Liberia
see Nigeria
Crisis Group 7 Sept
2005 INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP - NEW REPORT Liberia's Elections: Necessary but
Not Sufficient Liberia's presidential and legislative elections in October represent
welcome progress but it would court disaster to consider them the end of the country's
transformation. The process can still easily fail if Liberians refuse to implement
an intrusive economic governance mechanism or international partners pull out
early. The UN, U.S., EU and World Bank need to stay the course. Working with the
Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union, they
must rebuild shattered institutions and infrastructure and ensure Liberia's security
through maintenance of the UN peacekeeping mission and the gradual training of
new Liberian security forces. Long-term issues also need to be addressed, including
citizenship, reintegration of ex-combatants, decentralisation of government, transitional
justice, judicial reform and possibly constitutional reform. Elections are just
one step on a long road to recovery. ------------------------------------- Crisis
Group reports and briefing papers are available on our website: www.crisisgroup.org
Rwanda
See Norway
www.thetablet.co.uk
1 Sept 2005 Mass murder without a cause Darfur: the ambiguous genocide
Gérard Prunier Hurst & Co, £15.95 Tablet bookshop price £14.40. One of the
little-noticed effects of the Asian tsunami of last December was that it ended
the Darfur famine. A humanitarian crisis that had dominated print and broadcast
media for most of that year suddenly evaporated from the face of the earth, at
least the part of the earth that is on camera. We are talking media reality here,
of course, not reality per se. But as Gérard Prunier observes towards the end
of this excellent and authoritative analysis of the continuing Darfur catastrophe,
we live in a time when things are not seen as they are, but “in their capacity
to create brand images, to warrant a ‘big story’, to mobilise TV time high in
rhetoric”. The media can only handle one emotion-laden story at a time, Prunier
points out, and the tsunami was “much more politically correct” than the suffering
of the people of Darfur. In other words, the tsunami tragedy was heavy on emotion
and light on actual politics. This year’s African horror story is, of course,
unfolding in Niger: news of the famine there broke on television screens with
awkward timing immediately after the Live8 concerts. Yet the very mention of the
country that was last month suddenly “hit by hunger” illustrates how much we need
books like Prunier’s. Niger is the latest (though already fading) African disaster
story. It is a humanitarian crisis that demands a response and charities and donors
have duly responded. But explanations of the causes of the crisis are thin on
the ground, and not always convincing. The media’s – and therefore the public’s
– understanding of the Darfur catastrophe was marginally less rudimentary than
its apparent understanding of the Niger crisis. Ethnic cleansing was going
on in Darfur, certainly. People were being driven out of their villages, and they
ended up in camps where they needed feeding. The people doing the “cleansing”
saw themselves in some way as Arab, while the people who were “cleansed” were
African rather than Arab. So there was a racial factor. The objective of the “cleansing”
was difficult to discern as there was no evidence that the aggressors – who conducted
their campaign on horseback, in the manner of conflicts in the American Wild West
– ever settled the land from which they drove people. They laid waste villages,
raped and murdered indiscriminately and that was that. There were strong suggestions
that these militias were in the pay of the government in Khartoum, but why the
Sudanese Government would want them to behave like this was again something of
a mystery. They just did. It was Africa, after all. The question of the role
of the government in the killings, however, led directly to a whole set of further
questions about whether what was happening could be categorised as genocide. Prunier,
a research professor at the University of Paris who has also written books on
the Rwandan genocide and on the Congolese conflict that followed it, addresses
this issue head on, with refreshing clarity and with due recognition of its complexities.
Part of the reason why the violence in Darfur reached genocidal proportions, he
says, was the climate within the Sudanese Government, which was one of “complete
contradiction and infighting” among its various cliques, as it responded to an
insurgency whose causes reached back – as Prunier demonstrates in forensic detail
– to the time of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium and before. The resulting
impression of confusion was partly a deliberate ploy by the Sudanese Government:
by issuing completely contradictory statements they could never be held to be
in the wrong. “This is a factor”, writes Prunier, “which the international community
finds very difficult to understand in its dealings with Khartoum.” For Europeans,
he says, the extreme evil of genocide or ethnic cleansing is “a very serious business”.
The fact that it could be carried out in haphazard conditions was “unthinkable”
for the international community. “The grotesque is not part of its conceptual
equipment,” he points out, “and only late in the day did foreigners begin to realise
that the horror was far from coherent.” This book is worth reading for that insight
alone. The genocidal model for Europeans is of course the Nazi Holocaust,
but this model does not transfer neatly to Africa. There was no Sudanese equivalent
of the Wannsee Conference of 1942, in which the top brass of the Nazi regime sat
down at a table and decided on the modalities of the Final Solution to the “Jewish
question”. The question of intent in the Sudanese context is not so clearcut.
Prunier, to his credit, deals brusquely with the semantics of death. The December
1948 International Convention on the prevention and Punishment of Crimes of Genocide
defines genocide as “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. By this definition,
he writes, events in Darfur should certainly qualify as genocide. But Prunier
employs another definition, the one that he previously used in his book on Rwanda,
according to which genocide would require “a coordinated attempt to destroy a
racially, religiously or politically predefined group in its entirety”. By this
definition, he argues, the slaughter and deliberate starvation of the inhabitants
of Darfur does not constitute genocide. It is a measure of the jaded cynicism
of our times, Prunier says, that killing 250,000 in a genocide is perceived to
be more serious and a greater tragedy than killing 250,000 people in non-genocidal
massacres. The media must take much of the blame: Prunier draws attention to this
example of lazy journalists copying each other and reproducing obsolete data without
verification –the routine repetition of a figure of 70,000 dead in Darfur in 2004.
While he admits that it is difficult to be completely certain, he makes a convincing
case for a figure of 280,000 to 310,000 dead by the beginning of 2005. Others
too come in for incisive criticism. The United Nations Special Envoy for Sudan,
Tom Vraalsen, made statements of “almost surreal” optimism and credulousness,
calling President Omar el-Beshir’s promise of “unimpeded access” for humanitarian
aid a “breakthrough”. (Finally Vraalsen “sobers up”, pointing out that there
is a “systematic” denial of access.) Manipulating aid was all part of the programme
of destruction in Darfur. The Americans were preoccupied with extracting what
information they could from Osama bin Laden’s former hosts in Khartoum, and then
so obsessed with making sure the peace deal with the Sudan People’s Liberation
Army (SPLA) in the South was finally signed, that the Khartoum Government could
all too easily pull the strings to its own advantage. But the most poisonous role
by far was that played by the Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi, whose furtherance
of his Arabist fantasies by interference in neighbouring countries brought untold
suffering to millions. The first chapters of this book offer a detailed and
dispassionate account of the history of Darfur. Prunier’s horrific facts speak
for themselves and the tone is restrained. The later chapters are a searing indictment
of those who must be held responsible for suffering and death on an unimaginable
scale. And that means most of us. As long as tragedies such as these can unfold
without anyone stopping them, then humanity itself is on trial. James Roberts
Xinhua
3 Sept 2005 Ex-minister denies part in Rwandan genocide www.chinaview.cn 2005-09-03
14:28:11 DAR ES SALAAM, Sept. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- The former Rwandan minister of
family and women affairs has denied the allegation that she harbored an ideology
of discrimination between Hutus and Tutsis during a trial at the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, the only woman indicted
for the Rwandan genocide and crimes against humanity in 1994, told the United
Nations court that she had never exercised discrimination as her parents had come
from these two ethnic groups. The prosecution alleged that Nyiramasuhuko, appointed
minister in 1992, had encouraged local pro-Hutu militia to kill Tutsis and rape
Tutsi women and girls in Butare in southern Rwanda. Nyiramasuhuko pleaded
innocent to the charges, according to reports reaching here Saturday from the
northern Tanzanian city of Arusha where the UN court is based. The International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, with its mission to expire in 2008, has so far convicted
22 people and acquitted three, with 25 suspects currently under trial and 16 currently
in custody awaiting trial. Fourteen suspects are still on the run from the UN
court. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda killed some 800,000 people, mainly minority
Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
BBC 6 Sept
2005 Genocide arrest of Rwanda general About 800,000 people died in Rwanda's
100-day genocide in 1994 An army general has been arrested at the order of a Rwandan
local 'gacaca' court collecting evidence about the 1994 genocide, a court official
says. Maj-Gen Laurent Munyakazi denies accusations by witnesses that he was involved
in killing people taking refuge at churches in the capital. Domitille Mukantaganzwa
confirmed his detention for war crimes and said he would appear before a court
martial. Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the genocide. Community-based
gacaca courts began in March the process of identifying the victims and perpetrators
of massacres. Correspondents say it is the first time an officer of such seniority
has been detained on the orders of a gacaca court. 'Witness intimidation' "He
was put in detention by the gacaca... which will transfer his case to the court-martial,
that is the requirement of the law," gacaca court official Ms Mukantaganzwa told
AFP news agency. 'Gacaca' courts are being held in villages across Rwanda
She confirmed reports that the general had also been arrested on suspicion of
intimidating witnesses and attempting to tamper with evidence at the gacaca hearing
in May at which he appeared. His alleged war crimes would put him in the "first
category" of genocide perpetrators, she said, meaning he is thought to have planned
some of the killings. Maj-Gen Munyakazi served as a lieutenant colonel in the
Hutu-led army during the genocide. He has made no comment since his detention.
First category suspects are tried by Rwanda's formal justice system. Some 12,000
gacaca courts were set up because the country's conventional courts were overwhelmed
with genocide suspects and unable to try all those responsible.
BBC
8 Sept 2005 Genocide arrest of Belgian priest Many Rwandan Catholics believe
the Church let them down A Belgian Catholic priest has been arrested at the
airport in Rwanda's capital, Kigali, for his alleged role in the 1994 genocide.
Guy Theunis worked as a missionary in Rwanda, a former Belgian colony, from 1970
until 1994. Belgium's Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht has expressed his "astonishment".
Several Rwandan priests and nuns have been convicted of participating in the killing
of some 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Transit Rwandan prosecutor
Emmanuel Rukangira told the BBC that Father Theunis had incited Rwandans to commit
genocide by republishing articles from extremist publication Kangura in his Dialogue
magazine. Former Kangura editor Hassan Ngeze has been sentenced to life in prison
by the United Nations court set up to try those responsible for the genocide.
Thousands of Tutsis were slaughtered after seeking sanctuary in churches Mr Rukangira
said Father Theunis would be tried by the Gacaca village courts set up to deal
with genocide suspects. He was in transit through Rwanda from Democratic Republic
of Congo when he was arrested. Mr de Gucht said he had asked for an explanation
from Rwanda. Some members of the Catholic hierarchy in Rwanda had close ties to
extremist politicians and aided Hutu militias in the run-up to the 1994 killings.
Thousands of Tutsis were slaughtered after seeking sanctuary in churches. In 2001,
a Brussels court convicted two Rwandan Catholic nuns for their roles in the genocide.
In the 11 years since the genocide, some Rwandans have converted to Islam, saying
the churches let them down. [Fr. Guy Theunis was born in 1945 in Brussels,. Belgium.
He became a member of the Société des. Missionnaires d’Afrique (White Fathers)
in 1968]
Hirondelle News Agency 9 Sept
2005 RWANDAN GENOCIDE COMES TO HAUNT A SILENT CATHOLIC CHURCH Arusha, September
8th, 2005 (FH) - The arrest this week in Rwanda of a Belgian catholic priest has
jarred the church at a time when it is trying to come to terms with some of its
own accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Father Guy Theunis,
a member of the White Fathers congregation, was arrested Tuesday evening at Kigali
airport as he prepared to board a plane to Brussels. The priest had for many years
edited a church-backed magazine, Dialogue, and had left Rwanda at the height of
the 1994 genocide of Tutsis. According to a statement from the Belgian embassy
in Kigali, Rwandan authorities accuse the priest of “crimes against humanity”.
He becomes the latest in a long list of priests who have been prosecuted in Rwanda,
Belgium and at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). As each
of the accused enters the courts of law, it appears that it is the Catholic Church
in Rwanda, which is being judged by the court of public opinion. Father Athanase
Seromba, the former priest in charge of the Nyange parish in Kibuye (western Rwanda),
has since September last year been on trial at the ICTR for allegedly taking part
in the genocide. Seromba, 41, is accused of ordering bulldozers to demolish his
church in Nyange in which Tutsi were hiding during the genocide. Following that
attack, an estimated 2,000 Tutsi were buried under the debris or killed by militias
around the church grounds. He has denied all the charges. Seromba fled to Italy
after Tutsi-led rebels overthrew the government. Despite many calls for his arrest
from human rights organizations and the UN International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda (ICTR), the priest, (then with a new identity: Don Anastasio Sumba Bula)
continued to conduct mass at a parish in Florence. As the pressure increased,
Seromba turned himself in to the ICTR. In Arusha Tanzania, where the ICTR is based,
the Hirondelle news agency has learnt that he has received a visit while in detention,
from the apostolic nuncio (the Pope’s representatives) of Rwanda and Tanzania.
Other religious leaders have been paraded in court before him; among them pastor
Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, a leading member of the seventh Day Adventist church
in Rwanda who was found guilty by the ICTR in 2003 and sentenced to 10 years in
prison. The 81-year-old pastor was jointly tried and convicted with his son. While
stating that there had not been any church policy to support the genocide, the
Seventh Day Adventist’s top leadership apologized for the crimes committed by
its pastors. The Anglican Church in Rwanda has also apologized for acts of some
of its clergy. Also accused at the same court is Father Hormisdas Nsengimana.
He was a priest in Nyanza parish (Butare Province) in the South of Rwanda. After
the genocide in which he is accused of playing a part in the killing of Tutsi
refugees who had taken refuge in the church, he also fled to Italy. He then moved
to Cameroon where, like Seromba, he continued to work in a parish despite protests
from local and international human rights organizations. Father Nsengimana was
finally arrested two years ago in Yaoundé, Cameroon and joins Father Emmanuel
Rukundo, a former military chaplain, in custody. In 2001, two Rwandan Benedictine
nuns were convicted of genocide by a Belgian court. Sisters Maria Mukabutera and
Gertrude Mukangango were found guilty of supplying the gasoline that Hutu attackers
used to burn down a garage sheltering 500 Tutsi refugees during the genocide.
They were sentenced to 12- and 15-year prison terms, respectively. In a formal
statement after their conviction, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls noted
that: "The Holy See cannot but express a certain surprise at seeing the grave
responsibility of so many people and groups involved in this tremendous genocide
in the heart of Africa heaped on so few people." Catholic Church authorities in
Rwanda did not make any formal response at the time. In an interview with Hirondelle
News Agency, the Archbishop of Kigali, Thaddée Ntihinyurwa, the most senior official
of the Catholic Church in Rwanda said, “the Catholic Church is not found in Rwanda
alone. Those nuns have a mother organization that can speak on their behalf”.
Nor has the Catholic Church in Rwanda anything to say about Seromba, Rukundo and
Nsengimana. “We have no responsibility for whatever they may or may not have done.
Even though they are priests, they answer any charges as individuals”, responded
Archbishop Ntihinyurwa, when asked why the church had remained silent on the cases.
Archbishop Ntihinyurwa went on to say, “even if they were to be convicted, we
may never say anything”. Some Rwandans and human rights organizations believe
that the Catholic Church should at least say something about its senior leaders
that were openly close to or involved in MRND, the ruling party at time of the
genocide. “Powerful members of the church were active partners in a government
that planned and executed a genocide”, says Rwandan historian and commissioner
in the Rwandan National Human Rights Commission Tom Ndahiro. “The church says
its clergy that participated in the genocide did so as individuals, but we haven’t
even heard it condemn them in their individual capacities.” In their report on
the genocide ‘Leave none to tell the story’, New York based Human Rights Watch
(HRW) and Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l’homme (FIDH) observed
that in the run up to the genocide, the Rwandan leadership had “benefited enormously
from the support of the Catholic church”. “The archbishop of Kigali, Mgr Vincent
Nsengiyumva was an ardent supporter of the president, known for wearing Habyarimana’s
portrait pin on his cassock while saying mass”, says the report. Nsengiyumva was
also notably a member of the ruling party’s highest decision making organ, the
Comité Central for many years. Rwanda, one of the most Christianized countries
in Africa is overwhelmingly Catholic. Over 60% of its population identify themselves
as Catholic. “By not issuing a prompt, firm condemnation of the killing campaign,
church authorities left the way for officials, politicians and propagandists to
assert that the slaughter actually met with God’s favour”, says ‘Leave none to
tell the story’. Witnesses in various genocide trials have testified about clergy
at the height of the genocide announcing before congregations that God had “sacrificed
Tutsis the same way he occasionally did Jews”. The human rights report further
states, “Four days after the start of the genocide, catholic priests promised
their ‘support to the new government’. They asked all Rwandans to ‘respond favourably
to calls’ from the new authorities and to help them realize the goals they had
set including the return of peace and security”. Almost all members of that government
are now on trial at the ICTR, or in custody awaiting trial. The prime minister
of that government is locked away in a Malian jail serving a life sentence after
pleading guilty to genocide at the ICTR. Veteran Rwandan journalist Jean Paul
Tuyisenge, editor of Kinyamateka, a Catholic weekly that is the oldest newspaper
in Rwanda agrees that the entire leadership of the church was in the hands of
the MRND. “There was no way they were going to denounce themselves. They never
denounced anything. The closest they came to denouncing the killings were calls
for dialogue between the government and the rebels”, says Tuyisenge. But Tuyisenge
supports the Catholic Church’s refusal to apologise for the actions and omissions
of its leadership before and during the genocide. “Those were individual actions
of leaders and not the Christians”, he explains. “The church could only ask for
forgiveness if, as an institution, it had said; ‘go out and kill’”. The Organisation
for African Unity (now the African Union) report on the genocide noted that: “since
the end of the genocide, several parties have apologized for failing to stop the
massacres, including President Clinton, Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Prime
Minister of Belgium and the Anglican Church”, but pointed out that “no apology
had yet come from the French Government or the Catholic Church”. Two years
after the genocide, the Pope Jean Paul II said clergy should accept responsibility
as individuals. He denied any role or responsibility for the church. Critics of
the Vatican argue that while the church has denied any institutional blame, it
has paid legal fees for its clergy suspected of genocide, aided fugitives and
discouraged its members from cooperating with genocide tribunals. “The church
denounces prosecutions or investigations of its clergy as politically motivated,
yet it chooses to remain silent when they are convicted”, says human rights activist
Ndahiro. “We haven’t heard calls encouraging its followers to assist the courts”.
Among some Catholics in Rwanda there is a spiritual crisis. For genocide survivors
in particular, they face the dilemma of how to maintain a relationship with God,
while wanting to circumvent the clergy or quit the church completely. “My trust
in God hasn’t changed”, says Charles Kagenza, one of a handful of people known
to have survived the Nyange church massacres. “But I don’t think I will ever look
at my priests in the same way I did before the genocide”, he adds. Kagenza
lost an eye and has a big scar on his head from the attack on Nyange church during
the genocide. He still attends mass in the improvised structure next to the debris
of Nyange church where members of his family and friends are buried. There has
been no official study on the current numbers of members of the Catholic Church
in Rwanda compared to pre-genocide figures. In a rare interview held in 2003,
Bishop Augustin Misago of Gikongoro diocese in the south of Rwanda, admitted that
there had been a decline in numbers of Catholic Church goers in his diocese of
Gikongoro after the genocide. “But the numbers are going up again”, he said. Bishop
Misago was tried for genocide in Rwanda and acquitted in 2000. Joseline Mukamuganga
is not one of those Catholics that will not be returning to her Church. She has
moved to a Pentecostal church. “The Catholic Church did nothing to help us or
even to remain neutral. There’s no way I could stay in such a church”, says Mukamuganga.
Hirondelle
News Agency 9 Sept 2005 FEMALE GENOCIDE SUSPECT NYIRAMASUHUKO TAKES AIM AT EXPERT
WITNESS (WEEKEND FEATURE) Arusha September 9th, 2005 (FH) - Pauline Nyiramasuhuko,
the former Rwandan minister of gender who is on trial for genocide at the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), has decided to focus her attacks on French
academician Professor Andre Guichaoua. Guichaoua has appeared several times
as an expert witness for the prosecution. According to Nyiramasuhuko’s lawyer,
Nicole Bergevin, the French expert has described her client as an intellectually
weak woman who only managed to go up the political ladder courtesy of her friendship
to the president’s family. This was rejected by the accused. “That man is only
speculating and he does not know me. The first time he saw me was here in court
and it was also my first time to see him”, said Nyiramasuhuko. A graduate of
the school of social studies of Karubanda (Butare, Southern Rwanda), she was appointed
minister in 1992 after a late entry into university where she had obtained a law
degree a year earlier. She also dismissed allegations that she had entered
late into university in order to fulfil the requirements to be appointed minister.
“I made the best choice possible that would allow me to continue my social work”,
Nyiramasuhuko assured the court. She continued that she was appointed “on merit
because I had the necessary education and experience”. Before being appointed
minister, Nyiramasuhuko had first worked as a social worker for about 20 years
and had attended training abroad including in Israel. She continued that she
had been appointed with “no prior planning” – contrary to the claims by Guichaoua.
The prosecution maintains that Nyiramasuhuko was one of the most influential members
within the ruling Mouvement républicain national pour la démocratie et le développement
(MRND). According to the French expert, she also played a parallel role within
the MRND in her hometown of Butare (south). “It is an outrage that a professor
like Guichaoua could state falsehoods”, protested the accused who now sat in the
witness box. “I was a simple civil servant who was in charge of receiving people’s
complaints”, she said. At one moment, the accused told the chamber that she was
hurt by what the French expert said about her. ”He wrote many books without mentioning
my name and yet when the prosecutor brought him here, he started focusing on me”,
stated Nyiramasuhuko. The former minister chose to testify in her mother tongue
Kinyarwanda, though sometimes she would mix in some French. She is the first
woman to be indicted by the ICTR where she is accused of the massacres of Tutsis
in Butare as well as inciting rape between April and July 1994. She is being tried
together with her son Shalom Arsene Ntahobali who is alleged to have been a militia
leader, as well as two former préfets (governors) and two former bourgmestres
(mayors). All have pleaded not guilty. The trial which opened in June 2001,
is presided over by Judge William Hussein Sekule from Tanzania.
South
Africa
www.dispatch.co.za 7 Sept
2005 Our Opinion September 7 - never again Gqozo calls in SADF, screamed
the Daily Dispatch headline on August 4, 1992. Exactly a month later, another
headline reverberated: Remove Gqozo from power, ANC urges FW. The same report
went on to say that the ANC had called for the replacement of Ciskei's Brigadier
Gqozo with an interim administration "acceptable to all parties". With the subsequent
declaration of "unrest areas" in the then Border Corridor, however, the battle
lines were drawn. Today, 13 years later, one can be forgiven for looking back
on those turbulent years with disbelief at what started out as a peaceful march
- only to end in tragedy when Ciskei soldiers opened fire, killing 29 civilians
and one soldier, and wounding hundreds of others. South Africans and the world
reacted with horror to an event that was televised throughout the world. The Commonwealth
Secretariat at the time called the action "wholly unjustified". The tragedy
of what many called "South Africa's own Tiananmen Square" unfolded before the
world's eyes - the tragedy of a nation at war with itself. For weeks after the
massacre families searched for the missing, others buried their dead and Ciskei
went up in flames as people vented their anger against anyone associated with
Ciskei authority. That an almost unknown dictator in a tiny "independent" South
African homeland such as Oupa Gqozo was being propped up by apartheid South Africa's
army was untenable in the view of most observers. After all, the ANC had been
unbanned for more than a year and talks between the two sides were well under
way. That the order to open fire was given by SADF generals to Ciskei soldiers
was even more shocking. The Bhisho Massacre stands alongside other events in this
country's history that brought the country to the brink - the Sharpevilles, the
Sebokengs, the Boipotongs and the assassination of Chris Hani - moments when the
country teetered on the edge. At the time future and current leaders rose
to the challenge and steered South Africa away from the abyss towards the democracy
we enjoy today. Today's stories on page six bear witness to ordinary people like
Nomutile Nontshinga who lost her son Headman on that fateful day and who commemorates
the anniversary of his death by dusting off his academic gown and looking at photographs.
Headman had recently graduated with a science degree. He was 29 with his whole
life before him. No-one should have died that day. We owe it to the memory
of those whose lives were cruelly cut short 13 years ago today to ensure that
South Africans never have to die again in defence of an evil system imposed by
the few on the majority.
BBC 9 Sept
2005 Retrial for SA's 'Doctor Death' An appeal court
refused to overturn his acquittal The Constitutional
Court in South Africa has ruled that a high profile apartheid-era criminal case
against the man dubbed "Dr Death" can be reopened. The court said ex-biological
weapons head Wouter Basson, should face trial on charges of crimes against humanity.
Mr Basson has been accused of being involved in a number of plots to poison anti-apartheid
activists, including Nelson Mandela, using deadly bacteria. However, he was acquitted
of murder and other charges by a judge in 2002. The South African Court of Appeal
refused to overturn the acquittal. But the country's highest court said the original
judge had erred when ruling that the original charges fell outside South African
law because they involved crimes allegedly committed outside the country. In an
unanimous decision, the high court said the country was obliged under international
law to prosecute charges amounting to crimes against humanity. Many of the original
charges stemmed from horrific testimonies during the Truth and Reconciliation
hearings. Prosecutors estimate a retrial could begin within three months.
Sudan
AFP 2 Sep 2005 AU envoy secures Sudan commitment to solve Darfur crisisKHARTOUM,
Sept 2 (AFP) - The African Union mediator in the Darfur conflict secured Sudan's
President Omar al-Beshir's commitment to support upcoming peace talks as he wrapped
a three-day official visit Friday. Beshir "unequivocally reiterated the commitment
by the government of Sudan to supporting the inter-Sudanese peace talks scheduled
for September 15 in Abuja," Nigeria, a spokesman for AU envoy Salim Ahmed Salim
told AFP. The spokesman quoted Salim as saying he was "encouraged by this
commitment." Beshir was quoted by local media as calling on the AU to "assume
firm stances with regards to commitment by all parties to the ceasefire agreement
and to locating the positions of feuding parties for creating a conducive atmosphere
for the forthcoming negotiations." The AU's 6,000-strong peacekeeping force is
monitoring an April 2004 ceasefire between Khartoum-backed militias and Darfur
rebels, which has repeatedly been breached. The Sudanese president also requested
"accelerated negotiations in Abuja, particularly as the country is presently implementing
the (north-south) Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which stands an evidence of the
government's sincerity towards reaching peace and stability to the people of Darfur."
Salim met during his visit with leaders from the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM)
-- the main Darfur rebel group -- and the smaller Justice and Equality Movement
(JEM). He said he also obtained their support for the peace talks. According to
some estimates, up to 300,000 have died and more than two million been displaced
in the 30-month-old Darfur conflict. Although the humanitarian situation has improved
and the violence receded in recent months, incidents continue to plague peace
initiatives and efforts to repatriate the displaced. The UN mission in Sudan on
Thursday quoted a government report alleging that five troops had been killed
in an ambush earlier this week in Darfur.
American
Prospect Online 2 Sept 2005 www.prospect.org Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide
by Gerard PrunierCornell University Press (September 1, 2005), 240 pages http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0801444500/104-4021169-3971956?v=glance
Review: The Unintended Genocide: The first essential history of Darfur just
hit the shelves. By Kyle Mantyla American Prospect Online www.prospect.org
Web Exclusive: 09.02.05 Gérard Prunier, a professor at the University of Paris,
has performed an unusual feat: He has managed to produce the earliest book-length
analyses of two African genocides. Just one year after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda,
Prunier published The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide; now, 10 years later,
while Africa is experiencing yet another genocide, Prunier is again the first
out of the gate with his analysis, this time Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide.
The fact that his book is being published while the genocide
is still going on speaks volumes about the international community’s ability and
willingness to effectively deal with the death and destruction occurring in western
Sudan. While an estimated 400,000 people have died,
the world has focused its efforts elsewhere, primarily on reaching, and then implementing,
the Naivasha peace agreement in hopes of ending the two-decade-long war between
Khartoum’s National Islamic Front (NIF) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement.
While certainly a worthwhile goal, the distraction it has created and the leverage
it granted to the genocidal regime in Khartoum has generated a situation where,
according to the international aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières, millions
of lives are now “dangling by the thin thread that is humanitarian aid.” As Prunier
explains, this is no accident. When Darfur first began to receive media coverage
in 2004, politicians around the world sought to portray it as a “humanitarian
crisis” as opposed to the “political crisis” it truly is. Whereas a political
crisis would require a political response, a humanitarian crisis requires merely
a humanitarian response. Prunier notes that the United Nations and the rest
of the world quickly passed the responsibility for the situation off to humanitarian
organizations on the ground, expecting them “not to complement political action
but themselves to be substitutes for what the politicians should have done.” They
have, in essence, succeeded in creating an “impression that something is being
done without that ‘something’ being political.” Prunier examines the history of
the Darfur region, going back to the 17th century, as he describes just how the
current situation came to pass. While that history is dense and complex, Prunier
manages to effectively convey the point that the current “Arab vs. African” context
in which the genocide is taking place is not a distinction that appeared until
shortly after Sudan became independent in the late 1950s. Darfur had always
been neglected and marginalized by the rulers in Khartoum, but with independence
came elections, and with elections came “electoral tactics” that exaggerated the
“racial-cultural” nature of the region. Amid years of drought and famine, those
seeking electoral support told the “African” agricultural tribes that the region’s
woes were the fault of “the Arabs,” while those seeking the support of the more
nomadic “Arab” tribes claimed that it was the “Africans” who were cutting them
off from lands that were rightfully theirs and destroying their way of life. At
the same time, Darfur was being used as a pawn and battleground in a three-way
struggle between Chad, Libya, and the regime in Khartoum. Libyan dictator
Muammar Quaddafi, who harbored dreams of an “Arab Union” in the region, had set
off a border dispute with Chad, and soon began using Darfur as a launching pad
for attacks. Weapons and soldiers flooded the region while various political and
military alliances were made and broken. As Prunier writes, while “Darfur did
not seem to matter enough to be taken seriously at the level of good governance
… it certainly mattered enough to become an increasingly racialized battleground
between Khartoum, Tripoli and N’djamena.” By the early 1990s, the regime in Khartoum
had been overthrown by the NIF, while the Libyan-backed General Idriss Deby had
likewise overthrown the government in Chad. When all was said and done, Darfur
“had been left in a state of total chaos.” And so it remained for more than a
decade. Following the attacks of September 11, writes Prunier, “Khartoum was
quick to understand that for a born-again Christian president, a repented sinner
would be more valuable than a routine ally” in the war on terrorism, and soon
became an important intelligence asset to the CIA -- a relationship that continues
to this day. Around the same time, President Bush began to take an interest in
the north-south peace process, in part because it was an issue important to his
religious political base. All the while, Khartoum continued to ignore the needs
of the people of Darfur until 2003, when two rebel movements -- the Sudan Liberation
Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement -- launched a coordinated raid
in which they managed to kill more than 30 Sudanese soldiers, destroy a handful
of military planes and helicopters, and capture the commander of an air-force
base. Khartoum responded by launching attacks, not against the rebels themselves
but against their perceived supporters in Darfur. Russian-built Antonov aircraft
were used to bomb villages, an utterly reckless tactic considering that the Antonovs
are transport planes, not bombers. As such, the bombs couldn’t actually be aimed
-- and, in many cases, weren’t actually bombs at all. Instead, they were mostly
“old oil drums stuffed with a mixture of explosives and metallic debris” that
were simply rolled out of the plane’s open rear ramp, “completely useless from
a military point of view” but effective as “terror weapons aimed solely at civilians,”
writes Prunier. As part of its “counterinsurgency” campaign, Khartoum also
recruited, trained, paid, and coordinated with Arab militias known as the Janjaweed.
Mostly criminals, former soldiers, and jihadists, the Janjaweed were given the
task, once the bombs had stopped falling, of sweeping in on horseback and killing,
looting, and raping, as well as burning the villages to the ground. The attacks
continued for more than a year, but it was not until thousands had died, and hundreds
of thousands of others had fled, that the world began to even take notice -- though
it still did next to nothing. The UN Security Council passed several resolutions
demanding that Khartoum stop its attacks and disarm the Janjaweed, which Khartoum
routinely ignored. People debated whether what was taking place was “genocide,”
as the United States finally declared the situation in September of 2004. Not
that it made any difference. Prunier reports that he was informed by a high-ranking
member of the Bush administration in October 2004 that then-Secretary of State
Powell had essentially been ordered to use the term “genocide,” but to follow
it with a declaration that it “did not obligate the United States to undertake
any sort of drastic action” -- which is exactly what Powell did. The UN sent
a commission of inquiry to Sudan in the latter part of 2004, and though it reported
that it could find no genocidal “intent” on the part of those responsible for
the death and destruction in Darfur, it did find overwhelming evidence of “indiscriminate
attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction
of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement,
throughout Darfur.” The names of those responsible for these crimes were then
handed over to the International Criminal Court for prosecution -- and just happen
to be many of the same people the world was counting on to carry out the Naivasha
peace agreement and end 20 years of civil war. In 2004, the African Union (AU)
agreed to provide some 300 troops to patrol Darfur, a region the size of France,
though their mandate was limited to protecting their own cease-fire monitors.
Since then, the AU has expanded the size of its mission to roughly 4,000, but
its mandate remains more or less the same. The AU is ill-equipped and unprepared
to bring peace to Darfur, but the rest of the world has been more than happy to
let it take the lead. As Prunier explains, the mantra of “‘African solutions to
African problems’” [has] become the politically correct way of saying ‘We do not
really care.’” The AU has been set up to fail, given a “‘Mission Impossible’
type of situation” that it cannot handle in order to give the impression of “serious
international involvement.” Prunier concludes that what has taken place in Darfur
does meet the standard set out by the 1948 Genocide Convention, though he argues
that “the practice of genocide or quasi-genocide in Sudan has never been a deliberate
well-thought out policy, but a rather spontaneous tool used for keeping together
a ‘country’ which is under minority Arab domination.” Though nearly all of
the people of Darfur are Muslim, Prunier states that the genocide has occurred
mainly because “a large chunk of the Muslim North has decided to act not according
to its religious identity but rather in line with its racial origins.” Prunier’s
focus on the details of Darfur’s history can be overwhelming at times, but he
does a good job of explaining how, for nearly all of its existence, Darfur has
been routinely ignored, marginalized, or exploited by Khartoum, and how this marginalization
and exploitation sowed the seeds of the current conflict. While Prunier does not
claim to have answers or solutions for the current crisis, his book is the first,
and thus currently the best, examination of the crisis in Darfur -- one that ought
to be read by anyone who seeks to truly understand the 21st century’s inaugural
genocide. Kyle Mantyla is a policy analyst with People For the American
Way. He lives in Fairfax, Virginia.
Guardian
10 Sept 2005 The tragedy of Darfur Gérard Prunier offers an incisive analysis
of the Sudan crisis in Darfur, the Ambiguous Genocide. The world must act
now, says Dominick Donald Saturday September 10, 2005 The Guardian Buy Darfur
at the Guardian bookshop Darfur, the Ambiguous Genocide by Gérard Prunier 212pp,
Hurst, £15 During 2003, occasional reports emerged in the international media
of fighting in Darfur, a huge tract of western Sudan bordering Chad. Over the
next year the picture became confused, as - depending on who was doing the talking
- a minor rebellion became a tribal spat, or nomads taking on farmers, or Arab-versus-African
ethnic cleansing, or genocide. An outside world that understood political violence
in Sudan through the simplistic lens of the unending war between Muslim north
and Christian/animist south - a war that seemed to be about to end - had to adjust.
And nothing that has emerged since has made that adjustment easy. If Darfuris
are Muslim, what is their quarrel with the Islamic government in Khartoum? If
they and the janjaweed - "evil horsemen" - driving them from their homes are both
black, how can it be Arab versus African? If the Sudanese government is making
peace with the south, why would it be risking that by waging war in the west?
Above all, is it genocide? Gérard Prunier has the answers. An ethnographer
and renowned Africa analyst, he turns on the evasions of Khartoum the uncompromising
eye that dissected Hutu power excuses for the Rwanda genocide a decade ago. He
is never an easy read. While his style is fluid, there's too much brilliant, obscure
but pivotal erudition, too much confident summarising, and not enough readiness
to compromise for the reader cramming in another five pages on the tube. He isn't
helped by the fact that he is usually offering an incisive user's manual for a
machine most of us have never seen before. But stick with him. For he deploys
his fierce logic to a powerful moral purpose. He builds an understanding of
a community and a culture in all its complexity to then strip away the convenient
truths and confused equivocations that guilty or disinterested politicians use
to explain why nothing should be done. Read Darfur and you will be in no doubt
at all that the government of Sudan, whatever it says, is responsible for what
is happening there. The killings are the consequence of a logical, realist's policy,
stemming from a racial/ cultural contempt. You will also wonder whether anything
substantive will be done to stop them. Prunier's Darfur is a victim of its separateness
- not just from Khartoum, but from everywhere else in Sudan. Geographically, culturally
and commercially it always looked west, along the Sahel, rather than east to the
Nile, north to Egypt, or south to Bahr El Ghazal. Its Islamic practices fused
Arab with African, unlike the more ascetic, eschatological Muslim brotherhoods
prevalent along the Nile, or the animism or polytheism adhered to in the south.
Above all it retained a political and cultural identity apart from the homogenising
forces of what became Sudan. The Sultanate of Darfur tottered on, essentially
independent, until 1916; the Ottomans never established a foothold there, the
Mahdists were resisted and co-opted, while once the British brought it into the
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, they ruled through paternalistic neglect. Even when Darfur
was key to politicians in an independent Sudan - for instance, as a bedrock of
support for the neo-Mahdists who ruled the country for much of its first two decades
- it was ignored. Ravaged by the 1985 famine - Khartoum effectively denied
it food aid - and proxy battles for Chad, it saw in the new century with a marginal
economy and a government which, when it paid attention to Darfur, did so through
the medium of militias encouraged to define tribal or cultural groups as the enemy.
As Prunier shows, it is the economics and the militias that lie at the heart of
the atrocities in Darfur. The Sudan Liberation Army, recognising that the
Naivasha power-sharing peace process between Khartoum and the SPLA/M in the south
was going to leave Darfur even further behind, took up arms in 2002. All the government
could do was unleash the militias in the hope that it could deal with the problem
before southerners arrived in government and vetoed any repression. Now probably
half of Darfur's population has been driven into camps for internally displaced
persons (IDP), beyond the reach of international food aid, where malnutrition
and disease are carrying them off at the rate of perhaps 8% a year. This suits
Khartoum just fine. For while the international community havers about what it
cannot see, Khartoum is free to pay lip service to the Naivasha peace process
that will ensure regime survival, keep the Americans off its back, and allow the
élite to exploit Sudan's oil. It is this peace process that ensures the tragedy
of Darfur goes on. The UN Security Council has passed powerful-sounding resolutions
demanding the Sudanese government behave in Darfur. But it doesn't have the physical
tools to coerce anyone. The African Union force it dispatched there is small,
immobile, unsighted and with a weak mandate, and neither the US, UK nor France
has the troops to send in its place. Above all, it won't apply too much pressure
on Khartoum for fear of scuppering Naivasha - the deal that will end 50 years
of on-and-off fighting, and bring a recalcitrant Sudan back into the embrace of
the international community. Yet Naivasha will almost certainly fail anyway. The
Sudanese government probably has no intention of sticking to the Naivasha deal;
it has never stuck to its deals before, choosing to obscure non-compliance with
sorrowful tales of lack of control and warnings that enforcement will bring in
the bogeyman. The process is driven by external actors, and so is hostage
to their brief, easily distracted political attention spans. And it will bind
the international community to Khartoum as tightly as vice versa - who will be
coercing and who will be coerced? The international community believes it can't
pull out of Naivasha in the face of Sudanese non-compliance for fear of losing
oil deals, or an Islamic supporter in the war on terror, or of ushering in something
worse. In reality it has saddled up a spaniel and sent it over the sticks, ignoring
the sturdy point-to-pointer waiting in the wings. Is what is happening in Darfur
genocide? As Prunier points out, in the terms of the 1948 Genocide Convention
("deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring
about its physical destruction in whole or in part"), it is - particularly what
is happening in the IDP camps. Yet in his superb book on the Rwandan genocide,
Prunier argued for a different definition, namely "a coordinated attempt to destroy
a racially, religiously, or politically pre-defined group in its entirety". Why
quibble about definitions? After all, they're irrelevant to Darfuris - their suffering
will be the same, whatever tag is used. They're a concern for the international
community alone. But for them, he concludes, the "G" word really matters. In the
west, "things are not seen in their reality but in their capacity to create brand
images ... 'Genocide' is big because it carries the Nazi label, which sells well."
Unfortunately what is happening in Darfur doesn't look like Treblinka. So the
international community finds itself fixated on a distraction - a legal genocide,
that doesn't look like a genocide. Instead it should ignore the "G" word and focus
on the key issue. The Sudanese government is responsible for the deaths of perhaps
more than 200,000 Darfuris as an instrument of policy. It is weak, profoundly
unpopular, and hugely vulnerable. It needs the pretence of Naivasha. It can be
coerced. Let's get on with it. · Dominick Donald is a senior analyst for Aegis
Research and Intelligence, a London political risk consultancy
Daily
Star 30 Aug 2005 www.dailystar.com.lb Ideology in arms: The emergence of Darfur's
Janjaweed By Julie Flint and Alex de Waal Commentary by Tuesday, August 30,
2005 The nomad encampment lay in the middle of a stony, trackless waste, three
hour's drive from the district town of Kutum. Broad black tents were spread among
the few thorn trees and in the distance was the great sweep of Wadi Kutum, its
pale red sand ringed by date palms and vegetable gardens. Visitors waited on a
fine Persian carpet while the sheikh was summoned. Even in his 80s, bedridden
and almost blind, Sheikh Hilal Abdullah was a commanding figure. As the visitors
entered his tent, he swung his tall frame upright and ordered his retainer to
slaughter a sheep for dinner. He was courteous and imperious in equal measure.
"Who are you?" he demanded. "You can't be British. All the British speak Koranic
Arabic!" Then a servant served sweet tea on a silver platter while Hilal explained
that the world was coming to an end. Although settled in Aamo for more than a
decade, Hilal kept to the old nomadic ways. Hung on the sides of his tent were
only those things that could be packed on the back of a camel in an afternoon
- water jars, saddles, spears, swords, an old Remington rifle, his silver tea
set and well-worn rugs. "All the Um Jalul possess camels," he said. "You see that
small boy?" He gestured at his grandson. "Even he has camels." He spoke about
the traditions of mutual support among the Um Jalul, the most traditional of Darfur's
Rizeigat Arab nomads. During the famine that had devastated the region over
the previous 18 months, one of his nephews had donated more than a hundred camels
to support hungry kinsmen. He himself had loaned many animals, from a herd
that was shrinking faster than he knew. "None of us will need to cultivate," he
said. "None of us even need to collect wild foods like the Zaghawa. Camel nomadism
is our way of life." But just an hour's walk away was a small encampment of
destitute nomads whose animals were dead and who were scraping away at infertile,
sandy soils in a desperate attempt to grow enough millet to support their families.
They pointed bitterly at the distant wadi and its fertile alluvium. "There's enough
land here," said one, "but the Tunjur have registered every inch." Their cooking
pots were filled not with millet but with wild foods, especially the mukheit berries,
bitter and scarcely palatable, that had been the staple diet of most Darfurians
during the famine months. The proud old sheikh refused to talk about his people's
poverty. Instead he spoke darkly of how the cosmic order was changing. In the
old days, the nomads had been welcome guests of the Fur and Tunjur farmers. He
himself had traveled south every year to Kargula on the slopes of Jebel Marra,
where the Fur chief, Shartai Ibrahim Diraige, would welcome him with a feast and
the nomads would assist the farmers by buying their grain, taking their goods
to market and grazing their camels on the stubble of the harvest. On leaving,
the sheikh would present the Shartai with two young camels. But now all this was
changing: Fur farmers were barring the Arabs' migratory routes and forcing the
camel herders to range further south in search of pastures. In the far north,
in Wadi Howar, the Um Jalul shared the pastures with other herders, the Zaghawa
and Meidob. But this, too, was changing. The famous jizu desert pastures had
bloomed that season - 1985 - for the first time in seven years. Hilal brooded
on the ecological changes that were disturbing the region. But he would rather
die than change. For him, the old ways were the only ways. Contemptuous of
police procedures, he presided over swift customary justice at his tribal court
in Aamo. He had no hesitation in tying a witness or a suspect to a tree in the
midday sun, or smearing him with grease to attract biting insects, to extract
a confession. Punishment - payment of blood money, or whipping - was immediate.
But people from many different tribes, in Chad as well as Darfur, trekked to Aamo
court. There was no appeal, but the sheikh was famously just. The fame of his
son Moussa has spread even further: his name is first on a list of suspected genocidal
criminals compiled by the U.S. State Department. Moussa Hilal: A big sheikh On
February 27, 2004, hundreds of armed men mounted on camels and horses attacked
the town of Tawila on the eastern slope of Jebel Marra, the heart of the Fur lands.
By the time the attack was over, three days later, 75 people had been killed,
350 women and children abducted and more than 100 women raped. Overseeing this
mayhem, moving between a temporary headquarters in a large canvas tent and a convoy
of five Landcruisers protected by mounted men, was Moussa Hilal, 44, the most
powerful leader of the government-supported militias that have come to be known
as the Janjaweed. In the days before the attack, more than 500 Janjaweed had
converged on Tawila from different directions and congregated, without interference
from any of the government forces in the area, in a makeshift camp on a nearby
hill. This was more than Arab raiders settling old scores. These Janjaweed had
light and medium weapons, communication, internal structure - and impunity. The
state capital, Al-Fasher, is only 64 kilometers miles away from Tawila and Governor
Osman Youssef Kibir was fully informed of the attack while it was continuing.
But it was only on the third day, after the Janjaweed withdrew, that the governor
sent representatives to Tawila. Confident of the impunity afforded him by the
government, and of international community's refusal to match its bark with bite,
Hilal has amused himself by playing word games while his men burn Darfur. He has
never convincingly denied the crimes he stands accused of, nor shown any regret
over the destruction of Darfur, its people and its multi-ethnic society. He has
only protested at being called "Janjaweed" - a word customarily used to refer
to outlaws and highwaymen from Chad. "The Janjaweed are bandits, like the mutineers.
It is we who are fighting the Janjaweed." What Hilal does not deny, indeed relishes,
is being a government agent. "A big sheikh. not a little sheikh." As the father
in his desert tent took pride in his independence, so does the son in his Khartoum
villa, many hundreds of kilometers away from Darfur, take pride in being the government's
man, "appointed" by the government to fight against the rebels. "I answered my
government's appeal, and I called my people to arms. I didn't take up arms personally.
A tribal leader doesn't take up arms. I am a sheikh. I am not a soldier. I am
soldiers!" And not only "soldiers." According to documents obtained by the
authors, Hilal is also leader - amid - of an Arab supremacist organization called
the Tajamu al-Arabi, variously translated as the "Arab Gathering," "Arab Alliance,"
"Arab Congregation" and "Arab Congress." Little is known about the secret organization,
which has roots in Moammar Gadhafi's Libya and active contact today, according
to the documents, with "intelligence and security leaders" from other Arab countries.
But its ultimate objective in Darfur was spelled out in an August 2004 directive
from Hilal's headquarters. "Change the demography of Darfur and empty it of African
tribes." Confirming the control of Military Intelligence over the Darfur file,
the directive was addressed to no fewer than three intelligence services - the
Intelligence and Security Department, Military Intelligence and National Security,
and the ultra-secret "Constructive Security" or Amn al-Ijabi. In the figure of
Moussa Hilal, Arab supremacism has converged with criminal impunity, and the result
has been cataclysm. Hilal's public position is that, at the request of the government,
he raised a tribal militia to fight the rebellion in Darfur. This is true, as
far as it goes. In December 2003, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir vowed publicly
to "use the army, the police, the mujahideen, the fursan to get rid of the rebellion."
But there is more to Hilal's war than he acknowledges publicly. In the documents
that we obtained, Hilal makes clear he is doing more than merely combatting a
rebellion. He is waging jihad, "cleaning our land of agents, mercenaries, cowards
and outlaws." He urges steadfastness despite the spotlight focused on Janjaweed
activities. "We promise you that we are lions, we are the Swift and Fearsome Forces.
We fear neither the media and the newspapers nor the foreign interlopers." He
sends greetings to his supporters, a roll call of some of the most important men
in national and regional government: "Major General Omar al-Bashir. Ustaz Ali
Osman Mohammad Taha, vice president and the hero of Sudan. Brother Major General
Adam Hamid Moussa, governor of South Darfur. Air Force General [Abdullah] Safi
al-Nur. Brother Ustaz Osman Mohammad Youssef Kibir, governor of North Darfur"
and the man who turned a blind eye to the rape of Tawila. Hilal signs himself,
"The Mujahid and Sheikh Moussa Hilal, emir of the Swift and Fearsome Forces,"
the main division of the Janjaweed forces based at Misteriha, the Janjaweed control
center in North Darfur. He is not a common Janjaweed criminal. He is a holy warrior,
tribal leader and commander in chief. How did Moussa Hilal get from the tents
of Aamo, where his father inspired such respect, to the paramilitary base that
is Misteriha, where he commands such fear? The answer lies in a militarized ideology
that fed off desperation and grievance. Roots of the Northern Janjaweed From
the time of the sultans, the camel-herding, or Abbala Rizeigat, had been a headache
to the rulers of Darfur. They refused to stay in the places allotted to them,
and had no paramount chief to keep them in order. The British authorities tried
to tidy up the tribal hierarchies, but never succeeded. Since the Rizeigat camel
men were too few to qualify for their own nazir, or paramount chief, the first
plan was to put them under the authority of one of Britain's staunchest allies:
Ibrahim Moussa Madibu, nazir of the cattle-herding Baggara Rizeigat. But the Abbala
were too far away from the nazir's headquarters in southeastern Darfur for that
to be feasible. So the district officer proposed that the sheikhs of the Abbala
Rizeigat elect their own deputy nazir. The election, held at the annual horse
fair in Al-Surfayya in December 1925, was anti-climactic. The most influential
clans of the Mahamid, one of the main sections of the Abbala Rizeigat, boycotted
the conference to protest against British support for Abdel-Nebi Abdel-Bagi Kiheil,
a rival candidate. Abdel-Nebi, elected in their absence, turned out to be ill-suited
for the post: he didn't have the wealth to provide the continual generosity expected
of a leader; he quarreled with Ibrahim Madibu, and he preferred town life. A few
years after the conference, Abdel-Nebi left his headquarters and court at Girer
and Mehdi Hassaballah Ajina, sheikh of the Mahariyya, became the most senior chief.
But Mehdi never became nazir. His claim was disputed by the sheikh of the Mahamid,
Issa Jalul, whose clan - the Um Jalul - was the richest and most numerous of the
Abbala Rizeigat. No decision on the nazirate was possible without Issa Jalul's
consent. Had Rizeigat camel-herders won their nazirate, a vast area of pastureland
north of Kutum could have been allocated to them as a tribal homeland, ending
their centuries-old search for land to call their own. Wells and reservoirs could
have been dug to assist the herders in their annual trek northward to the desert,
minimizing the risks of clashes with other nomads. But the status of the Abbala
Rizeigat in Darfur's tribal hierarchy was never resolved, fuelling a cycle of
tribal conflicts and economic grievances that culminated in the emergence of the
Janjaweed. In 1948, Issa Jalul died. None of his sons was considered worthy
of succeeding him as sheikh of the Mahamid, and the clan leaders met to decide
a successor. Hilal Mohammad Abdullah, then in his 40s, came from a humble background:
he had most recently been a guard in Jalul's court. But Jalul on his deathbed
endorsed him as his successor and he was elected by acclaim. Hilal spent the following
half-century striving to become the first nazir of the Abbala Rizeigat. Sheikh
Hilal stayed at Aamo until his death in 1990. In his last years, he witnessed
one momentous event beyond his control and was caught up in another for which
he was partly responsible. The first event was the great drought and famine
of 1984-85; the second, the arming of his tribe. Death of the old order Seeing
the northern desert dying, and drawn increasingly to the savanna to the south,
the Zaghawa say that "the world finishes south." The drying of the Sahara is an
integral part of their cosmos. The same is true for the camel-herding Rizeigat.
They, too, have drifted southward across the desert over the centuries. Speaking
at the time of the great drought of 1984-85, Sheikh Hilal recounted this historic
migration, and how it had been driven by drought, war and political rivalries:
whenever two cousins disagreed, one could always move somewhere else. Unlike other
Darfurian Arabs who claimed that their forefathers had always come across an empty
land, Hilal didn't dispute that Darfur was always inhabited. Taking his stick,
he drew a chessboard in the sand. One set of squares he allocated to the Fur and
Tunjur farmers. The second set he labeled as pastureland, available for the use
of the nomads. But Hilal brooded on how the drought was disrupting the age-old
order: wind was blowing sand onto cultivated farms and huge rainstorms were carving
gullies out of the wadis. Farmers were now barring the nomads' way by erecting
fences or even burning off the grass. Even worse, although the old sheikh was
too proud to admit it, the Um Jalul were losing their beloved camels. Many were
becoming farmers or laborers in towns such as Kebkabiyya and Birka Saira, and
the villages in between such as Misterih. The failed nomads of Aamo and Birka
Saira, seeking a route out of poverty, were ready conscripts to rapacious militias.
Along with the other peoples of Darfur, the Um Jalul were eating or selling their
precious assets in order to stay alive. Darfurians were astonishingly resilient
in the face of the worst threat to their lives and livelihoods since the famine
of 1913. Thanks to their hardiness and skill, and especially to their ability
to gather wild foods, far fewer died than aid agencies predicted. But survival
came at a price which was only apparent later: they exhausted their land, their
assets and their hospitality. The fabric of rural life never recovered. Sheikh
Hilal was less innocent of the second change that killed the old order: guns.
Just as the rains failed, semi-automatic firearms began to flood Darfur. Then-President
Jaafar Nimeiri had allowed Sudan's famine to develop unchecked and in April 1985
popular protests brought him down. Relief aid at last began to reach Darfur and,
with a new regime in Khartoum ready to deal with Libya, the trans-Saharan road
to the Kufra oasis in Libya was opened, transforming Darfur. The desert road allowed
impoverished Darfurians to migrate to oil-rich Libya and send money back to their
families. It also allowed the Ansar, the military wing of the Umma Party (see
below), and Islamist exiles to return to Sudan. Having trained in Gadhafi's
camps, alongside the Failaq al-Islamiyya (Islamic Legion) or as part of the Arab
Gathering, they arrived infused with a supremacist agenda. They also came with
weapons: huge convoys of military trucks rolled across the desert to set up rear
bases in Darfur. Gadhafi's designs on Chad needed an intermediary in North Darfur.
He chose the Mahamid, the largest section of the northern Rizeigat and the
best represented in Chad. Sheikh Hilal, endeavoring to boost his clan's power,
had long been in close touch with his brethren in Chad, and the Um Jalul's camps
had been used for storing Libyan arms destined for the Burkan ("Volcano") Brigade
headed by Ahmat Acyl Aghbash. But Hilal never saw the automatic weapons that
changed the face of Darfur. Incapacitated from early 1986, the old sheikh lost
his sight, rarely rose from his bed, and withdrew from worldly affairs. Moussa
Hilal, the only one of Sheikh Hilal's sons who had attended secondary school,
took over the leadership of the Mahamid before his father's death. As clashes
with the Fur grew more frequent, it was he who organized the Mahamid's new arms
supplies from Libya. Arab Gathering As significant as lack of rain and an abundance
of guns was a new political ideology in Darfur: Arab supremacism. Sheikh Hilal,
for all his stature and ambition, was a parochial and traditional man; neither
he nor his courtiers had ideological sophistication. But by the end of the 1980s,
the old bedouin intrigues became caught up in national and international currents
far stronger than they. The origins of those currents lay in the Libya of Gadhafi
in the 1970s. The roots of Arab supremacism in Darfur do not lie in the Arabized
elite ruling in Khartoum. They lie in the politics of the Sahara. In Sudan in
the 1960s, the Umma Party and the Muslim Brotherhood had supported the Arab factions
who led the Chadian opposition with arms, money and rear bases, believing that
they were fighting for the rights of Muslims against the Chadian government's
Christian, "African" agenda. But Nimeiri normalized relations with Chad upon coming
to power in 1969 and the axis of Sahelian Arabism shifted to Libya, where Gadhafi
was dreaming of an Arab state straddling the desert and where, thanks to oil money,
he was busy fashioning his instruments. These included the Islamic Legion, which
recruited bedouins from Mauritania to Sudan; the Munazamat al-Daawa al-Islamiyya
(Organization of the Islamic Call), which fostered Islamic philanthropy and evangelization;
and sponsorship of the Sudanese opposition National Front including the Muslim
Brotherhood and the Ansar. In addition, Gadhafi was hosting a raft of Arab
opposition movements, known popularly as the "Arab Gathering," and giving them
military training in Kufra in the southeast of the country. In Darfur, the first
signs of an Arab racist ideology emerged in the early 1980s. At the time of
regional elections in 1981, candidatures had taken on ethnic dimensions and the
Arabs had been hopelessly split, allowing the Fur politician Ahmed Diraige to
sweep to power. Darfurian Arabs argued that if they were united, and drew the
Zaghawa and Fellata into their constituency, they could command an absolute majority.
All that was needed was an "Arab alliance." Around this time, leaflets and
cassette recordings purporting to come from a group calling itself the Arab Gathering
began to be distributed anonymously, proclaiming that the zurga (a derogatory
term for blacks) had ruled Darfur long enough and it was time for Arabs to have
their turn. The speakers claimed that Arabs constituted a majority in Darfur.
They called upon them to prepare themselves to take over the regional government
- by force if necessary - and to change the name from Darfur, the "homeland of
the Fur," to reflect the new reality. A directive, published during the "critical
stage" of 1998-99, laid out the aims and strategies of the movement in greater
detail, and set a "target date" of 2020 for completion of its project. Invoking,
for the first time, the name of the tribe of the Prophet Mohammad, this directive
was entitled "Qoreish 2." The crux of Qoreishi ideology, a convergence of Arab
supremacy and Islamic extremism, is that that those who trace their lineage to
the Prophet are the true custodians of Islam and therefore entitled to rule Muslim
lands. Adherents regard Sudan's riverine elite as "half-caste" Nubian-Egyptians
and believe the country's only authentic Arabs are the Juhayna, the direct descendents
of the Qoreish, who crossed the Sahara from Libya in the Middle Ages. They claim
that these immigrants found an empty land stretching from the Nile to Lake Chad,
and say this land should now be governed by their descendents - the present-day
Abbala and Baggara Arabs. The Qoreishi idea became an ideology in arms. No sooner
had it been published than Darfur was engulfed in a civil war that was stoked
by the spillover from Chad. For the first time, Darfurians heard of a militia
called the Janjaweed. Julie Flint and Alex de Waal are authors of "Darfur:
A Short History of a Long War," from which this commentary is excerpted for THE
DAILY STAR. The book is published by Zed Books, and will be available in October
2005.
Africa Action 8 Sep 2005
www.africaaction.org Press Release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Ann-Louise Colgan
(202) 546-7961 Hundreds Mark "A Day for Darfur" with White House Rally Ongoing
Genocide Seen as Consequence of Failed Presidential Leadership Thursday, September
8, 2005 (Washington, DC) - To mark the one-year anniversary of the Bush Administration’s
declaration of genocide in Darfur, Sudan, hundreds of activists joined leadership
figures at a rally outside the White House today to denounce the continuing failure
of political leadership from President Bush on this crisis. The death toll in
Darfur now stands at more than 400,000 people, with a further 2.5 million people
displaced and left homeless as a result of the ongoing government-sponsored genocide.
Salih Booker, Executive Director of Africa Action, said today, "As Americans struggle
to cope with the President’s failure of leadership on the domestic front in the
horrific aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we must also condemn the President’s
failure of political leadership on the international front, where he has failed
to act to stop the ongoing genocide in Darfur, and the death toll continues to
mount." Speakers and activists at today’s event emphasized the urgent need for
protection for the people of Darfur, and called on President Bush to take every
step necessary to ensure an immediate multinational intervention to support the
African Union and provide security to Darfur. Ruth Messinger, President of American
Jewish World Service, said, "As Jews who understand the consequences of silence
and indifference in the face of genocide, we must respond to the crisis in Darfur
and increase pressure on the international community to end the violence and suffering.
No-one can stand silently by." Rev. Dr. Robert W. Edgar, General Secretary of
the National Council of Churches, said, "It is unacceptable for us to sit idly
by as people die. This is true whether it is in the Deep South or Darfur, Sudan.
This genocide is one of the greatest horrors of our day. We urge people of conscience
everywhere to call on our leaders to take action now before events force us to
one day have to confess our sin of negligence and complicity." Today’s event also
saw the release of a petition signed by many tens of thousands of Americans, calling
on the President to act urgently to provide protection to the people of Darfur.
Across the country, citizen engagement on the crisis in Darfur continues to grow,
as Americans raise their voices to emphasize that genocide cannot be ignored.
Rev. Jim Wallis, Founder an Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners Magazine, said today,
"People of faith are united in their call for bold and immediate Presidential
leadership in order to restore hope and security to the people of Darfur. Now
is the time to put real meaning behind the words 'never again'." Fatima Haroun
of the Sudan Peace Advocates Network said today, "The people of Darfur have suffered
more than enough already. It is time for international action to stop the violence
and bring relief and peace to this troubled region." David Rubenstein, Coordinator
of the Save Darfur Coalition, said today, "The Save Darfur Coalition’s 134 member
organizations represent more than 130 million Americans. We call on President
Bush - one year after he recognized the genocide in Darfur - to take decisive
and effective action to end the violence that is brutalizing innocent civilians
in Darfur." Today’s event was organized by Africa Action, American Jewish World
Service, Armenian National Committee of America, Evangelical Lutheran Church of
America, Faithful America, Greater Washington Jewish Task Force on Darfur, NAACP,
National Council of Churches, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Save
Darfur Coalition, Sojourners, STAND, Sudan Peace Advocates Network, TransAfrica
Forum, and the United Methodist Church. ####
www.usnewswire.com
9 Sept 2005 Year after Bush Administration Declared Darfur Violence a 'Genocide,'
Progress is Minimal, Evangelical Official Says 9/9/2005 12:02:00 AM To: National
Desk, Religion Reporter Contact: Sean Crowley 202-478-6128 or 202-550-6524 (cell),
for the National Association of Evangelicals, scrowley@mrss.com WASHINGTON, Sept.
9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Since the Bush Administration declared that the violence
in the Darfur region of Sudan amounted to genocide one year ago (September 9,
2004), it has made minimal progress protecting millions of victims of the world's
worst humanitarian crisis. That's the conclusion of an official for the National
Association of Evangelicals and the Save Darfur Coalition -- http://www.SaveDarfur.org
-- an alliance of more than 130 faith- based, humanitarian and human rights organizations
committed to protecting the civilians of Darfur. Together, the organizations united
in the Save Darfur Coalition represent more than 130 million Americans. "It is
time to move the Darfur genocide from a talking point to an action item. President
Bush must put this issue on the top of his inbox," said Richard Cizik, vice president
of government affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. "The more
the American people learn about the suffering, devastation and killing, the more
they are demanding that our president turn his words into action. America has
been the world's conscience and halted genocide when it raised its evil head in
Europe. We have a moral obligation to do the same in Africa." Since February 2003,
government-sponsored militias known as the Janjaweed have conducted a calculated
campaign of slaughter, rape, starvation and displacement in Darfur. It is estimated
that 400,000 people have died due to violence, starvation and disease. More than
2.5 million people have been displaced from their homes and more than 200,000
have fled across the border to Chad. Many now live in camps lacking adequate food,
shelter, sanitation, and health care. "While the Bush Administration has displayed
some leadership in this humanitarian crisis, it has not done nearly enough to
stop the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in Darfur,"
concluded David Rubenstein, coordinator of the Save Darfur Coalition. "If every
American citizen understood how serious this crisis is, they would demand that
our leaders take action to save our brothers and sisters in Darfur. Our government
needs to hear from concerned American citizens about the need to step up its leadership
and march the world towards peace in Darfur."
Africa
Action 8 Sep 2005 www.africaaction.org Chronology of a Failure to Stop Genocide:
Bush Administration Policy on Darfur since September 9, 2004 September 9,
2005 On this day last year, the White House declared that genocide was taking
place in Darfur, Sudan. This announcement was the result of political pressure
from Congress and citizen pressure from across the U.S. The legal finding was
itself based on overwhelming evidence from a study of the region completed by
the State Department the previous month. The U.S. remains the only government
to acknowledge the crisis in Darfur as genocide, thereby invoking special responsibilities
to act. However, since September 9, 2004, the Bush Administration has done little
to stop the violence and provide protection to the people of Darfur. Despite important
opportunities and obligations, and growing public pressure, the President has
failed to take the necessary steps to ensure an urgent multinational intervention
to stop this genocide. Instead, the Bush Administration’s other interests in Sudan
have inhibited its response to the crisis in Darfur. U.S. diplomatic engagement
in ending the long-running civil war between the northern government and southern
rebels, and the U.S. desire to maintain an intelligence-sharing relationship with
the Sudanese government in context of the so-called "War on Terror" have both
been considered more important than saving lives in Darfur. A decade after the
U.S. blocked international action on the genocide in Rwanda, the White House has
abdicated its responsibilities to stop the genocide in Darfur. It has left the
African Union (AU) to deal with this crisis, even while it knows that the AU lacks
the capacity and the mandate to protect the people of Darfur. The death toll in
Darfur now exceeds 400,000 people, more than 2 million people have been displaced
and left homeless, and the genocide continues. It is clear that U.S. financial
support for humanitarian efforts in Darfur, limited official travel to the region,
and occasional remarks about U.S. engagement have failed to substitute for assertive
international leadership to provide the protection to the people of Darfur necessary
to stop the genocide. Genocide is a unique crime against humanity and it demands
a unique and urgent response. Once the U.S. recognized that genocide was occurring
in Darfur, it should have immediately acted to provide protection to the people
of Darfur - to stop the killing and rapes, to restore security to the region,
to facilitate the urgent delivery of humanitarian assistance, and ultimately to
support the voluntary return of displaced people to their land. A multinational
intervention mission, approved by the United Nations (UN) Security Council under
Chapter 7 of its Charter, would provide the mandate and authorize the force necessary
to build on the AU mission and stop this genocide. Instead, while the U.S. has
drafted all UN resolutions on Darfur in the past year, it has not once sought
to achieve such an intervention to stop this genocide. The following is a chronology
of the failure of the Bush Administration over the past year to stop the genocide
in Darfur: September 9, 2004: President Bush issues a press statement acknowledging
that genocide is taking place in Darfur. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell
testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that genocide has been
committed in Darfur, and that the government of Sudan and its proxy militia bear
responsibility, but he denies logic by stating that "no new action is dictated
by this determination." September 18, 2004: The United Nations (UN) Security
Council passes a weak U.S.-sponsored Resolution (1564), which presses the Government
of Sudan to end the violence in Darfur but fails to impose strong measures to
ensure this outcome. Indeed, this follows the expiration of a deadline set in
a previous resolution, by which the government was supposed to have disarmed the
Janjaweed militia. Resolution 1564 also requests that the Secretary-General establish
an International Commission of Inquiry to investigate reports of violations of
international humanitarian law and human rights law in Darfur. September 21, 2004:
President Bush briefly mentions the "terrible suffering and horrible crimes in
Darfur" in remarks to the UN General Assembly, and reiterates the U.S. finding
that genocide is occurring, but he fails to propose urgent international action
to stop the genocide. October 1, 2004: President Bush responds to a question on
Darfur during the first Presidential debate by emphasizing that genocide is occurring
but failing to propose action to address the crisis. He simply states that the
AU observer mission in Darfur should be supported. October 18, 2004: President
Bush commits to supplying two military transport aircraft to support the small
African Union mission in Darfur. November 1, 2004: President Bush extends Executive
Order 13067, which was first invoked in 1997, and which maintains sanctions against
Sudan and states that the actions and policies of the Sudanese government pose
an extraordinary threat to U.S. national security. November 19, 2004: The UN Security
Council passes a weak U.S.-sponsored Resolution (1574), which again demands that
the government, its militia forces and the rebel groups cease violence in Darfur,
and expresses support for AU plans to increase its mission to 3,320 observers.
January 9, 2005: President Bush commends the signing of the North-South Peace
Agreement in Sudan, and urges the government of Sudan to end atrocities in Darfur
and allow the free movement of humanitarian workers and supplies. February 1,
2005: In response to the UN Commission of Inquiry report on Darfur, a State Department
spokesperson emphasizes that the U.S. stands by its conclusion that genocide had
been occurring in Darfur, and states that the continued accumulation of facts
on the ground, and the facts in the UN report itself, support that view, and that
the U.S. continues to hold that position. March 31, 2005: The U.S. abstains as
the UN Security Council adopts a resolution to refer cases of war crimes in Darfur
to the International Criminal Court (ICC). April 14-15, 2005: U.S. Deputy Secretary
of State Robert Zoellick travels to Sudan to meet with senior officials from the
genocidal regime in Khartoum. While in Sudan, Zoellick evades media questions
on the crisis in Darfur and refuses even to use the word "genocide". April 20-22,
2005: Maj. Gen. Salah Abdallah Gosh, Head of the Sudanese intelligence agency,
is flown to Washington on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) jet to discuss intelligence
sharing in the context of the so-called "War on Terror." Gosh has been accused
by numerous human rights groups and members of Congress of planning attacks on
civilians in Darfur. April 25, 2005: Media reports indicate that the White House
has leaned on Congressional allies to strike the Darfur Accountability Act from
the budget supplemental appropriation bill, claiming it might impede the North-South
peace process in Sudan. May 27, 2005: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
and European Union (EU) agree to send air transport, vehicles, training and other
materials to support the expansion of the AU mission in Darfur. The U.S. agrees
to provide additional financial support for this mission. May 31, 2005: Deputy
Secretary of State Robert Zoellick again travels to Sudan, continuing a policy
of constructive engagement on the part of the Bush Administration with the genocidal
regime in Khartoum. June 1, 2005: President Bush breaks months of silence on the
crisis in Darfur by repeating his Administration’s position that genocide is occurring,
but offers only a transport plane to support the AU mission. June 9, 2005: NATO
agrees to help the AU with airlifts and training for its mission in Darfur. June
22, 2005: Deputy Secretary Zoellick’s testimony before the House Committee on
International Relations confirms that the U.S. has an intelligence-sharing relationship
with Sudan, which is impacting the U.S. response to the crisis in Darfur. Zoellick
emphasizes that U.S. support for the small AU operation is the centerpiece of
U.S. policy on Darfur. July 7, 2005: NATO begins a three-month airlift of AU observers
into Darfur, and the U.S. commits to supporting NATO’s work in the coming weeks
by transporting about 1,200 Rwandan troops and equipment from Rwanda to Sudan
to participate in the AU observer mission. July 9, 2005: Deputy Secretary of State
Zoellick again visits Khartoum to represent the U.S. at the inauguration of the
Government of National Unity. Zoellick also makes a third, and uneventful, trip
to Darfur to meet with local leaders, NGOs and humanitarian groups and internally
displaced people (IDPs). July 21, 2005: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits
Sudan to meet with senior government officials in Khartoum and to visit camps
for displaced people in Darfur. However, a fracas between Sudanese security officers
and Rice’s entourage appeared to generate greater attention and indignation from
U.S. officials and media than did the ongoing genocide in that country. Rice repeats
that the Administration’s position remains that genocide is occurring in Darfur.
July 26, 2005: The State Department announces the appointment of Roger P. Winter
as Special Representative of the Deputy Secretary of State for Sudan, tasked with
engaging with the new Government of National Unity and advising the Secretary
and Deputy Secretary on policy related to Darfur and to Sudan in general. August
1, 2005: President Bush issues a statement expressing condolences to the family
of Dr. Garang, First Vice President in the Government of National Unity, who has
just died. Secretary of State Rice emphasizes that the U.S. remains committed
to the cause of peace in all of Sudan, including resolution of the "humanitarian
crisis" in Darfur. September 8, 2005: For more than two years, a growing number
of communities and organizations across the U.S. have been demanding leadership
from the White House to stop the genocide in Darfur. This diverse movement now
includes a range of religious groups, student activists, African-American groups,
relief agencies, and human rights organizations of all kinds. On the one-year
anniversary of the Bush Administration’s declaration of genocide in Darfur, a
coalition of these groups and their supporters gather outside the White House
to condemn the failure of political leadership on the part of the President in
ensuring protection for the people of Darfur, and to urge immediate action to
stop the genocide in Darfur. This event, called "A Day for Darfur", is co-sponsored
and endorsed by the following groups: Africa Action, American Jewish World Service,
Armenian National Committee of America, Darfur Rehabilitation Project, Evangelical
Lutheran Church of America, Faithful America, Greater Washington Jewish Task Force
on Darfur, Human Rights First, NAACP, National Council of Churches, Religious
Action Center of Reform Judaism, Save Darfur Coalition, Sojourners, STAND, Sudan
Peace Advocates Network, TransAfrica Forum, and the United Methodist Church. NOTE:
U.S. Humanitarian Assistance for Darfur (2003-present) = $710,000,000 U.S. Spending
on Iraq War & Occupation (2003-present) = $192,000,000,000
IPS
8 Sept 2005 Darfur Crisis Eclipsed But Not Forgotten Jim Lobe WASHINGTON,
Sep 8 (IPS) - Exactly one year after the administration of U.S. President George
W. Bush declared the ongoing violence in Darfur, Sudan to be "genocide", activists
here declared that the president had failed to follow through with a sustained
effort to provide help to the victims. Rallying in Lafayette Park across from
the White House Thursday, more than 100 activists noted the anniversary and called
for the international community to urgently provide protection for the estimated
2.5 million people who have been displaced and left homeless by the continuing
attacks on the African population by government-backed Arab militias in Sudan's
western-most province. "As Americans struggle to cope with the president's failure
of leadership on the domestic front in the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,"
declared Salih Booker, the director of Africa Action, "we must also condemn the
president's failure of political leadership on the international front, where
he has failed to act to stop the ongoing genocide in Darfur, and the death toll
continues to mount." Africa Action, which Thursday released a petition signed
by nearly 100,000 people calling on Bush to "take every step necessary" through
the United Nations to immediately dispatch a multinational intervention force
with a mandate to protect civilians in Darfur, was joined by the leaders of several
religious denominations, including the American Jewish World Service, the Evangelical
Lutheran Church of America, and the National Council of Churches, as well as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP, among others.
While some observers have claimed that the violence has abated somewhat in recent
months, the death toll in Darfur since the conflict began two and a half years
ago has continued to climb and is now estimated at between 300,000 and more than
400,000. Recent reports have also indicated an increase in sexual assaults on
women and girls in many of the camps where most of the African population in Darfur
have been displaced. The African Union (AU) has now deployed -- with the logistical
and transport assistance of members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO), including the U.S. -- nearly 5,500 troops to Darfur to monitor the situation
there, and they still lack a U.N. mandate to protect civilians. Moreover, the
AU announced this week that it was suspending additional deployments for at least
three weeks due to the lack of jet fuel, thus putting its goal of having 7,500
troops on the ground by the end of this month out of reach. Activists have argued
that a considerably larger force is needed to cover an area roughly equivalent
to France or Iraq. The activists are also concerned that the media attention being
given to Hurricane Katrina, as well as the ongoing conflict in Iraq, will make
it much more difficult to publicise the situation in Darfur. A study released
in July by the Genocide Intervention Fund (GIF) found that U.S. network and cable-news
television stations had devoted more than 50 times more coverage to Michael Jackson's
child molestation trial than they had to Darfur violence. Moreover, when GIF subsequently
prepared an ad announcing those findings, the networks refused to broadcast them.
"We face a new challenge, particularly with Katrina's shocking aftermath, of getting
media attention focused on Darfur," said Ann-Louise Colgan, Africa Action's assistant
director. "But Katrina highlights the common vulnerability of people in this country
and around the world. For that reason alone, we need to refocus on Darfur, where
the ultimate crime against humanity is still taking place with impunity." "It
is unacceptable for us to sit idly by as people die," said Robert Edgar, NCC general
secretary. "This is true whether it is in the Deep South or Darfur, Sudan. This
gnocide is one of the great horrors of our day, and we urge people of conscience
everywhere to take action now before events force us to one day have to confess
our sin of negligence and complicity." It was one year ago that Bush issued a
press statement acknowledging that genocide was taking place in Darfur and that
then-Secretary of State Colin Powell testified that the Sudanese government and
its proxy militia bore responsibility. Nine days later, the U.N. Security Council
passed a weak, U.S.-sponsored resolution that pressed Khartoum to end the violence
but failed to impose strong measures in the event that the regime did not comply.
In November, the Security Council, at Washington's urging, passed another resolution
authorising the AU mission but once again failing to threaten or impose sanctions
for non-compliance. Since then, Washington has stepped up its support for the
AU operation but has declined to take stronger action, privately citing its concerns
that a more-aggressive approach would be vetoed by China, which has substantial
investments in Sudan's oil industry, and could derail a peace agreement between
Khartoum and a long-standing rebel movement in the southern part of the country.
But some critics have charged that other motives may also be at work. The secret
visit here in April of the head of Sudan's intelligence agency, Maj. Gen. Salah
Abdallah Gosh, who reportedly has been named in a U.N. report as one of the chief
perpetrators of the government's Darfur campaign, suggested that Khartoum's cooperation
in Washington's anti-terror struggle had bolstered its position in Washington.
This assessment was bolstered by subsequent White House pressure on Congress to
sideline legislation designed to add pressure on Sudan to end the violence in
Darfur. Despite several trips to Darfur over the summer, including one in July
by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and the appointment of Roger Winter, a
senior USAID official known for his sceptical views of Khartoum good faith, as
a special envoy to Sudan, the administration has done little or nothing to reduce
suspicions by Darfur activists that it is willing to pay additional political
and diplomatic capital to ensure Sudan's full compliance with Security Council
demands or its own promises to rein in the Janjaweed and provide sufficient security
to the displaced to enable them to reclaim their homes and villages. "We call
on Pres. Bush, one year after he recognised the genocide in Darfur," declared
David Rubenstein, coordinator of the Save Darfur Coalition, which includes 134
member organisations to which 130 million U.S. citizens belong," "to take decisive
and effective action to end the violence that is brutalising innocent civilians
in Darfur."
OneWorld.net 9 Sept 2005
White House Urged Act on Anniversary of Darfur Genocide Declaration by
Abid Aslam WASHINGTON - Hundreds of activists descended on the White House Thursday
to protest what they called President George W. Bush's inaction in the year since
his administration said that genocide was taking place in Sudan's western Darfur
region. Some 700 people took part in the Washington rally, at which a petition
demanding U.S. action and bearing tens of thousands of signatures was unfurled,
said Ann-Louise Colgan, director of policy analysis at Africa Action, one of the
event's organizers. ''As Americans struggle to cope with the President's failure
of leadership on the domestic front in the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,
we must also condemn the President's failure of political leadership on the international
front, where he has failed to act to stop the ongoing genocide in Darfur and the
death toll continues to mount,'' said Salih Booker, the organization's executive
director. Separately, the Sudanese government and two main rebel groups from Darfur
said Thursday they would attend peace talks scheduled to resume Sep. 15 in Nigeria's
capital, Abuja. Violence in Darfur, now in its third year, has killed more than
400,000 people and forced 2.5 million of the region's 5.5 million people to flee
their homes and villages, U.N. agencies and advocacy groups have estimated. Relief
workers also have been caught up in the fighting. The United Nations Mission in
Sudan (UNMIS) said Tuesday it had received fresh reports of fighting between rebel
groups and the nomadic Janjaweed militia, looting of humanitarian assistance,
and attacks on villages. ''The combat between the Janjaweed and the Sudanese Liberation
Army (SLA) has been taking place in the Jabal Moon hills in North Darfur,'' UNMIS
said in a statement, ''but the situation in West Darfur is most troubling, following
two attacks last week on humanitarian convoys sent in by non-governmental organizations
(NGOs).'' The death toll could exceed one million people by the end of the year
unless bold steps are taken to rein in the conflict between rebel groups of African
descent and Arab militias that the regime in Khartoum stands accused of arming
and abetting, Africa Action warned. It has urged Washington to push for the deployment
of an international peacekeeping force and has demanded that Africa Union (AU)
peacekeepers be given a political mandate to intervene in the fighting to protect
civilians. The fighting started over rebels' claims that the Sudanese government
had deliberately neglected Darfur, starving it of basic services and development
money. It has been compounded by competition for control of local oil, gas, and
mineral resources. Even as government and rebel forces implement a peace process
in the country's south, the Khartoum regime appears to be girding for new violence
in eastern Sudan, where local populations also are rebelling against the government,
according to Africa Action. In 2000, the group was among the first to warn of
what it then saw as an impending crisis in Darfur. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice visited Sudan in July and urged the government to end the violence in Darfur,
a region about the size of Texas. However, U.S.-Sudanese intelligence cooperation
in what the White House calls its ''war on terror'' and prospects for peace in
war-torn southern Sudan dominated Rice's talks with President Omar Hassan Ahmad
al-Bashir and senior government officials. Washington also has pledged to help
airlift AU troops from their home countries to Sudan. Even so, speakers at Thursday's
rally chided the White House for what they said amounted to scant lip service.
They renewed demands for urgent action to protect Darfur's civilians and to mobilize
a multinational intervention to support the AU, Africa's equivalent of the European
Union. ''We call on President Bush, one year after he recognized the genocide
in Darfur, to take decisive and effective action to end the violence that is brutalizing
innocent civilians in Darfur,'' said David Rubenstein, coordinator of the 134-organization
Save Darfur Coalition, which claims a combined membership of more than 130 million
Americans. Thursday's event was organized by Africa Action, American Jewish World
Service, Armenian National Committee of America, Evangelical Lutheran Church of
America, Faithful America, Greater Washington Jewish Task Force on Darfur, NAACP,
National Council of Churches, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Save
Darfur Coalition, Sojourners, STAND, Sudan Peace Advocates Network, TransAfrica
Forum, and the United Methodist Church. Anti-genocide activists also have been
pressing U.S. television networks to increase coverage of the Darfur situation,
described by the United Nations as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. The
campaign--run by the American Progress Action Fund and the Genocide Intervention
Fund--asks networks to ''be a witness'' to the genocide in Darfur. Organizers
said they hoped increased coverage would move voters to exert pressure on elected
officials. ''Television has told us stories of important human brutality before,
and Americans have responded by demanding action from our elected representatives,''
the campaign said in a statement citing examples including the civil rights struggles
of the 1950s and 1960s and the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s. Last year, the ABC,
CBS, and NBC network nightly newscasts aired a total of only 26 minutes on Sudan,
according to the Tyndall Report, which monitors major broadcasters. ABC devoted
18 minutes to Darfur coverage, NBC five, and CBS only three. By contrast, lifestyle
doyenne Martha Stewart's legal woes received 130 minutes of nightly news coverage.
A U.N. commission concluded last January that crimes against humanity--but not
genocide--had occurred in Darfur. In April, the world body passed a resolution
referring cases of alleged atrocities since July 1, 2002 to the International
Criminal Court. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan then handed the names of 51
people suspected of war crimes and atrocities in Darfur to the court. The list
included Sudanese government and army officials as well as militia and rebel leaders.
© Copyright 2005 OneWorld.net
washingtonpost.com
14 Sept 2005 Genocide, One Year On Wednesday, September 14, 2005; A30 A
YEAR AGO, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared that the violence in
the Darfur region of Sudan justified the term "genocide." That was the first time
since the adoption of the U.N. Genocide Convention in 1948 that a government had
accused a sitting counterpart of this worst of all humanitarian crimes, and Mr.
Powell chose his words carefully. His language was based on a survey of Darfurian
refugees commissioned by the State Department: Of 1,136 civilians interviewed,
a third had heard racial epithets while being attacked, suggesting that the mass
killings and evictions in Darfur constituted genocide. The survey also found that
three in four refugees had seen government insignia on the uniforms of their attackers,
leaving no doubt as to the guilt of Sudan's government. Since that finding,
the United States has led an international effort to end the genocide. The effort
has not been as quick or decisive as the genocide finding warranted: The Bush
administration's attempt to pressure Sudan's government with U.N. sanctions was
feckless, and it made no effort to deploy a robust NATO peacekeeping force. But,
little by little, American diplomacy has made headway. For now, the horror has
abated. The first success of Western diplomacy was to improve access to Darfur
for humanitarian workers and supplies, ending the government's policy of systematically
denying visas to aid officials and bottling up their equipment in customs. Next,
Sudan's rulers were persuaded to accept the deployment of 7,700 African Union
troops in Darfur, up from the handful who were there a year ago. Partly thanks
to the presence of these troops, violence between government forces and rebels,
and between government and civilians, has greatly diminished. But the progress
is incomplete and reversible. Fully 3.2 million people have been affected by the
war, half of Darfur's population. Many of these subsist in crowded camps for displaced
people, where they depend on Western charity. Although humanitarian access has
improved since last year, it remains imperfect. In the Kalma camp, which is
home to something like 160,000 displaced people, the government has refused to
extend a Norwegian group's authority to coordinate the distribution of relief
supplies and has imposed an economic blockade. Meanwhile low-level violence continues.
Although the government has authorized the deployment of 7,700 A.U. troops,
only 5,800 are in place so far -- a failure both of the African governments that
had promised troops and of the Western governments that promised to support them
logistically. The progress over the past year demonstrates that the United
States and its allies do have the power to save lives by the tens of thousands.
It also suggests that, if the Bush administration had pushed harder and earlier,
it could have saved many more people. This lesson must be remembered over the
coming weeks and months. Outsiders need to persist in their efforts to broker
peace negotiations between Sudan's government and Darfur's rebels; they must complete
the deployment of the African Union force and continue to pressure the government
for humanitarian access. The past year demonstrates that, if the United States
and its allies pursue these goals with determination, they can get what they want.
But if they lose interest in Darfur, violence may resume and humanitarian access
may dry up. With so much of the population already displaced and weakened,
Darfur's death rate could easily return to the horrific levels of a year ago.
IRIN
14 Sept 2005 Darfur risks descending into anarchy - observers [ This report
does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] © IRIN SLA fighters
in Fienna, Jebel Marra in South Darfur State. NAIROBI, 14 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - Darfur
risks sliding into a perpetual state of lawlessness even as the Sudanese government
and the main rebel groups in the war-torn region discuss the possibility of peacefully
resolving the conflict there, observers have warned. Banditry and continuous
attacks by armed groups on humanitarian workers, Arab nomads and villages in Darfur
have increased significantly over the past weeks and threaten to destabilise the
fragile ceasefire in the volatile western Sudanese region. "The month of September,
so far, has not been a good month. There has been quite an increase in both the
number and the scale of attacks," Radhia Achouri, spokeswoman for the UN Mission
in Sudan (UNMIS), said on Tuesday. "Overall, there have been at least 10 serious
attacks on humanitarian workers in the past 30 days - for the purpose of looting
- particularly in West Darfur," Achouri added. "The situation in South Darfur
is not better." "These type of occurrences are happening all the time and all
over," Ambassador Baba Gana Kingibe, head of the African Union Mission in Sudan
(AMIS), said on 6 September, expressing his worry about the widespread nature
and frequency of recent attacks. In the latest reported incident on Tuesday,
Abdel Wahed Mohamed al-Nur, chairman of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A),
accused the Sudanese government of killing 10 SLM/A of his soldiers and 10 civilians
during attacks on their positions west of Sheng al-Tobei village, about 65 km
south of El-Fasher, capital of North Darfur, Reuters news agency reported. An
armed forces spokesman, however, denied government forces were involved in any
attacks in Darfur. "I can confirm that the fighting is going on in that area.
We have an AMIS presence on the ground, but yesterday it was too hot [with hostilities]
to do any investigation," Nourreddine Mezni, spokesman for AMIS in Khartoum, said
on Wednesday. Meanwhile, preparations for the sixth round of the Abuja peace talks
between the government and the two main rebel groups - the SLM/A and the Justice
and Equality Movement (JEM) - have been completed, and the peace negotiations
are expected to resume in the Nigerian capital on Thursday. Mezni warned that
any incident would have a negative impact on the talks: "That is why Ambassador
Kingibe made an appeal on all parties to refrain from hostilities on the eve of
the resumption of the talks." In the past, fighting has tended to increase among
the parties prior to the resumption of peace talks. The alleged intension of this
display of military power was to strengthen parties’ respective bargaining position
at the negotiating table. Observers on the ground in Darfur, however, warned in
August that the SLM/A chain of command was disintegrating and that "warlordism"
was increasing in the region. "The conflict in Darfur started as a counterinsurgency
campaign that lasted a few months, with huge humanitarian consequences, but it
has now transformed into a low-intensity conflict which is likely to evolve into
a situation of chronic instability," Alexandre Liebeskind, head of Darfur operations
for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said. On 25 August, a rebel
group entered a village near Turba, some 50 km north of the South Darfur capital
Nyala, and abducted children belonging to the Arab nomads living in the area.
According to AMIS, the rebels also stole over 2,000 camels and killed three civilians
and three government solders. In an unconfirmed incident on 8 September, armed
men attacked the village of Abujidal in North Darfur, reportedly killing 12 villagers.
On Friday, shooting erupted in the town of Tawilla, also in North Darfur, forcing
many people to flee. Three persons were reported dead and an estimated 25 people
injured, among them 11 police officers. On the same day, fighting took place between
roughly 80 armed tribesmen and an unknown number of SLM/A troops at Kunjo, in
East Jebel Marra in South Darfur. The armed tribesmen allegedly attacked the village
and looted a number of cattle, leaving three tribesmen dead and four wounded.
"Although at this point we can't certify all of the incidents, as a general trend
the situation is concerning," Achouri warned. UNMIS had asked the government of
Sudan to secure the areas where there was no rebel activity, she added, while
AMIS had promised to do what it could in providing escorts for humanitarian convoys.
The conflict in Darfur pits Sudanese government troops and allied militias like
the Janjawid - accused of terrorising the region's non-Arab tribes - against two
main rebel groups, the SLM/A and the JEM, who claim to be fighting against the
marginalisation of their region by Khartoum. Over 2.9 million people continue
to be affected by the conflict, of whom 1.85 million are internally displaced
or have been forced to flee to neighbouring Chad.
Tanzania
- ICTR
The Nation (Nairobi) 13 Sept
2005 Luxurious Life of Genocide Suspects By Cyrus Kinyungu Nairobi The
United Nations prisons in Arusha may be the only jail in Africa where inmates
live like guests in a luxury hotel. The United Nations Detention Facility (UNDF)
is a jail in a class of its own, especially in Africa. Detainees at the jail have
access to luxuries few people in any African country can afford. The prison
holds suspected perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda where close to one
million people were killed in 100 days. It is a facility exclusively reserved
for politicians and senior military officers who may have taken part in the killings.
While other regular suspects languish in congested Rwanda prisons awaiting trial,
the detainees at UNDF while away their time comfortably waiting for trial at International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha. The ICTR penitentiary is the United
Nations model for a prison. It is the only jail that is owned by UN. The UNDF
commander, Mr Sandon Guindo, told the commissioners of prisons attending the Conference
of Eastern, Southern and Central Africa (Cesca) Heads of Correctional Services
in Rwanda recently that they should strive to achieve its standards. He explained
what the detention centre offered to the surprise of many. On arrival at the detention
centre, the inmates are received by the commanding officer or his immediate subordinate.
Before registration, each detainee is given a copy of the rules and documents
related to his rights and privileges. At the unique prison in the northern Tanzanian
town, detainees receive daily food rations costing Sh500. There are different
menus which take into consideration the detainees' health, age and cultural requirements.
"There is general menu, vegetarian menu, low or no salt, white meat-only diets
and many more," said Mr Guindo, adding that some inmates insisted on taking food
from a specific country. The UNDF serves as a detention centre for people charged
by the ICTR during trial while pending appeal and while waiting for transfer to
national prisons. The prison has the capacity to accommodate 90 inmates but it
currently holds 57. Each UNDF cell has an area of 5.22 metres by 2.15 metres.
The cells contains a toilet, shower, hand wash basin on fixed table, chair and
book shelves. Mr Guindo said every compound in the prison, comprising five to
13 cells, is provided with a television set with DSTV satellite channels. He said
this was for recreation and information. "Most compounds have green areas for
flower gardening and sheds where one can watch television. Two benches and one
table are provided in the TV shed," he said. In accordance to UN rules, each detainee
is accommodated in an individual cell provided with bedding and sanitary kit.
The sanitary kit provided in each cell includes bathing soap, tooth paste, a shaving
machine, toilet paper, disinfectant liquids and cleaning kit. And for clothing,
the detainees are allowed to dress in decent clothing and proper attire for appearance
in court or while within the detention centre. "ICTR provides clothing every year
to detainees. These are two suits, shoes, socks, shirts, sportswear and much more.
All their clothing including bedding are sent to dry cleaners once a week," said
Mr Guindo to the surprise of the commissioners. The detainees are given the opportunity
to select a lawyer from a list of lawyers from reputable international law firms.
Mr Guindo said the UNDF was open to International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Detainees, he said, were allowed to elect compound leaders to address problems
in their individual compounds and to present them to commanding officer when they
cannot find solutions. The detainees undergo medical examination upon their incarceration.
A medical consultant attends to them daily. "UNDF has a medical consultation room
and equipped with a short stay unit, should overnight observation be required,"
he said. Mr Guindo told the prison commissioners that the detainees had a programme
for physical exercises and sports. "An open ground is available to detainees for
exercise, a separate yard is available for basketball and a gymnasium was built
and equipped for calisthenics. "All these are geared towards maintaining their
state of good health," he said. He said all meals are prepared under the supervision
of a dietician. The detainees are allowed to receive as many telephone calls as
they wish from family members. They are also allowed to receive letters from them
while family visits are unfettered. "The detainees are allowed to receive various
presents from their relatives such as magazines, books, clothing, radios, television
sets and even computers," said Mr Guindo. However, conjugal visits are not allowed
in the cells though some detainees request for such visits. Prison commissioners
from several African countries said they were surprised prisoners were treated
so well. The Tanzanian principal commissioner of prisons, Mr Nicas Banzi, said
African societies could not afford to treat their prisoners in this way.
Uganda
International
Herald Tribune 11 Sept 2005 www.iht.com The nightmare of northern Uganda
Don Cheadle and John Prendergast The New York Times SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2005
GULU, Uganda It sounds like some incredibly dark Grimm Brothers fairy tale.
Each night before the sun sets, thousands of children march in grim procession
along dusty roads that take them from their rural villages to larger towns. The
children are afraid to sleep in their beds, terrified that they will be abducted
by a madman who will force them into a marauding guerrilla army that hunts down
their friends, families, and loved ones. The fleeing children sleep in churches,
empty schools, makeshift shelters, and alleyways. And every morning at sunrise,
the children walk home, free for another day. This is no fairy tale; the reality
of northern Uganda's 18-year-old conflict is brutal. Under the control of a self-proclaimed
messiah named Joseph Kony, the rebel Lord's Resistance Army has terrorized the
region's civilian population. Kony, his few disciples, and an army comprised
largely of kidnapped, tortured and brainwashed child soldiers have waged a campaign
to overthrow the government of President Yoweri Museveni and establish an ethnically
pure state based on Kony's distorted interpretation of the Old Testament. During
our visit to northern Uganda this month, we talked with one 13-year-old girl who
had recently escaped from her LRA abductors. In an attack in which her parents
were killed, she was captured during the one night she hadn't made her nightly
commute to safety because she had fallen ill. She was held for nearly a year,
experiencing all manner of depredations. Her chilling tale was typical of the
stories we heard from one child after another. Yet despite the horrors of this
conflict, developments over the past six months have given observers two reasons
for optimism. First, the LRA has been weakened because of improved performance
by the Ugandan military, pressure from an investigation by the International Criminal
Court and reduced support from Kony's long-time benefactor, the Sudanese government.
Many LRA bases in southern Sudan have been overrun and supply lines have been
disrupted. Defections and captures of its command and rank-and-file continue apace.
Second, a mediation effort led by a former Ugandan state minister, Betty Bigombe,
has opened contact with the LRA, giving its leadership an exit option. But the
window for peace is closing. Recent reports of sadistic mutilations - hacking
off lips, ears and breasts with axes and machetes - mark a return to the worst
LRA atrocities of the past 18 years. These attacks reinforce the opinion of many
that Kony will never come out of the bush. Renewed Sudanese government support
for the LRA makes matters worse. The LRA's retreat further into Sudan has created
complications for the Ugandan military, while Kony and his forces can rest, resupply
and plan further attacks on civilians. This is consistent with the LRA's history.
When backed into a corner, it has consistently emerged stronger, more focused
and more bloodthirsty than ever. The peace process is in need of some shock
therapy. The Ugandan government should make a clear proposal spelling out terms
for the end of the war, and the U.S. government, as the key external actor, should
step up its support for the peace process and help see if a deal is ultimately
possible. Because such a deal may not be possible, a simultaneous effort to increase
the effectiveness of Uganda's military actions against the LRA should also be
a high priority. Additional military pressure will influence LRA leaders to
consider a deal. This way forward is not simple, and will require the active assistance
of the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the Southern People's Liberation Movement
in southern Sudan, as well as diplomats in Kampala and Khartoum. The job will
be harder after the death of John Garang, the long-time leader of the SPLM, who
had recently become Sudan's vice president. His death should be a catalyst for
increased international support for ending the crisis in northern Uganda, one
that has destabilizing impacts on peace efforts in southern Sudan as well. U.S.
help is indispensable. The United States was crucial in ending the conflict in
southern Sudan, and has considerable influence with President Museveni of Uganda.
In addition to supporting peace efforts, U.S. influence also should be brought
to bear on the imperative of civilian protection. Consultation should begin about
the deployment of an international force to protect people in the displaced camps
from further attack. Around the world, children face all manner of depredations,
but the stories we heard in northern Uganda may be among the most horrific ever
told. Without more international support for the peace process and civilian protection,
the region's children will be condemned to continue living out their dark fairy
tale of abduction, torture, rape and murder. A happy ending is possible, but it
will require much more commitment from the Bush administration to these forgotten
children. (Don Cheadle was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance
in ''Hotel Rwanda.'' John Prendergast is a special adviser to the president of
the International Crisis Group.)
Zimbabwe
30
August 2005, 14:00 GMT 15:00 UK E-mail this to a friend Printable version Zimbabwe
tightens Mugabe's grip President Mugabe will be able to appoint 16 of the 46 senators
Zimbabwe MPs have passed changes to the constitution to strengthen government
control over land redistribution. Another clause would allow President Robert
Mugabe's government to confiscate passports of those deemed to pose a threat to
national security. Critics have condemned the proposals as an attack on fundamental
rights. The bill also reintroduces the Senate, which was abolished in 1987. Critics
say this will allow the president to appoint more people to parliament. Justice
Minister Patrick Chinamasa said the amendments would bring to a full circle Zimbabwe's
war against British colonial rule "This amendment will conclude the third chimurenga
[liberation war] and the process of decolonisation," he said. Welshman Ncube,
secretary general of the opposition MDC, described the bill as " the rape of democracy."
Concerns The bill has raised serious concerns among human rights groups and the
political opposition, who are worried about how the draft puts certain actions
of the government beyond the reach of the judiciary. Legal battles have slowed
down the transfer of land to new farmers The government will now, for example,
be able to expropriate land without being challenged in court. This is being seen
as a measure to smooth the government's programme of land redistribution from
white farmers to the black majority. One opposition MP raised the concern that
vague wording meant it could affect someone growing cabbages in his back yard.
Another clause will give the government the right to withdraw passports or travel
documents, again with no possibility of judicial appeal - opponents of the measure
fear that it will be used to keep government critics on a tighter rein. The changes
also reintroduce the Senate, the upper house of parliament that was abolished
in 1987. The president will be able to appoint 16 of the 46 senators, in addition
to the 30 MPs he already appoints to the lower house. President Robert Mugabe
is expected to use this as an opportunity to bring back into parliament certain
favoured former MPs and ministers who lost their parliamentary seats in the election
earlier this year. Property rights The new bill also includes a proposal to bring
private schools under state control. President Mugabe has repeatedly changed the
constitution during his 25 years as Zimbabwe's leader, but the latest changes
are the most wide-ranging amendments ever put forward. Most attention, though,
has focused on the clause to deny the right of appeal to farmers whose land has
been seized. The government says it will conclude the land question. The opposition
says the move would further undermine property rights, deepening the country's
economic crisis. The Law Society of Zimbabwe has joined the criticism, condemning
the proposals as an undisguised assault on the rights of citizens. It concludes
that the plans would seriously erode if not remove rights to property, protection
of the law and freedom of movement.
IRIN
31 Aug 2005 Children living in borderland limbo [ This report does not
necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] © IRIN Trucks parked at the
Musina border crossing MUSINA/BEITBRIDGE, 31 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - Lucas Mavhube,
17, sat hiding under a clump of bushes in the dark, a few kilometres from the
border gates at Beitbridge, Zimbabwe, waiting for an opportunity to slip through
the fence that separates his country from South Africa. "I waited and waited.
My time came when I saw some soldiers go past the security gate, late in the night
- the guards were distracted, and I then slipped through." He is now in the South
African border town of Musina, scratching a living as an "undocumented migrant."
Mavhube is among scores of Zimbabwean teenagers who risk their lives to slip through
the security cordon on either side of the fence and cross the crocodile-infested
Limpopo river that marks the border, motivated by the need to find jobs to uplift
their families and a better life for themselves. "After [crossing the river] there
is a 12 km trek to the town of Musina. They try to keep to the bushes, away from
the prying eyes of authority," said an aid worker with a local NGO that provides
support to migrant Zimbabwean children. Mavhube was found wandering in the streets
by one of the NGO's volunteers. After his mother died in 1997, Mavhube dropped
out of school in Chiredzi, a town in southern Zimbabwe. He did odd jobs when he
could, while his grandmother, a vegetable vendor, supported three younger siblings.
"But there is no food now - the situation got very desperate," he said. "I thought
I should leave so I can earn something in South Africa to help my family." Zimbabwe
is going through a severe economic crisis and facing serious food shortages due
to recurring droughts and the government's fast-track land redistribution programme,
which disrupted agricultural production and slashed export earnings. Mavhube and
five other Zimbabwean teenagers do odd jobs around Musina in an attempt to earn
enough money to get to another South African city, preferably Johannesburg, where
they think there are better opportunities. "Often, children have other siblings,
relatives or friends working in South African cities and they just pass through
Musina. But children like Mavhube, who do not know anyone else in South Africa,
hang around in Musina or Makhado [a neighbouring town]. We try to provide them
with shelter, a place to bathe in, wash their clothes, play, study and plan their
next move," an aid worker explained. The NGO is aware of at least 100 Zimbabwean
children who have crossed the border illegally since the beginning of this year.
"These are children that we came to know of - there are probably many more who
were smuggled in unnoticed," the aid worker said. According to the Geneva-based
International Organisation for Migration (IOM), at least 2,000 Zimbabweans are
deported from South Africa via Beitbridge every week. "In 2003 the South African
authorities deported 55,753 Zimbabweans without official documents. Figures for
this year are likely to be higher, with 24,000 irregular Zimbabwean migrants being
deported between January and March alone. Deportees are both male and female,
and aged from in their teens and upwards, but the reason for deportation is always
the lack of legal documentation," said IOM spokeswoman Nicola Simmonds. "It is
easier for teenage girls to cross the border - they often offer sex in exchange
for transport to truck or combi [minibus] drivers - girls even as young as 14
years. It is also more difficult for authorities to track them down, as once they
make it across the border they assume married identities, but who will marry a
teenage boy?" remarked an aid worker. There were few job opportunities for unskilled
Zimbabweans back home, remarked Elias Gwamure, 16. "None of us could finish school,
as we could not afford it, so there is little we can do." Many teenagers in Beitbridge
are waiting for a lift - preferably unnoticed - across the border. With their
thumbs in the air, they line the sides of the highway through the town and almost
30 km beyond, while scores of adults and children sit at the petrol stations in
town, begging for any foreign currency that could help buy them a trip out. "I
don't have a passport - most of us don't. Getting a lift is the only way out,"
said a waiting Zimbabwean teenager. They sit for hours and even days in the blazing
sun, after having made it to Beitbridge from towns as far as 300 km away; they
live off offerings from passers-by, or sell bags of oranges for local farmers.
Many of them have already had a brush with the South African authorities. "Once
caught, the Zimbabweans are transported to Beitbridge. They are usually denied
access to their belongings after being caught, and so often arrive empty-handed
and needing to bathe, eat, rest and receive counselling," said Simmonds. According
to IOM, many deportees often do not have enough funds to either attempt another
crossing or return home, and usually remain in town. In collaboration with the
Zimbabwean and South African government, IOM is to set up a reception and support
centre at the Beitbridge border in October, to provide humanitarian assistance
to Zimbabwean migrants deported from South Africa. "The reception centre, funded
by the British government's Department for International Development (DFID), will
help the deported migrants with transportation, food rations, basic healthcare,
and information on HIV/AIDS and irregular migration issues, including human trafficking
and smuggling," said Simmonds. A tripartite dialogue between IOM and the ministries
of home affairs in South Africa and Zimbabwe on issues of cross border migration
will also be initiated, she added. Although there are no reliable data on the
number of undocumented Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa, the Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe estimated that last year 1.2 million Zimbabweans were living across the
border. * The names of the children have been changed to protect their identities
IRIN 31 Aug 2005 "Third way" runs into
criticism [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
© New Zimbabwe.com Jonathan Moyo - former information minister BULAWAYO, 31 Aug
2005 (IRIN) - Reviled by both sides of the political divide in Zimbabwe, sacked
information minister Jonathan Moyo is back at the centre of controversy, promoting
a "third way" to break the logjam between the ruling party and its main opposition.
Moyo, the only independent candidate to win a seat in the parliamentary elections
in March, argues that his United People's Movement (UPM) offers an alternative
to ZANU-PF's 25-year grip on power, and the labour-backed Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC), which has lost three elections in a row since 2000, in ballots many
regard as rigged. Although the initiative has stirred discussion in a country
suffering triple-digit inflation, food shortages, savage unemployment and critical
foreign exchange shortages, the debate remains coloured by the image of Moyo himself
- first a staunch former critic of the government, then one of its most ardent
ministers, now a new party leader. According to Moyo, the UPM is a "synthesis
of the dialectic between ZANU-PF and the MDC", and an idea that has attracted
disgruntled elements in both parties. The goals of the "third way" are to provide
"a pragmatic ideological and policy alternative" for charting a way out of Zimbabwe's
crisis, and to "succeed where the MDC has failed". "As a sunset political party
going through an inevitably bitter [internal] succession struggle, ZANU-PF no
longer has the capacity to govern, and govern well," Moyo told IRIN. The MDC,
on the other hand, believes "it can come to power on the strength of protest votes
produced by the ineptitude and brutality of the ZANU-PF", but had become "trapped
by the web of protest politics". However, University of Zimbabwe political scientist
John Makumbe commented that what Zimbabwe needed most at present was political
dialogue between the MDC and ZANU-PF - not the introduction of more parties. "Currently
there is so much polarisation in Zimbabwe, there can only be two horses in the
political field, which are ZANU-PF and the MDC - there is no space for the so-called
third way," said Makumbe. "Jonathan Moyo must not fool himself into thinking that
he can win the people's support," Makumbe added. "His brutality against progressive
forces, and his unbridled hate for opposition politicians, is well documented."
As information minister for five years, Moyo was an abrasive defender of the government,
and spearheaded the draconian Access to Information and Protection of Privacy
Act: legislation for controlling the media that has seen the arrest of more than
100 journalists and the closure of four private newspapers in the past four years.
Moyo has, however, attracted audiences when he has spoken publically about the
third way, winning applause, especially from college students. His willingness
to stand up to ZANU-PF after being sacked in 2005 for his role in organising resistance
to President Robert Mugabe's succession plans has earned him the admiration of
some Zimbabweans. But for civil society activists and past opponents, like National
Constitutional Assembly Chairman Lovemore Madhuku, the third way initiative is
tainted by association with Moyo. "Little is known about it and if it is a credible
movement at all, it can only succeed when reputable people take charge, and not
the likes of Moyo - he has no credibility with the people, who justifiably dismiss
him as a disillusioned former ZANU-PF die-hard," said Madhuku. Thokozani Sibanda,
a civic activist, wondered aloud, "What is it that the MDC has failed to do, that
Moyo and his UPM think they will achieve?"
www.newzimbabwe.com
5 Sept 2005 Facing a Zimbabwean genocide By Kevin Engle and Gregory Stanton
Last updated: 09/05/2005 21:38:21 "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." Didymus Mutasa – Zimbabwe’s Minister of State for National
Security, Lands, Lands Reform, and Resettlement – August 2002 Operation Murambatsvina
has been, “…a long cherished desire.” Robert Mugabe – Executive President of Zimbabwe
– June 2005 Like a snared animal, attacking even those who would free Zimbabwe,
Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party, severely injured by their own failed policies,
and in a desperate attempt to hold onto power, are tearing into the flesh of Zimbabwe’s
own citizens. At first cloaking his ruin of Zimbabwe’s economy as land reform,
Mugabe has now turned on his urban poor, bulldozing hundreds of thousands of peoples’
homes in the cold of winter. According to the United Nations Report on the Fact-Finding
Mission to Zimbabwe to Assess the Scope and Impact of Operation Murambatsvina,
there are, “three main categories of victims – those who have lost their homes,
those who lost their livelihoods, and those who lost both.” There can be little
doubt that this list will soon contain a fourth main category, those who have
lost their lives. Beginning officially on May 19, 2005, Operation Murambatsvina
(“Operation Drive out the Filth”), having already left 700,000 homeless, and directly
impacting the lives of a further 2.4 million, is simply the most recent manifestation
of the Mugabe/ZANU-PF’s systematic progression toward a governmental policy of
overt mass murder. Make no mistake, what we are currently witnessing in Zimbabwe—even
now, Operation Murambatsvina continues to unfold—constitutes nothing less than
the first stages of a centrally organized program of mass murder on a scale of
the genocides of Rwanda and Darfur. With a diligence akin to that of Hitler’s
Germany, where valuable resources were diverted from the war effort—even as the
Eastern Front collapsed under the onslaught of the Red Army—in order that the
trains could continue to transport their pitiful cargos to the death camps, the
Mugabe regime squanders what few assets it is still able to squeeze out of the
freefalling Zimbabwean economy, to fuel a policy that aims at the elimination
of all potential opposition, an opposition that Augustine Chihuri, the Zimbabwean
Police Commissioner, has described as a, “crawling mass of maggots bent on destroying
the economy.” Use of such dehumanizing language is one of the surest early
warning signs of genocide. The Devil is in the Details Genocide is a process and
not an event. The Mugabe regime has committed genocide before, and it has now
begun the genocidal process again. In October 1980, when then Prime Minister Mugabe
signed an agreement with the North Korean President, Kim Il Sung, providing that
the North Korean communists would train what was to become the elite “5 Brigade”
of the Zimbabwean army, he launched an intentional, organized process of genocide.
5 Brigade, comprised largely of Shona-speaking members of the armed wing of what
is now the ZANU-PF, and organized along the lines of Hitler’s SS—standing outside
of the army chain of command, and answering only to Mugabe himself—unleashed the
Gukurahundi (“the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains”),
the regime’s first, and still unpunished, genocide. While an accurate death toll
for the Gukurahundi is all but impossible to ascertain, with thousands of bodies
disposed of in mass graves and thrown down abandoned mine shafts, it is estimated
that at least 20,000 people were murdered by members of 5 Brigade, the ZANU-PF
Youth Militia, the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), and the Police Internal
Security Intelligence Unit (PISI), all active participants in the killings. What
is known, and documented, about the Gukurahundi, is that it constituted the Mugabe
regime’s first overt use of food as a weapon of suppression, with over 400,000
Zimbabwean citizens driven to the brink of starvation before 5 Brigade was withdrawn
and disbanded in 1986. The Gukurahundi, while mainly about consolidation of
raw political power, the establishment of a one-party, Mugabe/ZANU-PF led government,
and the suppression of any opposition—by whatever means necessary—was also genocide.
Its’ victims were almost exclusively Matabele. Having ruthlessly acted to cripple
those he saw as threatening the ZANU-PF government in the 1980’s, Mugabe turned
to consolidation of his political power by co-opting Zimbabwe’s parliamentary
democracy, and its’ judiciary, hoping to turn both into rubberstamps for his dictatorship.
Mugabe was shocked when in the Referendum of February 2000, a majority of those
Zimbabweans who voted rejected proposed constitutional changes designed to strengthen
the powers of the executive presidency. Mugabe’s ZANU-PF reacted with a second
violent and coordinated attack on those perceived as threatening its grip on power,
the political opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and
Zimbabwe’s commercial farming sector. The ZANU-PF Youth Militias, nicknamed the
“Green Bombers,” have been re-constituted, with Shona ethnic indoctrination and
lethal armament. Now, Mugabe’s assault on the Zimbabwean people, again utilizing
the same tools of intimidation, torture, murder, and terror that were so viciously
applied during the Gukurahundi, has escalated into Operation Murambatsvina. No
longer content to control and suppress its’ political opposition, the Mugabe/ZANU-PF
regime has implemented a systematic policy of forced relocation and mass murder
by attrition. It is winter in the southern hemisphere. Mugabe’s policy of murder
by homelessness, neglect, and starvation has been organized at the highest levels
of government. It constitutes a crime against humanity as defined by international
law. Action not Discussion As with Sudan and Niger, discussions about the
situation in Zimbabwe have been taking place within the international community’s
halls of power. The UN has compiled a damning report, the US and UK, in concert
with other nations, have called on the Mugabe regime to cease and desist, while
NGOs around the world have identified the specific steps that can be taken to
end this grave humanitarian crisis. Yet the power elite in Zimbabwe have shown
open contempt at demands that it end Operation Murambatsvina, a program of destruction
that Mugabe cynically claims is meant to “bring joy to the people.” Given Mugabe’s
evident refusal to end the policies that will lead to the extermination, by attrition,
of hundreds of thousands of Zimbabwean citizens, the time for discussion and hand
wringing has passed. Now it is time for those nations with the moral will, and
the necessary resources, to act decisively – either with, or without, the approval
of Mugabe, the ZANU-PF, or this criminal regime's apologists. Facing a Zimbabwean
Genocide Mugabe has been called upon to take measured, reasonable, and responsible
steps to end the humanitarian crisis caused by Operation Murambatsvina – he has
refused. Mugabe has been offered humanitarian support if only he agrees to allow
independent, international aid agencies to distribute assistance to those in the
most dire straits, free from the corrupt influence of the ZANU-PF and its self-serving
functionaries – he has refused. Mugabe has been offered a desperately needed influx
of foreign exchange credits, if only he agrees to enter into talks with the MDC
– he has refused. Mugabe has been called upon to provide international access
to assist the hundreds of thousands of now homeless and hopeless victims of his
brutal campaign of “urban cleansing” – he has refused. In fact, Mugabe has even
gone so far as to deny that these victims exist, commenting to reporters on the
subject when in Libya for the recent African Union (AU) summit: “Where are they?
We don’t know about those. It’s just nonsense.” Mugabe and the ZANU-PF regime
in Zimbabwe must not be given yet another opportunity that they can refuse! Never
Again or Again and Again? What remains is for the world’s governments to decide
whether they want to look back on this time in pride at having acted to avert
another humanitarian disaster, a “tsunami,” as its victims have named it, a program
of mass murder, to call it what it is, or in shame, at their collective complicity
in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. The dying has already begun
in Zimbabwe. Will the “Never again,” invoked piously after Rwanda, again translate
into “again and again?” As Judith Todd, the Zimbabwean human rights activist observed
in June 2005, “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 regime will not stop with what we know so far
of Operation Murambatsvina. They will not stop until they are stopped!” Kevin
Engle, an independent researcher, has lived in Zimbabwe. Gregory Stanton, President
of Genocide Watch and James Farmer Professor of Human Rights at the University
of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia, has conducted genocide prevention
training in Zimbabwe
Americas
NYT
1 Sept 2005 After Decades, Nations Focus on Rights Abuses By LARRY ROHTER
BUENOS AIRES - After years of inertia, governments throughout Latin America have
recently shown surprising vigor in prosecuting human rights violations that occurred,
in some cases, 30 years ago or more. Chile, for instance, has offered reparations
to torture victims and forced the army to apologize for its abuses, while the
Supreme Court in Argentina in June declared unconstitutional a pair of amnesty
laws from the 1980's. Why this sudden activity? After all, reopening issues like
forced disappearances, torture and state-sanctioned murder is painful for any
society and hardly as popular with voters as, say, creating jobs or building roads
or schools. "What's happening now is not a coincidence, or like some kind of flower
that has blossomed overnight," argues Víctor Abramovich of the Center for Legal
and Social Studies here, one of Argentina's leading human rights group. "It's
a regional process that has taken years to mature." Indeed, even nations that
for years did their utmost to forget the past have now been confronting incidents
once thought safely buried. In Uruguay, a leftist government, led by Tabaré
Vázquez, took power for the first time in March and a former president, Juan María
Bordaberry, was indicted three months later for the 1976 murders of two political
leaders. Mexico charged one of its former presidents, Luis Echeverría, with genocide
last year for his role in a "dirty war" against students and leftists in the late
1960's and early 1970's. And in Peru, military, intelligence and police officials
involved in abuses during the authoritarian rule of Alberto K. Fujimori in
the 1990's are also facing charges. One factor is clearly generational.
Men and women who came of age politically during the height of the abuses in the
1970's are now becoming presidents, judges, cabinet ministers and senators, like
President Néstor Kirchner here and his wife, Senator Cristina Fernández. "We speak
a common language," explained Javier Miranda, a 41-year-old lawyer who is a leader
of the Association of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared in Uruguay. "I don't
have to explain to Tabaré Vázquez who my father was," he said. The same is true,
he added, for other Latin American leaders. "All knew people who disappeared and
thus understand what we are talking about. So there's a different sensibility."
With the military now on the sidelines in every country in the region - no longer
able to intimidate relatives of victims, much less interfere outright as it
did in the past - those with claims of abuse also feel more comfortable coming
forward. After 20 years, citizens are finally willing to believe that democracy
has come to stay. But perhaps most important, there is now a body of international
law to assure that once cases are brought, they can be won. Over the last
decade, several countries in the region have approved new constitutions or laws
that enshrine the American Convention on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court
of Human Rights, which interprets and applies the convention, above their own
national jurisprudence. The main precedent cited in the June decision of the
Supreme Court here, for example, was not an Argentine case but one from Peru,
the so-called Barrios Altos ruling from November 2001. In that case, the Inter-American
Court ruled that there was no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity
and ordered Peru to repeal two amnesty laws that prevented a state-sponsored death
squad from being held accountable for the massacre of 17 people a decade earlier.
"This is a remarkable and very important development that we have only seen in
the past few years," said Santiago Cantón, executive secretary of the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights. "More and more, tribunals are deciding they can reopen
a case internally and make justice if it is in order to comply with the Inter-American
system." Not only is that system being used to resolve cases from the 1970's,
it is also being applied to broader, more contemporary issues. Because of it,
censors in Chile were forced to allow "The Last Temptation of Christ" to be shown
in cinemas there, while Guatemala eliminated a law that prevented women from working
without the approval of their husbands. All told, 22 Latin American and Caribbean
nations have accepted the court's jurisdiction. Though the United States constantly
lectures Latin American countries about human rights violations, it has not ratified
the 1969 convention and consequently does not recognize the court's jurisdiction,
a situation that has not stopped the court from raising questions about the treatment
of Taliban prisoners being held at the Guantánamo base in Cuba. Even during
the years Latin American governments were indifferent to the subject, human rights
groups kept plugging away, building cases against offenders who they were sure
had literally gotten away with murder. If there was a single turning point, however,
it was probably the detention of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998.
In the end, British courts turned down a Spanish extradition request and allowed
General Pinochet to return to Chile, where efforts to prosecute him are continuing.
But the "mere idea that a head of state had no immunity and could be treated like
any other citizen was a revolutionary finding that reverberated throughout the
region" and still does, said José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Washington-based
Human Rights Watch's Americas Division. "The jailing of Pinochet was a contagious
example, a catalyst," said Mr. Miranda, the Uruguayan human rights leader. "It
gave us a blueprint for what could be done." The Pinochet ruling also helped debunk
the myth that human rights was somehow exclusively a left-wing cause. "No
one could accuse the British law lords, in their black robes and starched wigs,
of being part of an international socialist conspiracy," Mr. Vivanco noted. Many
of the governments that have reopened the human rights issue, like the one here
and in Uruguay, do have a leftist tinge. But Alejandro Toledo of Peru, Vicente
Fox of Mexico and Óscar Berger of Guatemala, conservatives all, have also taken
steps to account for abuses in their countries, and have been more assertive than
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who leads Brazil's first elected leftist government.
"No matter what its ideological coloration, a modern government wants to be perceived
as respecting the rule of law," said Horacio Rosatti, a professor of constitutional
law and former minister of justice here. "And the rule of law means that justice
must eventually prevail."
Canada
BBC
12 Sept 2005 Violence as Chile marks 1973 coup The violence is being blamed on
anarchist groups Protesters and police have clashed during events to mark the
32nd anniversary of Chile's military coup. Violence erupted in a cemetery, where
thousands had gathered to pay tribute to the more than 3,000 victims of Gen Augusto
Pinochet's 1973-1990 regime. Chile's centre-left government blamed the clashes
on "infiltrators". A teenager is reported to have been killed in later disturbances.
Gen Pinochet stayed at home and was visited by former aides. Protest At least
9,000 people marched 3km (1.8 miles) to the General Cemetery in the Chilean capital,
Santiago. It is not about forgetting the past, but about using those experiences
so that things like that do not happen again President Ricardo Lagos Many of
them carried flags of the Communist party and of other left-wing movements, as
well as pictures of former President Salvador Allende who committed suicide when
the military took over the presidential palace on 11 September 1973. Marchers
demanded justice for the victims of the military regime and protested against
recent moves to pardon some officers convicted of human rights abuses. Some 10,000
police officers were deployed to keep order. But after a few incidents of violence
outside the cemetery, clashes broke out inside, with demonstrators throwing rocks
at police. Riot police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse the protesters.
'Dark moment' Local reports suggest the violence was instigated by hooded protesters,
believed to be members of an anarchist group. Some of General Pinochet's supporters
rallied outside his house Later in the evening, barricades were set up in a number
of working class neighbourhoods in Santiago. A 16-year-old boy is reported
to have died from a bullet wound during the protests, which continued into the
early hours of Monday. The day of violence also left 21 police officers injured.
More than 80 people have been arrested. President Ricardo Lagos - who has
come under fire for pardoning an officer who killed a trade union leader in 1982
- made a call for unity. "I think the time has come to overcome this grey and
dark moment," he said, referring to the coup. "It is not about forgetting the
past, but about using those experiences so that things like that do not happen
again."
Colombia
United
Nations News Service 29 Aug 2005UN rights office condemns leftist rebel massacre
of farm workersThe United Nations human rights office in Colombia has condemned
the massacre of 14 farm workers in the northwest of the country and warned leftist
rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – Popular Army (FARC-EP)
that they were incurring war and could be subject to the International Criminal
Court (ICC). The workers were shot dead on 23 August in Valdivia municipality
of Antioquia province in an attack which the authorities attributed to members
of FARC-EP’s front 36, the office noted. “The Office warns that with killings
like that of Puerto Valdivia, the FARC-EP members are indulging in conduct that
constitutes war crimes,” it said in a statement issued in Bogota, the Colombian
capital. “Moreover, murders of this type, by their generalized and systematic
character, would possess the characteristics of crimes against humanity, and thus
those responsible could be subject to the jurisdiction of the International Court
of Justice,” it added. It called on the FARC-EP secretariat to “publicly assume
the responsibility that arises from this atrocious act and odder its members to
refrain at all times from attacks against the civilian population.” Hundreds of
thousands of people are estimated to have been killed and millions displaced in
four decades of fighting in the Andean country between leftist guerrillas, government
forces and right-wing paramilitaries.
