that NATO troops obtained recently from the archives of one of the main military entities, the Drina Corps. The archives are said to include statements and papers signed by several of the accused. Until now, the trials dealing with the wars of the 1990's that tore up Yugoslavia have been short on a paper trail and have had to rely heavily on witnesses' testimony. Much of what happened at Srebrenica, which had been a United Nations protectorate, is known. Some details came out during two trials of three high-ranking officers who are now serving long sentences. Another three men - two senior officers and a soldier in a firing squad - pleaded guilty and provided lengthy testimony. The picture painted during those many hours in court shows that the capture and killing of the men and boys of Srebrenica were coordinated by the military security and intelligence branch of the Bosnian Serb Army and militarized police. The forces were supplied and paid by a special department of the Serbian government in Belgrade, whose president was Slobodan Milosevic. His war crimes trial here is now in its fourth year. The killing at Srebrenica began soon after General Mladic's troops had overwhelmed the 300 United Nations peacekeepers protecting about 40,000 people who had sought refuge in the town or already lived there. The Bosnian Serb troops immediately separated more than 1,000 unarmed Bosnian Muslim men and boys from the families that had fled to the town. Several thousand others, former fighters as well as civilians, were ambushed as they tried to escape though the woods. Others unknowingly surrendered to Serbs disguised as United Nations peacekeepers, witnesses have testified. The captives were executed at various places in the area, at a warehouse, on a farm, near a dam, on the banks of a river. Many bodies were later found in mass graves with their hands tied behind their backs. The Red Cross list of the missing has close to 8,000 names. "It was a huge logistical undertaking, moving prisoners, then moving bodies and to do all of this out of sight of the U.N. and the press," said a prosecutor who has long worked on the case. Under tribunal rules, only official spokesmen, not prosecutors, can speak for publication. If the group trial goes forward, the accused will include those thought to be "the real hands-on guys, the guys on the ground that made all this possible," the prosecutor said. Among them are Ljubomir Borovcanin, a police commander charged with capturing and killing fleeing men. In court, prosecutors have shown a photograph of him during the operation, wearing a United Nations helmet. Two of the other defendants from General Mladic's inner circle are Col. Ljubisa Beara, the security and intelligence chief of the army's main staff, and one of his deputies, Lt. Col. Vujadin Popovic. Their indictment says they supervised the deportation of women and children and saw to it that men and teenage boys were rounded up, put in temporary holding facilities and taken to the killing fields. A radio intercept from July 15, during the killing, seems to record the rate of progress. On the tape, played in court during an earlier trial, a man identifying himself as Colonel Beara reports to his boss and asks for assistance, because "I have 3,500 parcels to distribute," a reference, prosecutors say, to captives and bodies to be disposed of. On the afternoon of July 17, on another radio intercept played in court, Colonel Popovic calls his boss, Gen. Radislav Krstic, from a farm where, on that day, in a span of five hours, an estimated 1,200 captives were executed. "Hello, it's Popovic, boss," he says. "Everything has been brought to an end. That job is done. No problems. I am here at the place. Can I just take a little break, take a shower? Basically that all gets an A. The grade is an A." That night, according to the intercepts, Colonel Popovic tried to reach General Krstic again, but could not reach him. By then, 500 more prisoners had been killed, at a cultural center at Pilice. On the intercept, the man identifying himself as Colonel Popovic says: "Tell the general I finished the job. I was there on the spot." He adds, "It was horrible, horrible." Among the questions that prosecutors hope to answer in any future trial dealing with Srebrenica is when, how and by whom the decision to commit the mass killings was made. They will also be looking for another crucial piece of the puzzle: what exactly was Mr. Milosevic's role in the killings and deportations of Muslims during three years of war in Bosnia that ended in late 1995. Another trial already under way is dealing with war crimes by the Muslim forces before the fall of Srebrenica. But the prosecution says that while war crimes were committed by Serbs, Croats and Bosnians during the wars of the early 1990's, evidence is overwhelming that most were committed by Serbs and that the gravest crime of all took place at Srebrenica. Mark Harmon, the lead prosecutor in the case against General Krstic, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison, told the judges in that trial that Srebrenica was about "the triumph of evil - a story about how officers and soldiers of the Bosnian Serb Army, men who professed to be professional soldiers, men who professed to represent the ideals of a distinguished Serbian past, organized, planned and willingly participated in genocide.'

Poland

The Age 11 July 2005 www.theage.com.au Holocaust Jew accused of war crimes By Allan Hall Age Correspondent Berlin July 11, 2005 Page Tools Email to a friend Printer format An old Jewish man who took his own cold-blooded revenge against Germans for the Holocaust will not be extradited back to Poland from Israel to answer charges of genocide. The case of Solomon Morel, 86, is the only one in Holocaust history where a Jew stands accused of war crimes against Germans. It has perplexed legal minds in both countries. Poland says genocide is genocide whether a Jew or a Nazi committed it, while many Israelis see rough justice in the 1500 German deaths for which Mr Morel is alleged to be responsible. Now the Israeli Government has said that Mr Morel will not be sent back to stand trial in Poland under any circumstances. Mr Morel, who came from the little Polish town of Grabowo, claims he was an Auschwitz survivor whose family was murdered by the Nazis during World War II. A book, An Eye for an Eye, which documents his strange life, claims his family was indeed liquidated, but by Poles who collaborated with the Nazis. It also says that he was never imprisoned by the Germans. By 1943 he was employed peeling potatoes for a Jewish partisan brigade before escaping to the Soviet Union, where he trained in the gruesome interrogation methods of the NKVD, Stalin's political police, before returning to Poland in 1945. He was then put in charge by the communists of a camp containing thousands of German prisoners including SS men, soldiers and civilians. John Sack, the Jewish-American author of An Eye for an Eye, claims Mr Morel, as commandant of Swietochlowice Camp, morphed into the kind of monster that would have been welcomed by the Gestapo. "His favourite method of killing prisoners was hacking the skull of his victims with a wooden leg of a chair," according to the book. "It is quite possible that in Swietochlowice several thousand persons were murdered by Morel and his men." They would beat them and throw the bodies out of the window." Camp survivorSack's book, and a score of Polish books and newspaper articles, said he beat, shot, starved, tortured and killed with gusto in the camp. "I knew Morel in the camp. He was a very brutal man," survivor Dorota Boriczek said. "He was young then. He would come in at night. We could hear the cries of the men then. They would beat them and throw the bodies out of the window." In 1989, a Polish reporter found Mr Morel living in a part of Katowice assigned for former uniformed functionaries of communist terror. In the early 1990s, the Main Commission for the Investigations of Crimes Against the Polish Nation started an official investigation of Mr Morel's activities in the Swietochlowice Camp after witness articles appeared in the press. In 1994, Mr Morel sought political asylum in Sweden. This was refused. He then successfully sought sanctuary in Israel. Poland tried to extradite him seven years ago on torture charges. Israel refused. So prosecutors began preparing a genocide case, for which there is no statute of limitations. Last week, they received a blank refusal from Israel saying "there was no basis whatsoever" to extradite Mr Morel. A Polish prosecutor said testimony from former inmates documented Mr Morel's torture of at least 13 prisoners. "There should be one measure for judging war criminals, irrespective whether they are German, Israeli, or any other nationality," the prosecutor said.

Serbia

Reuters 9 July 2005 Hardline Serbs Defiant Before Srebrenica Memorial By REUTERS Filed at 2:29 p.m. ET BELGRADE (Reuters) - Hardline Serbian nationalists gathered on Saturday to commemorate Serb victims of the Yugoslav wars in a defiant gesture ahead of the anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims. Their rally was in stark contrast to somber scenes in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, where solemn crowds lined the streets to greet a convoy of trucks carrying 610 coffins containing the identified remains of Srebrenica victims. The remains will be reburied at a memorial ceremony on Monday that is expected to draw 50,000 mourners. More than 2,000 victims have been identified by painstaking DNA analysis over the years. About 7,000 body bags have still to be analyzed and 20 more mass graves to be exhumed. But such incontrovertible evidence has little impact on those Serbs who still insist the killing was simply a fact of war, or a justifiable act of revenge, or who deny the massacre outright. Led by the ultra-nationalist Radical Party and the top ranks of the Orthodox Christian church, hardline Serbs packed a hall on the banks of the Sava river in Belgrade to listen to patriotic speeches and watch a documentary of Serb suffering in the wars. Seated in the two front rows were well-known defenders of Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitives Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic as well as supporters of Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serb leader now on trial for genocide in The Hague. The rally listened to a message from party leader Vojislav Seselj, who is in detention in The Hague awaiting trial on war crimes charges and is forbidden from engaging in politics. ABSURD ``With this film about crimes against Serbs we are showing who were the real victims in this war,'' Radical Party official Aleksandar Vucic told the Belgrade tabloid Srpski Nacional. ``We are in an absurd situation where no one talks about crimes against Serbs. We offered this film to TV stations but they refused to show it, while they looped film about Srebrenica day in and day out.'' The documentary, entitled ``The Truth,'' was a compilation of old images, much of it familiar state propaganda from the Milosevic era. Richard Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries' and Carl Orff's 'Carmina Burana' provided a dramatic musical background. The event, precursor to a memorial ceremony Serbs plan to stage near Srebrenica next week, was broadcast live by three television channels, including Belgrade-based BK television which has nationwide coverage. Serbia was embarrassed internationally in June when parliament failed to adopt a resolution on the 10th anniversary of Srebrenica. Hardliners refused to single out the massacre, insisting the war crimes committed by all sides were equal. Mladic and Karadzic remain free somewhere in hiding. The Radicals dispute the finding of independent historians that Serb forces were responsible for the majority of civilian deaths and atrocities in the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo between 1991 and 1999. Some deny a massacre even took place. Former Bosnian Serb 'president' Karadzic and his army commander General Mladic are indicted for the Srebrenica slaughter in mid-July 1995, in the final months of the war. In Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, Muslim males captured when Serb forces overran the U.N. ``safe area'' in eastern Bosnia were executed systematically over a period of several days and bulldozed into mass graves.

Russia

United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) Date: 30 Jun 2005 Print E-mail Save Kosovo Forum: Political leaders reach consensus on preparations for status talks and dialogue with BelgradeUNMIK/PR/1382 PRISTINA – SRSG Søren Jessen-Petersen welcomed the agreement of Kosovo political leaders on modalities of preparations for status talks and on dialogue with Belgrade. The leaders reached a consensus on these key issues in the second meeting of the Kosovo Forum facilitated by the SRSG in the UNMIK HQ this afternoon. The meeting was attended, among others, by President Ibrahim Rugova, 1st Deputy President of AAK and Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi, PDK President Hashim Thaci, ORA leader Veton Surroi and Vice President of LDK Kole Berisha. "The Forum confirmed the need for the President and the political parties to focus on status preparation in a consensual manner," the SRSG said in a joint press encounter with political leaders after the meeting. "We agreed to establish a Secretariat with representatives of the Office of the President and of the political parties. The Secretariat will look closely, at the working levels, at the structuring and functioning of the Forum, and at how to organize preparation for the status process. The Secretariat may identify further measures and processes that may be needed as the process evolves," the SRSG said, adding: "The Secretariat will meet tomorrow and UNMIK will facilitate its meetings, at least initially." The Forum also agreed today on the importance of the political dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade, while recognizing the need for continuing the technical dialogues. "Such political dialogue should go ahead on mutually agreed time and venue, and all political parties have expressed their readiness to provide support and a platform for such a dialogue," the SRSG said, clarifying that the purpose of the political dialogue is not to discuss the future status but other issues "that would hopefully contribute to the normalization and stabilization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina as well as the region as a whole". "UNMIK's role is to step back and have the political parties and the President out in front in the lead on these issues. And what we have done today, based on a proposal coming from the political parties and the President, is starting a process that in my view could easily evolve into the kind of platform that may be required for status discussions," the SRSG said, "For me it is a very important step…an example of the political parties taking over the process."

AFP 3 Jul 2005 Print E-mail Save Three explosions rock Kosovo capital, sparking fears of fresh unrestby Ismet Hajdari PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro, July 3 (AFP) - The capital of Serbia's UN-administered province of Kosovo was rocked by three explosions near international institutions Saturday, claiming no victims but sparking fears of instability before discussions later this year on the final status of Kosovo. The bombings, which had not been claimed late Saturday, occurred during a visit by the United Nations secretary general's special envoy Kai Eide. A first explosion went off outside the UN mission, followed rapidly by two others near the parliament building and the European agency for reconstruction and development in Pristina, as well as a restaurant close to the headquarters of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). "There were no victims and no injuries and the police and KFOR (the NATO multilateral force) have sealed off the area and begun an inquiry," police spokesman Refki Morina said. He refused to speculate on the identity of the bombers or their motives. A UN vehicle parked outside the UN mission was destroyed by a fire after the blast and two others were damaged. A witness at the Zora restaurant told AFP he had "not seen anything suspicious" before the explosion. As helicopters flew overhead, central Pristina was cordoned off to keep passers-by and cars away and local and UN police officers were on patrol. Eide is in Kosovo to evaluate the setting up by the ethnic Albanian authorities of democratic norms, especially in the field of human rights. Their application, demanded by the UN, is an indispensable condition for the opening in October of discussions on the final status of Kosovo. Kosovo, formally a province of Serbia-Montenegro with an ethnic Albanian majority, has been under UN administration since the end of the 1998-1999 war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian separatists. NATO deployed the 18,000-man KFOR to maintain security here. The Albanians, who make up more than 90 percent of the two-million population, want independence, which Belgrade categorically opposes. Saturday's attacks were "a very disturbing event ... at a very delicate moment for Kosovo," Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi declared. "This is an organized action which will harm Kosovo and this boosts our concern." Certain groups of ethnic Albanians regarded as extremists have in the past strongly criticized the slowness of international organizations in settling the final status question. The situation in the province remains very volatile more than a year after violent anti-Serb riots in March 2004 that claimed 19 lives and left some 900 people injured. UN mission spokesman Remi Dourlot said it was too soon to say whether the explosions were part of a plot to attack international agencies in the Serbian province. "It's too early to say anything about that. It's not the first time such a thing happens, we had some attacks in March when Haradinaj resigned," Dourlot told AFP, referring to former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj. "At the moment I don't know if we were the target of these attacks." Haradinaj, former chief of the Albanian guerrillas during the Kosovo war, stepped down to answer accusations of war crimes before the international tribunal in The Hague. Considered a hero by many of his compatriots, his resignation led to fears of possible unrest. In Mitrovica in the north of Kosovo the recently reopened bridge separating the Serb-majority north of the town from the ethnic Albanian south was closed late Saturday over fears of ethnic tensions flaring.

Turkey

zaman.com 11 July 2005 'People Focus on Armenian Issue, Ignore Srebrenica Massacre' By Foreign News Desk Published: Monday July 11, 2005 zaman.com The commemoration ceremonies for the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre open the wounds of people who witnessed the bloodbath. In the Srebrenica carnage, 8,000 Muslim Bosnians were massacred towards the end of Bosnian War in Srebrenica, under the United Nations (UN) protection. A cover page article titled "Witnesses Tell about Srebrenica Genocide on Its 10th Anniversary" published in the Aksiyon weekly news magazine relates accounts by those who witnessed the butchery. The massacre, which took place before the eyes of Dutch soldiers who were commissioned in the UN Peace Force, is told related by eyewitnesses as follows: Bosnia Herzegovina Losses Commission President Amur Marsovic: 27.734 citizens were lost during the war. Ninety-two percent of them were Bosnians, 6 percent Bosnian Serbs and 1.7 percent Bosnian Croatians. A Macedonian Turkish citizen, Saban Huseyinov was also among the victims. Thirteen percent of the fatalities are women. Ninety percent of the victims were civilians. The data shows that it was a planned annihilation. We discovered 366 mass graves. 'Bones belonging to one person can be found in three different mass graves' All the graves are in the Serbian region. We have found the corpses of 20 thousand citizens so far by deduction. I say 'by deduction', because a corpse belonging to a single person was pieced together from three different graves in a 30-kilometer radius of each other. In addition, we encountered corpses, which had changed places few times. We found bones cut to pieces by heavy construction equipment. Even the Nazis were not so brutal. The Western world wants to ignore the massacre and not accept responsibility for it. This is what hurts us most. If we must live together again, they should accept this. They pressure Turkey to accept the Armenian genocide but the parliamentarians themselves to not discuss this. Political decisions are taken, but Srebrenica massacre occurred ten years ago and all of its witnesses are here. They want to burry Srebrenica into history and cover it up. Srebrenica Massacre architect remains in office Hasan Nuhanovich translates for the Dutch soldiers, "The Serbs occupied the villages near the city and bombarded them. Despite the occurrence of these incidents, United Nations (UN) commanders said, "Do not worry, you are under our protection until a political solution is found. If the Serbs attack, we will bomb them by planes." The Serbs attacked the city from four different directions on July 6. The Dutch troops did not shoot even a single bullet. They collected the Bosnians together who wanted to defense themselves and seized their weapons already less in number. The biggest massacre occurred from 11-12 July 1995. Serb soldiers occupying the city separated the men from the women. They killed some of the men at point blank and took others to the forest. The Dutch soldiers watched the incidents and some of them even helped the Serbs. They took about 5,000 Bosnians including my brother out of the concentration camp on July 13 and killed men in full view of the others. I lost both my father and mother at the same time. The biggest injustice the Dutch soldiers did to the Bosnians was keeping the developments secret. The world did not learn about what was going on here for a long time. Mane Curic, the Srebrenica police chief chose people to be killed in front of the UN troops. He is still the security chief in Srebrenica. Neither the European Union (EU) nor the US has done anything on the issue. Despite knowing Mladic's whereabouts, US soldiers have not apprehended him. Nura Alispahic: When I turned on the television to watch the news last month, I saw my little son for whom I have cried for during the past 10 years. These were the first images of the Srebrenica massacre broadcast by The Hague. My son had lost a lot of weight. The Serbs took them out of a car. Then, they executed four of them by shooting them. I saw my son later. When they killed the person next to him, my son returned to view. He looked as if he was asking for help. I rushed to the television from where I sat and fainted at the second step. They shot my son. I saw him for the last time when the Serbs entered the city. Thousands of Bosnians like us had taken shelter in a factory where the Dutch soldiers had camped. The soldiers handed us over to the Serbs. My son was looking for an escape exit from the forest to flee the impending execution. I cannot forget the moment I embraced him for the last time. Nura Alispahic's daughter Makbule: The Serbs planned everything in advance. The UN soldiers silences us. While we were awaiting death, they were amusing each other. Even the drivers of the buses bringing us to Tuzla were Serbs. When the Chetniks stopped the buses on the road, the drivers opened the doors and said to them, "Take whichever one you like!" Vice President of Srebrenica Mothers Foundation Kada Hotic: "I lost my husband, children and many of my relatives on July 11. The bones of my husband and his relatives were found in a mass grave recently; but still there is no news of my children. I do not think that there will be fair trials at the War Crimes Trial in Lahey. Will the Western World, which condoned the war crimes during the war, find the criminals and judge them? No! Everything we experienced is so transparent; but we cannot find any addressee to apply. No Western foundation wants to accept the events we experienced, as genocide. 1042 children are still lost. 570 girls were violated and killed. They executed men by shooting them in front of my eyes. They killed a little child, who was crying out of fear of being executed by snatching him from his mother's arms. There are thousands of eyewitnesses to these events; but no one listens to them. Elvisa Lokman: When the war started, my childhood ended. My father was never with me when I needed him most. I will never forget how the Serbs decapitated Akif and played football with his head. I thought my childhood would be returned to me after Srebrenica was made secure. I will never forgive myself for not embracing and kissing my father. I did not want to believe that it would be the last time I saw him. But, I never saw him again. Today, I am still afraid of the dark. I jump out of bed screaming at the slightest sound in the house. Our Serbian neighbor was shouting: Kill for me too From the Srebrenica memoir of Sevliya Feyzic: Early in the morning, we all went to the factory where the UN troops were camped. We were 15,000 people in and around the factory. The UN soldiers did nothing. The Serbs raped young girls. Some men were shot before the factory. On July 12, in the morning, trucks and buses arrived. Among the Serb soldiers, I saw two of my neighbors, Zlatan and Cvetin. They were shouting as they kicked us. The bus driven by the Serbs headed towards Bratunats. On the road, there were Chetniks who stopped the buses, chose some men and shot them. Our neighbor Milan Micic driving the car opened the door and shouted, "Kill for me too". The Serbs got down and raped young girls among who was my aunt's daughter. The Bosnian Major of Srebrenica: Before the war, the population of Srebrenica was 36,000, of which 20,000 was Bosnian, 8,000 Serb, and the remaining part consisted of Croats and other ethnic groups. Only 3,000 Bosnians could return to the city. There are currently 10,000 people living in the city 6,000 of whom are Serb. Istanbul

euro-reporters.com 7 July 2005 Turkish media freedom Written by Brussels journalist David Ferguson Thursday, 07 July 2005 "Despite some improvements, the amendments do not sufficiently eliminate threats to freedom of expression and a free press," said Miklos Haraszti, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media following a legal review of the new Turkish Penal Code. Penal reform, together with recognition of Cyprus, is a precondition to the European Union opening negotiations with Turkey on 3 October. The revised Turkish Penal Code was finally approved by parliament on 29 June and has now to be published in the Official Gazette before entering into force. Gone are the infamous explanatory 'examples' for Article 305 concerning "offences against fundamental national interests". Two examples of 'offences' originally included were removed from the explanatory "Reasoning Document" in the new Penal Code. The 'example' indicated that it was a crime to demand the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Cyprus or claim there was a genocide against Armenians. Miklos Haraszti, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media is generally happy with the reform. He listed only 23 provisions that still need to be revoked (see report). Haraszti says seven of the 23 changes suggested by the OSCE in May have been made. "A welcome improvement is the deletion of most of the provisions which assumed stronger sanctions when the media was involved," said Haraszti in a press statement. "Turkish lawmakers acknowledged that information about crimes could be in the interest of free discussion of public affairs." However, three major areas remain where media freedom is endangered include the right of journalists to report and discuss on public-interest issues, restrictions on access and disclosure of information, defamation and insult provisions remain a criminal rather than a civil offence.

MENTIONING OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IS NO LONGER PROSECUTED IN TURKEY From now on in Turkey one can speak aloud about the events of 1915 without being afraid of criminal prosecution. OSCE welcomes the decision of Turkey to withdraw from the new criminal code the article that calls for criminal responsibility for the mentioning of Armenian genocide. The idea was expressed on Thursday in Vienna by the OSCE special representative on freedom of media Miklosh Harazsti. The special representative expressed hope that the review of the regulations in the criminal code will enable Turkey to start negotiations on EU membership. Meanwhile it should be mentioned that the renewed criminal code has not yet been put into effect. /PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Turkish parliament has approved the amendments on June 29, but the President has not signed the law yet. As it is known, the amendments in the criminal code were initiated by the Prime Minister of Turkey Rejeb Erdogan. This allows to suppose that there will be no problems with the final approval of the document. Two points were excluded from the article 305 which is entitled "offences against fundamental national interests of Turkey". The first point prescribed punishment for calls for the withdrawal of the Turkish Army from Cyprus and the second point that was excluded from the text of the article prescribed legal persecution for the mentioning of Armenian genocide. It should be reminded that the reform of the Turkish criminal code was made not long ago, but at that time both of the mentioned points were kept in the document without any considerable changes. However it is notable that Turkish authorities perceived the criminal code article concerning the punishments for the mentioning of Armenian genocide as a preventive measure rather than a punitive mechanism. The thing is that throughtout the existence of the shameful article in the criminal code there has been only one case when an action was brought against a citizen who dared to qualify the events of 1915 as genocide. Only the existence of the article was undoubtedly a restricting factor and even the most objective and principal Turkish historians and right protectors did not risk to call things by their proper names and qualify the massacres of 1915 as genocide. At the same time Turkish authorities did not hurry to imprison those courageous people. They preferred to pretend not to notice their actions "offending fundamental national interests of Turkey". This was for example the case with the well-known writer Orkhan Pamuk who plucked up his courage and shared with his compatriots about the monstrous crimes of the Young Turks against Armenians. The term "genocide" has repeatedly come from the lips and the pen of the writer. But Turkish authorities did not try to concentrate on that. The reason is clear. Erdogan did not want to tease Europeans on the eve of the negotiations on Turkey’s possible EU membership. But for all that, the authorities brought an action for the "propaganda of the invented Armenian genocide". The thing took place in February, however the "crime" itself was committed yet in November, 2004. The crime consisted in the fact that during some official ceremony the well-known attorney Madani Ayhan said, "In 1915 the Ottman Empire played a great role in the extermination of 1.5 million Armenians who struggled for unification and prosperity. I bow down before the beautiful and oppressed Armenian people and join them in their grief". This is what was done by Ayhan who was called for criminal responsibility fraught with three years of imprisonment. While, in Turkey they agree not to imprison people who speak aloud about Armenian genocide, in Europe they think of introducing criminal responsibility against those who try to cast doubt on the fact of Armenian genocide… 11.07.2005, "PanARMENIAN Network" analytical department

www.a1plus.am/eng 14:01:13 | 07-07-2005 | Politics | OSCE PRAISED TURKEY FOR AMENDING THE NEW PENAL CODE The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos Haraszti, today praised the Turkish authorities for introducing important changes to the new Penal Code, following a legal review his Office produced last May listing 23 provisions that needed to be revoked. {BR} However, "despite some improvements, the amendments do not sufficiently eliminate threats to freedom of expression and to a free press," Mr Haraszti said. The revised Turkish Penal Code was finally approved by parliament on Wednesday, 29 June. It now has to be published in the Official Gazette in order to enter into force. Out of the 23 changes the OSCE Representative suggested in May, seven provisions have been brought into line with media freedom principles. A welcome improvement is the deletion of most of the provisions which assumed stronger sanctions when the media was involved. Turkish lawmakers acknowledged that information about crimes could be in the interest of free discussion of public affairs. Relating to Article 305 on "offences against fundamental national interests", the Representative noted with satisfaction that two examples in the explanatory "Reasoning Document" - making it a crime to demand the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Cyprus or to claim that Armenians were exposed to genocide - have been removed. On a negative note, however, Mr Haraszti observed three major areas where media freedom remains endangered: - the right of journalists to report and discuss on public-interest issues is not secured; - restrictions on access and disclosure of information have not been lifted; - defamation and insult provisions remain a criminal rather than a civil offence, thereby leaving the free discussion of public affairs at risk. The Representative expressed his hope that modernisation of the Turkish Penal Code would continue in the spirit of improving the freedom of public scrutiny, while the provisions promoting self-censorship would all be removed.

United Kingdom

www.aegistrust.org 30 June 2005 Aegis report calls for moratorium on removal of Darfur asylum seekers to Khartoum 30 June 05 Genocide prevention agency the Aegis Trust (responsible for coordinating the ‘Protect Darfur’ campaign, backed by over 100 MPs) is today publishing a dossier on the plight of African asylum seekers from Darfur now threatened with removal to Khartoum, calling for an immediate moratorium on such removals, and the provision of protection to enable all Darfur Africans to return home. (Click here to download the dossier). Hundreds of survivors of the genocidal crisis in Sudan’s western Darfur region have fled to Britain in recent times. Most have lost everyone and everything they ever had. Some bear the scars of torture in Sudanese prisons. And all are terrified of removal to Khartoum, the heartland of the regime responsible for their destruction. The dossier, ‘Lives in our Hands’, profiles the cases of twenty-six such survivors – one of whom, Hatem Mohammed Hussain, was returned to Khartoum by the Home Office 18 months ago. He describes being tortured before being returned to the UK with the threat of death should he return to Sudan. It also contains the case of Bergu Mohammed, who claims to have been handcuffed and beaten so severely by UK immigration officers trying to force him to return to Khartoum that he has ongoing medical problems as a result. The dossier concludes with a report from a Darfur African activist based in Khartoum, who records the disturbing disappearance of hundreds of Darfur Africans who attempted ‘internal flight’ to Khartoum (as recommended by the UK Home Office). While their fate remains unknown, hundreds of other Darfur Africans are imprisoned in Khartoum. Those at large face systematic discrimination and the risk of imprisonment and torture, particularly on suspicion of supporting the Darfur rebels. “Removing Darfuri asylum seekers to Khartoum places them at high risk of imprisonment, torture and possibly death,” says Dr James Smith, Chief Executive of the Aegis Trust. “The Home Office should suspend all such removals until the international community provides the protection for Darfur that would enable these people to go home in safety.”

www.aegistrust.org 1 July 2005 Police seize Darfur asylum seeker profiled in Aegis report damning Home Office policy 01 July 05 The Aegis Trust, which coordinates the Protect Darfur campaign, yesterday published a damning report on the Home Office policy of removing Darfuri asylum seekers to Khartoum (click here to access online). The report – ‘Lives in our Hands’ – profiled the cases of 26 Darfur genocide survivors refused asylum in the UK. At 11am this morning, less than 24 hours after publication, police picked up Darfur genocide survivor Bakhet Adam Ali (case no.4) in Gloucester. Since his case is closed, he is liable to face deportation to Khartoum. A manager for Clearsprings Ltd, the company providing the accommodation in which he had been living, which he had been ordered to vacate following withdrawal of accommodation support and benefits by the Home Office following closure of his case, is reported to have come this morning and demanded he leave the house. Clearsprings has a contract with the Home Office to provide accommodation for asylum seekers, and makes a great deal on its website of how proud it is to be serving asylum seekers and refugees. Clearly they do not get paid to house failed asylum seekers. When ordered to vacate, Bakhet pointed out that this would leave him literally in the street, and begged leave to stay in the accommodation. The manager present called the police to have him removed. Three police arrived at 11am, handcuffed Bakhet and took him away. Bakhet was tortured and left for dead by Arab militia on two separate occasions. He is absolutely terrified of being returned to Khartoum. Aegis case notes follow. They can also be accessed within Aegis’ report by clicking here. High resolution photos, and film footage of Bakhet are available. These include images of the scars he bears from Janjaweed torture. “The Aegis Trust’s ‘Protect Darfur’ campaign argues that either world leaders must do much more to provide protection for civilians under threat of genocide in Darfur, or the Home Office must change their policy of rejecting people who have literally fled for their lives,” says Dr James Smith, Chief Executive of the Aegis Trust. “G8 leaders must remember that aid, trade and debt are all very important, but genocide causes poverty too. Until world leaders commit themselves to providing security, governments like the one that Bakhet is fleeing will continue to wreak devastation.”

Guardian 30 June 2005 UK trained Uzbek troops weeks before massacre Richard Norton-Taylor Thursday June 30, 2005 The Guardian British military advisers trained Uzbek troops in "marksmanship" shortly before a massacre in which hundreds of people were killed. The training was part of a larger programme funded by Britain despite concerns expressed by the Foreign Office at the time over the Uzbekistan government's human rights record. A group of Uzbek military cadets were given a "coaching course" in marksmanship by British soldiers in February and March this year. In May, Uzbek forces massacred up to 500 men, women and children in the town of Andijan. Uzbek troops used military Land Rovers in the operation. It is not known whether any Uzbek military students or officers trained by Britain were involved in this or any other operation against civilians. Details of Britain's military training programme in Uzbekistan have been given by Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, in answers to parliamentary questions from the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, Michael Moore. Over 100 Uzbek military personnel were trained by the British military advisory and training teams between October last year and March, at cost of £175,000. The courses included "field training" and instructor training, as well as coaching in marksmanship. Uzbek soldiers, including senior officers, have also been trained in Britain, in courses ranging from peacekeeping to "war-fighting". One Uzbek officer attended a course in "managing defence in a democracy". Land Rovers used by Uzbek troops during the killings in May appear to have been assembled under licence by the Turkish company Otokar. There had been a joint exercise between the Uzbek and Turkish armies. Land Rovers "might have been put at the disposal of the [Uzbek] military", a spokesman for the British-based company told the Guardian last month. In its latest human rights annual report, published last September, the Foreign Office said the government "appreciates Uzbekistan's support to the international coalition effort in Afghanistan but this does not mean that we have ignored human rights abuses in this or any other context". The Ministry of Defence said last night: "Our limited activities in Uzbekistan are designed to sow the seeds of democratic management and accountability of the military."

www.theherald.co.uk 5 July 2005 Lemkin’s House, Roxy Art House, Edinburgh NEIL COOPER GENOCIDE has been around a whole lot longer than the word itself. Its three syllables are still avoided by perpetrators of mass murder, who prefer to cover up their crimes with swathes of euphemism. Raphael Lemkin was a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust who pleaded with the US government to make genocide a crime. At the time of his death in 1959, such a law had yet to be passed and was only achieved as recently as 1988. Catherine Filloux's play takes this as her starting point for an earnest plea for humanity, as a purgatorially-inclined Lemkin holds court to the ghosts of genocides past, present and future. Visited by the senator who eventually passed his bill, Lemkin, it seems, can now rest easy. The dead bodies, alas, keep on piling up. Performed in Bosnian and English by the Sarajevo-based Kamerni Teatar 55, the script is a densely tangled curiosity which combines imagined history with magical realism that takes matters of life and death very seriously indeed. Jim Mirrione's messy, bare bones production, led by a suitably flustered Emir Hadzihafizbegovic as Lemkin, portrays its protagonist as a man caught in the crossfire and with the weight of the world on his shoulders. If Filloux's broad brushstrokes sometimes get lost in translation, this remains a rare glimpse at an aesthetic of no-frills theatrical purity. We do well to remember heroes like Lemkin, who set about changing the world in a quietly unassuming manner. For all its easy sentimentalism, the final scene is a starkly unambiguous coup de theatre as, against all odds, the ultimate cipher of future generations bawls into new life. GENOCIDE has been around a whole lot longer than the word itself. Its three syllables are still avoided by perpetrators of mass murder, who prefer to cover up their crimes with swathes of euphemism. Raphael Lemkin was a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust who pleaded with the US government to make genocide a crime. At the time of his death in 1959, such a law had yet to be passed and was only achieved as recently as 1988. Catherine Filloux's play takes this as her starting point for an earnest plea for humanity, as a purgatorially-inclined Lemkin holds court to the ghosts of genocides past, present and future. Visited by the senator who eventually passed his bill, Lemkin, it seems, can now rest easy. The dead bodies, alas, keep on piling up. Performed in Bosnian and English by the Sarajevo-based Kamerni Teatar 55, the script is a densely tangled curiosity which combines imagined history with magical realism that takes matters of life and death very seriously indeed. Jim Mirrione's messy, bare bones production, led by a suitably flustered Emir Hadzihafizbegovic as Lemkin, portrays its protagonist as a man caught in the crossfire and with the weight of the world on his shoulders. If Filloux's broad brushstrokes sometimes get lost in translation, this remains a rare glimpse at an aesthetic of no-frills theatrical purity. We do well to remember heroes like Lemkin, who set about changing the world in a quietly unassuming manner. For all its easy sentimentalism, the final scene is a starkly unambiguous coup de theatre as, against all odds, the ultimate cipher of future generations bawls into new life.

The Scotsman 6 July 2005 scotsman.com Making a drama out of a crisis JOYCE McMILLAN ON THEATRE BLACK SUN OVER GENOA *** EDINBURGH FESTIVAL THEATRE LEMKIN'S HOUSE **** ROXY ART HOUSE, EDINBURGH MORE THAN 200,000 marched in Edinburgh on Saturday in support of the Make Poverty History campaign. Thousands more will show their support at Murrayfield tonight in the final Live 8 concert. But the question of what we, the relatively privileged, can realistically do for the cause of global justice still hangs heavy in the air over Edinburgh and Gleneagles. In the last few weeks, many of Scotland's theatre companies have been trying to deal with the issues raised by the G8 meeting in Scotland. 7:84's agitprop show Tipping Point has toured theatres and schools across Scotland, Chicken Shed's controversial show Globaleyes visited the Royal Lyceum from London and over the weekend in Edinburgh and Glasgow, the Theatre Workshop company presented their spectacular community show Black Sun Over Genoa, recording and celebrating the experience of those who demonstrated against the G8 at Genoa in 2001. Each of these shows, though, has been guilty - in its own way - of stating the blindingly obvious, while failing to provide a hard-edged analysis of why, when so many billions of people clearly support the goals of campaigns for global peace and justice, those goals remain so difficult to achieve - and none more so than Black Sun Over Genoa. This a production as politically vague and emotionally overblown as it is visually spectacular. Developed from the company's shorter and sharper 2003 show, Nothing Ever Burns Down By Itself, Black Sun brings more than 90 performers to the stage, makes massive use of powerful news footage of the Genoa events, and seeks to show how a bunch of ordinary, mainly western, protesters are changed and radicalised by their Genoa experience, not least by the death during the demonstration of young local student, Carlo Giuliani, shot at point-blank range by panicking riot police. But in the first half of what is now an overlong two-and-a-half-hour show - as the demonstrators gather and prepare - these intentions are betrayed by a quality of writing and performance so poor that the audience struggles to stay awake, never mind fully engaged with the politics of the situation. Things looks up, in terms of quality, once the action starts, and Rae's real gift for creating theatrical spectacle begins to dominate the show. At the beginning of the second act, following the death of Giuliani, there's a debate scene, powerfully staged in the big space of the Festival Theatre, where the show flickers into real dramatic life; and throughout the second half, there are some beautiful and breathtaking visual effects and crowd-scenes, as the demonstrators advance in golden light from the back of the huge Festival Theatre stage to mourn Giuliani's death. But here, the show begins to slide into deep political trouble; in that the more it emotionally emphasises the death of this one young Italian protester - even bringing his modest and sensible mother, Haidi Giuliani, on stage to make a curtain speech - the more narcissistic and self-indulgent it seems. "One of us has been killed," chant Rae's protestors, in the standard atavistic response of any tribe that finds itself under threat. But if, in the words of their own slogan, "another world is possible", then it surely has to be a world in which every one of the 30,000 who die in Africa each day is recognised as "one of us." It would be a better world as opposed to one in which wealthy westerners celebrate their own anger without seriously analysing it, and fetishise their own confrontations with the police, in the streets of their comfortable cities. There's no trace of such self-indulgence, though, in the Kamerni Theatre of Sarajevo's Lemkin's House, which makes a regrettably brief visit to Scotland this week. At a single stroke, the American writer Catherine Filloux's play cuts through the babble of G8 indignation and celebration to confront one of the key questions that haunts our new world order: Why, when genocide has long been officially recognised as a crime against humanity, is the world community still so bad at preventing and punishing it? The play is based on the true story of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor who, fleeing to America after the Second World War, spent his life in a relentless and - at the time of his death in 1959 - unsuccessful struggle to have the concept of genocide recognised and outlawed. The Lemkin we meet in the play, though, is already dead, living in a "house" that is a kind of limbo haunted by the ghosts of those whose deaths have not been prevented since the United States finally outlawed genocide in 1988; and as the victims of Rwanda and Bosnia pass through his room, eventually ending up a row of corpses draped in UN, EU and US flags, Lemkin - the naive and bookish campaigner who thought a change in the law would change the world - sinks into despair, redeemed only by the presence of a beautiful baby he has delivered from the body of a dying rape victim, with whom he shares his sense of wonderment and dismay at the world's capacity for evil. At barely 90 minutes, Filloux's play - performed partly in Bosnian, although easy to follow - is sketchy, and its outline of the horrors of ethnic violence, and the evasions of the west in confronting it, is graphic to the point of caricature. But at its best - particularly in the beautiful performance of Emir Hadzihafizbegovic as Lemkin - this is a tremendously adult piece of theatre, that goes straight to the heart of one of the key difficulties in creating the better world of which we dream, while never losing the sense of profound humanity, sorrow and compassion that drives us to keep trying. • Both plays' runs have now ended.

BBC 7 July 2005 More than 30 die in London blasts Passengers evacuate an underground train at Kings Cross (Photo: Alexander Chadwick) Enlarge Image A series of bomb attacks on London's transport network has killed more than 30 people and injured about 350 others. There were three explosions on the Underground - which police said left 33 dead - and one on a double-decker bus in which an unknown number died. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has returned to London from the G8 summit, has described the attack as "barbaric". An Islamist website has posted a statement - purportedly from al-Qaeda - claiming it was behind the attacks. Map of where the blasts happened The Queen said she was "deeply shocked" and sent her sympathy to those affected and the Union Jack was flying at half mast over Buckingham Palace. Blast timeline 0851 Seven people die in a blast on a train 100 yards from Liverpool Street station 0856 21 people die in a blast on a train between Russell Square and King's Cross stations 0917 Five people die in blast on a train at Edgware Road station 0947 An unknown number die in a blast on a bus at Tavistock Place. US President George Bush told reporters at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles that "the war on terror goes on." All London Underground services have been suspended until at least Friday. Bus services have resumed in central London (Zone One) with diversions in affected areas. Most mainline train stations are open. Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick confirmed 33 people had died in the blasts on the Underground. He said there were 21 confirmed fatalities following the blast at 0856 BST in a tunnel between King's Cross and Russell Square. There were seven confirmed deaths after a blast at 0851 BST 100 yards into a tunnel from Liverpool Street station. The train was either a Central Line or Circle Line train. And at 0917 BST an explosion on a train coming into Edgware Road underground station blew a hole through a wall onto another train in an adjoining platform. It's particularly barbaric that this has happened on a day when people are meeting to try to help the problems of poverty and Africa Tony Blair Blair statement in full Three trains were thought to be involved and there were five confirmed deaths so far, Mr Paddick said. He said it was not yet known how many died in the bus blast at 0947 at the junction of Upper Woburn Place and Tavistock Square. London Ambulance Service said it had treated 45 patients with serious or critical injuries including burns, amputations, chest and blast injuries and fractured limbs. Some 300 more people were treated for minor injuries including lacerations and smoke inhalation, LAS assistant chief officer Russell Smith added. In other developments: The officer in charge of policing the G8 summit said many of the 1,500 Metropolitan Police officers in Scotland would be urgently redeployed to London The police set up a casualty bureau number on 0870 1566344 New Olympics minister Tessa Jowell said celebrations to mark the homecoming from Singapore of the successful London Olympic bid team have been cancelled Pope Benedict said the blasts were "barbaric acts against humanity" in a message to the Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor London Mayor Ken Livingstone, speaking from Singapore before flying back to the UK, said Londoners would not be divided by a "cowardly attack". 54 state schools were closed in Westminster Mobile phone services across London were jammed with all major networks reporting problems as people tried to contact relatives and friends. A spokeswoman for Vodafone said the emergency services were being given priority. Mr Paddick confirmed police were looking into whether the bus blast was the work of a suicide bomber. But, he added: "It could as easily be an explosive device left on the bus as the work of a suicide bomber. We are not able to determine which it was yet." He said no warning had been given before the blasts and that no-one had yet claimed to be behind them. BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said a previously unknown group calling itself the Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaeda of Jihad Organisation in Europe had claimed to be behind the attacks in a statement posted on an Islamist website. The group's statement said the attacks were revenge for the "massacres" Britain was committing in Iraq and Afghanistan and that the country was now "burning with fear and panic", he added. HAVE YOUR SAY There are a lot of people phoning loved ones to make sure they are ok Amy Hinkley, London, Have you been affected? Early reports had suggested a power surge could be to blame for explosions on the Underground but this was later discounted. Describing the bus blast in Tavistock Square, witness Belinda Seabrook said she saw an explosion rip through the vehicle. "I was on the bus in front and heard an incredible bang, I turned round and half the double-decker bus was in the air," she said. She said the bus had been travelling from Euston to Russell Square and was "packed" with people turned away from Tube stops. "It was a massive explosion and there were papers and half a bus flying through the air." she said. One caller to BBC Five Live said his friend had seen "the bus ripped open like a can of sardines". Blasts occurred: Between Aldgate East and Liverpool Street tube stations Between Russell Square and King's Cross tube stations At Edgware Road tube station On bus at Tavistock Square.

General

slate.msn.com 11 July 2005 From Srebrenica to Baghdad What the genocide taught us about intervention. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Monday, July 11, 2005, at 9:41 AM PT Gen. Mladic: 10 years later, and still at large Ten years since the hecatomb of Srebrenica … surely a decade cannot have passed so quickly? It really feels to me like yesterday. I can hear Susan Sontag's exact tone of voice as she described being in a ministerial office in Sarajevo when the mayor of Srebrenica got through on a bad line to say, "This is goodbye." He did not mean au revoir. Ronald Steel is one of the most gentle and humane liberals I have ever met, but I can still see his next-day's op-ed in the New York Times, announcing that the fall of the "safe havens" was "a blessing in disguise," since it might force the Bosnians to sue for peace. I can remember the red rage in which I wrote a letter to the Times, saying that a mass murder was a pretty effective disguise. And the sickening news, day by day, of the routine and organized torture and slaughter, and then the crude interment of the butchered cadavers, ploughed under like black plastic bags of refuse. I have had my differences with Mark Danner since that time, but if you wish to relive the episode (and you should want to do so) you really must look up his brilliant forensic inquiry in successive issues of the New York Review of Books. Above all, what I remember is the sense of shame. A French general named Philippe Morillon had promised the terrified refugees that they would be safe. A Dutch commander had been mandated to make good on this promise. The United Nations, the European Union, the "peacekeepers" of all nations had assured the terrified civilians of Bosnia-Herzegovina that the international community was stronger than Milosevic's depraved regime and the death squads that it had spawned. And those who were so foolish as to trust this pledge were then hideously put to death. On video. In plain sight. Scanned from NATO and American satellites circulating indifferently in outer space. What must it be like to die like that, gutted like a sheep in full view of the vaunted "international community," while your family is bullied and humbled in front of you and while your captors and killers taunt you in their stolen or borrowed United Nations blue helmets? Because yes, all that really happened, too, and meanwhile the nurturing and protective Dutch officers were photographed clinking glasses of champagne with Gen. Ratko Mladic. Shame isn't really the word for it. We still have to endure the disgrace (and the victims and survivors have to endure the humiliation) of knowing that Mladic and his psychopathic political boss Radovan Karadzic are still cheerfully at large. They are not hiding in some dingy cave in the unmapped hinterlands of Waziristan. They are in mainland Europe. Last Friday, when the New York Times covered both the London atrocities and the coming anniversary of Srebrenica, it ran an editorial that smugly inquired "why the wealthy nations have not done enough about the root causes of terrorism and why Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden continue to function after almost four years of the so-called war on terrorism. Many will wonder why the United States is mired in Iraq while Al Qaeda's leader still roams free." Prettily phrased, you have to admit. Others might wonder why the wealthy nations took so long to address the "root cause" of Serbian terrorism—the root cause being Serbian fascism and irredentism—and why it is that Mladic and Karadzic are still gloatingly free after 10 years, not four. The "hunt" for the latter two gentlemen began during the Clinton administration, and on the turf of the sophisticated and multilateral Europeans, as the writer of the above words might have had the grace to admit. Stepping lightly over easy-listening moral cretinism like that of the Times' editorialist, one ought nonetheless to accept the implied challenge about Afghanistan and Iraq. Those of us who have supported the rescue of both countries have had to put up with a great deal of slander lately. We have been accused of being thoughtless war-mongers, sinister neoconservative cabalists, slaves to Halliburton, agents of Zionism, enemies of innocent Muslims, laptop bombardiers, armchair warriors, and much else besides. I generally find that these loud insults conceal a surreptitious note of queasy unease. We were right about Bosnia. The European Union utterly failed Bosnia, which was in its very own "back yard." So did the United Nations. So did the Clinton-Gore administration, for as long as it regarded Milosevic as "containable" by the use of sanctions. Bosnia did not cease to be a killing field, and Serbia did not cease to be an aggressive dictatorship until the United States armed forces took a hand. The neoconservatives, to their great honor, mostly supported an effort to prevent genocide being inflicted on Muslims: an enterprise in which Israeli interests were not involved. Many liberal and socialist humanitarians took the same view. The argument about intervention and force changed forever as a result, except that many people did not notice. Just go and look up what the leaders of today's "anti-war" movement were saying then … too many civilian casualties (of all things!); the threat of a Vietnam-style "quagmire"; the lasting enmity of the Christian Orthodox world; above all the risk of a "longer war." Yes, well, we could have guaranteed a nice, short war if we had let the practitioners of genocide have their way. Except that, within a few years, the precedent of unpunished ethnic cleansing would have spread well beyond the borders of Yugoslavia. And we would never have been able to say "never again," because dictators everywhere would have had a free pass. Why did Saddam Hussein, that great lion of the Arab and Muslim world, denounce the American bombing of the Muslim-killing Milosevic? Why did Qaddafi do the same? For the very same reason that Christian fascists in Serbia now denounce the intervention in Iraq: They know that the main foe is the United States and that this fact transcends all the others. There has been a great deal of nonsense published in the last week to the effect that an alliance with the United States can put other countries like Britain in the position of being "targeted." Why deny this? I reflect on what was not done at Srebrenica, and on what ought to have been done in Rwanda, and on what was put off too long with the Taliban and the Baathists, and I think what an honor it is to have such enemies. Co-existence with them is not possible, which is good, because it is not desirable or tolerable, either. The Srebrenica memorial stands as enduring testimony to that inescapable conclusion. Related in Slate In 1999, Lucy Russell assessed the reverse domino theory of intervention against genocide. Three years later, June Thomas discussed why the entire Dutch cabinet resigned on account of Dutch soldiers' inaction at Srebrenica. When General Ratko Mladic was arrested in 1997, Franklin Foer traced a short history of war crimes; Chris Suellentrop explained the difference between genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. In 2004, Lee Smith considered the Islamic roots of the Darfur genocide and Michael Kavanagh warned of the imminent catastrophe in Congo. Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. e