US Committee for Refugees 6 Jun 2002 Statistical Up Uprooted populations worldwide A) Worldwide General Statistics Refugees 14.9 million refugees worldwide at start of 2002. 400,000 more refugees than last year--a 2.7 percent increase. Worldwide refugee totals have increased for three consecutive years after six straight years of declining numbers. 1.7 million fewer refugees than ten years ago; 2.7 million fewer than the peak year of 1992. Two countries/territories are the source of more than half the world's refugees: Afghanistan, Palestinians. Five countries/territories are the source of two-thirds of the world's refugees: Afghanistan, Palestinians, Burma, Angola, Sudan. Nine countries/territories have produced three-quarters of the world's refugees: Afghanistan, Palestinians, Burma, Angola, Sudan, Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa, Eritrea, Iraq. 12 countries/territories are each producing a quarter-million or more refugees. 21 countries/territories are each producing 100,000 or more refugees. Six of the ten leading refugee-producing countries are in Africa. Internally Displaced Persons At least 22.5 million internally displaced persons worldwide at start of 2002. (Less conservative estimates by USCR run as high as 24.9 million.) This is the largest number of internally displaced persons in seven years, according to USCR's most conservative historical estimates. 15 countries have a half-million or more internally displaced persons. 23 countries have a quarter-million or more internally displaced persons. 31 countries are each producing 100,000 or more internally displaced persons (compared to 26 such countries in 1996, and 21 such countries in 1990). Nearly half of the world's internally displaced persons are in Africa. Total Uprooted People (Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons Combined) At least 37.4 million people worldwide are uprooted as refugees or internally displaced persons. This is the largest number of uprooted people worldwide in seven years, according to USCR's most conservative historical estimates. 4 million or more became newly uprooted during 2001. 61 countries/territories are sources of significant numbers of uprooted people (at least 10,000 each). Ten largest producers of uprooted people: Afghanistan (5.5 million); Sudan (4.4 million); Palestinians (4.1 million); Angola (2.4 million or more); Colombia (2.4 million); Congo-Kinshasa (2.3 million); Indonesia (1.4 million); Burma (1 million or more); Burundi (970,000); Sri Lanka (940,000). More than one-third of the world's uprooted people come from three sources: Afghanistan, Sudan, and Palestinians. About half of the world's uprooted people come from five sources: Afghanistan, Sudan, Palestinians, Angola, and Colombia. Two-thirds of the world's uprooted people originate from ten sources (listed above). B) Worldwide Regional Comparisons: Refugees Middle East - 6.8 million refugees; 45 percent of worldwide total. Africa - 3 million refugees; 20 percent of worldwide total. South and Central Asia - 2.7 million refugees; 18 percent of worldwide total. Europe - 1.2 million refugees; 6 percent of worldwide total. East Asia - 0.8 million refugees; 5 percent of worldwide total (up from 0.7 and 4.6 percent last year) Americas - 0.6 million refugees; 4 percent of worldwide total. C) Major Hosting Countries Worldwide Half of all refugees worldwide have fled to five countries/territories: Iran (2.5 million); Pakistan (2 million); Jordan (1.6 million); Gaza/West Bank (1.4 million); and Tanzania (0.5 million). The second five countries/territories hosting the largest refugee populations: United States (490,000); Yugoslavia (400,000); Syria (400,000); Lebanon (390,000); India (345,000). 15 countries are each hosting a quarter-million or more refugees. 26 countries/territories are each hosting 100,000 or more refugees . 72 countries/territories are each hosting 10,000 or more refugees. D) Repatriation Worldwide At least 610,000 refugees voluntarily repatriated in 2001. The five largest voluntary repatriations during 2001: to Afghanistan (208,000); to Sierra Leone (80,000); to Macedonia (71,000); to Somalia (40,000); to Eritrea (33,000). More than 1.2 million refugees have voluntarily repatriated in the past two years. More than 2.3 million refugees have voluntarily repatriated in the past three years. More than 3.9 million refugees have voluntarily repatriated in the past five years. 14 countries each received 10,000 or more repatriating refugees during 2001. Click here for the USCR World Refugee Survey 2002. http://www.refugees.org/WRS2002.cfm

ICRC 20 June 2002 ICRC News by 02/25 ICRC initiative on conflict-related disappearances Uncertainty as to the fate of a relative is a harsh and painful reality for countless families around the world. While the pain is felt most keenly by immediate family members, wounds can fester in entire communities, even entire countries, and impede a return to stability and reconciliation once armed conflict or internal violence have ended. They may even contribute to further outbreaks of violence. The current approaches used to deal with conflict-related disappearances, which focus on preventing their occurrence or — failing that — ascertaining the fate of the missing and providing their families and communities with support, are inadequate. For this reason, the ICRC has launched a major initiative to find a more effective way to address the problem. The ICRC has already begun an internal review aimed at improving its own action and that of its partners in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. However, on the basis of its long experience the ICRC is well aware that a concerted effort among civilian and military leaders and various experts and organizations will also be needed. It has therefore invited a wide range of people from governmental, non-governmental and other organizations to help develop standards and guidelines for dealing with this very complex issue. Three special studies will be carried out. In addition, a series of eight workshops will be held throughout 2002, as will an international conference on the missing and their families (Geneva, February 2003), which will seek to identify best practices. A wide range of issues will be addressed, in particular: Ÿ methods for preventing disappearances; Ÿ the needs of families who have lost contact with their loved ones; Ÿ how to respond more appropriately when people are unaccounted for. Another objective is to raise this concern to a higher level on the agendas of governments, the United Nations and non-governmental organizations to encourage them to take more effective action. The first workshops — on dealing with human remains, the legal protection of personal data, identification and prevention, and support for families of missing persons — took place recently. The level of participation, and the willingness and commitment of the participants to seek viable and effective solutions, have been encouraging. When all workshops have been held, their results will be included in a preparatory document for the conference, which will represent an opportunity to make substantial progress in tackling the problem of conflict-related disappearances and its destructive effects on families and communities.

Africa

AFRICA: Analysts warn of challenges ahead of AU launch NEPAD hopes to generate US $64 billion in investment JOHANNESBURG, 20 Jun 2002 (IRIN) - Analysts on Thursday issued a cautious welcome for the African Union (AU), expected to be launched on 8-10 July in Durban, South Africa. Speaking to western diplomats gathered at the South African Institute for International Affairs (SAIIA), political observers agreed that although the transformation from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) into the AU was a promising move, the new organisation faced enormous challenges. Although relatively upbeat about the launch, applied legal studies expert Prof Shadrack Gutto said: "The most important challenge for African leaders is to make the AU not only coherent but relevant to the African people." Gutto commended the wording of the AU's mission statement, "A New African Initiative", saying that the ambitious plan outlined in the statement went far beyond anything ever envisaged by the OAU. "The new institution is more about the present moment. Women and the youth are explicitly mentioned in the mission, which is a reflection of the change in attitudes among leaders. In 1963 these groups were not a priority for the founders of the OAU." The formation in 1963 of the OAU was the first attempt to make real the vision of a united Africa. However, with an out-of-date charter, which narrowly defined sovereignty, the pan-African organisation has been widely criticised for its apparent protection of dictators by its so-called principle of non-interference. Significantly, the AU, unlike its predecessor, will have the political leverage to intervene in member states where there is evidence of serious human rights violations, such as genocide and war crimes. Senior Africa researcher at SAIIA, Ross Herbert said: "It is one thing to have it down on paper, but the real test is the implementation in practical terms. How much power will leaders have to rope in countries such as Zimbabwe, which seems to have gone off the rails, remains to be seen." The union will be multi-faceted, with an assembly made up of all the heads of state and an executive council composed of foreign ministers. Included in the union plan are a pan-African parliament, a court of justice and a central bank. The new resolve to end Africa's conflicts and develop the continent's many moribund economies, was affirmed at a summit in Lusaka last July and leaders were given a year to prepare for the AU launch. But NGOs and analysts labelled the union as a "waste of money" and "another autocratic nightmare". "The AU will require a budget much larger than that of the OAU. Leaders will have to be more creative about how they intend to finance such an ambitious project," Gutto added. As the OAU cedes to the AU, it is owed US $50 million in arrears as less than a third of its members have paid their membership fees. Central to the success of the AU is the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), an African-designed plan to rebuild the continent. If the plan gets off the ground, the hope is to generate US $64 billion in investment yearly, boosting continent-wide annual economic growth to seven percent. In return, western countries are asking Africa to make a commitment to democracy and the fight against corruption. At a summit in Nigeria in March, 21 African states agreed on a communique which proposed eight draft codes of behaviour to be judged by an independent, credible African institute "separate from the political process and structures". The African Peer Review Mechanism, as it has been dubbed, should make sure "that policies of African countries are based on best current knowledge and practices". Gutto said: "By setting up the institute and the codes of practice, NEPAD's backers are hoping to head off worries among the western states whose money is needed if NEPAD is to succeed." When NEPAD was unveiled, in July, Africa had already suffered a decline in prosperity which had seen 34 of the continent's nations ranked among the world's least developed countries, compared with 27 in 1996. Development aid to Africa fell from US $24.2 billion to US $14.2 billion between 1989 and 1999, while the UN said that foreign investment had been set to fall by 40 percent even before the 11 September attacks on the United States.

Angola

AFP 18 Jun 2002 Three million Angolans need immediate aid: UN official GENEVA, June 18 (AFP) - Three million Angolans, whose country is emerging from 27 years of civil war, are in need of immediate aid, a senior UN official said Tuesday. The director of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Ross Mountain, has launched an appeal for international aid for the wartorn country, calling on donors to give up to 142 million dollars (150 million euros) in the next six months. He also called for Angolan authorities to also step in and assist in financing and dispensing aid. "There is a need for additional resources in order to consolidate the ongoing peace process and most importantly, to ensure that those who are suffering will survive and are able to reintegrate into their communities," Mountain told a news conference after returning from a trip to Angola. "It is vital that UN assistance arrives pretty fast." The Angolan government signed a peace accord on April 4 with the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) movement, ending Africa's longest war. He said the organisation had estimated that three million Angolans were now in need of immediate assistance. Mountain told journalists he had visited a number of hospitals where he had seen countless children were suffering from severe malnutrition. Another UN agency, UNICEF, said on Tuesday that Angola had one of the highest under-five child mortality rates in the world, estimating that one Angolan child dies every three minutes. Given Angola was "a potentially very rich country", Mountain said the Angolan government was in a position to make resources available for both humanitarian and reconstruction efforts. "We got a positive reaction that there would be resources forthcoming, which is encouraging," he said adding that government officials had spoken of a figure of about 20 million dollars. The 27-year civil war forced more than four million people to leave their homes. In addition to the refugee crisis, demobilizing the former rebels and finding a new role for them in society remains a key hurdle to the peace process. The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned last Tuesday that Angola's government and the UN were being too slow to respond to the needs of at least 600,000 people in need of immediate aid.

Burundi

IRIN 31 May 2002 BURUNDI: Court clears 34 accused of Teza tea factory massacre NAIROBI, 31 May 2002 (IRIN) - Following a month-long trial, from 2 to 28 May, a Bujumbura criminal court declared innocent 34 alleged leaders of a July 1996 attack on a tea factory in Burundi’s Teza region, Muramvya Province, that left about 100 dead, the local news agency Net Press reported on Thursday. News agencies and human rights groups at the time reported that a large number of Hutu rebels had attacked the plant, killing mainly Tutsis. The factory, six administrative buildings, 20 trucks and large quantities of tea were destroyed by fire. Soon after the massacre, the army reportedly retaliated in the Bukeye and Kiganda areas, killing at least 500 people, according to Amnesty International. It called on all parties to the conflict in Burundi to take immediate measures to prevent killings of unarmed and defenceless civilians, to exercise restraint and to take steps to prevent reprisal killings.

IRIN 7 June 2002 Lawyers Demand Release of Anti-Genocide Leader Lawyers for the leader of a Tutsi anti-genocide organisation in the capital, Bujumbura, who has been imprisoned without charge since 2 May, have called for his immediate and unconditional release, a Burundi news agency, Net Press, reported on Thursday. Burundi's new penal code, enacted since the installation of a transitional national government on 1 November 2001, forbids holding anyone in prison without charge. The president of Puissance d'autodefense-Amasekanya, Diomede Rutamucero, was arrested after members of his organisation staged a protest in Bujumbura against the Arusha peace accord and the adoption of laws on provisional immunity for returning political leaders, many of whom they hold responsible for massacres of Tutsis. On Wednesday, authorities informed Rutamucero that he had been arrested in connection with a complaint a government minister lodged on 27 April, claimed that members of Amasekanya had been singing offensive and intimidating songs. A regional analyst told IRIN that Rutamucero's detention was an attempt by authorities "to get anti-genocide organisations to shut up". "You can't charge someone over what someone else said," he added, referring to Rutamucero's imprisonment on the basis of what members of his organisation said. This is the 15th time during the current tenure of Burundi President Pierre Buyoya that Rutamucero has been imprisoned. Under a deal to end the brutal eight-year civil war largely between the ruling Tutsi minority and the majority Hutu opposition, Buyoya, a Tutsi, is heading the new power-sharing administration for 18 months until mid-2003. During this period, Domitien Ndayizeye, a Hutu, serves as vice-president. Ndayizeye is then to assume the presidency for the next 18 months.

AFP 21 June 2002 12 sentenced to death in Burundi for 1993 massacres BUJUMBURA, June 21 (AFP) - Twelve people were sentenced to death in Burundi on Thursday for "massacres, murders and pillage" committed in 1993 at the start of the civil war, the justice ministry said. Eleven sentences were handed down in the central town of Karuzi and one in Ngozi in the north. The 1993 assassination of Burundi's first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, was followed by inter-ethnic massacres between the majority Hutus and Tutsis and provoked the start of the current civil war. - Nampa-AFP

AP 22 Jun 2002 Burundi Court Sentences 11 to Death The Associated Press BUJUMBURA, Burundi (AP) — A court has sentenced 11 people to death and 16 others to life imprisonment for taking part in massacres that followed the 1993 assassination of Burundi's first democratically elected leader, the justice minister said Friday. The criminal court in Gitega, 45 miles east of the capital, Bujumbura, handed down the sentences on Thursday, said Dwima Bakana. The death penalty in Burundi is carried out by hanging. The last time it was implemented was in 1995. The 8 1/2 -year civil war in Burundi broke out after Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the President Melchior Ndadaye, a member of the Hutu majority. Ndadaye's death sparked a cycle of killings with Hutus attacking Tutsis and the Tutsi-dominated army carrying out reprisal attacks on Hutu civilians. More than 200,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed during the civil war. A transitional government was inaugurated in November after President Pierre Buyoya's government, 17 political parties and the National Assembly signed a power-sharing agreement last August; but fighting has continued.

Cameroon

IRIN 17 June 2002 CAMEROON: Amnesty International, Survival protest Mbororo arrests YAOUNDE, 17 Jun 2002 (IRIN) - Two global human rights watchdogs, Amnesty International (AI) and Survival have protested the arrest of four activists of the Mbororo ethnic group in Cameroon's North West province, and launched a campaign for their release. AI said on Thursday that it was concerned over the safety of the detained activists who had been held without charge and faced further risk of torture or ill-treatment. The military, Survival added, arrested Ousman Haman, Ahmadou Hassan, Adamu Isa and Yunusa Mbagoji in April and May on the orders of a member of the ruling Cameroon Peoples' Democratic Movement. Ousman Haman was arrested near Sabga in Mezam judicial division. Under the law he could only be charged within Mezam, where English Common Law is in force. Instead he was taken to Bafoussam in another province to be tried by a military tribunal under French-based Cameroonian law. Ahmadou Hasan, Adamu Isa and Yunusa Mbagoji were arrested in the city of Douala for an alleged crime that occurred near Sabga in Mezam judicial division. They were transported first to Bamenda and then to Bafoussam to be tried in a military tribunal, the organizations said. All the four suffered various types of torture, AI and Survival said, adding that the arrests were part of human rights abuses against the Mbororo Fulani of the North West Province. The government had neither explained the reason for their arrests nor allowed them access to lawyers and their families. "Several weeks after their arrests, no charges have been brought against [them]. The four were arrested in relation to a dispute over grazing land. At no time since Cameroon gained independence in 1961 has any dispute over grazing land been taken to a military tribunal. The detention of the Mbororo men suggests a wider campaign of intimidation against this politically marginal ethnic group," Survival said. In 1986 a prominent businessman and a member of the ruling party central committee established two cattle ranches in the Boyo and Menchum divisions and reportedly forced some Mbororo out of their land without compensation, which made him the largest single private landowner in the province, AI said. "The Mbororo Social and Cultural Development Association which was established on 1992 to protect Mbororo rights and promote development has been a particular target," it said. Survival is a London-based organisation that supports tribal peoples by campaigning for their rights. It helps to protect the lives, lands and human rights of the minority tribes. Details of the campaign are available at: http://www.survival-international.org

DR Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo)

IRIN 30 May 2002 Kigali Accused of "Genocide Against 3.5 Million People" The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has accused Rwanda of committing "genocide against more than 3.5 million people" in the DRC, including the victims of "the recent massacres" in Kisangani, by engaging in "killing, slaughter, rape, throat-slitting and crucifying". In a case filed on Tuesday at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, The Netherlands, the DRC government stated that Rwanda had been guilty of "armed aggression" in the DRC since August 1998, and that it had resulted in "large-scale human slaughter" in the South Kivu, Katanga Orientale provinces in the east of the country. The application submitted to the court accused Rwandan troops and their Congolese rebel allies, the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD), of rape and sexual assault, assassinating and kidnapping political figures and human rights activists, systematic looting of public and private institutions, seizure of property belonging to civilians, and arrests and arbitrary detentions in contravention of the United Nations Charter, the Organisation of African Unity Charter, the International Bill of Rights, and others. It demanded the "immediate, unconditional withdrawal" of Rwandan troops from DRC territory, and stated that DRC citizens were entitled to compensation for acts of wrongdoing, including looting, destruction, slaughter and removal of property. It also requested that "provisional measures" be taken pending the court's decision on the case, which may take up to several years. The purpose of these measures would be "to prevent irreparable harm being caused to its [DRC's] lawful rights and to those of its population by reason of the occupation of part of its territory by Rwandan forces". The application added that to fail to make an immediate order for the measures sought, "would have humanitarian consequences incapable of being made good, whether in the short term or in the long term". The Rwandan Special Envoy for the DRC, Patrick Mazimhaka, denied the charges. He told IRIN that Rwanda had no case to answer. He said people had died in the region due to neglect, poverty, disease and a lack of infrastructure, medical supplies, food and access for aid agencies. "Rwanda cannot be held responsible," he said. The Rwandan foreign minister, Andre Bumaya, declined to comment, saying that the government was preparing a statement on the matter. The International Court of Justice would hold hearings on the request for provisional measures on 13 June and possibly on the 14th also, the ICJ said in a statement.

AFP 9 Jun 2002 -- Rebels say 400 civilians killed in eastern DR Congo KIGALI, June 9 (AFP) - Rwandan-backed rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have accused a rival group allied to the Kinshasa regime of massacring nearly 400 civilians this week in the northeastern Ituri region. "The Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) denounces the widespread massacring of the civil population near Bunia by the RCD-ML led by Mbusa Nyamwisi and allied to the forces of the Kinshasa government," the rebels said in a statement in Kigali late Saturday. "During the nights of June 4-5, and again June 6-7, nearly 400 people were killed at Gomu (45 kilometres from Bunia), at Risafi, and in the villages of Bedu, Madro, Lonyo, Katoto and Kilo." A spokesman for the community confirmed there had been killings but questioned the death toll. The Rwandan-backed group controls the eastern third of the vast DRC, while the RCD-ML (Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement), a small rebel group backed by Uganda, controls the far northeast of the country, near the border with Sudan and Uganda. The region is plagued by ethnic violence, particularly between the Hema and Lendu tribes. The RCD said "four bodies had been taken to Bunia and placed in front of the office of the UN mission to the DRC (MONUC)." The rebels said they "demanded a commission of inquiry be set up and urged the UN Security Council to put pressure on the Kinshasa government, the RCD-ML and their backers Uganda to stop the massacres." The RCD's claims have not been confirmed by independent sources. The rebel group has been excluded from a peace deal signed at Sun City in South Africa in April between Kinshasa, the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) -- the main Ugandan-backed rebel group -- as well as smaller groups sucha as the RCD-ML and a host of political parties. The RCD said that Kinshasa, the RCD-ML and Uganda should carry the blame for "the unprecedented increase in attacks on Ituri's civilians who are rejecting the Sun City accord." A spokesman for the Hema community, which has been worst hit by the violence, confirmed that there had been attacks but did not agree with the RCD's death toll or version of events. The source, who spoke to AFP by telephone from Bukavu in eastern DRC, blamed the killings on the rival Lema tribe. "The Hema community is not against the Sun City accord," he added. The RCD has in recent weeks been accused of killing nearly 200 people in reprisal for a failed insurrection in the northeastern city of Kisangani, which is under its control.

AFP 7 Jun 2002 -- Human rights situation "grave" in eastern DR Congo: NGO KIGALI, June 7 (AFP) - The human rights situation remains "grave" in South Kivu province in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a local human rights organisation said in a report obtained Friday. "Numerous instances of murder, rape, torture, looting, arbitrary arrest and detention and massive displacement of the local population as a result of fighting were recorded throughout 2001," the Heirs of Justice rights group said in its report. South Kivu, a mountainous region bordered by lakes Tanganyika and Kivu, is in theory controlled by the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), the DRC's biggest rebel group. Soldiers from Rwanda and Burundi have been fighting in the region alongside RCD troops against Hutu rebels from Rwanda and Burundi and Mai-Mai tribal warriors loyal to Kinshasa. A number of unidentified armed groups have also sprung up in the region since war broke out in the DRC in August 1998. "The repeated, serious human rights violations committed by the RCD and its allies and by various other armed groups are for the most part going unpunished," Heirs of Justice said. It added that it wanted to "remind the RCD leadership that it carries the responsibility for the reprehensible abuses committed against the women, children and men of South Kivu." The human rights group singled out the 2001 Christmas Day massacre at Kalama, in the Bunyakiri district, in which "at least 84 people, including women and children" were killed by RCD troops. "These people were accused of cooperating with the Mai-Mai and the Interahamwe (extremist Hutu militia who carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda)," according to the Heirs of Justice report. The group noted that more than a dozen people died on May 15 when the Burundian army bombed three villages on the Rusizi plain, and blamed "other, similar atrocities" on the Mai-Mai, the Interahamwe and the Rwandan Liberation Army (ALIR), the rebel movement formed by Rwandan Hutu extremists in the DRC. War broke out in the DRC four years ago when Rwanda and Uganda invaded in a bid to help oust then president Laurent Kabila, whom they accused of failing to flush out Hutu rebels in the east.

IRIN 10 June 2002 DRC: MONUC to verify RCD claims of 500 dead in Ituri NAIROBI, 10 Jun 2002 (IRIN) - The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - known as MONUC - is to investigate reports of up to 500 people having been killed in recent clashes between the Hema and Lendu ethnic groups in the northeastern DRC province of Ituri, mission force commander Gen Mountaga Diallo told IRIN on Monday. "It appears the situation is worsening, and I'm afraid we are yet to see the worst," he said. He added that eight of his military liaison officers in the region were still awaiting security clearance on Monday from the local authorities - the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Kisangani-Mouvement de liberation (RCD-K-ML) and their Ugandan backers - to visit the site of last week's fighthing near Bunia. Diallo said he would lead a MONUC delegation to Kampala, the Ugandan capital, this week to consult with government officials on possible ways "to cool down the situation". On Saturday, the Rwandan-backed RCD-Goma armed opposition movement denounced that week's killing of civilians around Bunia; alleging that DRC troops, supported by Congolese Mayi-Mayi militias allied to RCD-K-ML leader Mbusa Nyamwisi, carried out the acts. RCD-Goma spokesman Jean-Pierre Lola Kisanga said his movement was concerned for the safety of civilians in government and RCD-K-ML controlled territory, and called on the international community to condemn "widespread acts" of human rights and international humanitarian law violations. He urged the UN Security Council to demand that the DRC and Ugandan governments "cease civilian massacres in Ituri, and that a UN international commission of inquiry be created to determine those responsible". In a letter written on 19 March to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged MONUC to "immediately send more military and civilian observers to the strife-torn Ituri Province", warning that the "conflict between Hemas and Lendus has resulted in hundreds of civilian killings and the displacement of thousands". From the onset of the Hema-Lendu conflict in 1999 to the current spiral of killings, HRW said, "Leadership disputes within RCD-K-ML and manipulation by the occupying Uganda army have combined to stoke the violence." Diallo added, "It appears that there is political manipulation behind these ethnic rivalries." Both groups, he said, were organised into militias, trained in camps, and armed with weapons such as AK-47 assault rifles. He said that the Uganda People's Defence Forces - which have at least 1,000 soldiers in Ituri - had made multiple efforts to stop the fighting, without success. In another development, Rwanda has renewed its calls on MONUC to disarm the 40,000 Interahamwe (Hutu militiamen) Kigali believes are based in the DRC. President Paul Kagame's special envoy for the Great Lakes region, Patrick Mazimhaka, had asked the Security Council on Thursday to deploy peacekeeping soldiers to disarm the Interahamwe, believing that this could encourage an additional 15,000 ex-FAR (former Rwandan armed forces) to renounce fighting, the BBC reported. That would, he told Reuters, clear the way for Rwanda to withdraw all its troops from DRC territory. Responding to MONUC reports of 12,000 to 15,000 Interahamwe in eastern DRC, Mazimhaka told Radio France Internationale (RFI) on Friday that those figures "concerned the situation in Kivu and North Katanga areas, where MONUC has access ... MONUC does not have access to Kinshasa government military camps where those 40,000 are." Meanwhile, RCD-Goma leader Adolphe Onusumba has been travelling throughout the eastern region of DRC to update local populations on his movement's efforts to resume the inter-Congolese dialogue. The Sun City, South Africa, talks ended in April with an alliance formed among Kabila, the Ugandan-backed Mouvement de liberation du Congo armed opposition organisation of Jean-Pierre Bemba, and a majority of representatives from the political opposition and civil society. Under the deal Kabila would remain president in a new government and Bemba would become prime minister. RCD-Goma rejected the offer of presidency of the National Assembly. Then the movement formed an association - the Alliance pour la sauvegarde du dialogue intercongolais - with five unarmed opposition parties, one of them being the Etienne Tshisekedi-led Union pour la democratie et le progres social. Whereas all parties have expressed their willingness to continue talks, the Kabila-Bemba camp insists that any further negotiations take place under the terms of its Sun City accord. However, the RCD-Goma-led alliance is refusing to recognise that accord, demanding that all matters be open for discussion in a renewed dialogue.

BBC 11 June 2002, Ethnic massacre claim in DR Congo The Lendu use bows and arrows in the fighting The United Nations says it is investigating claims that more than 2,000 people have been killed in tribal clashes in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The commander of the UN mission in the country, General Mountaga Diallo, said he was trying to send a team to Ituri province, where the Hema - a minority tribe in the area - say many of their people were killed by the majority Lendu. People are complaining that we haven't been doing more, but we are here with only the mandate provided within the Lusaka peace agreement on Congo General Diallo UN Congo mission But he added that efforts to verify these claims were hampered by a lack of security guarantees in the region. "It appears the situation is worsening, and I am afraid we are yet to see the worst," he said. Thousands of people have been killed in recent years in fighting between the Lendu and Hema over land and natural resources. Fresh clashes Hema representatives asked the UN to investigate at least 2,400 deaths which they say resulted from more than 70 attacks since April, and to demilitarise the area. The long-standing rivalry between the Hemas and Lendus has been exacerbated by the war in DR Congo, with each side backing rival warlords. General Diallo said the rebels and the Ugandan army, who control the area, had refused to provide an escort for his team to travel to the villages north of the town of Bunia, on the border with Uganda, where the massacres are reported to have taken place. But he added that he would himself fly to Kampala later this week to discuss ways of calming the situation with the Ugandan authorities. He stressed that the UN mission was in Congo as an observer mission only, and that its mandate did not stretch to intervention in local factional fighting. Old enmities "People are complaining that we haven't been doing more, but we are here with only the mandate provided for within the Lusaka peace agreement on Congo," he said. There have been sporadic, but very bloody outbreaks of violence between the Hema and the Lendu in the region for the past three years. The traditionally pastoralist Hema outnumber the Lendu, who rely on growing crops, by about five to one. The two communities have clashed for decades over tea and coffee farms, as well as cattle, which form the backbone of the local economy. General Diallo said the groups had organised into militias, set up training camps and acquired automatic weapons to intensify their conflict. Uganda has been accused in the past of pitting the two communities against each other, allegations it has denied.

Business Day (Johannesburg) 18 June 2002 Uganda to Ease Tensions in Congo. By Michael Wakabi Johannesburg UGANDA moved to ease tension in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, sending leaders from the strife torn Ituri province, for talks in Kinshasa with President Joseph Kabila's government. The move was part of efforts to stop tribal clashes that have claimed hundreds of lives in the region in recent weeks. The leaders will join the heads of Uganda-backed rebel groups that are already meeting in Kinshasa. As the United Nations moved to investigate the clashes, Uganda said it was too thin on the ground to have prevented the killings that the Hema ethnic group said had claimed 2400 lives since April. The bulk of Ugandan forces were pulled out of Congo last year, leaving a skeletal presence to patrol border areas. President Museveni's adviser on Congo Lt-Gen David Tinyefuza, said the local leaders had been removed from the region because they were part of the problem. "We have removed some of the leaders and asked them to go to Kinshasa to to sort out their mess," he said. "We are trying to help them find a local solution to the problem because it is not necessarily a military problem." Kabila left Congo yesterday for Equatorial Guinea, where he is expected to meet on the sidelines of a regional summit with President Paul Kagame of Rwanda to ease tension between those two states. Both leaders will take part in the 10th summit meeting of the Economic Community of Central African States where heads of state and government from 11 member states are to decide on measures necessary to promote regional economic co-operation. With Sapa-AFP

IRIN 21 June 2002 DRC: Rape as a weapon of war in the east NAIROBI, 21 Jun 2002 (IRIN) - Sexual violence, perpetrated by all parties to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is "rampant" in rebel-controlled eastern part of the country, says the advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW). Its report issued on Thursday on "The War within the War: Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls in Eastern Congo" details the widespread, and in some cases systematic, use of rape on the part of Rwandan troops and their rebel allies, the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie, as well as armed groups opposed to them from Burundi and Rwanda, and an ethnic militia groups known as the Mayi-Mayi. Some of the combatants used rape as a form of "punishment" for civilian populations seen to be cooperating with the "enemy", HRW said. In other cases women and girls were abducted and forced to provide sexual and domestic services for periods of more than a year. Medical care in the region was practically nonexistent, and rates of HIV were thought to have reached 50 percent among fighting forces, HRW reported. "Rape in these circumstances can be a death sentence," it added. "Combatants must direct their violence against recognised military targets, not against hapless women and girls who happen to cross their paths. Those who abuse women must be held accountable for their crimes," Alison des Forges, senior adviser to the Africa division of HRW, said. [The full report is available at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/drc]

Guardian UK 20 June 2002 The invisible war This week the UN launched two inquiries into the conflict in the Congo. But the real issue is still being ignored - who will disarm the militias? Victoria Brittain Thursday June 20, 2002 The Guardian A humanitarian catastrophe more overwhelming than Afghanistan's grips the Democratic Republic of Congo. UN figures suggest that 2 million people are displaced, and estimates of the number killed in the past half-dozen years of this invisible war range from 1 million to 3 million. This week the UN has announced two human rights inquiries into different areas in the eastern part of the DRC; the international court of justice at the Hague has also started hearing a case between the DRC and neighbouring Rwanda; and the UN's mission in the DRC, MONUC, has had its mandate prolonged for a year. Earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent by the international community on seven weeks of peace talks in Sun City, South Africa, between the various Congolese factions. The political talks produced a power-sharing formula between President Joseph Kabila and the millionaire northern leader, Jean-Pierre Bemba, a protege of Uganda, but no resolution in the east. Meanwhile, the social and political crisis is worsening. A report from Human Rights Watch this week on the war in the east reveals a level of sexual violence against women and a barbarity which local doctors describe as unprecedented. The consequences of this growing culture of brutality, and a health crisis rendered acute by galloping HIV/Aids, are grim. The UN inquiries, the internationally guided peace talks and the extension of MONUC's mandate are all aspects of an old Congolese story: the attempt by outsiders to impose their own norms on this huge country. The Kinshasa government's court case against Rwanda is another old Congolese story: a government that counts on westerners to do their dirty work - in this case hoping to persuade the UN court to order Rwanda's troops to leave the DRC without ending the threat of a repeat of 1994's genocide in Rwanda. The DRC is a product of colonialism, too vast and diverse to be a viable country. The atmosphere in Goma in the east is instantly recognisable as East Africa, while Kinshasa feels like Guinea, Senegal or Angola. The eastern provinces of the Kivus have long been regarded as a bastion of opposition to central government, and since 1993, when a violent land dispute broke out, there has not been a day of peace. Today, around 40% of the east is nominally under the control of the rebel Rassemblement Congolaise de Democratie that has the trappings of an administrative structure, as well as an army. But the RCD leadership has fractured several times and has little credibility. Various RCD factions were allegedly involved in the killings in Kisangani on May 14, which are being investigated by the UN, and in the repeated bouts of ethnic conflict between the Hema and Lendu in the north-east, where the second UN inquiry will take place. The RCD-Goma faction, which has the biggest army, is supported by Rwanda, other factions by Uganda. The fabulous wealth of the DRC's mining industry (gold, cobalt, diamonds, copper, cadmium, coltan and germanium) has long made it a magnet for unscrupulous outsiders. Its postcolonial leadership was happy to be wooed by western interests, notably the US and France, and to grow rich while the country stagnated and its vast areas were used for subversion elsewhere in Africa. The new, post-cold-war DRC shows little sign of being different. The fundamental power struggle remains for the wealth of the country. The weak Congolese elite in Kinshasa is courted by ambitious businessmen from a host of countries. Meanwhile, the formal economy and the state have virtually collapsed over much of the country. The catastrophic condition of the people is even worse than under former President Mobutu. The vast majority of the country eats less than two-thirds of the calories needed to maintain health, and 70% of the population have no access to healthcare. As the Human Rights Watch report details, destitute women, often displaced or widowed by the war, now make a living selling sex, the only commodity they have. Since 1996 this tragic place has been at the centre of a series of wars that have greatly contributed to the continent's impoverishment. The war has to varying extents involved almost all the DRC's neighbours: Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zimbabwe and Angola. Zimbabwe has no strategic interest in the war. For the three close neighbours in the east - Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi - war in the DRC threatens chronic instability. The poison which feeds it now is the continuing presence in the DRC of 12,000 or so armed former combatants from the days of the genocide in Rwanda. After they and thousands more fled into exile in the DRC they were initially used by President Laurent Desire Kabila, father of the current president, against his former backers, the government of Rwanda. Many were retrained in camps in Zimbabwe, and aimed to return to Rwanda to complete the genocide. In the lawless east, where numerous militias of shifting alliances make much of the region a no-go area, the Interahamwe militia and ex-soldiers from Rwanda - participants in the genocide - remain a significant factor. Over the years, thousands of them have returned voluntarily to Rwanda or been captured. Peace talks, UN inquiries into human rights violations and international court cases are distractions from the central issue of who will disarm this group of men, who have caused so much suffering. · Victoria Brittain is an associate of the LSE's crisis states programme.

News 24 (SA) 17 June 2002 UN to probe Kisangani massacre Kinshasa - UN human rights envoy Asma Jahangie arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Sunday to investigate a massacre last month in the northeastern city of Kisanagani. Jahangie, envoy of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, is to meet non-governmental organisations and members of civic groups representing the east of the war-torn former Zaire. She will then travel to Kisangani itself, the DRC's third largest city and a major UN peacekeeping base. Local sources said 200 civilians and soldiers were killed in Kisangani in clashes between different rebel factions on May 14 after some of the guerrillas attempted to stage a mutiny. The DRC foreign minister, the European Union and France have all accused Rwanda of being involved in the killings that followed the failed rebel mutiny. "We will ask Kofi Annan's representative how many deaths there have to be before the United Nations decides to take sanctions against Rwanda," said Aena Tokwaulu, a leading member of a women's association who hails from Kisangani. "We Bantu people say responsibility lies with the chief. So responsibility for the deaths of these men, women and children from the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo lies with Kofi Annan," she said. The DRC government decreed a week of mourning following the Kisangani killings, since when the city has been the scene of regular protests, namely against the UN mission in the DRC (Monuc) and the British ambassador, whom the demonstrators accuse of turning a blind eye to the conflict. On Friday the UN Security Council condemned the Kisangani massacre and told the RCD rebels to halt extrajudicial executions and other human rights abuses there. The RCD, which launched an uprising against the Kinshasa government in August 1998, now controls the eastern third of the vast central African country. - Sapa-AFP  

Congo (Brazzaville)

Pan African News Agency (PANA) 20 Jun 2002 90 killed in Ninja militiamen attack on Brazzaville Brazzaville, Congo (PANA) - Fighting between Congo government troops and Ninja militiamen on 14 June left 90 people dead, Information Minister Francois Ibovi disclosed Thursday at a press conference. The victims included 80 militiamen, five government soldiers and five civilians killed by stray bullets, he said. The fighting took place in Mfilou and Moukondo areas and around the military air base when the Ninja militiamen made a futile attempt to gain control of Maya Maya international airport. "These are terrorist incursions and we ask the public to help the security forces track down the terrorists by denouncing them" Ibovi said. He denounced the disinformation campaign run by the enemies of peace on buses and in the streets of Brazzaville. "There are many rumours in the districts (around the capital) and the objective of those who work for the terrorists is twofold. They instil fear in order to either blaze the trail for terrorism or prepare plunder and looting," the minister said. During the clashes, the Ninjas torched vehicles and houses in the western sector of the Congolese capital. "The fight is not against any ethnic group, but against terrorism. Regardless of their ethnic origin, the culprits will have to answer for their actions against the public, the army, the police and the gendarmerie", Ibovi said, adding that the dialogue for peace and national reconciliation was still on.

AFP 19 Jun 2002 Nearly 80 dead in latest bout of Congo violence: army official BRAZZAVILLE, June 19 (AFP) - A guerrilla attack on the main airport in Congo last week left nearly 80 people dead, an army official said Wednesday in the former French west African colony. Most of the dead were among the ranks of the so-called "Ninja" rebels, who attacked the Brazzaville international airport early on June 14. Army spokesman Colonel Jean Robert Obargui said of the 80 killed, 72 were Ninjas, five were civilians and three were government soldiers. Earlier, an unnamed police officer said more than 170 people including 155 so-called Ninja rebels had been killed in the attack. However, Colonel Obargui denied outright the figure of 155. "There were never 155 Ninjas killed during the fighting. Where were these corpses found?" The International Committee of the Red Cross announced on Monday that it had taken 12 severely wounded people, as well as pregnant women and five serious medical cases, to the city's hospitals, and transferred 19 bodies to the city morgue. According to statements from captured rebels quoted by the army, the Ninja guerrillas had marched for three days through tropical forests to reach the western sector of the city, where they linked up with a number of "sleeper" activists who had been based in Brazzaville itself. Most of the residents of western Brazzaville, who fled when the fighting broke out, had returned home on Wednesday, an AFP reporter said. However several thousand living in the vicinity of the airport were still staying away. Brazzaville faces Kinshasa, capital of the much larger Democratic Republic of Congo, across the Congo river.

Ethiopia

IRIN 31 May 2002 ETHIOPIA: Government criticised over Awasa shootings ADDIS ABABA, 31 May 2002 (IRIN) - Opposition parties in Ethiopia have condemned the government for the shootings in the southern town of Awasa, claiming that 38 people were killed and not 15 as reported by the federal authorities. One opposition leader, Beyene Petros, told a press conference in the capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday that "brutal force" was being used against people demanding basic rights, after fighting broke out on 24 May. "This must stop immediately," said Beyene, who heads the Council of Alternative Forces For Peace and Democracy in Ethiopia and the Southern Ethiopia People’s Democratic Coalition. Skirmishes flared up as around 3,000 demonstrators started protesting about plans to change the status of Awasa, which is the capital of the Southern Nations and Nationalities State, currently administered by the local Sidama ethnic group, which believes it will lose out under the new proposal. Also present at the press conference were Hailu Shawel, president of the All Amhara People’s Organisation, and Prof Merara Gudina, chairman of the Oromo National Congress. This was a tragic massacre against the Sidama people, who are attempting to peacefully demonstrate against the government's decision to relocate the central Sidama Zone from Awasa to another location," said Beyene. "This has resulted in the deaths of 38 innocent Sidamas. I am quoting this figure on the basis of dead bodies. This is a confirmed figure." He added that there were an undetermined number of wounded in the areas around Awasa – which is 150 miles south of Addis Ababa. Beyene said the government figures had come from health centres and hospitals, but had not taken into account other bodies that had not been taken to hospitals. Awasa has now been ruled out of bounds to United Nations staff, and the area is said to be very tense. Security sources in the town told IRIN that a curfew was still in place – a week after the shootings. The state minister for information, Netsannet Asfaw, insisted that the security forces had not used excessive force. She said the demonstrators had opened fire on the security forces first, resulting in the deaths of two policemen. She said the government now had information that two more people had died, bringing the total number of deaths confirmed by the federal authorities to 17. The Ethiopian Human Rights Council is investigating the shootings and is expected to publish a report shortly

IRIN 7 June 2002 ETHIOPIA: Rights group blames government for Awasa killings ADDIS ABABA, 7 Jun 2002 (IRIN) - The Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRC) has blamed the Ethiopian security forces for clashes in the southern town of Awasa last month which, it said, left 25 people dead and a further 26 wounded. The EHRC report issued on Friday said a 13-year-old boy was among the dead, killed when demonstrators - protesting against a change in the status of the town - clashed with police on 24 May. Two of the victims were policemen. The report added that 36 people were jailed. “The government was to blame for sending armed people. The other people had nothing but green leaves in their hand and were draped in the Ethiopian flag, nothing else,” said Hailu Mekonnen, Secretary-General of the EHRC. The five-page document said police opened fire indiscriminately on the protestors - all from the Sidama ethnic group - who had been trying to end their demonstration in the town square of Awasa. It also claimed that security forces opened fire for ten minutes from a machine gun mounted on an armed vehicle. Awasa is currently the capital of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's Regional State, one of the country’s nine federal regions, and administered by the Sidama ethnic group. The demonstration, in which up to 3,000 people took part, was held to protest against changing its status to that of a special zone. The change effectively takes Awasa out of the state and means the Sidama would lose administrative control. Some farmers fear they could lose the right of ownership to some parts of the farmland – which is located in the fertile basin of the Rift Valley. Religious leaders and elders in the town have been meeting to try and restore calm, but the area is still reported to be very tense. The federal authorities claim the demonstrators opened fire first, saying many of the them were armed and had been drafted in from nearby towns. They argue that the change in status will benefit Awasa. “However, attempts by anarchists and criminal elements disguised as promoters of the democratic rights of nations and nationalities are sometimes encountered," a statement from the information ministry said. “The government seriously warns that all unlawful and anarchic activities against the democratic principles and provisions are strictly prohibited."

IRIN 11 June 2002 ETHIOPIA: "Voluntary resettlement" in Badme Doninic Harcourt-Webster/UNDP ADDIS ABABA, 11 Jun 2002 (IRIN) - Ethiopia has begun "voluntarily resettling" drought-affected families in the northern Tigray region to the disputed border area near Badme, local sources told IRIN on Tuesday. They said some 210 people were moved from central Tigray in May under a pilot project to the Badme sub-region, as part of the government's new drive to tackle food insecurity in Ethiopia. The two-year border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea broke out in Badme in May 1998 and both countries claim they were awarded the village after a crucial border ruling in The Hague on 13 April. Badme - which is currently administered by Ethiopia - saw some of the heaviest fighting of the war. The resettlement programme is part of a new five-year plan launched by the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in 2000/2001. Tigray is one of the harshest areas in Ethiopia with massive food insecurity. However, the western part is known as the breadbasket of the region - a surplus producing area and the destination of many seasonal casual labourers. Central Tigray is the region's most populated area with about 60 percent of inhabitants living there. Some 40 percent of the households are headed by women, who have lost their husbands through war and famine. The sources said they were being resettled from the villages of Abergele, Naider, Adet and Woreilehe. The resettled families are given seeds, three hectares of land and oxen on credit to help them start farming. They also have an option to return to their original homes after the harvest in September. A study - which is expected to end later this month - will look at the total number of people to be resettled and whether the land can sustain them. "People have underestimated the impact that this last war has had on Tigray," said the sources from the regional capital Mekele. "Tigray is such a harsh terrain. "We need a monumental transformation of the economy and the productive base so it is good that they are doing this, but they need to do more. The west is the only logical place in Tigray but they have to also develop the social services." The voluntary resettlement programme - organised by the regional government - has been the centre of heated debate in Ethiopia and especially in Tigray. "It is also politically sensitive because lowlanders and pastoralists are concerned that they may lose their land," the sources added.

Kenya

GREAT LAKES: Small-arms unit established NAIROBI, 11 Jun 2002 (IRIN) - A small-arms unit, based in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, has been established by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to address the widespread use of light weapons in the Great Lakes region. In a statement issued on 7 June, the unit said that in recent years there had been a dramatic increase in the "availability, accumulation and uncontrolled proliferation" of small arms in the region, as well as a "booming business" in their import and export. Yet, instead of the respective governments in the region working together to combat the "escalating situation", many had resorted to manufacturing their own weapons and ammunition, UNDP reported. Some of the arms in use, as well as the trained or partly trained soldiers using them, were a legacy from pre-colonial struggles: "The long shelf-life of tolls of violence (small arms) and the abundance of ammunition dumped in the field over decades (aside from new stocks) have ensured the perpetuation of the utilisation of these weapons even when the original political objective for their use was long gone," the UNDP said. The fundamental aim of the new unit was, therefore, to motivate groups to surrender arms in exchange for help in successfully reintegrating into civilian life, and also to render civilian life more "attractive and viable". The unit would research and raise awareness about the humanitarian impact of the use of small arms with a view to advocating against it; develop international and UN policy and legislation on small arms; develop control and reduction strategies; and design and implement country-specific and regional programmes to address the issues from a development perspective, the UNDP said.

BBC 31 May, 2002, Kenya accused of ethnic atrocities The government is accused of organising violence A human rights group has accused Kenya's ruling party of organising and supporting violence designed to displace ethnic communities who are seen as opposition supporters. The methods employed in Rwanda's genocide were replicated on a much smaller but still deadly scale in Kenya. Human Rights Watch But the ruling party, Kenya African National Union (Kanu) has denied the allegations. Human Rights Watch says 100 people died in clashes instigated by the party in 1997 and warns of more clashes ahead of polls due in December. It says in its report that hired youth gangs used techniques akin to those seen in the 1994 Rwanda genocide which left 800,000 dead. 'Official backing' "The methods employed in Rwanda's genocide were replicated on a much smaller but still deadly scale in Kenya," the group said in a statement launching the 119-page report. "Speaking for the first time, perpetrators of armed attacks in the run-up to the last general election in Kenya have said that they were backed by ruling party officials." Human Rights Watch fears more electoral violence The report particularly cites ethnic clashes on the country's Indian Ocean coast during the 1997 election campaign. Kanu's current Secretary General Raila Odinga declined to comment, saying he crossed over from the opposition last year and was not a member of the ruling party in 1997. But he told reporters that Kanu, in power for 39 years, had no intention of fomenting ethnic violence in the forthcoming parliamentary polls. Violent culture Correspondents say the elections are seen as crucial because President Daniel arap Moi is set to retire after 24 years at the helm. They say the elections are tentatively set for December though a constitutional review may delay them for several months. Human Rights Watch says the steady flow of guns into Kenya in recent years is fostering a violent culture marked by rising crime and outbreaks of political violence. It says Kenya's location in conflict-ridden eastern Africa makes the country vulnerable to gun smugglers, who once used the country as conduit to funnel guns to other parts of the region. About 100 Kenyans died in clashes during the 1997 election campaign The same trade is now spilling back into Kenya, mainly in the northern and western parts of the country, its reports says. In Nairobi, the capital, and other urban centres, the growing number of guns has led to rising crime, such as carjackings and murders. Kenya's human rights activists say some 100,000 people were displaced in the 1997 unrest, bringing to 400,000 the number of those uprooted in political violence in the country of 28 million in the past decade. In 1998, the government launched an inquiry into the violence, but declined to make the report public after receiving it in August 1999. Tensions in Kenya have been largely subdued in the recent past, but political analysts say a spate of killings in urban slums this year show signs of being politically motivated.

Madagascar

BBC 4 June, 2002 Largest military clash in Madagascar The blockades have devastated the economy Up to 12 people are reported to have died in fighting in Madagascar's north-eastern, vanilla-producing region of Diego Suarez. Seven soldiers and three civilians were killed on Monday, reports the French news agency, AFP, quoting hospital and military sources. Veteran leader Didier Ratsiraka dispatched elite troops to recapture the regional capital of Sambava on Monday after it was taken by troops loyal to new President Marc Ravalomanana. The BBC's Alastair Leithead says this is the largest military clash since political turmoil followed disputed elections last December. He says that around 300 troops on each side are involved. According to AFP, a truce was declared overnight and the situation was calm on Tuesday morning. Surprise attack Vanilla is the main cash crop of the island nation, whose economy has been devastated by blockades imposed on the capital, Antananarivo, by supporters of Mr Ratsiraka, based in the eastern port city of Tamatave. Ravalomanana's supporters have vowed to break the blockade This fighting follows repeated warnings by Mr Ravalomanana's officials that they would use force to break the blockades on their Antananarivo stronghold. However, Sambava does not have a major port and analysts are surprised that it has been attacked. Mr Ravalomanana told the BBC that the attack was in response to reports of human rights abuses in the area by supporters of Mr Ratsiraka. Fuel and food are becoming scarce in Antananarivo and aid workers warn of a "creeping" humanitarian emergency. The BBC's Jonny Donovan in Madagascar says that Mr Ravalomanana is under pressure from Antananarivo residents to end the blockades. Phones cut Mr Ravalomanana was sworn in as president last month but Mr Ratsiraka has refused to recognise his defeat. The French-trained commandos, the Rapid Intervention Force (RFI), have remained loyal to Mr Ratsiraka throughout the dispute and were on Monday sent to retake Sambava and the surrounding region of Diego Suarez. Ratsiraka is refusing to stand down Our correspondent says that details of the fighting are difficult to come by as the phones lines are being cut. Last week, an attempt to take control of the airport in the country's second port city of Mahajanga by Mr Ravalomanana's forces was repulsed. The fighting shows that Mr Ravalomanana and his backers and now trying to solve the long-running dispute by military action and not negotiation, our correspondent says.

BBC 31 May, 2002, Madagascar attack foiled The blockades are causing severe hardship An airport in the north-western town of Mahajanga in Madagascar has been attacked by forces loyal to new President Marc Ravalomanana, reports say. We're going to smash all the roadblocks Defence Minister Jules Mamizara Officials in the administration of Mr Ravalomanana's rival, Didier Ratsiraka, say that the assault was repulsed and that one of the attackers was killed. Mr Ravalomanana's officials have repeatedly warned in recent weeks that they would use force to remove blockades imposed on their stronghold in the capital by those loyal to Didier Ratsiraka. Mr Ravalomanana was sworn in as president earlier this month after disputed elections last December but Mr Ratsiraka denies that he lost the poll and is demanding a run-off. 'Civilian' The BBC's Alastair Leithead says that the threat of serious armed conflict has increased in recent days. Mr Ravalomanana's forces had planned to secure the airport so that a plane could be flown in from the capital Antananarivo, carrying troops to pursue military operations, officials on both sides of the Indian Ocean island conflict told the French news agency, AFP. The provincial governor, Etienne Razafindehibe, told AFP by telephone AFP: "There was an attempt to attack soldiers guarding the airport. Our forces drove off the attackers and killed one of them, a civilian armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle," he said. The blockades are beginning to cause severe hardships in the capital, Antananarivo, where fuel and some foodstuffs are becoming scarce. Ethnic clashes Mr Ravalomanana's Defence Minister Jules Mamizara warned on Wednesday: "We're going to smash all the roadblocks and establish our administration across the territory to bring normal life back to Madagascar." Forces loyal to Ravalomanana are trying to establish their authority Mahajanga is the country's second port and Mr Ravalomanana's supporters have said that they would target it before the country's main port - Tamatave. Mr Ratsiraka has set up a rival administration in Tamatave, where his support is strong. Earlier on Friday, thousands of Ratsiraka supporters marched through the streets of Tamatave, demanding the release of their Prime Minister, Tantely Andrianarivoa. He is in the custody of Mr Ravalomanana's supporters after being arrested on Monday. Earlier this month, Mahajanga was the scene of ethnic clashes between the rival political groupings.

BBC 14 May, 2002, Ethnic strife rocks Madagascar - The Abattoir district, the scene of the worst violence By Alastair Leithead BBC correspondent in Madagascar One of the things Hery Rasamoely loves about Mahajanga is just how cosmopolitan the little port town is, but now each morning she goes to school to teach English, she could be attacked simply because she has straight hair. Hery has the Indonesian looks of a "merina" or a Malagasy person from the highlands. It's mainly the politicians who are trying to separate the people Hery Rasamoely She comes from the interior of the island but lives on the coast, where people have a more African look - and have curly hair. "Here in Mahajanga some people are now pursuing the highlanders and as we have got very straight hair we are the first targets for them," she says. Sporadic violence "The former president's [Didier Ratsiraka] supporters were using this ethnic problem between the highlanders and the coastal people to get more votes. It's mainly the politicians who are trying to separate the people." Merina people fear ethnic violence Hery is very determined she will not leave her town, and she is both fatalistic and brave about what could happen to her. But many merina people are scared - they stay indoors, certainly after dark, and are considering leaving Mahajanga. The violence has been sporadic for three weeks now, but in the last few days running battles have claimed lives and left many injured. In the dismal surroundings of the rundown provincial hospital, where there is little sign of medicines, Rija Randriamaharavo sits upright on his bed and describes the injuries he suffered. There are burns scattered around his body where petrol was poured on to him and set alight, machete cuts on his back, his head and his arm where he put it up to protect his face. His leg is in plaster and there are two deep cuts where the nails in the piece of wood that smashed his leg dug into his shin. Traditional rivalries He is both from the highlands and a supporter of newly appointed president Marc Ravalomanana. It can be tough being a Merina and a supporter of Marc Ravalomanana It is a brutal business, and what began as political division has developed into ethnic conflict. Politicians are using the rarely spoken of traditional rivalries between the highland and the coastal people to drive a wedge into the community. Propaganda is played every day on the television station that backs long-standing president Didier Ratsiraka. It preaches division. Those broadcasters who back Marc Ravalomanana have a tough task - when they began to broadcast coverage of Mr Ravalomanana's investiture, their cables were cut. And the Mayor of Mahajanga, Claude Pages, is not spared attention. He runs one of these TV stations and the office was attacked with rocks and petrol bombs. "These people are mainly young people who are not particularly bright, and it is very easy to manipulate them," he says. "They have been paid by the supporters of Didier Ratsiraka because they would like trouble in the town and because they don't want to accept their defeat at the election." He plays down the ethnic element to the violence, saying it is mainly political, but posters and leaflets put up around town shouting "merina leave" prove these traditional rivalries are being deliberately stoked. The provincial governor also tries to paint a rosier picture of his beautiful little port with its thriving fishing industry and its Arab style architecture. He is one of four governors who have declared an intention to secede from Antananarivo and set up a confederation of independent states. The local authorities deny there is an ethnic issue "On the whole things seem calm and quiet - there is no major problem and people feel quiet and feel they are secure," Governor Etienne Razafindehibe says. "The situation now in Mahajanga is not an ethnic problem, but the politics created it - it is a very cosmopolitan town so there is no way we can have an ethnic problem." Propaganda But in the pro-Ratsiraka Abattoir district of the town the propaganda is clearly working. Stalls run by merina have been destroyed and battles have been taking place almost nightly between the mainly ethnic quarters. The main boulevards are quiet by day Both sides are now armed with guns and grenades, and the military and the police do not have the will, or perhaps the orders, to intervene. But Hery Rasamoely is optimistic. "Yes, the propaganda is working as there is violence, but will they succeed in creating divisions along ethnic lines? No, I don't think so. We think that everything will be OK later as people get on together, but now we still have very big trouble in our country," she says.

BBC 30 April, 2002 Timeline: Madagascar A chronology of key events 1880s-1905 - France consolidates its hold over Madagascar in the face of local resistance. 1910-20 - Growth of nationalism fuelled by discontent over French rule. Ancient heritage: Avenue of the Baobabs 1946 - Madagascar becomes an Overseas Territory of France. 1947 - French suppress armed rebellion in east. Thousands are killed. 1958 - Madagascar votes for autonomy. 1960 26 June - Independence with Philibert Tsiranana as president. 1972 - Amid popular unrest, Tsiranana dissolves government and hands power to army chief Gen Gabriel Ramanantsoa as head of a provisional government. He reduces the country's ties with France in favour of links with the Soviet Union. 1975 June - Lieutenant-Commander Didier Ratsiraka is named head of state after a coup. The country is renamed the Democratic Republic of Madagascar and Ratsiraka is elected president for a seven-year term. 1976 - Ratsiraka nationalises large parts of the economy, forms the AREMA party. Over the years he increases state control over the economy until 1986 when he changes tack and promotes a market economy. 1992 - Under pressure of demonstrations, Ratsiraka introduces democratic reforms. A new constitution is approved by referendum. 1993 - Albert Zafy elected president. 1996 - Zafy impeached. Ratsiraka voted back into office. 2000 March - Thousands homeless after two cyclones hit the island and Mozambique. 2000 December - AREMA wins in most of the cities, apart from Antananarivo, in provincial elections. The elections are for a new system of local government designed to give the six provinces control of their development programmes, education and health. Some 70% of voters stay away after the opposition called for a boycott, saying voters had not been properly informed about the reforms. Highland boy 2001 February - An opposition parliamentary group, the Crisis Unit for the Defence of Democracy, is established following the jailing of MP Jean-Eugene Voninahitsy for insulting the president and cheque fraud. 2001 May - Senate reopens after 29 years, completing the government framework provided for in the 1992 constitution, which replaced the socialist revolutionary system. The new framework comprises the presidency, national assembly, senate and constitutional high court. 2001 December - First round of presidential elections. Opposition candidate Marc Ravalomanana claims an outright victory and says there's no need for a second round. Ravalomanana 2002 January - Ravalomanana and his supporters mount a general strike and mass protests. The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) mediates talks between Ratsiraka and Ravalomanana, urges that a second round of polls be delayed. 2002 February - Ravalomanana declares himself president in front of thousands of supporters following weeks of political deadlock with Ratsiraka over the results of December polls, which he says Ratsiraka rigged. Within days violence breaks out between rival protesters. Ratsiraka imposes martial law on Antananarivo. 2002 April - Supreme court annuls the results of the first round of elections and calls for a recount. Ravalomanana and Ratsiraka agree to recount at a meeting in Senegal. 2002 29 April - The High Constitutional Court names Ravalomanana as winner of the December polls after a recount but Ratsiraka says he'll ignore the verdict.

Namibia

The Namibian (Windhoek) 6 June 2002 German Firms Seek Dismissal of US $2m Herero Legal Suit Christof Maletsky TWO German companies facing a US$2 billion ( about N$20 billion) legal suit filed by Hereros in Namibia have asked a United States court to dismiss the case. The Hereros accuse Deutsche Bank and Woermann Line (now known as SAFmarine) and their government of forming a "brutal alliance" to exterminate over 65 000 Hereros between 1904 and 1907. The lawyer representing the Hereros, Philip Musolino of Musolino and Dessel, told The Namibian from Washington DC yesterday that the two companies had filed arguments for the dismissal of the case in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. "We are now working on our reply. We will file on the first of July," Musolino said. The Herero People's Reparations Corporation, which is registered in Washington DC, has also filed a US$2 billion claim against Germany. Musolino said the German government had countered by stating that the US-based lawyers had no jurisdiction to take them to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He said they would soon file papers asking the court to declare whether the Hereros' lawyers had the jurisdiction to fight on behalf of the Hereros in the US court. Initially, the Hereros filed cases against the German government, Deutsche Bank, Woermann Line (now known as SAFmarine) and Terex Corporation. However, they withdrew their case against Terex after the company claimed in court papers that it was under different management at the time of the atrocities. Musolino and Dessel are acting on behalf of the Herero People's Reparations Corporation. The Corporation is owned by the Chief Hosea Kutako Foundation which is headed by Herero Paramount Chief Kuaima Riruako. In the court papers, Riruako and others state that the companies helped imperial Germany to relentlessly pursue the enslavement and genocidal destruction of the Hereros. "The defendants and imperial Germany formed a German commercial enterprise which coldbloodedly employed explicitly-sanctioned extermination, the destruction of tribal culture and social organisation, concentration camps, forced labour, medical experimentation and the exploitation of women and children in order to advance their common financial interests," say papers filed by the lawyers. Riruako said they opted for the US courts because they felt there would be minimal outside influence compared to Germany. The Hereros handed over a formal request to the then President of Germany, Roman Herzog, when he visited Namibia in March 1998, in an effort to be compensated. Herzog responded that the Hereros could not claim any compensation from Germany as international rules on the protection of rebels and the civilian population did not exist at the time of the conflict.

The Namibian 4 June 2002 Herero chiefs dispute to be settled out of court by CHRISTOF MALETSKY- GOVERNMENT has agreed to consider applications by 40 Herero traditional leaders for official recognition. Herero Paramount Chief Kuaima Riruako and 39 other Herero traditional leaders sued the President and Minister of Regional and Local Government and Housing after Government recognised only four Herero traditional leaders in terms of the 1995 Traditional Authorities Act. Subsequently, a full bench of the High Court unanimously agreed in a judgement last December that a decision by the Minister of Regional and Local Government and Housing not to recognise the 40 and to refer the matter to the Council of Traditional Leaders should be set aside. Judge Elton Hoff, Judge Peter Shivute and Acting Judge John Manyarara however declined to grant Riruako and his traditional leader colleagues their second request: to order the Minister to officially recognise the 39 as chiefs in terms of the Traditional Authorities Act. Government had vowed to challenge the High Court ruling with an appeal set for July 1. However, Government recently approached the Hereros, through their lawyers, and indicated they would like to settle the case out of court. Herero Paramount Chief Riruako confirmed yesterday that the Herero chiefs met at Okandjira, east of Okahandja, over the weekend and decided to accept Government's offer to settle the case out of court. "The Government will abide by the court decision but we are still working on the details of the settlement," Riruako told The Namibian. He could not say how many chiefs would be recognised because "some have died in the meantime but have not been replaced". Riruako said the weekend meeting, however, agreed that the Herero chiefs would not accept any delays on Government's part. Initially, Government recognised only four Herero traditional leaders - Tuvahi David Kambazembi of the Kambazembi Royal House, Christiaan Eerike Zerua of the Zerua Royal House, and Kunene Region Chiefs Kapuka Thom and Paulus Tjavara. Riruako and his group charged that the decision to recognise only those four leaders was politically motivated, because the chiefs who got the nod of approval were ruling party supporters. But the High Court said it was clear that at least Chief Kambazembi and Chief Zerua were not supporters of the ruling party when they were recognised. It rejected the claim that the Minister was prompted by ulterior, political motives not to recognise the dissatisfied traditional leaders. The court also found that instead of the Minister taking the decision on the recognition of the chiefs, as he was obliged to do in terms of the Act, it was in fact taken by Cabinet. Because Iyambo had abdicated his function in terms of the law in this way, the court set aside his decision.

Rwanda

Internews 5 June 2002 Kigali Tribunal Hasn't Rejected Congo Office Proposal, Says Registrar Mary Kimani Arusha Adama Dieng of Senegal, Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), says the tribunal has not ruled out the possibility of setting up an office in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but that there is need to resolve issues of materials and funding for such a project. Dieng made the remarks in an interview granted to 'Radio Okapi' journalists last Friday. Radio Okapi is based in the DRC. The registrar clarified a previous statement by ICTR Spokesperson Kingsley Moghalu of Nigeria, which he said was misunderstood. In a press briefing at the ICTR on 14 May, Moghalu said that the tribunal "has no immediate plans at this time to open an office in the DRC," a statement that was perceived as a rejection of a request by the Congo government earlier that month. Lèonard She Okitundu, DRC's Minister for Foreign Affairs, on 11 May wrote to the ICTR and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urging the tribunal to establish a satellite office to address the issue of suspected genocide suspects in the Congo in order to speed up the reconciliation process in the region. The government of Rwanda continues to maintain its forces in the DRC, citing insecurity posed by former Rwandan officers and militiamen who participated in the 1994 genocide, and are suspected to be in the DRC. She Okitundu's proposal indicated that once the issue of genocide suspects in the DRC is resolved, Rwanda would no longer have a reason to have its soldiers in the country. Dieng told Radio Okapi that the while the ICTR is favorable to the idea of a Congo office, the funds and material support required for the project are not yet assured. He added that the ICTR is taking its time to look for a "suitable response to the request." "One must not forget that it was only in the month of March that the budget was adopted, it is normal for the spokesperson to take precautions in stating clearly that we have not rejected the proposal but we have first to resolve the material and financial concerns," Dieng stressed, adding that a Congo office would expedite efforts to arrest genocide suspects, improve investigative efforts and ease access to prosecution and defense witnesses.

Hirondelle (Lausanna) 4 June 2002 A Hundred Rwandans Sought in DRC for Genocide Crimes Says Local Paper   Arusha Close to one hundred Rwandans members of the former Rwandan Armed Forces, and militia of the former presidential party known as Interahamwe are being sought in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for genocide, according to a local Congolese newspaper. On Sunday Le Soft International reported that there are about a hundred hard-core Rwandan combatants, which Rwanda has publicised as wanted in the country or before an International Tribunal such as (ICTR) Arusha. The newspaper added that the incomplete report of those presumed guilty of genocide was drawn up meticulously by officers of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) following information provided by surrendering or captured combatants during operations carried out in Rwanda or in the DRC. The list comprising 88 names features notably the former chief of staff of the Rwandan Armed Forces, Major General Augustine Bizimungu, former prefect of Kigali Town, Colonel Tharcisse Renzaho, former head of the "civil defence", Colonel Athanase Gasake as well as the Commandant of the Presidential Guard, Major Protais Mpiranya. The Rwandan authorities have forwarded the said list to the United Nations Mission in Congo and the Joint Military Commission (JMC) as provided for by the peace accords on the DRC signed in Lusaka in 1999, added the newspaper. Moreover, there are names real and coded, and their military grades as they were in the ex-Rwandan Armed Forces of former President Juvénal Habyarimana or as they are currently in the armed groups. These armed groups include ALIR (Rwandan Liberation Army) and FDLR (Democratic Force for Liberation of Rwanda), according to the newspaper. Last week, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) accepted a proposition by the DRC government to open an office in the country, which would facilitate in the arrest of as many as possible genocide suspects apparently in Congo, according to the Tribunal Registrar Senegalese Adama Dieng. The Registrar indicated that the proposed office would re-enforce the operational capacity of the ICTR in the investigation, arrest and transfer of suspects as well as the search for prosecution and defence witnesses living in DRC. The ICTR estimates that there are around 60 Rwandan genocide suspects who are living in the DRC. Of these a warrant of arrest has been issued for around 20, according to sources. In February Dieng made an official visit to the DRC and to Congo Brazzaville, seeking the co-operation of these governments in the arrest and transfer to Arusha, of genocide suspects living in the two countries.

AP 27 June 2002 Genocide Survivors Demand Reforms KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) - Hundreds of survivors of the 1994 slaughter in Rwanda demonstrated outside the office of the U.N. tribunal for Rwanda on Thursday, demanding reforms at the court. The protest, organized by two genocide survivors' associations, was timed to coincide with the arrival of Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the Arusha, Tanzania-based court to try perpetrators of the killings. The 100-day slaughter in 1994 left more than 500,000 Tutsis and moderates from the Hutu majority dead. The U.N. court in Tanzania was set up in 1995. ``Staff at the court collaborate with perpetrators of the genocide,'' said Philibert Gakwenzire, an official with IBUKA, an association of genocide survivors. ``When witnesses return from recording secret testimony at the court in Arusha, they find that relatives of suspects and everyone else in the village knows exactly what was in the testimony,'' Gakwenzire said. He also complained of the tribunal's slow pace, convicting only eight people in seven years. There are more than 50 accused in the U.N. detention center in Tanzania. Gakwenzire demanded that the court ``clean up its act, starting by removing its staff implicated in the genocide,'' and that it prevent the harassment of witnesses. On Jan. 24, IBUKA and AVEGA, an association for genocide widows, decided to stop cooperating with the tribunal, charging that genocide suspects work there and pose a security threat. Tribunal officials have denied the allegations, though some defense investigators have since been arrested and charged with genocide. ``What they protect is their jobs and fat paychecks, not the interests of victims,'' one demonstrator shouted, amid chants of ``You must go!'' Tribunal officials were not immediately available for comment. War-crimes court: How it works The International Criminal Court, designed to prosecute crimes against humanity, entered into force yesterday.

South Africa

News 24 SA 10 June 2002 SA probes universal jurisdiction Cape Town - Parliament's justice committee wants an investigation into whether South African courts should be given universal jurisdiction to try anyone accused of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide anywhere in the world. It also wants the Correctional Services Minister to investigate whether South Africa should be placed on an international list of states willing to accept prisoners found guilty of such crimes for the purpose of serving their sentences. In its report tabled on Monday on the International Criminal Court Bill, the committee said the possibility of universal jurisdiction should be explored. It asked the Department of Justice to undertake the necessary research, including the financial implications and the difficulties that might arise as a result of competing requests from different countries. The department has six months to report back after the committee's report is adopted by the National Assembly. The bill currently provides for a more limited jurisdiction. SA courts' jurisdiction South African courts will have jurisdiction if the crimes are alleged to have been committed outside South Africa, if the perpetrator: is a South African citizen; is not a South African citizen, but is ordinarily resident in the Republic; is present in South Africa after the commission of the crime; and commits a crime against a South African citizen or against a person who is ordinarily resident in South Africa. The approach adopted in the bill was similar to Canadian legislation, the committee said. Urging that universal jurisdiction be explored, the committee said Belgium was the only country which, to date, had gone even beyond what South Africa and Canada had done. Belgian courts had universal jurisdiction which meant they could deal with cases in which the crimes in question had been committed by any person anywhere in the world. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is scheduled to begin on July 1 this year. The Bill provides that no prosecution may be instituted against a person accused of having committed a crime, if the crime in question is alleged to have been committed before the start of the statute. The committee has urged the Justice Department to make every effort to ensure the proposed legislation comes into operation on or before July 1 and that the required subordinate legislation is prepared and promulgated timeously.

Scotsman UK 21 June 2002 South Africa bans Zulu war cry against Indians Fred Bridgland in Johannesburg A POP song that incites Zulus to hate Indians has been banned in South Africa. AmaNdiya (Indians in Zulu), by the composer Mbongeni Ngema, has caused a storm in the month since its release, with the former president, Nelson Mandela, damning it as "pandering to the same prejudices that underpinned apartheid". In his song, Ngema calls for Zulus to confront the Indians, whom he describes as "our oppressors". It calls for equivalents of the warriors who defeated the British at Isandhlwana in 1879 to take on the Indians who "every day fill our airports". While many blacks have called radio stations and written to newspapers supporting Ngema, other South Africans are appalled. "Who needs Reality TV to dumb us down when we’ve got Mbongeni Ngema?" the columnist Charlotte Bauer wrote in the Johannesburg Sunday Times. Max du Preez, a radical Afrikaner editor who supported the African National Congress in the apartheid era, wrote in his Johannesburg Star column: "Similar racist songs and stories were sang and told before the Tutsi murders in Rwanda, and before Muslims, Serbs and Bosnians started killing each other. AmaNdiya smacks of the same jealousy of Jews that made it possible for Hitler to seduce the German nation into condoning his genocide." Until yesterday’s ban, the lyrics had been pounding out over the townships and pavement stalls of Durban, an ethnically diverse city where Zulus and Indians predominate. Ngema, who created the plays Woza Albert! and Asinamali! and the musical Sarafina, which all made it to Broadway, said: "If there wasn’t this reality, I wouldn’t have written this song. People would rather not deal with it, but the African-Indian problem is a very deep-rooted one. As long as I can remember, people have been talking about how oppressive Indians are to Africans." There are some 1.3 million South African Indians among the country’s 44 million people. Most live in or around Durban, where they were brought by the British in the 1850s to work as labourers or servants. Whites favoured them over blacks and granted them better access to education and the right to run businesses, although they were denied the vote and were forced to live in segregated townships. Mahatma Gandhi fought for Indian rights in Durban before he returned to India to lead the independence struggle. Some 150 Indians were killed in 1949 in a riot by Zulus. In banning AmaNdiya, Kobus van Rooyen, chairman of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, said: "The song demeans the Indian section of the population by accusing the Indians in sweeping generalisations of the oppression and dispossession of the Zulus. It constitutes racial hate speech with incitement to harm. The lyrics are inflammatory, inciting fear among Indians." This is not the first time Ngema has courted controversy. When he was given £1.5 million in 1997 by the EU to write and produce a musical to help to counter South Africa’s HIV/AIDS pandemic, he was accused of purloining £350,000 to pay tax bills, renovate his home and turn his garage into a studio. Cambodia committed to try Khmer leaders, says prime minister

Sudan

The East African (Nairobi) 10 June 2002 Congress to Bush: Don't Go Soft On Khartoum Kevin J. Kelley President George W. Bush's policy of using persuasion rather than punishment to promote peace in Sudan was bitterly criticised last week by some members of the US Congress and by leaders of lobby groups. Clashes over Washington's approach to Khartoum broke out at a June 4 committee hearing in the US House of Representatives. The session featured a testy exchange between the Bush team's top Africa policymaker and a Democratic Congressman who charged that failure to get tougher with Sudan amounted to "playing with human lives." The dispute over the most effective of ending Sudan's civil war highlighted the long-standing issue of whether the US should seek normal relations with the Islamist regime or intensify efforts to destabilise it. In recent months, President Bush has favoured a softer line of approach, but advocates of a no-compromise stance are warning that Khartoum cannot be trusted to negotiate a settlement to the 19-year-old conflict with rebels in the southern half of the country. The controversy focused last week on a move to prevent foreign companies from developing Sudan's oil resources by preventing them from raising capital in the US. That proposed sanction against non-US firms is contained in a Bill approved by the US House one year ago by a margin of 422-2. President Bush's allies in the Senate, however, are blocking efforts to enact the proposal into law. American companies are already forbidden from doing business in Sudan. Some members of the House International Relations Committee called for action on the plan to dissuade Canadian, European and Asian companies from helping Sudan tap its sizeable oil reserves. Khartoum uses oil revenue to finance its assaults on rebel troops and civilian populations in the south, said Republican Congressman Chris Smith. "If you cut the spigot, you stop the war," he declared. But Walter Kansteiner, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, argued strongly against the attempt to block access to US capital markets. Such political interference in free markets is exactly what he urges African governments to forego, Mr Kansteiner told the committee. It was that statement that prompted Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos to fire back: "So far, we're playing with human lives." The California lawmaker was referring to the estimated two million Sudanese who have died in the course of the civil war. Non-governmental experts testifying at the June 4 hearing endorsed the effort to punish foreign companies that do business in Sudan's oil fields. Michael Young, head of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, said the Bush administration's special envoy for peace in Sudan is proceeding from a flawed premise in arguing that neither side can win the civil war. "Whether or not Khartoum can win the war is not the question. The point is that Khartoum thinks it can win the war, especially with hundreds of millions of dollars in oil revenue pouring in," Mr Young said. Eric Reeves, a Sudan specialist at Smith College in Massachusetts, charged that the Canadian oil firm Talisman is "the very embodiment of Western corporate evil in Sudan." The company, which has played a leading role in developing Sudan's oil resources, is complicit with "genocidal destruction," Prof Reeves declared. Talisman's airstrips in Sudan are used by Khartoum's helicopter gunships for attacks on civilians, he said. The Bush team's policy was further faulted on the grounds that it had failed to prod Sudan's rulers into implementing "confidence-building measures" specified by US Special Envoy John Danforth. Assistant Secretary Kansteiner disagreed, citing one "important accomplishment in our engagement." Khartoum has allowed humanitarian relief to be delivered to the Nuba Mountains, he pointed out. While former Senator Danforth's peace mission has achieved "moderate successes on symptomatic humanitarian issues," it has so far not addressed the root causes of the conflict, added John Prendergast, an NGO official with long experience in Sudan.

Uganda

Xinhua 7 Jun 2002 -- Ugandan police to mediate ethnic clashes between Sudanese refugees KAMPALA, June 7, 2002 (Xinhua) -- Ugandan Second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Disaster Preparedness and Refugees MosesAli has ordered the establishment of a police post in the Kiryandongo refugee settlement of the Acholi and Lotuk ethnic groups between Sudanese refugees, local media reported on Friday. The move follows a clash between the Sudanese refugees of the Acholi and Lotuk ethnic groups in western Masindi district last week. The inter-tribal clash left 1,500 Lotuk tribesmen displaced and three refugees dead while several others injured in critical conditions. "He also directed that with immediate effect, a police post be established within the settlement," a press statement from the office of the prime minister was quoted as saying. The statement added that the displaced Lotuk were camped at Bweyale refugee settlement, where they accessed assistance from the World Food Program and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

New Vision (Kampala) 4 June 2002 Thousands Throng Namugongo Shrines Alfred Wasike THOUSANDS of pilgrims from many parts of the world yesterday converged for prayers at Namugongo, on eastern Kampala outskirts, for the annual Martyrs Day to remember the commitment of more than 20 fresh Ugandan Christian converts executed on the orders of Kabaka Mwanga in the late 1880s. A ululating Vice-President Speciosa Kazibwe, welcoming in "Kisoga style" the exhausted but enthusiastic pilgrims gathered for several days around a mini- grass thatched Basilica set on a small lake at the Catholic martyrs shrines, described the bravery of the young Christians of the 19th century as "a celebration of dedicated leadership." Despite the tight security around the sprawling shrines, there was a roaring trade in alcohol. There was also brisk trade in soft drinks, food and Martyrs Day souvenirs like hats. The pilgrims and traders braved a scorching sunshine, dust and later dark rain clouds that produced a drizzle. In a lengthy homily, Bishop Willigers of Jinja Diocese, spoke out against the genocide in Rwanda, instability in the DR Congo, the civil war in the Sudan, abduction of children from Uganda by Joseph Kony's LRA rebels, corruption in Government and public life. "Where are we heading to? I know someone who could be a martyr. She is a Munyarwanda, Felicity Niyetegeka, who was killed by the interahamwe for hiding Tutsi refugees. There are problems in the DRC, Sudan", he lamented. "Kony is busy abducting our children. Government is busy making promises that the insurgence will end soon. And it is not ending. The moral fibre of our people is being sapped in the so-called protected villages despite persistent calls by religious leaders to allow people go back to their homes," Willigers said.

Zambia

The Post (Lusaka) June 2, 2002 You Can't Trust Mmd Anymore, Says Mwila Reuben Phiri You can't trust the MMD government anymore, opposition Zambia Republican Party (ZRP) president Benjamin Mwila has said. In an interview on Friday, Mwila said the Mwanawasa administration was trying to weaken the opposition through arrests of its leaders and cited the recent case of Patriotic Front leader Michael Sata as an example. "Now they are trying to frame me so that they can arrest me and lock me up because the offence they are alleging I committed is not bailable," said Mwila in apparent reference to a story in one of the state owned and government controlled newspapers that he was involved in aggravated robbery. Mwila said it was ironic that a police officer could say he was waiting for instructions from Inspector General of Police Silas Ngangula to effect an arrest on an aggravated robbery charge when no one has ever recorded a statement from him ever since the offence is alleged to have been committed. "I wouldn't like to start accusing the state of conniving to lock me up. I hope this is not a trend by the government to weaken or eliminate the opposition," Mwila said. "This is a very sad development for Zambia." Mwila said he was the more aggrieved party over events that took place during the campaign in the December 27, 2001 presidential and parliamentary elections where his team was openly attacked by MMD cadres while the police watched. "Now they want to turn around and accuse me of aggravated robbery. That's not how to run a government. We can now see what we were dreading. I hope there will be no genocide. I can see it in the offing," Mwila said. "Politics of elimination must stop." And Mwila said the atmosphere of disunity that was emerging under the Mwanawasa administration was worrying. He said the unity which Zambia had enjoyed in the last 38 years had dissipated, particularly after the December elections and the situation was escalating. Mwila said there was need for the government to initiate dialogue both within the MMD and with the opposition in order to foster development. He said the MMD was embroiled in internal squabbles at the time when the majority of Zambians were living in abject poverty. "Zambia must be redeemed from the poverty and economic malaise. The only way to fight this is by uniting. Drought has not spared us either and the President has declared a disaster. How can we fight hunger with the nation in tatters?" And condemning defections from the opposition to the ruling party, Mwila said this was not the solution for resolving the problems the nation was facing. He said he was cheered that while other opposition members were trooping back to the MMD, ZRP had remained intact because they had a cause to redress injustices and economic imbalances. "The Zambian economy has been plundered by expatriates. We want the economy to be in the hands of Zambians," he said. Mwila said Zambians were lucky because there were no distinct economic differences and that all political parties had similar manifestos. "This is the scenario today as there are no more socialists. Everyone has joined the bandwagon of capitalist approach," Mwila said. "There should be no unjustified arrogance because arrogance will breed chaos."

Americas

Brazil

BBC 23 May, 2002, Brazil officer jailed over massacre A second senior Brazilian police officer has been found guilty of playing a leading role in the massacre of 19 landless peasants six years ago. Major Jose Maria Oliveira was sentenced to a total of 158 years in jail. About 150 lower-ranking police will be tried over the next month. The killings happened as police were dismantling roadblocks set up by hundreds of members of Brazil's Landless Movement, the MST. The prosecution said many of the peasants were shot at point-blank range, proving the killings were deliberate. Some human rights groups welcomed the conviction as a sign the Brazilian authorities were at last taking human rights seriously. But others said the real culprits - the civilian authorities who ordered the action - were still not being held to account.

Colombia

BBC 11 May 2002, UN investigates Colombian massacre The United Nations is conducting an investigation into the massacre in Colombia last week at Bojaya, in the western province of Choco. The UN, which is sending an envoy to the remote jungle area, has already categorised the attack as a war crime. A hundred-and-nineteen people were killed when rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) bombed a church where civilians had taken shelter from fighting. Right-wing paramilitaries are alleged to have been using the civilians as human shields. A source within the UN investigating team has already said that the Colombian Government will be severely criticised for ignoring repeated warnings that the community was in the gravest danger. The UN team was invited by the Colombian president, Andres Pastrana.

Guatemala

Financial Times UK 7 June 2002 Return of Guatemalan death squads By Andrew Bounds The bullet that killed Guillermo Ovalle as he was eating lunch in a Guatemala City cafe delivered a simple message: the death squads are back. Mr Ovalle worked for the foundation set up by Nobel peace prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, one of a number of organisations trying to prosecute generals responsible for atrocities in the country's genocidal civil war. Shadowy armed groups now appear to be trying to intimidate them into silence. Shortly after Mr Ovalle was killed in what appeared to be a messy hold-up someone called the foundation and played a funeral march down the telephone, confirming the incident was anything but accidental. The assassination in May was the most serious of a growing wave of attacks on human rights activists in Guatemala, including kidnappings, beatings, break-ins and death threats. The methods have all the hallmarks of those who prosecuted the dirty war against leftist guerrillas and the indigenous Mayan population, particularly in the 1980s, and who still fear prosecution. Six years after the conflict ended Hina Jilani, the United Nations' top human rights official last week called on the government to "unmask" the death squads. President Alfonso Portillo admitted clandestine groups with military links existed but said he was powerless to combat them. It is perhaps no coincidence that the attacks are increasing as the human rights community celebrates the anniversary of its greatest victory, the conviction on June 8 2001 of three soldiers for involvement in the murder of a crusading bishop. They included a colonel, the highest ranking military officer to be jailed in Guatemala. Juan Gerardi, the auxiliary bishop of Guatemala City, was bludgeoned to death in his home on April 26, 1998, two days after presenting an exhaustive report detailing the army's role in hundreds of massacres in a war that killed 200,000. The court found Colonel Byron Lima Estrada, his son Capt Byron Lima Oliva, Jose Obdulio Villanueva and Mario Orantes, Msgr Gerardi's assistant, guilty of involvement in a murder plot hatched by the army. The verdict came after three months of evidence and three years of investigation marked by incompetence, interference and delays. It was achieved under incredible diplomatic pressure from the international community, who saw the Gerardi murder as a test case for ending the army's impunity. However, a year on and with an appeal pending, it looks more like a one-off victory. "I think it was a historic verdict. But we cannot talk of the end of impunity because there are so many unresolved cases," said Edgar Gutierrez, who worked on the Gerardi report and is now in government. "It is the exception to the rule." Such cases include genocide charges laid against former heads of state, including Gen Efrain Rios Montt, head of Mr Portillo's Guatemalan Republican Front and president of Congress. A recent UN report said the armed forces remained overmighty and prepared more for internal repression than external conflict. In violation of UN-monitored 1996 peace accords, the two units responsible for the bulk of human rights abuses - the presidential bodyguard, to which Capt Lima and Mr Villanueva belonged, and military intelligence - have not been disbanded. Nery Rodenas, one of the church's lawyers in the Gerardi case, says it is probable that the soldiers' appeal, scheduled for July, will succeed. The prosecution evidence was mostly circumstantial. His office tried and failed to replace the presiding magistrate, who has a reputation for being soft on the army. One year later, observers agree, another Gerardi-style killing is far more likely than another Gerardi-style conviction.

Mexico

Reuters 4 Jun 2002 Behind Mexico massacre, people ignored by progress By Richard Jacobsen SANTIAGO XOCHILTEPEC, Mexico, June 4 (Reuters) - The massacre of 26 men and boys, apparently over a generations-old land dispute in Mexico's impoverished southern Sierra Madre, has exposed how pockets of poverty and lawlessness still fester as the rest of the nation progresses. Officials in the southern state of Oaxaca said 16 men and one woman, members of a community with a long-standing feud with the victims' town, were arraigned on Tuesday after being arrested for allegedly taking part in the massacre on an isolated stretch of mountain road late Friday. But while the gunmen may have been caught, the underlying causes of the killings -- poverty, isolation and the tenuous rule of law -- still remain entrenched in Oaxaca and other regions of Mexico, officials and analysts said. Other, less sensational killings over land, drugs, politics or religion are common and often go unpunished in rural Mexico, where people live worlds apart from the modern, urban Mexico striving to integrate itself with the United States and Canada, the country's partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement. "This is a very primitive thing," said Angel Colmenares, an evangelical pastor as he watched coffins being lowered on Sunday in the town cemetery of Santiago Xochiltepec. Colmenares was describing actions of those who opened fire with automatic rifles and shotguns on the victims -- ages 14 to 66 -- as they rode home in the back of a dump truck from their jobs at a local lumber mill. In Santiago Xochiltepec, a town of about 800 in the mountains of Oaxaca state, residents said enemies in the nearby town of Santo Domingo Teojomulco were responsible for ambushing and killing the 26, ages 14 to 66. TWO MEXICOS The scale of the massacre drew a large deployment of army troops and state police to the zone that lies several hours drive along a tortuous narrow road branching off the highway connecting the state's colonial capital and its Pacific beach resorts. Mexico on a national level has made progress consolidating its electoral democracy and advancing human rights while stabilizing and merging its economy, now one of the most stable in Latin America. The Oaxaca massacre "once again exposes the differences and the heterogeneous nature of a country like ours," Carlos Martinez, a sociologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico wrote on Tuesday in the daily El Universal. Poor, indigenous peasants "are moving in the opposite direction of the official version of a (Mexican) democratic transition," he added. Forty percent of Mexico's 100 million people live in poverty, and in rural areas they are often left with few options but to emigrate to the cities or the United States, or fight over scare resources. "These are places without a present or a future so people there logically fight for what little they have, which is the land and the forests," said Hector Sanchez, a member of the leftist opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution and who represents Oaxaca in the lower house of Congress. Sanchez, who heads the Chamber of Deputies indigenous affairs committee, said conflicts in the countryside will continue as long as Mexico's rural areas remain largely marginalized from education, health care and modern infrastructure. Isaac Garcia, a state police commander sent to Santiago Xochiltepec following the massacre, acknowledged that residents of the region had been killing each other over land for decades. "This time it got out of hand," he said.

NYT 3 June 2002 16 Arrested in Killings of 26 Over Land Disputes in Mexico By TIM WEINER OAXACA, Mexico, June 2 -- Fifteen men and a woman were jailed here today on suspicion of killing 26 villagers from the rural reaches of Oaxaca State in a vendetta over land, officials said. The officials said the suspects were residents of nearby villages that have fought the people of Santiago Xochiltepec, where the victims were from, for many years. As villagers buried their husbands and sons, a Oaxaca State prosecutor, Sergio Santibañez, said he had not ruled out the possibility that the massacre had its roots in a fight between low-level drug traffickers. But he said Santiago Xochiltepec, a village of about 650 people that is part of a larger municipality, Santiago Textitlán, has had blood feuds with villages attached to a neighboring municipality, Las Huertas. The people of one of those villages, Santo Domingo de Teojomulco, lost a court decision three months ago to Santiago Xochiltepec over the use of 40 square miles of long-disputed land that lies between them. Mexico has seen massacres like this before in recent years, but most have been the results of battles between government forces or paramilitary groups attacking their real or imagined opponents on the left, or drug lords taking vengeance on rivals and their families. What made these killings extraordinary was the number of victims coupled with the likelihood that their deaths were a result of a feud over dwindling resources. The killings were also unusually vicious. The dead, all men and teenage boys, were shot repeatedly with weapons including AK-47 military assault rifles and AR-15's, the civilian version of the United States Army standard issue rifle. The villagers were killed Friday night while returning home in a truck after a week's work at a sawmill in the municipality of San Pedro el Alto. Their route took them through the villages of their old rivals. An Oaxaca State official, Heliodor Díaz Escárraga, said some of the suspects lay in ambush along the road east of Las Huertas. He said they ordered the driver, Alberto Antonio Pérez, out of the truck, and started firing. Mr. Pérez, who is from San Pedro el Alto and might not have been a target, survived the shooting, along with his son and 2 of the 28 passengers. Mr. Díaz Escárraga said that while the killing most likely had its roots in the long-running dispute over land, it might also have involved "an element of personal vengeance." He said that two months ago, villagers from Santiago Textitlán, about a four-hour drive from here, were accused of killing a man who came from Las Huertas. Timber is one of the few remaining natural resources that provide the semblance of a living in southern Oaxaca. Disputes often include arguments over harvesting trees from land theoretically held in common. As the land held communally by villagers is divided and subdivided, generation by generation, subsistence farmers have less and less to farm. That leaves them with two choices: to clear land farther and farther up the steep mountain slopes, or exploit land that belongs to others. In most of rural Mexico, especially in the south, the courts are dysfunctional. Villagers do not consider settling disputes using lawyers, and the police are notable by their absence.

United States

The Nation (Nairobi) 11 June 2002 $5m Reward On Genocide Suspects The United States Government is offering Sh400 million ($5m) for the arrest or conviction of people indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. One of the people being sought in connection with the genocide in which about a million Hutus and Tutsis were killed is Mr Felicien Kabuga, whose photograph appears in an advertisement on Page 21 of today's print edition of the Daily Nation. Mr Kabuga, 69, is wanted for financing the massacre of men, women and children. He has been in hiding since his escape from Rwanda soon after the genocide. It is anticipated that the reward programme will help to provide the Arusha-based tribunal with the necessary information on cases before it. Thousands of people are being held at the United Nations Detention Facility in Arusha. Some of the genocide suspects are reported to be living in Kenya. The reward programme will be inaugurated today by the US Ambassador at Large for War Crimes, Mr Pierre-Richard Prosper. Those with information are asked to call 0722-298483 or 0733-250208 or e-mail rewards@state.gov.

Houston Chronicle 10 June 2002, 11:45PM Texas secession rumor, attacks on Islam mark Baptist meeting By RICHARD VARA Religion Editor ST. LOUIS -- On the eve of the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, a Florida Baptist newspaper accused Texas convention leaders of preparing to end their affiliation with the national convention. About 10,000 delegates, called messengers, were assembling at America's Center to legislate business and approve policies for the 16-million member denomination today and Wednesday. A former national convention leader also lambasted Islam and its founder, Muhammad, saying its founder was "demon-possessed" and the religion was not "as good as Christianity." Already tense relations between the Southern Baptist Convention and Texas, the denomination's largest state convention, became more tense as a Florida Baptist newspaper predicted Texas was preparing to secede. "The Baptist General Convention of Texas is leaving the Southern Baptist Convention," stated James A. Smith Jr., editor of the Florida Baptist Witness. Smith said the Texas convention "is remaking itself into the chief alternative to the SBC." Texas leaders from convention executive director Charles Wade of Dallas to convention president Robert Campbell of Houston have repeatedly denied accusations from SBC leaders who have accused Texas of trying to undermine or secede from the denomination. "The BGCT is making no plans to be a denomination," reiterated Becky Bridges, director of communications for the Dallas-based Texas convention. "This kind of language is very divisive," she said. Smith's comments echo similar criticisms leveled at Texas Baptists by leaders of the 4-year-old Southern Baptists of Texas, an alternative conservative convention, Bridges said. Smith cited several actions of the Texas convention, including rejection of the controversial 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, the denomination's doctrinal statement, as proof that Texas Baptist leaders were refusing to cooperate with the national convention. Smith also cited the creation of a state chaplaincy in February and the defunding of the six national seminaries to demonstrate proof Texas leaders were distancing themselves from the national convention. Bridges said many of the actions result from growth in Texas that Baptist leaders are addressing. For example, the state convention is developing Spanish-speaking preachers and Spanish-language materials that are not readily available from the national convention. "Texas Baptists are people on missions," Bridges said. Texas, with more than 2 million members and nearly 6,000 churches, contributed more than $36.7 million to the national convention, Bridges said. Richard Land, president of the denomination's Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission, said relations with the state convention were "rocky." "When you have an organization that is in the midst of secession, it is always rocky," Land said. The Rev. Jerry Vines, pastor of First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Fla., brought applause from participants at the pastors' conference, which precedes the annual meeting, when he criticized "religious pluralism," or the view that all religions are equal in truth. "They would have you believe Islam is as good as Christianity," Vines said. "I am here to tell you Islam is not as good as Christianity. Christianity was founded by the virgin-born Jesus Christ." "Islam was founded by Muhammad, a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12 wives, and his last one was a 9-year-old girl," Vines said to applause. "Allah is not Jehovah, either," Vines said. "Jehovah is not going to turn anyone into a terrorist that will try to bomb people and take the lives of thousands and thousands of people."

AP 12 June 2002 Church head won't repudiate comments (By ALLEN G. BREED, Associated Press, 6/12/02) The new head of the Southern Baptist Convention has rejected calls to repudiate what a Muslim group is calling "bigoted" and "hate-filled" statements made by one of its pastors. The Rev. Jack Graham, elected the convention's president on Tuesday, said the Rev. Jerry Vines' comments about Islam were "accurate." Vines, a former convention president, told conventioners at a pastors' conference Monday that many of this country's problems can be blamed on religious pluralism. Pluralists "would have us to believe that Islam is just as good as Christianity, but I'm here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that Islam is not just as good as Christianity," Vines, pastor of First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Fla., told several thousand delegates at the gathering in St. Louis. "Islam was founded by Muhammad, a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12 wives - and his last one was a 9-year-old girl. And I will tell you Allah is not Jehovah either. Jehovah's not going to turn you into a terrorist that'll try to bomb people and take the lives of thousands and thousands of people." Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the comments were outrageous. "It's really unfortunate that a top leader in a mainstream Christian church ... would use such hate-filled and bigoted language in describing the faith of one-fifth of the world's population," Hooper said Tuesday. "This is the level of bigotry that requires a clear statement from the top leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention..." Ingrid Mattson, vice president of the Islamic Society of North America and a professor of Islamic studies at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, called the comments "medieval." She said statements like this from such high-placed religious leaders can lead to violence against Muslims. "It makes me wonder what's the hateful religion right now that we should be worried about," she said.

CNN 13 June 2002 Muslims angered by Baptist criticism WASHINGTON (CNN) - Criticism of Islam's founding prophet by a Southern Baptist leader has prompted Muslims to accuse the denomination of bigotry. During a Monday evening conference at the annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, the Rev. Jerry Vines told conventioneers "that Islam is not just as good as Christianity." "Islam was founded by Muhammad, a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12 wives -- and his last one was a 9-year-old girl," said Vines, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Florida, and a former Southern Baptist Convention president. The convention's president has rejected calls to repudiate what a Muslim group called "bigoted" and "hate-filled" statements. Hussein Ibish, director of communications and media for of the American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee, and the Rev. Jerry Falwell joined "Crossfire" hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson to discuss the controversial comments. FALWELL: I do know Dr. Vines very well as a humble man of God, a preacher of the gospel for many years. And I did not believe, when I was listening to him, that he was attacking Islam or Muslim people. He was rather comparing the life and the behavior of Jesus Christ and Muhammad. And he gave the story of the virgin-born, sinless son of God who died upon the cross for the sins of the world, rose from the dead to grant ever-lasting life and then he pointed out historically -- and by the way it's all a matter of history -- that Mohammad, in fact, was guilty of massacring many, many thousands of Jews ... BEGALA: Do you believe Muhammad was a "demon-possessed pedophile," Reverend? That is a slur on a prophet who's ... FALWELL: I'll tell you what he did. I'll let you decide if he's a pedophile. Among his many wives, and no Muslim scholar denies this, he had a wife who was given to him, betrothed to him at age 6 by his best friend ... And he -- when she was 9 -- consummated the marriage. Now in a civilized society, when a 54-year-old man consummates a marriage with a 9-year-old girl, I think it is reasonable to say that pedophilia is not taking it beyond the limits of reality. CARLSON: Mr. Ibish, is that true? Let's just start there. Did Muhammad have a nine-year-old wife? IBISH: I have no idea and neither does anybody else. To be honest with you, that happened 1,500 years ago. Much of this is mythological ... It's not the point. FALWELL: That is the point. CARLSON: Do Muslim scholars believe it to be true? Is it accepted ... IBISH: Actually, I have no idea about whom the prophet married, and when, and why -- and it doesn't matter. The point is that this is part and parcel of a generalized attack on Islam and Muslims. Of course it's an attack on Islam. You've got to be kidding. What about the rest of the stuff that he said about Islam not being as good as Christianity? CARLSON: Mr. Ibish, hold on ... I want you to respond to the more specific charges in this, and the general charge that Islam promotes violence. That is the charge that this man has made. It's a charge that many have made, and I want you to respond to what I believe is one of the sources of this understanding. And it comes right from the Koran, Sura 9-5. I want to read it to you. "Fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, seize them, beleaguer them and lie in wait for them. Fight them. Allah will punish them." Kill unbelievers, in other words. IBISH: Right, now anyone can play this game, Tucker. FALWELL: That's not a game. IBISH: I can go into the Bible. It's a filthy game to tarnish other people's religion. CARLSON: This is a quote from the Koran, Mr. Ibish. It's not a filthy game. IBISH: Exactly. I can go into the Bible, into the book of Joshua and find quotes about God ordering Joshua to wipe out everybody, men, women and children. I can go into the Talmud and find all kinds. In fact, there are Web sites all over this country, anti-Semitic vicious Web sites that are filled up with quotes, ripped out of context from Jewish holy books in an attempt to slur Jews. CARLSON: Well, give us the context. I don't understand. IBISH: Well, the point is that the traditions of Islam have been peaceful and tolerant in the main, but just like with Christianity and Judaism, there have been violent Muslims. The point is 1.3 billion people in this world are Muslims. Most of them are good and decent people, and the faith has given them a moral vehicle to be such.

Reuters 30 June 2002 U.S. Spoils Debut of New Global War Crimes Court By Irwin Arieff UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The world's first permanent criminal court comes into being on Monday hounded by U.S. opposition despite its lofty goal of punishing such heinous wrongdoing as war crimes and genocide. "On Monday, July 1, the world is going to look a lot different because the scope of impunity enjoyed so long by all of those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes will shrink considerably," said Richard Dicker of New York-based Human Rights Watch. But even as the new court takes force, Washington -- which has renounced the court -- is waging a battle at the United Nations to obtain a loophole giving immunity to U.S. nationals such as peacekeepers and soldiers serving overseas. Major powers Russia and China have also chosen not to join the court. Court supporters, including the 73 countries that have so far ratified the 1998 treaty creating the new tribunal, argue the United States hopes to kill off the court bit by bit after failing to block the treaty itself. They say the court charter already provides ample protections against abuse such as Washington fears. But the Bush administration, cheered by the Pentagon and conservatives, says the president is just looking out for U.S. soldiers and officials. He argues the tribunal would infringe on U.S. sovereignty and could lead to politically motivated prosecutions of Americans working outside U.S. borders, including soldiers. Washington has threatened to withdraw from all U.N.-authorized peacekeeping missions around the world if the 15-nation Security Council fails to grant it assurances -- via council resolutions -- that U.S. nationals are safe from the court's grasp. 'TRYING TO CRIPPLE THIS CHILD' "We are being asked to choose between peacekeeping and the court, and I don't think people are willing at this point to step back from the court," said one council diplomat opposed to the U.S. position, speaking on condition of anonymity. The United States initially signed the treaty creating the court, during the final days of Bill Clinton's presidency. But Bush in May renounced any obligation to cooperate with the new court and said he had no intention of submitting the treaty to the U.S. Senate for ratification. "It is very unfortunate that the world's most powerful democracy is attacking and trying to cripple this child a few days before its birth on July 1. It will not succeed," said William Pace, organizer of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. "The new system of international criminal justice that begins on July 1 will be one of the greatest instruments of peace ever created to confront the dark and violent forces of human nature," Pace said. The tribunal is expected to go into operation next year in The Hague, Netherlands, a belated effort to fulfill the promise of the Nuremberg trials 56 years ago, when Nazi leaders were prosecuted for new categories of war crimes against humanity. While no official ceremony is planned, Monday marks the day criminal actions around the world become subject to the tribunal's jurisdiction. The court is not expected to actually begin operations until February 2003, when Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands is to officiate at inauguration ceremonies. Before then, an independent prosecutor and 18 judges are to be elected to nine-year terms. No two judges can come from the same country. While Washington insists its 200,000 soldiers abroad lack ironclad protection from frivolous prosecutions, the new tribunal has jurisdiction only when countries are unwilling or unable to prosecute their own nationals for atrocities. Suspects from nations like the United States that have not ratified the court treaty can, in any event, only be prosecuted if the country where the crimes occurred has ratified the court treaty, and then, only if Washington refuses to investigate. Cases can be referred by a country that has ratified, the Security Council or the tribunal prosecutor after approval from three judges. But the court is not retroactive and cannot probe crimes committed before July 1.

Asia-Pacific

Australia

Reuters 31 May 2002 List fingers Lithuanian Nazi war crime suspects SYDNEY - The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has given Australia a list of 22 suspected Lithuanian Nazi war criminals it believes fled to Australia, saying it is Canberra's last chance to show political will and pursue war criminals. "Australia remains the only Western country to which large numbers of Nazi war criminals and collaborators emigrated after World War II, which has failed to take successful legal action against a single person," director Efraim Zuroff said in a statement on the centre's website (www.wiesenthal.com). The Jerusalem-based centre, named after the nonagenarian Holocaust survivor and Nazi-hunter, said the 22 suspects served in the auxiliary police battalions and police units which participated in the persecution and murder of thousands of Jews in Lithuania and the Ukraine in World War II. The Jewish human rights group said the names of the men were only recently discovered by the centre's researchers in Vilnius and Jerusalem and handed to Australia's Ambassador to Israel. "If people have evidence they should present it to us," Australian Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said yesterday, adding the list of 22 men would be examined. Australia tried unsuccessfully to prosecute a handful of ageing, suspected Nazi war criminals. Australia disbanded its war crimes unit in 1993 - at the time a former war crimes prosecutor said the unit was investigating 20-25 cases. War crimes investigators believe war criminals from Nazi-occupied Latvia arrived in Australia as part of a wave of post-World War II immigration. Last May, an Australian court ruled that alleged war criminal Konrad Kalejs should be extradited to Latvia to face charges of war crimes and genocide. But the 87-year-old, who was a commander in a labour camp near Riga in 1942-43 during World War II, died before he could be sent Latvia. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre says Kalejs was a member of a hit-squad responsible for 30,000 deaths. Zuroff told Australian radio he did not know whether the 22 suspected war criminals were still alive or whether they were actually in Australia, but called on the Government to launch an investigation. "This is really a last chance for the Australians to do something at least to achieve a measure of justice. "I think it's unbelievable that Australia to date has not successfully prosecuted a sole Nazi war criminal and believe me it's not for lack of suspects." Zuroff conceded it was now very difficult to secure a World War II war crimes prosecution because of the passage of time. Australia's war crimes act is more specific than equivalent laws in Canada and the United States, demanding direct evidence that someone actually participated in murder. Zuroff also urged Australia to adopt laws similar to the US and Canada which allow for a person to be stripped of his citizenship and deported for lying about his war past.

Reuters 21 June 2002 Film reveals dark chapter of Aboriginal history Reuters Sydney,July 21 "Rabbit-Proof Fence", a low-budget film by A-list Hollywood director Phillip Noyce, is set to expose world cinemagoers to Australia's most shameful secret - a government scheme to kidnap Aboriginal children. The film tells the real-life tale of three young Aboriginal girls removed from their parents under an officially ordained assimilation policy aimed at breeding out Australia's original inhabitants. Many Australians still struggle with their conscience over the "Stolen Generation" - tens of thousands of Aborigines taken away under a policy which lasted for some 80 years until the 1960s. Now "Rabbit-Proof Fence" is to be released overseas, revealing this dark side of Australia's past to British audiences in August and the United States in October. The story of the three girls who walked 2,400 km (1,500 miles) through the Australian outback to find their parents is matched by the amazing story of how this movie was made. Australia-born Noyce said the time was right for the film, his first in his homeland in 12 years. "White Australia's relations with Aboriginal Australia have changed a lot over the last few years, and I knew that the time was right for a story like this, not only here but also all over the world," Noyce said in an interview. But that was only after he read the script. ACCIDENTAL CALL Noyce received an accidental telephone call at his Los Angeles home in the middle of the night from a woman in Australia. Screenwriter Christine Olsen thought she had the number of someone who knew someone who knew Noyce, not his home. "He was so unnervingly polite," Olsen told Reuters. "I woke him up. Can you imagine?" Noyce was preparing for the release of "The Bone Collector", his film starring Oscar-winning actor Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie, so getting him to read the script took time. But Olsen persisted and Noyce read it two months later. "I found the story more emotionally compelling than any screenplay I've ever read, reinforced by the knowledge that the girls really did undertake the journey," Noyce said. However Noyce, who directed Harrison Ford in "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger", was already lined up to make another $100 million blockbuster, "The Sum of All Fears" - another of author Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels adapted for film. But one thing led to another and Noyce switched projects. With Noyce as director of "Rabbit", British actor Kenneth Branagh agreed to play a role, waiving his usual fee for a share of the film, and music legend Peter Gabriel did the score. "I never had any doubt it would get made," Olsen said. Olsen's script was adapted from "Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence", a book written by Aborigine Doris Pilkington Garimara, who was separated from her mother for 31 years. The title comes from a fence which divided the continent north to south. The fence, to protect crops and pasture from rabbits, was built mainly by transient workers. "The land along the rabbit-proof fence was home and (our) mother and grandmother," Pilkington told Reuters. "That's the part of the story that is important to me." Pilkington's mother Molly, then 14, Molly's sister Daisy, 8, and their cousin Gracie, 10, made the journey home along the fence. Molly, 86, and Daisy, 80, appear briefly in the movie. Pilkington, who turns 65 on her July 1 government-issued birthday, is battling breast cancer and has lost one of her six children to the disease. Asked how she felt when she finished her book, Pilkington said: "I felt like them - triumphant". She said she had set out to honour her mother's courage and document an extraordinary family feat. "It's gone far beyond that. Now the story itself is being shared, not only nationwide, but internationally," she said. And against the odds, the movie is making money. "Rabbit" was made for about US$5 million and its main stars are unknowns. Its US$4 million gross here has nearly recouped its budget. In its first week in Australia, it came in third at the box office behind Hollywood's "Ali" and "Black Hawk Down". Advance sales overseas total $8.4 million, including $4.6 million reportedly paid by Miramax for the rights to distribute the film in the United States, Britain and elsewhere. POSTER STIRS AUSTRALIA In promoting the movie, powerful Miramax is keeping its trademark between-the-eyes style. "What if the government kidnapped your daughter?" screams the studio's billboard posters in America. Miramax says the movie's subject matter, the abduction of black children, though true to life and heart-rending, has limited appeal unless it can drum up public interest. "We do not apologise for telling the truth," it said. Some Australian politicians have called on Miramax to apologise for the poster, but Noyce said the politicians should first apologise to Aborigines. A 1997 Australian Human Rights Commission report said the policy of removing tens of thousands of Aboriginal children was a form of genocide aimed at wiping out Aborigines. Aboriginal boys were used as virtual slaves on outback farms and girls were clothed in white dresses and put to work as domestic servants. Many were raped and beaten with whips. Australia's 400,000 Aborigines see a formal apology for the "Stolen Generation" as the key to racial reconciliation. But conservative Prime Minister John Howard, now serving his third straight term, has steadfastly refused to say sorry. Meanwhile, Pilkington is working on her next book. Her mother Molly made the long outback journey home twice. At age 24, Molly was recaptured with her two daughters and taken back to the settlement from which she had escaped as a child. Once again, she fled and found her way home, but was able to carry only one daughter. She took two-year-old Annabelle and left four-year-old Doris. The authorities took Annabelle from Molly a year later. The two never saw each other again.

Bangladesh

Daily Star 9 June 2002 Bangladesh-Pakistan Forum seminar 'Form joint criminal court to probe '71 genocide' BSS, Dhaka Speakers at a seminar yesterday called for strengthening relations with Pakistan and removing "the grave discriminations" perpetrated against the Muslims in the wake of the Sept 11 US attack. Putting forward a number of recommendations, they also laid emphasis on the need for fair play in relations between Bangladesh and Pakistan. Some participants said the Pakistani authorities should come froward with positive intentions to strengthen the relations. The newly formed Bangladesh-Pakistan Forum organised the seminar at the conference centre of International Relations Department (IRD) of Dhaka University (DU). The seminar was divided into four sessions. Prof. Imtiaz Ahmed, Chairman of IRD, DU, Prof. Dilara Chowdhury of the Department of Political Science, Jahangirnagar University, Dr Abdur Rab Khan, Research Director of Bangladesh Institute of Strategic and International Studies and Prof. Abul Kalam of IRD, DU chaired the sessions. Iqbal Ahmed Khan, High Commissioner of Pakistan, was chief guest at the inaugural session while Shamsul Muktadir, president of the forum, Prof. Moonis Ahmar, Maj. Gen. (Rtd) Syed Mohammad Ibrahim, Brigadier (Rtd) Shakhwat Hossain, Hossain Khaled Vice-president of Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ahmed Karim, former general manager of Muslim Commercial Bank and Prof. Jaglul Haider of Rajshahi University among others, spoke at the sessions. Iqbal Ahmed Khan said the state of the contemporary world in which Pakistan and Bangladesh conduct foreign relations was indeed complex. "We need to pool or resources and intensify our cooperation and consultation in order to play an effective role in the realisation of the aspirations of our people's," Khan said. Prof. Imtiaz Ahmed said it is necessary to form a joint criminal court by Bangladesh and Pakistan to probe into the genocide of 1971 for promoting relations between the two countries. He also emphasised the need for working together to resolve the outstanding issues. Prof. Moonis Ahmar said the road to Bangladesh-Pakistan relations was not smooth but with fair intentions, substantial will and determination, particularly in the non-governmental level, much could be done to overcome the present stalemate and instill dynamism in relations between the two countries. Prof. Dilara Chowdhury urged the Pakistani authorities to take into consideration the concerns of the people of Bangladesh with regard to the War of Liberation issue if they (Pakistanis) wanted to promote relations. General Ibrahim said if 30 years is a generation, it is time to look back through the tunnels of history at the events of 1971 with a view to drawing lessons for the present. Some people in Pakistan believe that Bangladesh is the result of India's interference and therefore, it should be kept away, the General mentioned. He said the ego of the Pakistani military about '71 continues to remain a factor on the way to strengthening relations between the two countries. Shamsul Muktadir said the post-September 11 scenario has perpetrated grave discrimination towards the Muslim World which is an unjust and intolerable situation. Bangladesh and Pakistan, being the second and third largest Muslim countries, should jointly work out a solution to this problem in collaboration with other friendly countries, he said. Referring to trade gap between the two countries, Brigadier (Rtd) Shakhwat Hossain said Pakistan had imposed heavy taxes on Bangladeshi goods, including tea, for which the importers of that country were looking for goods from other countries. Hossain Khaled placed 11 recommendations including duty-free access of potential products to each other's markets.

Cambodia

Reuters 3 Jun 2002 Cambodia, U.N in Khmer Rouge talks PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (Reuters) -- A United Nations envoy to Cambodia has said efforts are underway to get the world body and Phnom Penh to restart aborted talks on a Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal. Special human rights envoy to Cambodia Peter Leuprecht said on Monday that a number of countries were working to patch up differences between Phnom Penh and the United Nations on the issue of a tribunal for leaders of the 1970s Khmer Rouge "killing fields" regime. The U.N. pulled out of plans for a joint tribunal in February, saying the court envisaged by Phnom Penh would not be impartial. The shock withdrawal, which ended almost five years of talks, stunned diplomats and analysts and saw Cambodia threaten to go it alone, or seek help from individual countries to set up a court. "I know that a number of friendly governments...are trying to get the two parties together again," Leuprecht told reporters on arrival in Phnom Penh to begin his sixth mission to Cambodia. Leuprecht declined to name the governments in question. "I still have some hope... The U.N. is a very complex setup and sometimes the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing in the U.N.," Leuprecht said. "I think it's really now for the secretary-general (Kofi Annan) himself to take a decision." U.N. links to regime Prime Minister Hun Sen has warned the U.N. he will proceed with a trial -- with participation from friendly countries -- within months if the world body does not return to negotiate. He said last month since the United Nations recognized the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge as Cambodia's legitimate government during the 1980s after they were driven from power, it was intent on protecting the movement's leaders. "Without U.N. involvement different countries might provide judges, but in my view this is a second-best solution," Leuprecht said. Defenders of the U.N. pullout say the Cambodian government -- many members of which have past links to the Khmer Rouge -- cannot be trusted to hold a trial on its own and have constantly blocked U.N. efforts to make the court impartial. An estimated 1.7 million people died from disease, starvation, forced labor and execution during the 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge regime. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998, but several key figures in the regime live freely in the country. None have ever faced trial for atrocities committed during their rule.

AFP 20 June 2002 Hun Sen appeals to donors for understanding over Khmer Rouge trial Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen appealed to international donors for understanding after talks with the United Nations aimed at bringing to trial surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge collapsed. He said on Thursday that his government was "fully and unequivocally committed" to pursuing justice for the 1.7 million people who perished under the ultra-Maoists during their 1975-79 reign. "I ask the world at large to understand and appreciate our position and have trust in our sincere wish and ability to pursue the matter to a satisfactory conclusion," he said. Hun Sen's appeal was launched at the annual Consultative Group (CG) of donors who are considering Cambodia's request for 1.46 billion dollars over the next three years in financial aid. The CG, consisting of envoys from 22 countries, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, International Monetary Fund and the European Commission, is reviewing the troubled past 12 months before making a decision. The troubles include the UN's withdrawal in Feburary from efforts to stage a trial for genocide and crimes against humanity, citing the country's inability to stage fair and impartial hearings. However, the major sticking point was whether Cambodian law or an agreement with the UN would control the tribunal. UN legal counsel Hans Corell said in an article published in the international press on Wednesday that had a trial proceeded then the UN would been relegated to providing technical assistance to a Cambodian court rather than being a partner in administering justice. "There would be no guarantees against delays or political influence, in light of the government's own admission that its judicial system remains weak," Corell wrote. "Under such a scenario, the United Nations would have been attached to a judicial process over which it would have little or no control." It was the first comment made by Corell since the UN's withdrawal from the process and coincided with the opening of the donors conference. Since the UN's withdrawal Hun Sen has pursued a foreign-assisted trial while leaving the door open for the UN to return. "We realise that if we do not learn the lessons of history, history will repeat itself. Therefore in resolving our past we can ill-afford to leave our destiny totally in the hands of others," he told donors.

China

The Guardian UK 4 June 2002 Beijing arrests 20 in Tiananmen inquiry John Gittings in Shanghai Tuesday June 4, 2002 China has detained more than 20 people suspected of smuggling abroad secret documents about the 1989 Beijing massacre, according to reports in the Hong Kong press on the eve of the 13th anniversary of the killings. Zhang Liang, who compiled a collection of Tiananmen papers published abroad last year, says the authorities acted after a nationwide inquiry into the source of his materials. Western scholars who worked on the book with Mr Zhang (his name is a pseudonym) believe he represents a group of dissident liberal scholars and civil servants on the mainland. Several hundred people were shot and killed on the night of June 3-4 1989, when army units used armoured personnel carriers to smash barricades and disperse pro-democracy demonstrators in the heart of Beijing. Yesterday, as on every other anniversary, the official Chinese press was silent on the subject. However, the massacre was referred to in postings on at least one popular website discussion group. "The Chinese youth died for the sake of China," one contributor said in a message to the People's Daily "strong nation" site. The posting was removed within seconds by a watchful monitor, and replaced with the note that "this is a mistaken message". In a statement marking the anniversary, Amnesty International calls the massacre an unresolved human right issue. "Despite repeated appeals from within and abroad," it says, "the Chinese authorities have failed to account for those killed, injured and imprisoned...." Amnesty complains that "the circle of victims continues to increase" as those in China who urge a review of the 1989 events are "arrested and sentenced for drawing attention to the crackdown". It cites the case of Huang Qi, arrested on June 3 2000 for running a website which appealed on behalf of those missing after the massacre. Mr Huang was tried in secret last year and remains in prison. No verdict has been announced.

Reuters 5 Jun 2002 Tens of thousands in Hong Kong mourn Tiananmen massacre By Carrie Lee HONG KONG (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people gathered in a Hong Kong park on Tuesday night to mourn the hundreds, possibly thousands, who died when Beijing sent tanks into Tiananmen Square 13 years ago to crush a pro-democracy movement. Organisers said the crowd was at least 45,000-strong, defying predictions of political observers who said turnout would fall short of last year's 30,000 because of soccer's World Cup and fading memories of the bloody 1989 crackdown. Holding candles and singing songs, many in the crowd said June 4 would always be remembered. "I will never forget the June 4 incident...as long as China doesn't have democracy, its apparent progress and economic opening are useless," retiree Edward Lam, 50, told Reuters. Hung all around the sprawling park on Hong Kong island were banners which read: "Free democracy campaigners, end one-party dictatorship, build a democratic China." Hong Kong, which returned to China in 1997, is one of two Beijing-controlled territories where commemorations of the 1989 massacre are tolerated. The other is Macau, a former Portuguese enclave, which returned to China in 1999. Yearly remembrances of the night are seen as a litmus test of freedoms and high level of autonomy promised to this former British colony at the handover. By comparison, mainland Chinese police have zero tolerance and two democracy campaigners were reportedly rounded up over the weekend as authorities pounced on any sign of public anger. The vigil comes as a survey showed that public denunciation of Beijing's actions on June 4 have fallen to the lowest level in Hong Kong. Of the 1,000 people polled, 53 percent said Beijing did not do the right thing, down from almost 80 percent in 1993. Some 74 percent thought human rights in China have improved since 1989, the highest level since the yearly polls by the University of Hong Kong began in 1993. In addition, 65 percent in the recent survey believed human rights conditions would be better in three years' time. Most Hong Kong residents were wary and suspicious of Chinese rule at the handover. But having slipped into two recessions since then, the territory has grown closer to the Chinese mainland, hoping to profit from robust economic growth there. Lee Cheuk-yan, of the group which organised the vigil, fears Hong Kong may be de-politicised by its economic dependence on China.

Cook Islands

ICRC News 6 Jun-20e 2 02/23 Cook Islands - Accession to Protocols I and II On 7 May, the Cook Islands announced their accession to Protocols I and II additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. On 7 May, the Cook Islands announced their accession to Protocols I and II additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. This is a particularly timely step since it comes on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Protocols. Together with the Geneva Conventions, these instruments form the cornerstone of international humanitarian law. Some years after the Second World War, struggles for independence from colonial rule and revolutionary conflicts flared up in various parts of the world. In these new situations the four Geneva Conventions, which lay down rules relating to armed conflict between sovereign States, did not apply. In modern warfare civilians pay a heavy toll, and control of the population is often the main issue at stake. The ICRC therefore felt that the legal protection afforded by the Conventions should be extended to the victims of this type of conflict and of civil wars, which were becoming increasingly frequent. The two Additional Protocols remind combatants of their obligation to distinguish at all times between civilians and military objectives and to respect, in all circumstances, the "fundamental guarantees" against such acts as hostage-taking, torture, murder, mutilation, affronts to personal dignity (including sexual abuse) and collective punishment. In the past 25 years, results have been long in coming. So far, 160 States have acceded to Protocol I (which protects the victims of international armed conflict) and 153 to Protocol II (applicable in non-international conflicts), while 190 are bound by the Geneva Conventions. With the improvement in the political climate following the end of the Cold War, the ICRC hopes that this anniversary will prompt other countries to make the commitment to respect and ensure respect for these international treaties which are so basic to the protection of conflict victims. The ICRC intends to mark the 25th anniversary of the Additional Protocols with a series of events and announcements on the 6 and 7 June.

India

 PTI 11 June 2002 US panel slams Gujarat govt over riots PTI WASHINGTON: The Indian government came under attack for its alleged "incompetence and indifference" to the Gujarat riots, by a statutory body advising the US administration, which also condemned the Gujarat government for its alleged complicity in "genocide, ethnic cleansing and pogrom" directed at Muslims. A hearing of United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, chaired by Commissioner Felice Gaer, said that the accounts of a thousand people being killed in clashes because of their religious identity is cause enough for the commission to be concerned. "In addition, however, we are also concerned about several recent reports which suggest that the government of Gujarat and some members of the police force may have been implicated in the violence in that state. The commission is very concerned that the US has not spoken out forcefully against the attacks on Muslims in Gujarat", she said. Najid Hussain of the University of Delaware, the first witness, said "the violence in Gujarat was not because of Hinduism. It was the result of extremism, which is a religion in itself". He said, that "the government of Gujarat did not just give a tacit approval to the perpetrators of the violence against muslims but connived in the pogrom". Another witness, Fr. Cedric Prakash, a Jesuit priest of Gujarat, said the volence in Gujarat was in fact the highlight of several months and years of attacks on minorities and other vulnerable communities. Robert Hathaway, executive director at the Wilson Centre, said there are credible reports that "local officials in Gujarat failed to act to protect victims of communal violence--indeed that the authorities deliberately encourged such violence by looking the other way". Hathaway and Sumit Ganguly of the university of Texas, another major witness, suggested that in view of the growing importance of US-India relations, the US will be more effective in quiet deplomacy than in publicly "hectoring and lecturing" to India on communal harmony. Hathaway said Ambassador Robert Blackwill, should "demonstrate our concern for the Hindu victims of intolerance as well. But since the vast majority of the Gujarat victims have been Muslim, it is especially important that America's senior diplomat in India be seen as demonstrating a particular concern about the fate and future of this community". Members also expressed concern that extremist organizations in India were geting funding from Indian communities in the US and UK.

Guardian UK Comment -- Have we learnt nothing from Rwanda? If the UN doesn't act over India and Pakistan, it will have another genocide on its hands Observer Worldview Charles Glass Sunday June 9, 2002 The Observer India and Pakistan are at war. A million troops stand mobilised on either side of the 1972 line of control that separates the two countries in Kashmir. Civilians on both sides are dying in artillery exchanges. Pakistani-armed militants have attacked Indian troops and civilians in India. Pakistan and India have, by international consensus, at least 200 nuclear warheads between them. If ever the United Nations Security Council had the obligation to invoke Article 34, calling for investigation of disputes 'likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security', this must be it. So what is happening at the UN? An emergency session, urgent discussions, formation of a peacekeeping force, proposed sanctions for the two parties if they escalate the conflict? Not exactly. A Reuters report conveys the urgency: 'Security Council members agree India and Pakistan's dispute over Kashmir should be left to bilateral diplomatic efforts outside of the UN, Syrian Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe said on Tuesday.' The UN is abdicating its legal role. In its place, bilateral diplomacy permits the threat of nuclear war to grow. The UN Charter allows any state (Article 35) or the Secretary General (Article 99) to place any threat to international peace before the Security Council. No one has done so. Instead, the United States has sent a Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, and is sending Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to discuss the conflict with the leaders of Pakistan and India. The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has invited Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to Moscow. Britain has sent emissaries. But there has been no concerted international effort to end the latest small-scale war or to prevent a nuclear exchange that would kill millions in both countries. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Britain among them, are not invoking international law to protect civilians from what will be a genocide. American diplomacy is having as much effect on India as President George Bush's admonition to Ariel Sharon earlier this year to withdraw his forces from Palestinian territory 'immediately', 'at once' and 'without delay'. If Bush cannot influence a country that the US subsidises with more than $3 billion a year, why should the Indians and Pakistanis listen to him? If the US has no influence, what can little Britain or emasculated Russia do? At the UN, the US, Russia, China and the rest of the world could work together to force an agreement on two leaders who fear losing face more than than they fear the destruction of their countries. Security Council resolutions of 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1972 established a framework for resolving the dispute over Kashmir. The UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan, first deployed in 1949, remains in position to become a larger, stronger force that could help both sides to police the border. Pakistan must prevent infiltration of India and close its insurgent bases. India should be made to respect UN resolutions calling for a referendum in Kashmir. Britain's India Act of 1947 gave the Kashmiris the right to choose to be part of India or part of Pakistan. Evolution of Kashmiri opinion since means that any referendum must allow for a third option: independence. The only international forum that could force a referendum is the UN. It can impose an arms embargo and other sanctions on India and Pakistan if they ignore UN resolutions. The UN is missed a similar opportunity to prevent the planet's last act of genocide in Rwanda in 1994. President Clinton did not want the UN to intervene. He feared that invoking the UN's Genocide Convention would mean sending American troops again to Africa in the aftermath of the Somalia débcle. The UN commander in Rwanda, Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, had 2,500 troops. He pleaded with the chief of peacekeeping in New York for another 3,000, plus armoured cars and other protective equipment, to prevent the genocide that his informants assured him was on the way. His UN force was so ill-prepared that General Dallaire cabled to the UN: 'They [UN troops] will hand over these local people for inevitable killing rather than use their weapons to save local people.' The local UN commander in Kigali, Belgian Colonel Luc Marchal, told me later: 'I still have the feeling that we were in a desert... during weeks and weeks, we were crying and nobody answered us.' More than 800,000 Rwandans were butchered by Hutu extremists using rifles, machetes and knives. The US, Belgium and France were informed about conditions in Rwanda. So was the head of UN peacekeeping, Kofi Annan. Neither Annan nor the US ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, informed the UN or called for an emergency session. Annan became UN Secretary General. Albright was appointed Secretary of State by Bill Clinton, who went on to win a second term of office. The lesson was: keep quiet, ignore genocide and win promotion. Rwandans killed nearly a million of their own with primitive weapons. How many more can Vajpayee and Musharraf kill with their armouries of mass destruction? What precedent will UN inaction now set for other countries - Russia, China or Israel - considering the quick fix of an atomic bomb or two? Perhaps times have not changed all that much. On Armistice Day in 1948, American General Omar Bradley lamented: 'Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.'

BBC 21 June, 2002, Gujarat refugees told camps will close Many Muslims have no homes to go back to By Jill McGivering BBC correspondent in Delhi In the city of Ahmedabad in the Indian state of Gujarat, there is growing concern for thousands of Muslims still sheltering in makeshift camps almost four months after fleeing from their homes. Ahmedabad saw much violence during the riots The government says it will close the relief camps by the end of June but many of the people there either have nowhere to go or are too frightened to leave. About 150,000 Muslims took refuge in compounds attached to schools and mosques after religious violence broke out in late February. Most have left, but the fate of those still seeking shelter has become uncertain. The government says the camps must close when it stops supplies of water and food. Nowhere to go As another incentive, some food rations will be continued to help people who go back home. Many people are still homeless Many camp organisers are also trying to persuade people to leave. Some are said to be overwhelmed by how long this crisis has lasted. What was envisaged as a short-term need for shelter and sanctuary has become a long-term commitment, made all the more difficult by the onset of the monsoon rains. But some non-government groups working with the displaced people say they simply do not have homes left to return to and need more support. Many Muslim homes and businesses were burned down and possessions looted. Financial help The government is giving compensation to victims of the riots, but some Muslims complain it is too little. One man said it was not even enough to buy plastic sheeting to protect a family from the rain. As well as practical difficulties, those working with the displaced people say there is still a mood of fear and insecurity despite assurances from the government that they are safe. There is also disagreement about how many people are still in the camps. Government officials say there are fewer than 19,000, but many local journalists put the figure at almost 50,000.

Iraq

Al-Ahram (Egypt) 6 - 12 June 2002 Issue No.589 Charm amid chaos Though war-torn, divided, and seemingly forever beleaguered, Iraq's Kurdistan has a lot to offer. Khaled El-Fiqi liked an Abbasid era stone bridge and the traditional male attire of Dahuk -- Long and winding roads lead to Iraq's Kurdistan. Regardless of what route you choose, moreover, you are bound to be harassed at the borders. Turkey allows no one to pass. Iran and Syria are, grudgingly, more accommodating. I had to drive from Damascus to Kameshli, a town in Syria's northeastern reaches. There, I crossed the Iraqi border into a zone controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Masoud Barzani's KDP is one of the two major groups in Iraq's Kurdistan. Its rival, the Jalal Talabani-led Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), had given me permission in Cairo to make the visit. So, at the first checkpoint, I had some explaining to do. The KDP official in charge heard me out, consulted his superiors and, two hours later, graciously handed me a permit to proceed to PUK-controlled Al- Sulaymaniyah. Click to view caption MODERNITY AMID THE RUBBLE: A gruelling six-hour car ride from the border, Al-Sulaymaniyah is a surprisingly easy- going city surrounded by mountains on almost all sides. It had fallen on hard times, but its fortunes had improved after the oil- for-food arrangement was implemented. According to the UN- sponsored deal, Kurdistan receives about 13 per cent of Iraq's oil revenues, a sum that proved sufficient to rehabilitate some 3,500 Kurdish villages, but was apparently insufficient to improve the area's dilapidated roads. Still, for a region devastated by civil strife and two major wars, the city was remarkably calm. It also had a modern aspect. Often described as the cultural capital of Kurdistan, Al- Sulaymaniyah lives up to its reputation with surprising grace. It has a reasonable infrastructure of communications -- Internet, mobile phone and dish antennas. Despite the modest per capita income of 500 Iraqi dinars (less than $30) per month, food is plentiful and most can afford it. Women are dressed in a variety of European fashions. And, if you can afford eating out, the biriani and stuffed vegetable dishes are delicious. Not everyone, of course, can afford to eat in restaurants. The poor still live in refugee camps. I visited a camp that was built four years ago in Bard Qarman. There, about 1,000 families are accommodated in makeshift tents covered with plastic sheets and exist on relief donations. The local government, mindful of the economy, provides free education in Kurdish. The teaching of Arabic starts at fifth grade. When I questioned the practice, I was told how the Iraqi regime had repressed the Kurdish language in the past. Education officials said that once the situation improved they planned to have Arabic taught at first grade. Most Kurds depend on animal husbandry. The mountains and valleys abound in grazing areas and animals are allowed to graze freely. You can buy a sheep for about $30 dollars -- a cow costs ten times more. A few years of drought interrupted the hydro-electric power supply, so most Kurds use generators to light their homes and businesses. This, however, only partially solves the problem. Petrol, which is provided solely by the Iraqi government, is in short supply. Although it is relatively cheap, cars wait in line for hours at the pumps. Plenty of rain fell last year and the dams filled up. This could ease the situation. But money must first be found to repair the power grid. CITY OF THE FOUR GODDESSES; Irbil (the name, I was told, means 'four goddesses') is the capital of the region and one of Kurdistan's oldest towns. Its most imposing feature is its castle. Perched on a sand hill and surrounded by an enormous moat, the castle houses entire markets, expansive residential areas, and a massive, if dilapidated, mosque. These date back to the early days of Islam. It is hard to tell where Irbil begins and the countryside ends. The city is a maze of circular alleys, and the traffic is befittingly confusing. The surrounding farms produce great wealth in large crops of barley and wheat. So much so that the area is often described as the granary of Kurdistan. Monuments abound. These include a Saladin castle. Beyond, green hills, intersected by streams and waterfalls, roll away into the distance -- a place to visit, certainly, once the traffic and politics are sorted out. A THRIVING COMMUNITY: Dahuk has a thriving merchant community, but electricity cuts can last six hours a day. When I tried to phone another Kurdish town, I discovered that I had to make an international call. Somebody told me later there are no direct telephone links between a number of Kurdish towns, mainly because of the political rivalries between the region's two leading parties. Thanks to its closeness to the Turkish and Iranian borders, Dahuk shops, Port Said-style, brim with goods from Turkey, China, Iran, Syria, Indonesia, and elsewhere. Strangely, though, for an open city, the men of Dahuk retain their centuries old dress: baggy, striped trousers and turbans. The village of Imadiyah, 1,400 metres above sea level, is perhaps the only place in the world that decreases in area as it becomes more populous. Built on a pinnacle, it loses its soil to erosion by the elements as its population increases. The view compensates for the precarious setting: orchard-covered hills and springs glinting in the sunshine. Another outstanding feature is the Abbasid bridge near Zaku. In obvious need of repair, the stone-built, 117-metre bridge stands on massive slabs of rock neatly arranged at the bottom of the river. It alone would attract sightseers, once the region becomes more accessible to tourists.

Indonesia

Bangkok Post 7 June 2002 Four killed in bus blast Worst violence to hit area since peace deal A bomb exploded inside a bus packed with commuters in central Indonesia, killing four people and injuring 17 others, police said yesterday. The explosion on Wednesday afternoon occurred as the bus carrying 25 people was headed towards Poso, the district capital of Central Sulawesi, a province with a history of violence between Muslims and Christians. The bombing was the worst violence to hit the region since the warring factions signed a peace agreement in December, but police could not say who was behind the attack. It called into question recent statements by military leaders who insisted that peace was taking hold in Central Sulawesi. Because of the region's remoteness, it took time for the news of the blast to reach Jakarta. A sprawling nation of about 17,000 islands, Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago; Poso is about 1,600km northeast of the capital Jakarta. Police said they were inspecting the badly damaged bus yesterday. They said they were looking for three unidentified passengers who got off the bus before the blast and were questioning six other people who were on the bus, including the bus driver. Victims _ some of them injured seriously _ were rushed to three hospitals. Police did not give their religions. Poso was calm yesterday with most businesses opening as usual. But police were on high alert and all vehicles entering the coastal town were checked for weapons. Indonesian National Police Chief Gen Da'i Bachtiar, who was on a visit to the island of Lombok, urged residents in Central Sulawesi to remain calm despite the blast. ``The explosion of the commuter bus constituted a provocation attempt by those who don't want to see the society in Central Sulawesi living quietly and peacefully,'' Gen Bachtiar told the state-run Antara news agency. Two years of fighting _ fuelled by the presence of the paramilitary Islamic group Laskar Jihad _ have killed about 1,000 residents and displaced thousands more in the province. Tensions have risen recently in Poso, where newspapers reported a series of mysterious home-made bombs exploded there last week. No one was injured, but a number of shops were destroyed. The Jakarta Post newspaper reported on Saturday that the Indonesian military had begun withdrawing about 1,500 troops from the region. Military officials said on Saturday the pullout showed security had improved in Poso. Since the fall of former dictator Suharto in 1998, Indonesia has been wracked by separatist and religious violence, though predictions that the country would break apart have not materialised. Yesterday, government troops and separatist rebels gave conflicting casualty figures for fierce fighting this week in the restive province of Aceh, in western Indonesia. In a gun battle yesterday, a military spokesman said three rebels were killed when troops ambushed them on a street in Pidie district, northern Aceh. The military said a rebel and a police officer were killed in two gun battles in Aceh on Tuesday. Rebels insisted seven policemen were killed in those clashes. They gave no immediate account of yesterday's gun battle.

AFP 11 Jun 2002 -- Indonesian VP meets Muslim, Christian leaders in riot-torn Ambon AMBON, Indonesia, June 11 (AFP) - Indonesian Vice President Hamzah Haz Tuesday met with Muslim and Christian leaders in riot-hit Ambon city to try to find a lasting solution to three years of sectarian conflict. Haz, who arrived with a large retinue of 80 officials shortly before noon in Ambon, met with the representatives, ahead of a weapons handover due to take place later in the day. Members of the two communities have battled each other since January 1999 in violence which has left more than 5,000 dead and half-a-million refugees. Before the meeting, Haz accompanied by Maluku Governor Saleh Latuconsina and local military and police, made a tightly guarded brief visit to the village of Soya in the hills south of the city to meet survivors of an armed attack in April which left 13 people dead. The April 28 pre-dawn attack, in which an ancient church was also torched, shattered a shaky peace which had descended on the eastern Malukus islands after a state-brokered peace pact in February. "This incident which has claimed lives was not our wish and this is a bitter experience which should not repeat itself," Haz told the crowd, quoted by the Antara news agency. The vice president, through Welfare Minister Bachtiar Chamsah, donated 100 million rupiah (11,400 dollars) to the village for the reconstruction of the burned church. Lining the streets to Soya were hundreds of school children waving small Indonesian flags. Haz was due to perform an afternoon prayer at the Al Fatah main mosque here and attend an official ceremony at the mosque, where Muslim fighters will hand over weapons and explosives. He will also meet other religious and community leaders at a forestry office which has accommodated the local provincial administration since the governor's office was torched last month, the official schedule shows. Officials have said Haz's visit to Ambon, the capital of Maluku province, aimed to "find a solution for the long conflicts in Maluku and to follow up past government efforts" to end the sectarian violence. Travelling with him were national police chief General Da'i Bachtiar, Resettlement and Infrastructure Minister Soenarno (eds: one name), Religious Affairs Minister Said Agil Munawar, Health Minister Ahmad Sujudi and the president's Military Secretary Major General Tubagus Hasanuddin. The vice president is due to return to the capital late Tuesday.

AFP 11 Jun 2002 -- Gunmen shoot dead parliamentarian in Indonesia's restive Aceh BANDA ACEH, Indonesian, June 11 (AFP) - Two gunmen shot dead a district parliamentarian at his home in Indonesia's restive province of Aceh Tuesday, police said. Taslim Jalil, from the Islamic "Star and Cresent Party" was shot dead in Lhoknga near the provincial capital of Banda Aceh a few hours before dawn on Tuesday, Adjunct Senior Police Commissioner Dadek Achmad told journalists. The gunmen, who wore military fatigues and were armed with a rifle, were believed to be members of the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM), he said. No one has so far claimed responsibility for the murder. Meanwhile, violence involving the GAM, which has been fighting for a free Islamic state since 1976, and government forces has claimed another eight lives across Aceh since Saturday. Four badly decomposed bodies were found in Tanoh Santeut, in West Aceh district, in Sunday, a local humanitarian activist said. In a separate incident, two civilians were killed and a soldier missing after a military convoy was ambushed by rebels in the hills of Blang Keujren in the district of Southeast Aceh on Saturday, Aceh military spokesman Major Zaenal Muttaqin said. An officer was also wounded and has been flown for medical treatment to Medan in neighbouring North Sumatra province, he added. Muttaqin also said troops shot dead a suspected guerrilla in a clash in Peureulak in East Aceh district on Sunday. A soldier was also wounded in the shootout. Five gunmen also shot dead a private contractor at his home on the outskirts of Lhokseumawe, the main town in North Aceh district, late on Sunday, Muttaqin said, adding he believed the assailants were GAM members. More than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in the conflict, including over 500 this year alone.

AFP 9 Jun 2002 -- At least nine killed in latest string of violence in Indonesia's Aceh BANDA ACEH, Indonesia, June 9 (AFP) - At least nine people have been killed in the Indonesian province of Aceh where soldiers are hunting separatist rebels, the military and residents said Sunday. Three members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) were shot dead by troops in Idi Rayeuk, East Aceh, on Saturday, Aceh military spokesman Major Zaenal Muttaqin said. Another rebel was wounded and has been detained, Muttaqin said, adding there had been no casualties among troops. But the local GAM spokesman, Ishak Daud, told AFP that only one rebel had been killed. He also said the military suffered heavy casualties and that three helicopters landed in the area to evacuate the victims. Daud said that troops shot dead four civilians, including a teenage girl, during an operation to hunt down rebels in the area. He also accused soldiers of killing a man and his wife and wounding another woman during a similar anti-rebel operation in Simpang Ulim, East Aceh on Friday. Muttaqin brushed aside Daud's claim saying, it was "the usual GAM manipulation to corner the security personnel." However, he admitted that a sergeant major had been fatally wounded in a grenade attack on his home by unknown gunmen in Samalanga, Bireun district late Friday. Two rebels were also shot dead by troops in a clash in Matangkuli, North Aceh late on Friday, he said. But GAM spokesman for the area, Tengku Jamaika, said the two were civilians. Also in North Aceh, a civilian was killed and four others, including two women, were wounded after troops fired indiscriminately on a crowd in Jambo Aye on Saturday, residents said. In Ujung Langgo, in Pidie district, police say they shot dead two rebels on Friday, local police chief, Adjunct Senior Commissioner Maryanto (Eds; one name) said. "The two were involved in the murder of a policeman near Sigli town on February 24, 2002," Maryanto said. But Laweung denied the victims were rebels. "They were two local youths who just ran away at the sight of the police when they arrived in their village," he said. None of the claims of death have been independently verified. On Saturday, troops hunting GAM guerrillas stumbled into a four-hectare (9.9 acre) marijuana plantation, in Indrapuri subdistrict near the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, another spokesman for the Aceh military, Major Ertoto (Eds: one name) said. The owner of the almost ready-for-harvest field on the slopes of an isolated mountain remained unknown but Ertoto said the military suspected it belonged to the GAM as part of their fund raising efforts. The field and its crops were torched, he added. The GAM has been fighting for a free, Islamic state for Aceh since 1976. More than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in the conflict, including over 500 this year alone.

AFP 10 Jun 2002 -- Indonesia to send more police, troops to Poso after fresh violence JAKARTA, June 10 (AFP) - Indonesia is to send 560 more soldiers and police to a district of Sulawesi island where violence has resurfaced after some six months of peace between Muslims and Christians, a report said Monday. They will join 1,800 soldiers and policemen already in the Poso district, said the head of the security restoration operation there, Police Commissioner Sukirno (eds: one name). Sukirno, quoted by the state Antara news agency, said the reinforcements from other regions in Sulawesi would arrive by end of the month at the latest. "I do not know yet how long they will be assigned here but what is clear is that their arrival here is to anticipate provocation by individuals who do not want Poso to be safe and peaceful," Sukirno told Antara. Poso had experienced more than two years of intermittent violence between Muslims and Christians in which between 500 and 1,000 were killed and tens of thousands made homeless. More than 3,300 police and soldiers were deployed there but 1,500 men were gradually pulled out after a peace pact between the two camps in December. The peace was shattered after four people were killed in a bus bombing last week and a group of masked men killed a Muslim farmer on Sunday. Officials in Jakarta have vowed to find the culprits and prevent provocateurs from igniting further violence in Poso. Some officials blame unspecified "outsiders" rather than local Muslims and Christians for stirring up trouble.

BBC 11 June, 2002, Moluccas militants to hand over arms The handover is part of a deal to end violence Islamic militants in the Indonesian Moluccan islands are expected to hand over weapons and explosives on Tuesday during a scheduled visit by the country's vice-president, Hamzah Haz, to the provincial capital, Ambon. Vice-President Hamzah Haz is a prominent Muslim A military spokesman quoted by the French news agency AFP said the ceremony would be led by the Forum for Muslim Brotherhood of Maluku, which includes members of the extremist Islamic Laskar Jihad militia. The militia surrendered a cache of weapons in Ambon last month, saying more would be handed in provided the authorities continue investigating a Christian faction that it blames for fomenting sectarian violence. The two communities signed a peace pact earlier this year in which they called on militia groups to surrender their weapons, after a three-year conflict left thousands dead. But the deal has been undermined by a series of violent incidents, most notably the attack in April in which at least 12 Christian villagers were killed. Christians and Muslims in the Moluccas used to live peacefully. But in January 1999 violence erupted between the two communities, sparked by a minor traffic accident in the main city of Ambon. The violence intensified in mid-2000, with the arrival of the Laskar Jihad. Correspondents say the group is still the biggest obstacle to lasting peace. Some analysts link the group to Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, but both Laskar Jihad and the Indonesian authorities deny this.

BBC 19 June, 2002, Soldiers 'joined Timor church massacre' In Indonesia, the public prosecutor has told a human rights court that Indonesian soldiers and police joined in a massacre of independence supporters sheltering in a church in East Timor in 1999. Twenty-two people were shot, slashed and beaten to death in the attack. The allegations were made on the first day of the trial of three more Indonesian government officials - including a military and a police commander -- on charges of crimes against humanity. The prosecutor said that the three defendants knew that pro-Indonesian militiamen were preparing to attack the church and that some of the men under their command were taking part. He accused them of failing to prevent the killings, or to punish any of their subordinates involved. The officials were among 18 Indonesians due to stand trial at the court, which Jakarta set up to deflect pressure for an international tribunal.

Israel

Jerusalem Post 11 Jun 2002 NSC's Dayan warns of demographic problem By NINA GILBERT The country needs to make a decision regarding its relationship with the Palestinians in the next few years, in light of the looming demographic threat to the existence of a Jewish state, National Security Council head Maj.-Gen. Uzi Dayan said yesterday. Dayan, who was appearing before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, noted that within 20 years, Jews will comprise only 45 percent of the total population in Israel and the territories, compared with some 55 percent today. The committee decided to step up efforts to formalize the legal status of the council. During the summer recess, the committee aims to complete its discussions on the council legislation. Under the bill, the activities and the role of the council will be given legal status, including the establishment of a professional team to advise the government. The council will be subordinate to the government. Dayan said there are three possible approaches to relations with the Palestinians. First, the war on terror can continue until the Palestinians understand that terror does not pay, and a state is established after they transform themselves. Another approach is the direct establishment of a Palestinian state, without any transitions. The third option would be the establishment of only one state. As for regional matters, he warned that there will not be democratization within the next 20 years, and the threat of weapons of mass destruction from Iran, Iraq, and Libya will continue. He said Syria will also amass these weapons, but not aim for nuclear capabilities. He said that as many as 20 to 25 states could be in the nuclear club in 20 years. Moreover, he warned that states that support terror are also liable to use nuclear weapons. Therefore he said the war on terror should be extended to efforts to block nuclearization. On the socio-economic front, Dayan said that the worsening economic situation would have an impact on education. He noted that fewer students are choosing to study science and math, and Iranian students are more advanced in math than Israelis.

Jerusalem Post 5 Jun 2002 Christian donors bringing 400 American immigrants By HAIM SHAPIRO AND TOVAH LAZAROFF When Rabbi Joshua Fass immigrates with his family on July 9, he will be bringing 400 other North Americans Jews with him on a chartered plane funded by an organization he created to finance immigration through the help of private donors, including a Christian group. It will be the first time in at least 25 years that such a large number of North American immigrants have arrived at one time, according to Akiva Werber of the Jewish Agency. Fass hopes this will be a quarterly event that will change the face of North American immigration through his new US group, Nefesh b'Nefesh. Working in conjunction with the Jewish Agency and the Absorption Ministry, it offers economic assistance in the form of one-time grants of $5,000 to $25,000 to each new arrival or family, with the help of private donors. Funding for this initial group of 400 comes mostly from a $2 million grant from the International Fellowship of Christian and Jews. Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the group's president, said this is the first time American Christians are funding Jewish immigration to Israel. In the past, he said, the mainly evangelical Christian supporters of the organization had helped Jews from elsewhere immigrate. "In recent years, we have made it possible for hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union, Ethiopia, and most recently, Argentina, to realize their dream of coming home to Israel. Now, we have the privilege of enabling this new wave of aliya to come from North America. "Naturally, I hope that our support will serve to trigger many more olim, and that the American Jewish community will, itself, regard aliya as a priority to fund in the future,"he said. He said the contribution was made possible thanks to the fellowship's 250,000 predominantly Christian donors, who give millions of dollars every year to fund a variety of projects to help Israel. He added that many of the donors are children, elderly people, or single parents who themselves have limited means. He said that he is convinced there are many American Jews who wanted to come to Israel, but are unable to do so for lack of funds. This was especially true, he said, of young people who are just starting out in life and who are the best candidates for aliya. Fass said it was precisely this reason that he started the organization. When he and his wife first announced their intention to immigrate, many friends said they wished to join them but could not afford to do so. Fass was inspired to see if he could help them. After doing a market study and securing funding from Florida businessman and co-founder Tony Gelbart, Fass met with Jewish Agency immigration emissaries. They told him they had 500 to 600 families who wanted to immigrate, but couldn't afford to do so. "I told them to call the applicants back in,"Fass said. The program has grown faster and larger than he anticipated, with thousands of applicants up through the year 2005. He hopes to bring at least one chartered plane every three months. This summer, a second group of at least 150 North American immigrants will arrive, bringing the total to 550. Last year, 1,378 North American Jews immigrated, according to Jewish Agency statistics that show the numbers have been steadily dropping from 1995, when 2,503 North American Jews came. North American Jews have never made up a large portion of immigrants only 111,096 out of 2.8 million immigrants who have arrived since 1948. The banner year was 1971, when 8,122 came. Without the Nefesh b'Nefesh program, the Jewish Agency was expecting the number of North American immigrants to rise slightly, Werber said. Now it's likely it might match the figures in the early 1990s, when more than 2,000 came in any given year. A Nefesh b'Nefesh office has been created to help absorb the immigrants. "I do not just want numbers, I want success stories. I do not want them to feel like they have been abandoned,"said Fass. The Jerusalem office offers a 12-hour hot line and psychiatric support. It pairs the immigrants with employment mentors and Israeli families who can be their social buddies, so they do not remain in an American bubble. It will also offer seminars on common problems, such as adjusting to a new school system and separating from friends and family, Fass said. His desire to come to Israel was born out of tragedy. Before Pessah in 2001, a 14-year-old relative was killed in a suicide bombing near Petah Tikva. After the anger and sorrow subsided, he felt compelled to fill the void left by the loss of his relative by coming with his family. With the help of Nefesh B'Nefesh, there will be thousands of Jews who can fill that void. "It will set the stage for putting aliya on the North American agenda. It will heightens the feasibility of aliya. There are a lot of dreams that can come to fruition through this,"Werber said. Information on the organization can be found on the Internet at www.nefeshbnefesh.org.

LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment 11 Jun 2002 -- Israeli forces surround school and kept students hostage Israeli occupation forces continue their widespread offensive in Ramallah and arbitrarily detained dozens of Palestinian residents. This morning, Israeli forces surrounded the Academy of Educational Sciences, which is run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), in the Masyoun area of Ramallah. Students were handcuffed, taken into a room, and Israeli soldiers took their pictures. They were taken hostage for around eight hours. According to Ahmad Khaloof, one of the students, around fifty students were arrested and taken away to an unknown destination. The Israeli siege ended around noon. Arbitrary arrest or detention is clearly prohibited under international law. Article 9(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that 'no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention.' Article 10(1) states that 'all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.' Moreover, article 9(5) states that 'anyone who has been the victim of unlawful arrest or detention shall have an enforceable right to compensation.' The Israeli invasion of Ramallah has caused food shortages as dozens of Palestinians are held under curfew at their workplaces without food. For instance, yesterday, Monday, June 10, thirty workers were held at the taxi station in central Ramallah, without access to food or water. Israeli infantry patrolling the streets of Ramallah threw stun grenades at persons watching from their windows. A number of doors of stores were blown away. For instance, the door of Nassar's fashion store and al- Shiesh restaurant in downtown Ramallah were blown away by Israeli soldiers. Eyewitnesses said that they saw buses taking Palestinian detainees to the 'Ofer Detention Center, which is located in Beitunia, west of Ramallah. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment, 'no protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.' Articles 55-57 and 58-63 of the Fourth Geneva Convention concern the mandatory provision of basic necessities to the civilian population. Israel is bound by the obligation to ensure the normal supply and facilitate the distribution of food-stuffs, medical supplies, and other essential items, and to ensure the normal functioning of medical personnel, services, and institutions'. The use of curfew regulations as a punitive measure, including their imposition in order to facilitate human rights abuse, or their enforcement in such a way as to deny civilian residents basic humanitarian services and unjustifiably disrupt civil life, is absolutely prohibited by international law. LAW, repeats its urgent calls on the international community to take effective measures in order to protect the rights and lives of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and specifically to immediately send an independent, effective protection force to the area. LAW is gravely concerned about the fate of thousands of Palestinian political prisoners who are still in custody, without charge or trial, often under administrative detention orders which may be renewed indefinitely. There is strong evidence that the majority of those detained have been arbitrarily detained, and that thousands of Palestinians have been rounded up, humiliated, ill-treated and held in poor conditions as a collective punishment. LAW further calls on the Israeli government to ensure that the rights of detainees are protected in accordance with international human rights and humanitarian law. Moreover, LAW calls on the international community, in particular the member states of the European Union to ensure Israel's respect for the Fourth Geneva Convention and to live up to their legal obligations, and calls for an end to all acts by states aiding and abetting the perpetration of gross violations of human rights, including by ending supply of all arms used to perpetrate such crimes. LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment is a non-governmental organisation dedicated to preserving human rights through legal advocacy. LAW is affiliate to the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), and the World Organisation Organisation Against Torture (OMCT). LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, PO Box 20873, Jerusalem, tel. +972-2-5833530, fax. +972-2- 5833317, email: law@lawsociety.org, web: www.lawsociety.org

Al-Ahram (Egypt) 6 - 12 June 2002 Issue No.589 Region Judicial partiality? Jonathan Cook reports from Jerusalem on the legal chances of ending the Israeli practice of using Palestinian civilians as human shields -- Under mounting legal pressure, the Israeli army has promised to stop using Palestinian civilians as human shields, a practice widely employed during Israel's recent military invasion of the West Bank according to evidence compiled by human rights groups. The army made the promise during a hearing before the Israeli high court, although it refused to confirm or deny whether it had a policy of using human shields. But lawyers at the Adalah centre for Arab minority rights in Israel, which filed the petition, said the military's decision to issue an order banning the use of human shields was an implicit admission that soldiers were resorting to such tactics. Adalah doubted, however, that even with the ban in place it would be possible to prove to the court's satisfaction that in individual cases people had been taken as human shields. The dossier submitted to the court by seven Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups includes many examples of Palestinian non-combatants being taken hostage and forced to assist the army, often at gunpoint. The most common practice, according to the testimonies, was for civilians to be coerced into entering buildings in which the army suspected militants were hiding. In the worst cases, individuals were taken for days at a time. In several towns during Israel's recent Operation Defensive Shield there were also examples of soldiers posting Palestinian men at windows and using their shoulders as rests from which to fire their weapons. All such uses of civilians are prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention and constitute a war crime. In one case documented by the Israeli human rights group Betselem, six Israeli soldiers entered the Al-Baq Mosque in the casbah of Nablus, which was being used as an emergency hospital, on 8 April. According to one of the doctors inside, Dr Zahra al-Wawi, the soldiers arrived with their guns on the shoulders of Palestinian civilians. In another case, Dr Mohamed Iscafi, the director of the leading Palestinian medical charity, the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, was taken hostage by an army unit in the centre of Ramallah. The Israeli commander told Iscafi that he believed Palestinian gunmen in the building next door had made their way into his building after they came under heavy fire. The doctor was ordered to help in a search of the offices. "I refused to co-operate, saying I was a doctor and they had no right to hold me, but he [the commander] wasn't interested in my opinions," Iscafi said. "They took me to the first locked door on the ground floor and used explosives to open it. As the smoke cleared, I was told to go inside. They said they would come in behind me. I realised I was being used as a human shield." The doctor searched some 20 offices, all of them empty. The soldiers then took him to the neighbouring building, which had been badly shelled by tanks. "Again they sent me into each room first. I knew there had been gunmen in there, so I was very frightened. On the top floor, two offices were still smoldering and giving off toxic fumes, but the soldiers insisted I went in first," Iscafi said. "Afterwards the commander thanked me, saying 'Without your help, we could not have entered the building.' There were about 20 soldiers in the group and a few seemed really uncomfortable watching me being treated like that. But most of them didn't seem to care." The Israeli army has consistently denied using human shields. After an army investigation at the Jenin refugee camp, where some of the worst incidents were documented, spokesmen were prepared to concede only that one Palestinian woman had been asked to go back into her house to ask others to come out. But testimonies such as Iscafi's have been supported by the accounts of ordinary soldiers. One reserve sergeant, Nati Aharoni, told the army's weekly newspaper Bamahaneh on April 12 of his experiences searching a building in Qalqaliya. "We had entered the building in the past and were afraid that this time the Palestinians might have left explosive devices for us," he was quoted as saying. "So according to normal practice the unit commander took a Palestinian from a neighbouring house and made him look through the place. Then we shook his hand and thanked him." According to Betselem, such actions are not taken simply on the initiative of a local commander. Using human shields, says spokesman Lior Yavne, is an "operational recommendation" in the army, and is regarded an effective way to safeguard soldiers' lives. There have been Palestinian claims of soldiers taking civilian hostages through much of the current Intifada. Last summer, for example, the Ha'aretz newspaper reported that the army took over a house with a family of 20 inside in Beit Jala and used them as protection against gunfire from Aida refugee camp. At the court hearing last week, the Israeli army agreed to "immediately issue a decisive order" imposing an absolute ban on all of the forces in the field from using civilians as hostages or as a means to "humanly shield" Israeli soldiers from fire or "terrorist attacks by the Palestinian side". The army also said it would "clarify" that it was forbidden to force Palestinians to enter other residents' homes unless the local commander thought such activity would not put a civilian in danger. Marwan Dalal, of Adalah, who filed the petition, said: "This qualification is totally unacceptable for two reasons. One, no Palestinian wants to help the Israeli army and so such actions always involve coercion, which is prohibited by International Law. And two, how can the commander know all the facts, how can he be sure that there is no danger to a Palestinian hostage?" Adalah has demanded to see the order on the use of human shields, issued by the army, and wants to know details of what is permitted for local commanders. The court has given the army until later this month to respond. The lawyers, however, believe the chances of ending the practice of taking human shields are slim. The standard of proof demanded by Israeli courts in cases involving security issues is extremely high. If the judges must choose between believing the accounts of soldiers and Palestinians they are likely to favour the army. During the Intifada some judges have even confessed to a lack of impartiality. In a petition brought by Israeli Arab MK Mohamed Barakeh earlier this year to stop the army's assassinations of militant Palestinian leaders, Judge Mishael Cheshin said he wanted the policy maintained because it would prevent his son, who was serving in the army, from having to venture into dangerous areas to arrest suspects. "My son goes into that [Palestinian] territory and I don't want to endanger him," he said. Almost all of the petitions filed by human rights groups during Operation Defensive Shield failed in the Israeli courts, including attempts to stop the aerial bombardment of Jenin camp and to end the policy of the widespread demolishing of homes. Dalal said he believed the army had issued the order on human shields to avoid prosecution at possible future international war crimes tribunals. He feared that by issuing the order military commanders would be able to claim they had disciplined offending soldiers in internal inquiries.

Gulf News (United Arab Emirates) 21 June 2002 Church supports martyrdom Abu Dhabi |By Nissar Hoath | 20-06-2002 Martyrdom by Palestinian men and women is part of intifada, which serves their struggle against Israeli atrocities and cannot be separated from their liberation movement, said a visiting official of the Orthodox Church in occupied Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Addressing a packed crowd at the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up in the capital, Father Dr Attallah Hanna, official spokesman of the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, said last night he supported martyrdom by Palestinian men and women to fight for their just rights. Father Attallah said the basic principle of all Palestinian political parties is the continuation of intifada against Israeli atrocities. Therefore, he said, the Church fully supports the uprising to achieve the objectives of freedom from Israel. Giving his full support to martyrdom, the spokesman of the Orthodox Church in the Holy Land said: "As you know, political parties in Palestine agree to the continuation of the intifada, which includes different approaches of struggle. "Some freedom fighters adopt martyrdom or suicide bombing, while others opt for other measures. But all these struggles serve the continued intifada for freedom. Therefore, we support all these causes." He said Palestinian people should be steadfast in their struggle to be heard by the world community. The veteran prelate said Palestinian people have been forced to adopt martyrdom by Israeli aggressors. "It is the Israeli Zionist regime that is committing genocide in Palestine by killing innocent women and children. Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves from the Israeli barbarism and atrocities," Father Attallah said. "We are part of the intifada, so you don't expect us to keep distance and watch. We are in the struggle, whether it's martyrdom or any other means, we are part of it," he said. Referring to the Christian community in Palestine, he said it was the Israeli conspiracy to show the world that it was a Muslim struggle and Christians and other community members had nothing to do with it. "Let me make it clear that Muslims and Christians are one and cannot be separated from the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. We are Palestinians and Arabs," he said. The Orthodox Church official further said Palestinian Christians have suffered under Israeli Zionist rule as much as Muslims. He said Israeli troops have been committing genocide against Palestinian Christians since 1948. He said an Orthodox Church has been occupied by Israeli settlers for more than 15 years, which itself shows how Palestinian Christians are suffering under Israeli occupation. "We are one people. Whether Muslims or Christians, we are Palestinians and Arabs and we will continue our struggle till we achieve freedom," he assured the Church supporters. Referring to the number of Christians in Palestine, he said the number had decreased due to forceful migration by Israeli troops since the occupation of Arab lands. "The current two per cent Christians in Palestine are an integral part of our Muslim brothers. They are as loyal to the struggle as they are. There have been pioneering leaders in the struggle for the freedom among Christians in Palestine," he said. "Our main aim is liberation of the occupied land with Jerusalem as the Capital city of an independent Palestine. All the Arabs are Palestinians, whether Muslims or Christians," Father Attallah said. He said Israel, with its Western allies, portrays Palestinian issue as a conflict between Jews and Muslims. "Let me tell the world that it is not the issue. The conflict is between the truth and Israeli lies. If it was a religious conflict, the Christians would not have come to the picture. Christians are part and parcel of the Palestinian struggle for the freedom," he said.

Gulf News (United Arab Emirates) 21 June 2002 Call to protest against Israeli genocide Abu Dhabi Dr Fr Attallah Hanna The Orthodox Church of Jerusalem has urged churches around the world to protest against against Israeli atrocities committed against innocent women and children in the Holy Land. Dr Fr Attallah Hanna, official spokesman of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, called upon the churches to break their silence over the Israeli genocide. Delivering a lecture at the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up, Dr Fr Hanna said: "We call upon world churches, especially the Vatican, to raise their voices against barbaric acts of Israel and play their role to help bring permanent peace in the region. "We call upon the world Christian community to extend their support to the Palestinian people in their struggle against Israeli brutalities." Dr Fr Hanna said though each church has its own characteristic, it is their duty to reject injustice and exploitation. Referring to calls for a political party by Palestinian Christians, he said such a move will worsen the situation and create division among the people. "We have no problem with the Christian community joining any political party in Palestine, but we reject and refuse a Christian party. It will further divide Muslims and Christians on sectarian grounds, which will only serve the interests of the Zionists." Elaborating on churches in the U.S., Dr Fr Hanna said there are various groups in the United States that have committed themselves to solely serve the Zionist interests of the Israeli government. "In fact, they are not churches but Zionist shops to serve their interests. They interpret the Holy Verses of the Bible to serve Zionist interests." The Orthodox Church official also clarified that Palestinian Christians are being ill-treated for their affiliation to the Orient or the East. He explained that Christianity originated from the Arab civilisation in the east. "It is a wrong notion in the West that Christianity is the religion of the West. The faith spread from Palestine, the country of Sham (Syria) in the Arab world," he said. "We are being oppressed by Israeli regimes for our affiliation with region. We are proud to be affiliated with the Arab civilisation where our roots come from," Dr Fr Hanna said. He also referred to the UAE's support to the Palestinian people in their war against evil. He said the people of Palestine, both Muslims and Christians, are grateful to the UAE and its people for their continued support. "I want to address a word to our brothers in the UAE. Thanks for your care and generous support. We are grateful for all that you have done for our women and children," he said. Dr Fr Hanna also thanked President His Highness Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan for his support and pledge to rebuild the houses of Palestinian people, the refugee camps and mosques and churches demolished by Israeli troops. "The noble stance of His Highness Sheikh Zayed and the UAE role towards humanitarian and social services have a special place in every heart in Palestine," he said.

Jerusalem Post 13 June 2002 THE MIDDLE EAST WAR IS A GENOCIDAL WAR MADE BY THE ARABS Jorge L. Rivera Fort Knox, Kentucky U.S.A. (13 Jun 2002) jlriveras@juno.com June 13, 2002 Dear Friends: Despite all that is being said about genocide, this war between Israel and the Palestinians is just that: one race fighting for survival, while the other (Palestinians) is fighting to destroy the one trying to survive. Sooner or later Israel is going to have to FINALLY decide between the survival of the nation and the destruction of the Palestinians. It is just a matter of time. The only problem is that time is running out right now. In the same way that time has ran out for many Israelis whom have died horrible deaths at the hands of Palestinians. time will also run out to those left behind. This decision is a decision of survival: do the Palestinians accomplish their goal, or do the Israelis stop them cold before they have a chance of doing it. Remember, the 'homicidal' 'suicide' bombers are just one offensive arm of the Palestinians. The 'other' offensive arm is still planning a catastrophe ten times bigger than September 11 against the Israelis. When this happens, then what? Will the Israeli government just blow up a few 'empty' buildings as a matter of protest? Would the Israeli population accept the catastrophe as just 'something inevitable' and just continue with their 'lives?' Will Israel as a nation be content with the 'catastrophe' thinking that other catastrophes WILL NOT FOLLOW? As you can see, little by little Israel is being pushed into a corner by her enemies. This decision about crushing, destroying, preempting, eliminating, and the exiling of the Palestinians IS coming to rest on the Israeli lap for the Israelis to decide. It will be a decision of survival. Right now 51% of the Palestinians are in favor of the 'homicidal' bombings, of armed struggle against Israel, the destruction of Israel as a nation, and the murder of ALL Jews in the Middle East. So, no matter what the 'politically correct' wise men and women say about this war, it has come to be just that: the survival of who is stronger, the survival of who have a stronger will, the survival of who is fittest to continue living. Jorge L. Rivera

Jerusalem Post Jun. 21, 2002 Three Palestinian children killed in Jenin; IDF: crew acted "mistakenly" By THE JERUSALEM POST INTERNET STAFF Three Palestinian children and a 50-year old man were killed, and tens of others were wounded in Jenin, when the IDF fired at Palestinian residents in the town's market, Palestinian sources said. IDF Spokesman said an IDF crew conducting house to house searches in Jenin for an explosives laboratory, encountered a gathering of Palestinians breaching the curfew that was imposed on the town on Thursday. The crew fired 2 tank shells with the aim of dispersing the gathering, Three Palestinians were killed from the fire and another 10 were injured, IDF Spokesman said. Preliminary investigation into the incident showed the crew acted "mistakenly", an IDF Spokesman announcement said. The IDF was continuing its investigation of the incident, the announcement said.

New Zealand

AFP 4 June 2002 NZ apologises to Samoa From Michael Field in Samoa   NEW Zealand offered Samoa a formal and almost abject apology today for events over 70 years ago during the colonial era in this Pacific nation. The tragedies included a catastrophic epidemic and the gunning down of pacifist protesters on Apia's streets by New Zealand Police. The apology was delivered here by New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark at a state lunch marking the 40th anniversary of the re-establishment of independence it initially lost to Germany in 1900. "On behalf of the New Zealand Government, I wish to offer today a formal apology to the people of Samoa for the injustices arising from New Zealand's administration of Samoa in its earlier years, and to express sorrow and regret for those injustices," Clark said. The depth of the apology appears to have caught Samoa by surprise, particularly as they were not asking for one. Clark arrived here yesterday to a very low key welcome with not even her Samoan counterpart, Tuileapa Sailele, turning out to greet her at the airport. However, there are over 115,000 people of Samoan descent in New Zealand, 60 per cent of them born there, and they are politically active, mostly favouring Clark's ruling Labour Party. Clark said she was "troubled by some unfinished business", news of which was still "a revelation to many New Zealanders". Samoa was annexed by Germany in 1900 and seized by New Zealand at the start of World War I. It was a League of Nations mandated territory, later a UN trusteeship under Wellington's administration. Independence was re-established in 1962. In 1918 New Zealand administrators knew the ship Talune, which had arrived in Samoa, was carrying Spanish influenza, but they still let people ashore. In the following two weeks over 22 per cent of the population died in what was the world's worst single case of the epidemic. Neighbouring American Samoa, which has strict quarantine regulations, never got the virus although Talune went on to take it to Tonga and Fiji. The blunder led to a pacifist movement, the Mau, calling for independence. In 1929 as the Mau paraded peacefully behind a brass band, New Zealand police, equipped with rifles and a machine gun, opened fire and killed at least nine protesters on the day and wounded 50 more. Among the dead was the high chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III, who was shot at while holding his arms high calling for peace. The "Black Saturday" killings at the time were compared, proportionately, to the April 1919 Amristar massacre in India in which British soldiers killed 400 unarmed protesters. Britain has never formally apologised to India over that. Clark's apology is also in marked contrast to Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who has steadfastly resisted apologising to Aborigines over crimes committed against them since white rule began more than 200 years ago. Clark said the early colonial administration also banished Samoan leaders and stripped some of their chiefly titles. "These actions split families apart and many families lost their titles forever." Clark said she hoped the apology would enable New Zealand to build an even stronger relationship with Samoa. "New Zealand and Samoa are bound together by our geography, our history, our cultural and family links, and today, by our trade and diplomacy," Clark said. "It is important that we are also bound by our mutual respect for each other." Clark is due to attend a dinner tonight with former prime minister Tupua Tamasese Efi, who is the nephew of the murdered chief. His home at Tuaefu has become a shrine to the Mau movement. Earlier he said an apology would be a comfort because she would be making the sacrifice of these people an important issue: "To me there is a spiritual healing that will be gotten from this apology. Especially to me because I am Tamasese," he said.

New Zealand Herald 4 June 2002 NZ apologises to Samoa From Michael Field in Samoa   New Zealand Herald Emotions high as Clark seeks closure in Samoa 05.06.2002 By TAPU MISA APIA - In saying sorry to the Samoan people yesterday, Prime Minister Helen Clark seemed to bring closure to the tragic events arising out of New Zealand's inept and incompetent administration of the islands. "We are truly sorry for what happened all those years ago," she told a gathering of about 500 Samoans and visiting dignitaries gathered in Apia to celebrate the country's 40th anniversary of independence. Expressing sorrow and regret at the events of the past, Helen Clark said it was hoped that the apology would enable the two countries to build a stronger relationship. The apology covered the influenza epidemic of 1918, the shooting of unarmed Mau protesters by New Zealand police in 1929 and the banishing of matai (chiefs) from their homes. For many in the audience, the apology brought tears and high emotion. Tupua Tamasese Tupuola Efi, whose great-uncle was one of those shot on Black Saturday, said he was deeply moved by the apology. Former Prime Minister Tupua Tamasese said saying sorry for events that had caused "unbearable grief and resentment" was the right thing to do. "The fact is that no New Zealand Government has admitted this wrong before, no New Zealand Government has said, 'Look, this is wrong. I'm sorry', that is what is significant. "This gesture is historic and I accept it in the spirit in which it's given." But Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, while acknowledging the apology, appeared to play down the need for it. "We have long ago forgiven and moved on. "We have certainly not allowed the past to stifle the development of the excellent relationship that Samoa and New Zealand now enjoy." Tuilaepa said the Treaty of Friendship signed by New Zealand and Samoa in 1962, "in a real sense demonstrated the desire of both countries to put to rest the past and to concentrate on the future". Education Minister Fiame Naomi Mataafa, whose grandfather was a Mau leader and one of Samoa's highest chiefs, said it had to be acknowledged that the apology was something the New Zealand Government wanted to do. Asked how she felt about the emotion that greeted Helen Clark's speech, Fiame said the independence celebrations were always emotional. Others felt the apology was an important step in going forward. Leatigagaeono Simativa Perese, who heads the Pacific Lawyers Council and Pacific Radio Network in New Zealand, said the apology was a mature thing to do. "A formal apology is a healing thing." Sala Vaimili III, a former Health Minister, said the "very touching" apology was the highlight of the celebrations for him. The suggestion that the apology was just election-year posturing was dismissed by Helen Clark and Labour MP Taito Phillip Field. "That's nonsense," said Mr Field. "We know that lives were lost as a result of the epidemic as well as Black Saturday. "We acknowledge that it has been a painful memory. I think this apology brings a conclusion to that." He rejected any thoughts of compensation arising from the apology.

New Zealand Herald 4 June 2002 Full text: Helen Clark's apology to Samoa Rt Hon Helen Clark, Prime Minister Address to state luncheon, Samoa 12.00 noon Monday 3 June 2002 (Samoa Time) 11.00 am Tuesday 4 June 2002 (New Zealand Time) Ou te fa'a talofa atu, i le paia maualuga ole aso. It is a pleasure to be in Samoa for this important fortieth anniversary of Samoan independence. On behalf of all the international guests here today, thank you to the Head of State and to the government and people of Samoa for your warm welcome to us. The links between New Zealand and Samoa go back a very long way. Samoans and Maori are distant relatives, with Maori travelling down to Aotearoa by waka from their ancestral Polynesian homeland many centuries ago. European colonisation reached New Zealand just as it reached Samoa. New administrators from afar replaced the local rulers. In New Zealand it was the British, and in Samoa it was the Germans and later the New Zealanders who came. This week we celebrate the fact that forty years ago Samoa regained its independence, and became the first Pacific island nation to do so. Samoa today is acknowledged as a leader in the South Pacific. It is a nation which New Zealand is proud to call a friend. We work with Samoa in the United Nations, the Commonwealth, and the Pacific Islands Forum. We support Samoa's development through our overseas aid programme. And many of our citizens are also the sons and daughters of Samoa. In my time as Prime Minister, I have seen my government and the Government of Samoa work together on a number of critical issues. Only two weeks ago, Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele was together with me and other leaders in East Timor to celebrate that new nation's independence. Samoa has sent a number of its police to help East Timor and their contribution has been greatly appreciated. The Government of Samoa has also been a strong advocate for upholding the principles of the Pacific Islands Forum and of the Commonwealth; principles to which my government is also strongly committed. Samoa's voice has also been heard on the need to manage the Pacific's fisheries; to provide sanctuaries for the great whales which roam our oceans; to act against the global warming which could have catastrophic effects for some of our neighbours; and to keep our region nuclear-free. New Zealand is pleased to back Samoa's development with support particularly for the education and health systems. We work closely with Samoa to ensure that what we do meets Samoa's needs. For many decades now, people from Samoa have come to settle in New Zealand. More than 115,000 people in our country identify as Samoans. The early migrants came to work in our industries which were crying out for labour. They were hardworking and good citizens. They created communities and families in New Zealand. They contributed to our economy and laid the foundations for the vibrant Samoan community in New Zealand today. Now we see their children and grandchildren in all walks of life in New Zealand. Samoans are to be found in our Parliament, our public service, and in the professions, business, and the church. Only a few months ago we were proud to appoint New Zealand's first Samoan judge. Samoans have also made an amazing contribution to our sporting life and to the arts and culture of New Zealand. Samoan painters, poets and writers, dancers, musicians, and fashion designers are helping create a new Pacific style in New Zealand. Now, by supporting capacity building programmes in the Samoan and other Pacific communities in New Zealand, we are working to enable many more to participate at all levels of our social and economic life and to make their unique contribution to our country. Today we come to celebrate Samoa and its people, its culture and heritage, and the beauty of its lands and its seas. We know how dear to Samoans their sacred links to the land, the sea, and their villages are. We come to acknowledge the contribution of independent Samoa to the wider regional and international communities of which we are part. We come to say thank you to Samoa for the gift to New Zealand of its people and for the part they are playing in our society. But before coming today I have also been troubled by some unfinished business. There are events in our past which have been little known in New Zealand, although they are well known in Samoa. Those events relate to the inept and incompetent early administration of Samoa by New Zealand. In recent weeks as we have been preparing to come to Samoa, there has been a focus on those historic events, and the news has been a revelation to many New Zealanders. That focus has come about because my government believes that reconciliation is important in building strong relationships. It is important to us to acknowledge tragic events which caused great pain and sorrow in Samoa. In particular we acknowledge with regret the decision taken by the New Zealand authorities in 1918 to allow the ship Talune, carrying passengers with influenza, to dock in Apia. As the flu spread, some twenty two per cent of the Samoan population died. It is judged to be one of the worst epidemics recorded in the world, and was preventable. There were also the shootings in Apia in December 1929 of non-violent protestors by New Zealand police. At least nine people died, including Tupua Tamasese Lealofioaana III, and fifty were injured. The early colonial administration also banished Samoan leaders and stripped some of chiefly titles. These actions split families apart and many families lost their titles forever. On behalf of the New Zealand Government, I wish to offer today a formal apology to the people of Samoa for the injustices arising from New Zealand's administration of Samoa in its earlier years, and to express sorrow and regret for those injustices. It is our hope that this apology will enable us to build an even stronger relationship and friendship for the future on the basis of a firmer foundation. New Zealand and Samoa are bound together by our geography, our history, our cultural and family links, and today by our trade and diplomacy. It is important that we are also bound by our mutual respect for each other. Today as a symbol of our relationship we present to Samoa a waka huia, used to hold precious taonga. The taonga we treasure today is our relationship with the people of Samoa. May it go from strength to strength. Ia ola Samoa.

New Zealand Herald 5 June 2002 History points to others 05.06.2002 By ALAN PERROTT After apologies to Samoa and to Chinese immigrants, the New Zealand Government may have opened a can of contrition that will not be easily resealed. Prime Minister Helen Clark yesterday delivered her second official apology of the year when she said sorry to Samoa for this country's involvement in a devastating influenza outbreak in 1918 and the gunning down of Mau protesters in 1929. It followed an apology on February 12 to all Chinese immigrants who were forced to pay a poll tax from 1881 until 1944. "It's politics," said Auckland University history lecturer Dr Hugh Laracy. "It's election year and it's also somewhat fashionable to try and make amends for the past through apologies." Dr Laracy said this country's actions in Samoa were regrettable, but labelled them as blunders rather than deliberate actions. He is unaware of any other serious grievances bubbling in the Pacific, although he is certain we have annoyed everyone at some time. But he felt any potential umbrage should be balanced by years of aid projects, grants and helpful immigration policies. A spokesman for Helen Clark said the apology was based on papers prepared for the Cabinet by advisers from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. He was not aware of any further apologies being prepared. According to some historians we could do worse than consider an apology for the treatment of Dalmatian immigrants during World War I. Many were interned and some were still living in camps a year after the war ended. A spokesman for the Auckland Dalmatian community said no apology was being sought. By why only look at immigrants when we have a rich history of oppressing ourselves? During World War II, 800 conscientious objectors were imprisoned in Military Defaulters Camps in very harsh conditions. In 1912, a miner was killed during the crushing of the Waihi miners strike. Many families were forced to leave their hometown because of hostility from strike breakers under police protection. A simple sorry could be just as applicable in either case.

Pakistan

Pakistan News Service 3 June 2002 Sikhs Observe Khalistan Martyrs Day Golden Temple Attack Laid Foundation of Khalistan WASHINGTON, June 03 (PNS): It is a Sikh tradition and Sikh history that Sikhs never forgive or forget the attack on the Golden Temple, the Sikh Nation's holiest shrine. In that spirit, Sikhs from all over the East Coast gathered in Washington, D.C. today to observe Khalistan Martyrs Day. This is the anniversary of the Indian government's brutal military attack on the Golden Temple and 38 other Sikh temples throughout Punjab, from June 3-6, 1984. More than 20,000 Sikhs were killed in those attacks, known as Operation Bluestar. These martyrs laid down their lives to lay the foundation for Khalistan. On October 7, 1987, the Sikh Nation declared its homeland, Khalistan, independent. "We thank all the demonstrators who came to this important protest," said Dr. Gurmit Singh Aulakh, President of the Council of Khalistan. "These martyrs gave their lives so that the Sikh Nation could live in freedom," Dr. Aulakh said. "We salute them on Khalistan Martyrs' Day," he said. "As Sant Bhindranwale said, the Golden Temple attack laid the foundation of Khalistan." Sikhs ruled Punjab until 1849 when the British conquered the subcontinent. Sikhs were equal partners during the transfer of power from the British. The Muslim leader Jinnah got Pakistan for his people, the Hindu leaders got India, but the Sikh leadership was fooled by the Hindu leadership promising that Sikhs would have "the glow of freedom" in Northwest India and the Sikhs took their share with India on that promise. No Sikh representative has ever signed the Indian constitution. Recently, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Me.) said, "The essence of democracy is the right to self-determination." The minority nations of South Asia need freedom. "Without political power nations perish. We must always remember these martyrs for their sacrifice," Dr. Aulakh said. "The best tribute to these martyrs would be the liberation of the Sikh homeland, Punjab, Khalistan, from the occupying Indian forces," he said. "That must be the only objective," he said. "We should use the opportunity presented by the situation in South Asia to liberate our homeland." The Golden Temple attack launched a campaign of genocide against the Sikhs that belies India's claims that it is a democracy. The Golden Temple attack made it clear that there is no place for Sikhs in India. Since 1984, India has engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing in which tens of thousands of Sikhs were murdered by the Indian police and security forces and secretly cremated after declaring them "unidentified." The Indian Supreme Court described this campaign as "worse than a genocide." General Narinder Singh has said, "Punjab is a police state." U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Cal.) has said that for Sikhs, Kashmiri Muslims, and other minorities "India might as well be Nazi Germany." According to a report last year by the Movement Against State Repression, India admitted that 52,268 Sikh political prisoners are rotting in Indian jails without charge or trial. Many have been in illegal custody since 1984. In February, 42 Members of the U.S. Congress wrote to President Bush to get these Sikh political prisoners released. MASR report quotes the Punjab Civil Magistracy as writing "if we add up the figures of the last few years the number of innocent persons killed would run into lakhs [hundreds of thousands.]" Indian security forces have murdered over 250,000 Sikhs since 1984, according to figures compiled by the Punjab State Magistracy and human-rights organizations. These figures were published in The Politics of Genocide by Inderjit Singh Jaijee. India has also killed over 200,000 Christians in Nagaland since 1947, over 80,000 Kashmiris since 1988, and tens of thousands of Tamils, Bodos, Dalits (the aboriginal people of the subcontinent labelled "Untouchables") as well as indigenous tribal peoples in Manipur, Assam and elsewhere. In March 2000, while former President Clinton was visiting India, the Indian government murdered 35 Sikhs in the village of Chithisinghpora, Kashmir and tried to blame the massacre on alleged militants. The Indian media reported that the police in Gujarat were ordered by the government to stand by and not to interfere with the massacre of Muslims there. "Guru gave sovereignty to the Sikh Nation," Dr. Aulakh said. "The Golden Temple massacre reminded us that if Sikhs are going to live with honor and dignity, we must have a free, sovereign, and independent Khalistan," he said.

Sri Lanka

Xinhua 18 Jun 2002 Large number of displaced persons in Sri Lanka return home COLOMBO, Jun 18, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Over 100,000 internally displaced persons in Sri Lanka have returned to their homes since the beginning of this year. This follows the ceasefire agreement signed between the government and separatist Tamil Tiger rebels which assures all ethnic groups that there was hope for peace after 19 years of war. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a recent report that an estimated 1.3 million people had fled their homes during the war and were accommodated in welfare centers or with their friends and relatives. Some 71,000 of them returned home by May and a further 29,000 since then. UNHCR, however, said that conditions are still not conducive to facilitate the large scale return of displaced persons or the repatriation of refugees who fled to India and other countries. According to UNHCR, 66,000 Sri Lankan refuges are housed in 111 camps in Tamil Nadu in India and about 200 Sri Lankan families had returned home after the ceasefire. Minister of Rehabilitation, Resettlement and Refugees Jayalath Jayawardena is expected to visit Indian refugee camps soon with officials to create an awareness among the refugees regarding the present situation in the country.

Vietnam

NYT 7 June 2002   Vietnam accuses former U.S. Senator of war crimes June 1, 2002 Posted: 12:06 AM EDT (0406 GMT) Former U.S. Senator and decorated war hero Bob Kerrey is accused by Vietnam of committing crimes during the Vietnam war -- -- HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- Vietnam has accused former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey of crimes during the Vietnam War, saying Friday that families of villagers killed by his Navy team experienced "incomparable suffering and losses." It was the first time Vietnam has publicly accused Kerrey of criminal activity. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh made the accusation in reaction to a revised account of the raid in Kerrey's new memoir. Thanh did not specify what crimes Vietnam believed Kerrey had committed. "Whatever Mr. Kerrey says cannot change the truth. Mr. Kerrey himself has admitted that he was ashamed of the crimes he committed," she said. Requests to speak to Kerrey at New York's New School University, where he is president, were not immediately answered. The incident, which Kerrey first acknowledged last year, put the former senator at the center of a national discussion about U.S. conduct during the war. Kerrey said then that about 13 civilians were killed "by mistake" after his SEAL team was fired on and returned fire during the raid on Thanh Phong village on February 25, 1969. He said he did not know of the civilian casualties until the shooting stopped. But in his new memoir, "When I Was a Young Man," Kerrey writes that he was aware that women and children had begun to gather as his squad searched the village for enemy Viet Cong. Shortly thereafter, Kerrey says his men were fired upon from the direction of the women and children. The Americans fired back, and the villagers were hopelessly caught in the cross fire, he says. Medal for heroism Kerrey acknowledged the difference in his recollection of events in an author's note, saying it changed after he met with members of his squad following news reports. More than 58,000 Americans and some 3 million Vietnamese died in the war, which ended in a bitter defeat for the U.S. in 1975 After Kerrey acknowledged the incident last year, a member of his Navy SEAL unit and two Vietnamese women who said they witnessed the raid alleged the soldiers herded the women and children together and massacred them -- a charge that Kerrey and five other members of the Navy SEAL team deny. One of the women, Pham Thi Lanh, said 20 unarmed villagers, mostly women and children, were killed. On Friday, Thanh, the foreign ministry spokeswoman, said, "Our countrymen in Thanh Phong, Ben Tre province, clearly told the truth about the massacre." She said families in the village had experienced "incomparable suffering and losses" because of the "crimes committed by Kerrey's unit." She said Kerrey and other Americans who fought in Vietnam now "should take specific and practical actions that contribute to the healing of the wounds of the war they caused in Vietnam." Thanh did not specify what crimes Kerrey had committed in the raid or what actions should be taken. Kerrey, who later served as Nebraska governor and senator, and ran for president in 1992, received a Bronze Star medal for heroism in the Thanh Phong raid. More than 58,000 Americans and an estimated 3 million Vietnamese perished in the Vietnam War, which ended in a communist victory in 1975.

Europe

Bosnia

WP 1 July 2002 Dispute Threatens U.N. Role In Bosnia U.S. Wields Veto In Clash Over War Crimes Court By Colum Lynch Page A01 UNITED NATIONS, June 30 -- The United States vetoed a six-month extension of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Bosnia today because the Security Council refused to grant the small contingent of Americans serving there immunity from the world's first permanent war crimes court. But the United States subsequently agreed to a European request to allow the mission to continue operations for three more days, raising a slim chance for a compromise before the mission is forced to cease operations Thursday. U.S. and European officials said Washington would use the three days to increase pressure on foreign leaders to meet its demands. The move marked a dramatic escalation in the Bush administration's effort to place U.S. citizens beyond the reach of the International Criminal Court, which comes into existence Monday despite fierce U.S. opposition. It also cast fresh uncertainty over the long-term fate of U.N. peacekeeping and the more immediate future of the United Nations in Bosnia, where a force of more than 1,500 U.N. police, including 46 Americans, was preparing to gradually relinquish its responsibilities over the next six months to a mission run by the European Union. The U.N. Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina and a NATO force have served as the guarantors of stability since the country's bloody war ended in 1995. John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, voted to block a resolution supported by 13 members of the 15-nation council that would have extended by six months the Bosnia mission, whose mandate expired at midnight. Bulgaria, one of nine countries that sponsored the resolution, abstained. Negroponte said he had vetoed the resolution "with great reluctance" and pledged that the United States would "stand by" its commitment to pursue peace and stability in Bosnia. "The fact that we are vetoing this resolution in the face of that commitment, however, is an indication of just how serious our concerns remain about the risks to our peacekeepers." He said the United States would pull out three military observers serving with the U.N. in East Timor if it did not resolve the dispute over the ICC in the coming week. Another U.S. official said Washington was prepared to accelerate the withdrawal of the 46 Americans in Bosnia. It remained unclear what impact today's decision would have on a much larger NATO peacekeeping force in Bosnia, which was established under the U.S.-brokered 1995 Dayton Accords. U.S. and European officials said Washington is exploring ways to determine whether the NATO force in Bosnia, which includes a contingent of about 3,100 U.S. troops, can remain in place. The tough U.S. negotiating tactics infuriated court advocates, including Washington's closest allies, who characterized the U.S. veto as an extraordinary, and unnecessary, attempt to use the council, whose resolutions are legally binding, to amend a global treaty that has broad international support. "This isn't about the vulnerability of Americans deployed in peacekeeping operations," said Richard Dicker, a court proponent at the New York-based Human Rights Watch. "The United States is using the Security Council as a battering ram against the integrity of the treaty." The standoff in the council dampened what court advocates had hoped would be a celebration of the court's birth. The treaty creating the criminal court has been signed by 138 countries and ratified by 74. The ICC was established to prosecute alleged dictators and war criminals for the most serious crimes, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Although the Clinton administration signed the treaty in December 2000, the Bush administration renounced it in May, arguing that the tribunal might conduct politically motivated trials against Americans. U.S. officials acknowledged that American peacekeepers' exposure to prosecution by the court is limited. There are 677 American police, 34 military observers and one peacekeeper serving in the U.N.'s 15 peacekeeping missions. U.S. military forces serving in U.N.-approved missions already have immunity from prosecution and arrest by local authorities. But the Bush administration insists it needs explicit protections for all current and former American nationals from the ICC, which will be based in The Hague. France's and Britain's envoys said that U.S. police and peacekeepers had little to fear from an international court and that Washington could obtain adequate assurances of immunity through provisions in the ICC treaty, including one that would allow the United States to negotiate bilateral agreements with countries that host American forces. "While we understand the United States' concerns regarding the court, we do not share them," said Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's U.N. ambassador. "We believe that the risk of peacekeeping personnel appearing before the court is extremely small." France's U.N. ambassador, Jean-David Levitte, urged Washington to withdraw a small unit of American citizens, which includes the U.N.'s top official, Jacques Klein, and 46 American police officers rather than shut down the Bosnia mission. "What is at stake is the very capacity of the United Nations to continue peacekeeping operations," Levitte said. "For the United States the simplest thing is to withdraw the 46 U.S. police. . . . There is simply no need to kill off UNMIBH." U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan raised concern over the possibility that Washington could sacrifice some of the U.N.'s 14 other peacekeeping operations when their mandates come before the council for renewal. And he warned that the abrupt closure of the U.N. mission in Bosnia would "severely compromise" the transfer of responsibility to the European Union. "The [Bosnian] state and its institutions are still fragile and under pressure from nationalist forces," Annan said. "Unless an agreement can be reached on an orderly wind-down of the mission, the police in Bosnia and Herzegovina will be left unmonitored, unguided and unassisted."

Croatia

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty 18 Jun 2002 Croatia publishes census results According to the recent population survey, Croatia has 4,437,460 inhabitants, 89.63 percent of whom are ethnic Croats, RFE/RL's South Slavic and Albanian Languages Service reported from Zagreb on 17 June. The Serbs are the largest ethnic minority, with 201,631 people, or 4.54 percent of the total. The overall population has fallen by 6.1 percent since the previous census in 1991. Most of the difference presumably is the result of the flight of thousands of Serbs following the government's 1995 military offensives that ended the five-year rebellion.

Hungary

BBC 19 June, 2001, Hungary 'Status Law' irks neighbours The Hungarian parliament has voted overwhelmingly in favour of a new law aimed at helping more than three million ethnic Hungarians who live in neighbouring countries to work and study in Hungary. Hungarians abroad Croatia - 25,000 Romania - 1.7m Slovakia - 600,000 Slovenia - 10,000 Ukraine - 125,000 Yugoslavia - 340,000 The conservative government, which sponsored the bill, said the legislation will help to protect the cultural identity of Hungarian minorities in the lands where they have lived for centuries. But the law has been sharply criticised both by part of the domestic opposition and by foreign governments who say it meddles in their affairs, and differentiates among their citizens on the basis of ethnic background. Under the so-called Status Law, Hungarians living in Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia and Slovenia will be entitled to a special identity document proving that they are Hungarian and allowing them to work in Hungary for three months each year. Higher wages The Romanian Government issued a statement on Tuesday describing the law as "discriminatory" and "contrary to the European spirit". A bell of mourning for territory Hungary lost in 1920 The Slovak Government said "intensive further consultations" were needed before the law was implemented. Ethnic Hungarians issued with the identity card will have to pay tax and make national insurance contributions on any income earned in Hungary but will qualify for free health care and improved rights to study. The BBC's Central Europe correspondent, Nick Thorpe, says the law has gained widespread support among ethnic Hungarians in neighbouring countries. He says tens of thousands of them already work illegally in Hungary, attracted by higher wages than they can usually earn at home. Austria dropped The law applies to ethnic Hungarians in six neighbouring countries, but Austria was dropped from the list after the EU objected. The plaque says: Sweet Homeland Hungary A spokesman for the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, Gabor Horvath, said the EU apparently had no further objections to the law once references to Austria had been dropped. However, the Romanian Foreign Ministry said Austria's exclusion indicated that the law was not compatible with "the European spirit". The opposition Socialist Party supported the bill in its final form but the Alliance of Free Democrats opposed it. A deputy for the Alliance of Free Democrats, Matyah Oershi, said the law would encourage ethnic Hungarians living abroad to leave their homelands and emigrate to Hungary. However, the Hungarian Government - which estimates that 25% of ethnic Hungarians would like to emigrate to Hungary - says the law should have the opposite effect. The large overseas diaspora came about when Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory in the Treaty of Trianon after World War I.

RFE/RL 19 June 2002 Hungary: Six-Month-Old Status Law Attracts Few Applicants, Much Trouble By Eugen Tomiuc The Hungarian law granting economic, cultural, and education benefits to ethnic Hungarians living abroad has been in force for almost six months. But the number of ethnic Hungarians applying for benefits granted by the Status Law has been relatively low. The law caused friction between Hungary and some of its neighbors, chiefly Romania and Slovakia. Hungary last year signed a memorandum with Romania on how to implement the law but still has to reach agreement with Slovakia. Now, Hungary's new Socialist government says it is considering amending the law and says it is ready to hold new talks with its neighbors. Prague, 19 June 2002 (RFE/RL) -- Six months after coming into force, a Hungarian law that enables ethnic Hungarians living abroad to enjoy some economic, cultural, and education benefits has attracted a relatively low number of applicants. Furthermore, the Law on Hungarians Living in Neighboring Countries -- the Status Law -- continues to cause various levels of disagreement between Budapest and its neighbors Slovakia and Romania, which are host to Europe's largest ethnic Hungarian minorities. The law was conceived by former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's center-right government and was passed by parliament last June. Analysts say the law was meant as an incentive for ethnic Hungarians to remain in their countries of origin once Hungary, which is a front-runner among candidates for European Union admission, becomes an EU member in 2004. It allows Hungarian minorities in five neighboring countries (Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, and Slovenia) to receive an annual three-month work permit in Hungary, as well as medical care and pension benefits while on Hungarian territory. Budapest also pledges to support the development of Hungarian higher-education facilities abroad and to grant ethnic Hungarian families living outside Hungary an annual allowance to educate their children in Hungarian. Some 3.5 million ethnic Hungarians live in the five countries, most of them in Romania, which has some 1.7 million, and Slovakia, with 600,000. Hungarian officials say that after six months, just over 10 percent of ethnic Hungarians living abroad have applied for the identification card that gives them the right to enjoy the benefits. Tamas Toth is a spokesman for the Hungarian Foreign Ministry. "More than 400,000 Hungarians living abroad have requested the so-called Hungarian ID. So I think this number shows the interest that really exists in ethnic Hungarians living abroad toward the law," Toth said. Romania and Slovakia last year criticized some of the law's provisions, which they said were extraterritorial, and argued that a measure passed by Hungary cannot be enforced on the territory of other states. However, Romania subsequently signed a memorandum in December with Hungary, agreeing to allow some organizations, including Romania's ethnic Hungarian party, UDMR, to gather applications from ethnic Hungarians and to send them to Hungary for processing. But it requested that such organizations have the limited role of a go-between and that the procedure for obtaining the ID -- receiving of applications, issuing, and forwarding -- take place primarily on Hungarian territory. Hungary in the memorandum also agreed to allow all Romanian citizens, regardless of their ethnic origin, to apply for work permits within its territory. UDMR says that, according to its centralized data, only some 225,000 applications were received during the past six months, i.e., less than 14 percent of Romania's ethnic Hungarians. It says that in the first two months, an unexpectedly high number of applications -- 13,000 to 15,000 weekly -- overwhelmed the Hungarian processing system, causing long delays and disappointment among applicants. But ethnic Hungarians' interest in the law has consequently dropped abruptly, a trend the UDMR says can be partially explained by the beginning of farming season in Romania's rural areas with ethnic Hungarian populations. Slovakia has said it is not against its ethnic Hungarian citizens benefiting from the law on Hungarian territory. But unlike Romania, Slovakia has not allowed any ethnic Hungarian organizations in Slovakia to gather and send applications to Hungary. Slovak Deputy Foreign Minister Jaroslav Chlebo told RFE/RL that Bratislava wants only Hungarian diplomatic missions, and not ethnic Hungarian associations in Slovakia, to deal with the applications. "The dissemination and collection and then sending of the application [forms] of those who want to apply for the identity cards to the Hungarian authorities -- this must be conducted either by the Hungarian embassy here in Bratislava or the [Hungarian] consulate-general in Kosice. Nobody else has got the legitimacy to do so on the territory of the Slovak Republic and definitely not the nongovernmental organizations or associations of ethnic Hungarians here in Slovakia, as they have started to do so," Chlebo said. Chlebo said that, according to what he calls "indirect sources," some 35,000 ethnic Hungarians from Slovakia -- some 6 percent -- have applied for the Hungarian ID so far. Chlebo said Bratislava is awaiting Hungary's official response to the Slovak proposals, but points to the fact that the law is against European and international norms on the protection of ethnic minorities. The Status Law originally included Hungarians living in Austria -- the only European Union country bordering Hungary -- but subsequently excluded that group to comply with EU rules against ethnic discrimination among EU citizens. Furthermore, the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe's chief legal consultative body, last year issued a report saying that the law is not completely in accord with the EU's nondiscriminatory principles. The European Commission in its annual reports last year also said that some regulations adopted by Hungary are in "evident contradiction" to European standards on the protection of minorities. Both Hungary and Slovakia are among a group of 10 candidate countries -- together with Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Cyprus, and Malta -- likely to become EU members in 2004. Romania and Bulgaria are expected to join no sooner than 2007. Hungarian Foreign Ministry spokesman Toth said that since the law does not observe regulations against ethnic discriminations among EU citizens, it will become obsolete once Hungary, along with Slovakia or Slovenia, joins the EU. But Toth told RFE/RL that Budapest must find a mutually acceptable solution with Romania. "There is a major objective of Hungarian foreign policy, that is, the accession to the European Union, which is to be completed by 1 January 2004. So logically, the law's implementation cannot go beyond that date if we suppose that, for example, Slovakia and Hungary will become EU members together. In Slovakian-Hungarian area, I think that is the date as far as the implementation can go. If Romania will not be in the first group of countries acceding to the EU, then of course, we must find a mutually acceptable solution for the law," Toth said. Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy's new Socialist government, which came to power after April's general elections, has said it wants to make changes to the law and restrict the number of work permits available in Hungary for Romanian citizens who are not ethnic Hungarians. But Romania, which is one of Europe's poorest countries, has reacted coolly to the suggestion. Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase yesterday said he expects Hungary's new government to implement the memorandum signed in December. In the memorandum, Romania and Hungary agreed that Budapest will review the Status Law and initiate the necessary amendments after six months. Spokesman Toth said yesterday that the Romanian-Hungarian Interethnic Affairs Committee has begun negotiations to determine what amendments could be added to the law. Toth said Hungary is willing to negotiate the work-permits issue with Romania. "What I can tell you [is] that in a unilateral way, Hungary is not going to take any measures in this case. We are going to negotiate. We would like to negotiate. We would like to put it clearly for every party concerned in this issue that Hungary is ready to negotiate and the [final] position will be formed during those negotiations," Toth said. But Toth said that while the Hungarian government wants a solution acceptable to Romania, it must not jeopardize the stability of Hungary's job market.

BBC 27 March, 2002 Hungarians unwanted in Romania census Funar threatens to visit anyone who claims to be Hungarian By Nick Thorpe BBC Central Europe reporter Romania has been frequently been criticised for trying to forget about its gypsy minority. Now, a Romanian mayor is trying to enlist the support of local gypsies in his battle against what he sees as a worse problem, the large number of ethnic Hungarians in his town, Cluj. Julia Eotvos: Call for Hungarian identity cards The road to the town's rubbish dump runs out of the city beside a railway line, before veering uphill, past shacks reminiscent of the shanty towns of a Third World city. Some 500 gypsies live here permanently, swollen by other, more transient arrivals. As each truck arrives, children jump up on to the back, and start frantically sorting through the mountain of junk, before the load has even been deposited on the ground. "It's just a question of technique," said Gabi, a diminutive 12-year-old, "to make sure you don't get cut by the wheels." The gypsies sort mostly paper, iron and glass out of the rubbish, and sell their day's work back to the state company. Today, the community has an unusual visitor - the mayor of Cluj, Georghe Funar. This is not simply a friendly call, but bound up with the fact that 27 March is the final day of Romania's population census - the first since 1992. The 1992 census figure showed that nearly 23% of Cluj's population was ethnic Hungarian. Mr Funar, notorious for his hostility to ethnic Hungarians, is unhappy with that figure. Under the Public Administration Law passed in Romania last year, if a national or ethnic minority makes up over 20% of the population of a given settlement, they have the right to street signs, schools, and official proceedings in their own language. "I don't believe the Hungarians make up more than 10% of the population of Cluj," he says. He is determined that this year's figure will reflect that belief. Identity quest In the crowd listening to Mr Funar, is 45-year-old Julia Eotvos. Some of the gypsies speak Hungarian as their first language Mother of 15 children, she holds a banner saying; "We want Hungarian identity cards." In January, a new law came into effect in neighbouring Hungary. Known as the status law, it gives special privileges to Hungarians living as national minorities in Romania and other countries bordering on Hungary. That includes the right to work temporarily, and a grant of 80 euros per child per year, if the children attend Hungarian-language schools. The gypsies of Cluj are for the most part of ethnic Hungarian descent. There has been a rush of gypsies, as well as ordinary ethnic Hungarians, to apply for such Hungarian identity cards - 125,000 applications have been filed in Romania since the end of January. For this reason, and due to the poor social standing of Roma, gypsies may well claim to be Hungarian on their census form. Mr Funar is trying to persuade the gypsies to admit they are Roma, when the census collectors visit them. He has threatened to personally visit anyone in the town who claims to be Hungarian on the census form, in order to verify their claim.

Italy

The Guardian UK 4 June 2002 New book says Christians suffered most Italian writer accused of distorting history Rory Carroll in Rome A new book which claims that Christians are the victims of worldwide persecution has stirred controversy in Italy amid accusations that it minimises the Holocaust and demonises Islam. The author, Antonio Socci, claims the untold story of the 20th century is the murder of 45 million Christians, mostly at the hands of communist and Islamic regimes, and that massacres continue to this day. The New Persecuted, Inquiries into Anti-Christian Intolerance in the New Century of Martyrs, has angered some scholars by depicting Christians as beleaguered victims of rampaging Muslims. Some reviewers have hailed the publication as a wake-up call to Christians in the west who have not realised, even in the wake of September 11, that they are under attack by a hostile rival religion. Others said Mr Socci was part of a rightwing revisionist effort to distort history and promote a hawkish response to perceived threats. Drawing heavily from the World Christian Encyclopedia, published last year by the Oxford University Press, Mr Socci traces the persecution of Christians through the centuries, from the crucifixion of Jesus to the lions at Circus Maximus, the assassination of Thomas Becket and the execution of Thomas More, the Boxer rebellion in China, Mexico's revolution and the Turkish massacres in Armenia. He calculates that in the past 2,000 years some 70 million Christians have been killed, two-thirds in the past 100 years alone, a bloodbath blamed mostly on the Soviet Union as well as communist China and Nazi Germany. Mr Socci supports Israel and does not dispute the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust but by framing the genocide in such a context he had minimised its significance, said Alberto Melloni, an author and religious historian. "The statistics he cites are largely meaningless but the effect is to make the Shoah [Holocaust] just one detail in a century of massacres. It is part of an effort by some in the Catholic church to stop the Shoah being the most important event in the 20th century." Mr Socci, 43, a columnist with conservative Italian newspapers, claims that an average of 160,000 Christians have been killed every year since 1990, the vast majority in the third world. Critics said the figure included Christians killed in conflicts which had little to do with religion. Chronicling attacks, pogroms and wars in East Timor, Indonesia, Sudan, Egypt, Pakistan, India, and even Rwanda and Latin America, Mr Socci identifies Islamic extremism as the main danger. He complains that secular western governments, intellectuals and media organisations have played down the bloodbath because the persecution of Jews and Muslims, whether in the former Soviet Union or former Yugoslavia, was considered more newsworthy. "This global persecution of Christianity is still in progress but in most cases is ignored by the mass media and Christians in the west." Tommaso Debenedetti, a cultural commentator, said the book was part of an attempt by Italy's right to deflect accusations of intolerance against immigrants and other minorities by casting itself as the victim of non-Christian and liberal forces. "The right is reversing the argument." Breaking ranks with positive reviews which called the book "extraordinary", the Turin daily La Stampa said it was a provocation with uestionable statistics and a flawed definition of martyr which included those killed for political reasons.

Kosovo

UN News Service Date: 10 Jun 2002 -- New adviser to help UN in Kosovo with returnees, reintegration of ethnic minorities The United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) today welcomed the arrival of a new official to advise it on ways to foster economic development related to the return of displaced persons and the integration of minorities. Nenad Radosavljevic, the newly appointed Senior Adviser in the Office of Returns and Communities, who took up his job on Monday at UNMIK Headquarters in Pristina, will play an important role in helping to shape policies aimed at facilitating returns and integrating ethnic minorities into mainstream society, the Mission said. UNMIK chief Michael Steiner said he had been seeking a professional from a non-majority community with economic expertise to undertake this difficult task. Mr. Radosavljevic was the former chief executive officer of an ironworks company in Lesak and general manager of a tool factory in Zvecan. "With my Senior Adviser now in the office, and with the Inter-Ministerial Coordinator on Returns having been named, we can begin to make serious progress on the issue of returns - truly sustainable returns - as well as on ways to better integrate non-majority communities into Kosovan society," Mr. Steiner said. "I am delighted to have Mr. Radosavljevic at my side to improve our prospects for creating a multiethnic and integrated Kosovo." Mr. Radosavljevic also had been the former President of the Leposavic Municipal Assembly as well as a former member of the Kosovo Assembly, where he was elected as a member of the Povratak Coalition in November 2001.

Netherlands

Reuters 4 June 2002 Milosevic got atrocity reports by e-mail: HR activist THE HAGUE, June 3: Slobodan Milosevic was sent reports cataloguing Serb human rights abuses against Kosovo Albanians by post, fax and e-mail, the ex-Yugoslav president's trial heard on Monday. As UN prosecutors sought to show Milosevic had known or must have known of crimes that his forces committed in the south Serbian province, a human rights activist told of the horrors he witnessed in Kosovo and the reports he helped compile on them. "I know for a fact that all our reports were sent to the accused...I personally remember adding his e-mail address to the e-mail list: slobodan.milosevic@gov.yu," said Fred Abrahams, a former researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW). Abrahams said reports by HRW, a non-governmental organisation that documents human rights violations around the world, were always made public as well as being sent to government officials and alleged perpetrators. To convict Milosevic over Kosovo - one of three indictments he faces at the UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague - prosecutors must prove not only that atrocities were committed against ethnic Albanians, but also that he knew or should have known and did nothing to prevent them or punish the perpetrators. Abrahams's appearance followed a bizarre setback for the prosecution early in the day, when a Serbian witness expected to give important evidence abruptly refused to testify. The protected witness, known only as K12, said he had been a driver during his 1988-89 Yugoslav army military service and had then worked for years as a truck driver, but then broke down and said he could not give evidence without elaborating. "You're here to tell the truth," presiding Judge Richard May admonished, prompting K12 to retort: "The truth is that I cannot testify and there is no other truth than that." WITNESS "WROTE THE INDICTMENT": Abrahams told the court of Serb-inflicted murder, rape, torture and destruction of Kosovo Albanians' mosques and homes, as well as of humanitarian violations by NATO and Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas. NATO launched a 78-day bombing campaign in March 1999 to curb a violent Serb crackdown on Kosovo which HRW also investigated along with KLA atrocities. Milosevic objected bitterly to Abrahams as a witness, saying the fact he had worked briefly as a research analyst for prosecutors meant he "wrote the indictment" against Milosevic. The ex-Serb strongman is accused of crimes against humanity and genocide in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia during the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. He has refused to plead, prompting judges to enter a not guilty plea, and is defending himself. Abrahams insisted on HRW's impartiality, saying it had criticised all sides in the Balkan conflicts. But Milosevic cast doubt on that, speaking of HRW's "role to provide alibis for the interference of international organisations in other countries". His suggestion during cross-examination that Abrahams had seen nothing first-hand drew an impassioned response. Abrahams recounted his experience investigating the September 1998 murders of 21 civilians of the same family in Gornje Obrinje in Kosovo's Drenica valley. "I was present in that forest and I will never in my life forget the smell of the bodies that I saw," he said. Abrahams followed K12 in the witness box. The court was in closed session for most of K12's half-hour in the stand and went into open session only briefly before his abrupt exit. Pressed by judges on why he could not testify, K12 said it could "jeopardise other people". Judges asked to look at a magazine that had apparently been mentioned in closed session. Further details of K12's identity were not clear. But a story last year in the Belgrade weekly Vreme quoted a Serbian truck driver who said he was drafted in February 1999 to drive a sealed refrigerator truck back and forth from Serbia to Kosovo. The story was published in June 2001, just after Serb police discovered mass grave sites near Belgrade and said they were believed to contain bodies of dead Kosovo Albanians. After driving a dozen such lorries, the driver known in Vreme under the false name "Nikola" said he had unsealed the truck to find corpses, mainly of civilians, piled up inside.-Reuters

WP 11 June 2002 U.N. Court Orders Reporter To Testify Article Quoted Serb Accused of Genocide By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, June 11, 2002; Page A22 A U.N. war crimes tribunal has ruled that a former Washington Post reporter must testify in a case involving allegations of genocide during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia. Rejecting arguments that such testimony would put future war correspondents in jeopardy, the tribunal in The Hague decided Friday that Jonathan C. Randal, now retired from The Post, must submit to questioning about an article on "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia, formerly part of Yugoslavia. At issue is Randal's 1993 interview with Radoslav Brdjanin, which quoted the Serb nationalist as saying that there should be an "exodus" of non-Serbs from parts of Bosnia held by the country's Serbs, to "create an ethnically clean space." Attorneys for The Post had sought to block a subpoena of Randal, 69, by the prosecution. "This trial chamber fails to see how the objectivity and independence of journalists can be hampered or endangered by their being called upon to testify when this is necessary," the ruling says, "especially in those cases where they have already published their findings. . . . No journalist can expect or claim that once she or he has decided to publish, no one has a right to question their report or question them on it. This is an inescapable truth and a consequence of making public one's findings." Still, the ruling from the body, formally known as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said that such subpoenas should be subjected to a "delicate balancing act." But Post Managing Editor Steve Coll said yesterday that "the last couple of years have made clearer than ever how hard is the work of independent correspondents in combat zones where many combatants are not formally aligned with any government and suspicious of the motives of the media." Coll said he is concerned that such combatants will instead come to regard journalists "as instruments of some faraway court or power and deal with them as such." Post attorney Eric Lieberman said the paper was weighing an appeal. "The court acknowledged that journalists perform a vital public service when reporting from combat areas, and that war crimes tribunals should regulate the process of calling them as witnesses," he said. "We are disappointed, however, that the court decided not to protect Mr. Randal from testifying." The tribunal allows for appeals to a panel of judges that is convened jointly by the tribunal and a U.N. war crimes court for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. There is no issue involving confidential sources. Randal argued instead, according to the ruling, that "journalists' independence would be undermined and journalists would have fewer opportunities to conduct interviews with officials with superior authority," and that "journalists would as a collective profession be put at risk of greater harm and danger." Randal, now living in Paris, maintained that reporters should enjoy a qualified privilege against testifying in such tribunals, and that his account was of little importance in the trial. But the prosecution contended that Randal's article "goes directly to the heart of the case against Brdjanin" and that the retired reporter is in "no danger." In U.S. court cases, such disputes are sometimes resolved with a statement by the journalist that his article was accurate, which allows it to be introduced as evidence. In this case, though, Randal's interview was conducted through a journalistic translator, identified only as "X." Brdjanin's defense team contends that Randal must be cross-examined because "X" was hostile to Brdjanin and therefore the Post article did not correspond with what he said during the interview.

Russia

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty 18 Jun 2002 Death toll in Chechen-Aul sweep rises Russian troops have killed at least 13 residents of the village of Chechen-Aul in a search operation that began on 13 June, according to chechenpress.com on 18 June (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 17 June 2002). Seventeen people detained by Russian troops have vanished without a trace, the website reported. Russian Colonel Igor Shabalkin told Interfax on 17 June the search was "one of the most productive" to be conducted recently. He confirmed that 20 village residents have been detained and said large quantities of arms were confiscated.

AFP 17 Jun 2002 Children main victims of landmine war in Chechnya: UN by Olga Nedbayeva MOSCOW, June 17 (AFP) - Up to 5,000 children have been killed or injured by anti-personnel mines in Chechnya since Russia launched an anti-insurgency operation there nearly three years ago, the senior UN envoy for children said here Monday. Olara Otunnu, the UN Secretary General's special envoy for Children and Armed Conflict, said: "In the course of the conflict... between 7,000 and 10,000 people have become victims of landmine detonations, children accounting for more than half of them." He gave no breakdown of numbers of children killed or wounded by the mines which have played an increasing role in the conflict since Russia sent in troops to put down a separatist rebellion in the North Caucasus republic on October 1, 1999. UN Russia envoy Frederick Layons said the United Nations plans to increase humanitarian aid to Chechnya by 35 million dollars (37 million euros), adding to the 200 million dollars it has granted since the beginning of the conflict. But Otunna warned that Russian authorities "bear the main responsibility for the rehabilitation of children hurt in armed conflicts, while the international community can only supplement efforts of the Russian administration." Continuous investments in social protection, education and medical services for children were necessary, he stressed. He said that more than 150,000 people, 60 percent of them women and children, have become displaced as a result of the fighting in Chechnya. "Children suffer most from military conflicts. In the North Caucasus they account for nearly one half of the forcibly displaced persons, who number 150,000," he noted. According to statistics released by Russia last July, around 400 school-aged children have been killed in the war. More than 1,000 children have been injured and 2,000 have been orphaned since the outbreak of conflict, and 6,000 children and adolescents have become homeless, the statistics said. Otunni said he would tour Chechnya next week to meet with some of the thousands of young people displaced by the conflict there. He said he planned to spend three days in Chechnya and the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia where many Chechens have found refuge. The use of landmines in the Chechen conflict would be a priority issue, he said, stressing that he would "explore all possibilities to ensure maximum possible protection" to children and mothers. Otunnu was due later to meet Social Affairs Minister Valentina Matviyenko and other Russian officials. He is also due to visit to the Georgian breakaway region of Ossetia, which borders Chechnya, before returning to Moscow. Human rights groups have repeatedly criticized Russia for failing to investigate its dismal record in Chechnya.

WP 29 June 2002 Chechen Refugees Describe Atrocities by Russian Troops Villagers Tortured, Killed In Assault, Reports Say By Sharon LaFraniere Page A16 NAZRAN, Russia -- Kuslum Savnykaevna has no intention of heeding the Russian government's wish that she abandon the converted car repair shop where she and her five children live in Ingushetia and return to their former home in neighboring Chechnya. And if she ever had any doubt that they must remain refugees in this impoverished region in southern Russia, she said, what she witnessed in the last month erased it. In mid-May, Savnykaevna went to visit her parents in Mesker Yurt, a village of roughly 2,000 about seven miles east of Grozny, the ruined capital of Chechnya, where separatist rebels have been battling the pro-Russian government. She had not been there long when Russian troops suddenly surrounded and closed off the village to conduct a zachistka, or cleansing operation, that lasted three weeks. She said she saw some of the victims of the operation after their relatives carried them back from a field the soldiers had occupied at the edge of the village: a man whose eye was gouged out; another whose fingers were cut off; a third whose back had been sliced in rows with the sharp edge of broken glass, then doused with alcohol and set afire, according to his relatives. Her brothers and nephews were spared, she said, only because her family paid the soldiers a $400 bribe not to hurt them. "I have never imagined such tortures, such cruelty," she said, sitting at a small table in the dim room that has housed her family here for nearly three years. "There were a lot of men who were left only half alive." The troops left the village on June 10, and so the full story of what happened at Mesker Yurt is not yet clear. But Aslanbek Aslakhanov, Chechnya's elected representative to the Russian State Duma who brought eight victims to the hospital, said, "Every rule and law that could be broken was broken." Memorial, a Russian human rights group that is investigating the military's actions there, said at least eight villagers died and 20 more are missing. Savnykaevna said she attended 25 funerals, and others in the village at the time estimated the death toll at 20 or more. Russia's military commander in Chechnya, Col. Gen. Vladimir Moltenskoi, told the Defense Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda earlier this month that the mop-up operation was conducted properly and found a large cache of weapons and evidence of a school for rebel snipers. "Mesker Yurt is a pro-bandit village. A group of at least 50 fighters was active here," he said. A Russian colonel in Grozny told Russian Tass, the semi-official news agency, that soldiers killed 14 rebels who put up armed resistance during the zachistka. Human rights investigators said the zachistka in Mesker Yurt is the latest example of a pattern of killings, torture, rape and extortion by the Russian military since it began a campaign to subdue militants in Chechnya in October 1999. Russian President Vladimir Putin insists that the conflict is over, that life is slowly returning to normal in Chechnya, and the 147,000 refugees camped out in tents and abandoned buildings in nearby Ingushetia should return and begin to rebuild their villages and towns. But the accounts of residents, evidence collected by human rights groups and the Russian military's statistics suggest the opposite. Investigators for Memorial said Russian soldiers are killing Chechen civilians in greater numbers than before -- a trend some attribute to dwindling criticism of Russia's actions from such Western nations as the United States. Memorial said it has documented proof that 946 innocent Chechens died at the hands of Russian troops in just three of Chechnya's most populated districts during a 14-month period that ended in November. Another 1,200 to 2,000 are listed as missing, the group said. Meanwhile, the rebels, who try to blend into the general population, continue to kill an average of one to two Russian soldiers every day. Ingushetia, a tiny region of 300,000 people on Chechnya's western border, has provided a safe haven for those fleeing the violence for nearly three years, housing 32,000 in tent cities and another 115,000 in everything from old cow barns to abandoned factories. Provided with gas, electricity, water and some food from international aid groups, and protected from the Russian military's dreaded raids, the refugees have been demonstrably better off than the population in Chechnya, estimated to number between 800,000 and 1.1 million. But with the recent replacement of Ingushetia's independent-minded president with a Kremlin-friendly leader, the refugees here are feeling more vulnerable. Murat Zyazikov, a general in Russia's security service, was elected in April in a runoff vote that critics charged was tainted by fraud. He said in a radio interview earlier this month: "We do not intend to chase out the refugees." And on Monday, a U.N. representative, Olar Otunnu, said Russian officials had promised him they would not force the Chechens to return home. Still, the recent detention of half a dozen refugees, including a Chechen dentist arrested about 10 days ago, has stirred fears that Ingushetia's new government is allowing Russian soldiers a freer hand. Some advocates for the refugees see the Russian government's halt of bread distribution to the camps as another form of pressure. Mikhail Ejiev, deputy director of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, a human rights monitoring group partly funded by the U.S. government, said as long as refugees remain in Ingushetia, Chechnya will command some measure of international attention. "If they go back home, they [Russian authorities] can say the problem is over," he said in an interview in the Nazran office of the society. "But the refugees will stay, because they don't want to die." The refugees are unsure how long their welcome will last. But those interviewed last week said they would not return to their homes -- what's left of them -- unless the Russian soldiers depart. "You can go into any tent, and you will hear the same thing," said Maldat Shabazava, whose tent in the Sputnik camp is lined with metal bunk beds for seven children. "We are afraid for our male population, afraid we will have no husbands or sons." Oleg Mironov, Russia's human rights commissioner for Chechnya, acknowledged that there are "systemic and massive violations of human rights" there. But other Russian officials insisted the government was taking corrective steps, including a regulation issued in March that requires soldiers to identify themselves and be accompanied by civilian officials when they check documents of people living in Chechnya. But Aslakhanov, the Duma deputy, said any improvement was short-lived, and brutal zachistkas are again the rule -- as he saw when he traveled to Mesker Yurt this month. In interviews last week, residents and visitors who were trapped in Mesker Yurt described what took place in the 21 days that the village was shut off from the outside world. The interviews were conducted in Nazran, less than 10 miles west of the border with Chechnya, where some residents of the village traveled at the request of a reporter. Others who talked were refugees living in Ingushetia who had been caught in Mesker Yurt during the cleansing operation and returned to Nazran to tell their stories. Their accounts could not be verified immediately, and some Chechen residents have exaggerated the degree of abuse by Russian troops. One person interviewed said there were, in fact, at least two people in the village who served as financial couriers for the rebels. But the villagers said the arrests in Mesker Yurt were not targeted at individuals, but involved dozens of civilians with no known links to the guerrillas. They insisted they were describing only what they had witnessed personally, and their descriptions fit a pattern of lawless behavior by the Russian military that has been extensively documented by human rights organizations and journalists. The trouble in Mesker Yurt started on May 18 when a group of men abducted a 36-year-old Chechen named Sinbarigov, who some villagers said worked for Russia's Federal Security Service. The next day, his head was found on a stick next to the village administration building, according to Memorial. The Chechen rebels' Web site said the man was executed because he had helped the Russian authorities. The following day, Russian troops circled the village and blocked the roads with armored vehicles. Savnykaevna, the Ingushetia refugee, said residents decided their only defense was to send every male resident from the ages of 13 to 35 to the red brick mosque in the center of the village. She said 200 to 300 men fled there. She and the women of the village surrounded it, trading places when they grew tired of standing in front of the soldiers' pointed guns. After three days, she said, the men went back to their houses, because the soldiers threatened to blow up the mosque. "Then on the fourth day, after lunch, they started arresting, killing, torturing," she said. More than a dozen soldiers rushed into her parents' house, she said, and slipped black masks over the heads of her three brothers and her nephew. They demanded 12,000 rubles -- about $400 -- to let them go, she said. Other men were dragged off to the field where the soldiers had camped and were tortured, villagers said. When the streets were clear of soldiers, Savnykaevna said, she visited the homes of her parents' neighbors. Three brothers from one family were arrested, she said. "They brought back only a bag with their bones inside," she said. A worker from the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, who visited the village, identified the brothers as Apti, Adam and Abu Didishev. In another house, Savnykaevna said, two brothers lay in bed, one with an eye plucked out, the other with four fingers of one hand missing. She said his parents told her both had been tortured with electricity, leaving dark marks on their faces and arms. She said she saw soldiers beating the bare feet of one man with an iron pipe while the man's legs dangled outside the opening of a tank. Later, when she visited his home, she said his relatives told her the soldiers had sliced his back with broken glass, rubbed salt in his wounds, then doused his back with alcohol and burned him. The family of Said Abubakarov, 19, found his shirt with his fingers in the pocket, according to the account provided to the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society. Three miles away, in the town of Argun, Zena Gazihanova, 50, heard about Mesker Yurt and organized busloads of women who protested for days outside the headquarters of the pro-Russian government in Grozny. "We were screaming very loudly," she said. "Release our sons and brothers! Stop the genocide!" Word leaked to Moscow, where angry Chechens filled the office of Aslakhanov, the Duma deputy. He flew to Ingushetia and drove to Mesker Yurt on June 9, the day before the Russian troops left. With him was a civilian prosecutor and military prosecutor assigned to Chechnya. At the village, he said, he found representatives of numerous Russian military and law enforcement agencies. They refused to let them enter the village, he said, telling him it was too dangerous. "They humiliated me, a colonel, a deputy, when they didn't let me in," he said, in a telephone interview from Moscow. "Everything that concerned Chechnya is a lie sitting on a lie," he said. "The worst part of this story is that there is no way to find the guilty ones." While Aslakhanov cooled his heels, the soldiers prepared to depart. Asmalika Ejieva, 41, said the soldiers told the villagers to show up at the field at 8 the next morning and their relatives would be released. The next morning, the field was deserted, she said. In freshly dug pits, she said, they found parts of bodies that appeared to have been blown up with explosives. Ejieva said people are terrified that if they describe the horror, they will be killed. Some are leaving for the relative safety of Ingushetia, she said, because the Russians left with a promise: In 10 days, they would come back.

Serbia and Montenegro

AFP 31 May 2002 Lawmakers agree to replace remaining Yugoslavia with 'Serbia and Montenegro' By KATARINA SUBASIC, Agence France-Presse BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (May 31, 2002 8:11 p.m. EDT) - An accord ratified Friday calls for the Yugoslav Federation, whose brief history was marked by the rule of notorious strongman Slobodan Milosevic, to disappear "by the end of the year" and be replaced by a new state called Serbia and Montenegro. Yugoslavia's federal parliament approved the EU-brokered accord between Serbia and Montenegro, already endorsed by the legislatures of the two republics, by a vote of 74 to 23, while the upper house ratified it by a vote of 23 to six. Dragoljub Micunovic, president of the lower house of parliament, said the Yugoslav Federation was set to disappear "by the end of the year, after the adoption of the constitutional charter and the holding of elections." The European Union brokered the accord between the two republics to address fears that Montenegro's separatist drive could ignite a new war in the Balkans. Under the deal, either Serbia or Montenegro can opt out of the union after three years, a key clause that separatists in tiny Montenegro have held up as a guarantee that their republic will achieve independence in the near future. The federal parliament in Belgrade on Friday also named nine members, drawn from the main parties represented in parliament, of the commission that will be set up to draft a constitution for the new state of Serbia and Montenegro. Micunovic said the parliaments of the two republics would now nominate nine members each for the commission. The draft constitution will then be submitted to the parliaments for approval. The constitution "should be drawn up quickly and adopted by September, which would allow for elections perhaps in November and enable us to have a new government by December," Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus said. Opposition politicians slammed the new accord as "a partial and harebrained solution" that was part of "a scenario aiming to dismantle Yugoslavia and Serbia." Serbia, which has a population of eight million, and Montenegro, with 650,000 residents, have been uneasy partners in what is left of Yugoslavia following the bloody break-up in the 1990s of the federation that once also included Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia. Croatia welcomed the new agreement, with government spokesman Tomisav Jakik calling it "a positive move in the right direction." Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president and earlier president of Serbia, insisted on keeping the name of the old communist federation, hoping in vain to maintain the heritage of Yugoslavia. He is today charged with more than 60 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo in the 1990s. The new union accord initially called for the new state to be set up by June, but current Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica said this week that the deadline will probably not be met. The delay drew concern from EU foreign policy representative Javier Solana, who warned Serbian and Montenegrin leaders this month that he feared a loss of momentum for implementing the deal. "Serbia and Montenegro cannot indulge themselves in losing time any more," Solana wrote in a commentary carried by the Belgrade daily Blic and the Montenegrin daily Vijesti. The EU convinced the sides to sign on the accord with the promise of closer ties and trade benefits between the 15-nation bloc and Serbia and Montenegro.

Spain

Business Week JUNE 17, 2002 THE STARS OF EUROPE -- AGENDA SETTERS Baltasar Garzón Investigating Judge, Spain He's gone up against drug lords, arms traffickers, corrupt politicians, billionaire businessmen, and Islamic extremists. Baltasar Garzón, Spain's top investigating judge, knows no fear--and, say his critics, no restraint. Garzón first came to international attention in 1997 when he demanded the arrest of Argentina's former military dictators for the murder of Spanish citizens who disappeared during the Dirty War of 1976-83. In 1998, he charged ex-Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet with genocide and demanded that he be extradited from Britain, where he had traveled to seek medical treatment. (Pinochet was ultimately declared unfit to stand trial and returned to Chile.) One of Garzón's most recent moments in the spotlight came when he coordinated dawn raids in Madrid and Granada that netted eight Islamic extremists accused of lending support to the September 11 terrorists. Now he's racing between Puerto Rico, the isle of Jersey, and the FBI's offices in Washington, pursuing claims of money-laundering and bribery against the former executives of Spain's No. 2 bank, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria. The 46-year-old Andalusian is one of the few European investigating magistrates who contributed to the downfall of a government. It was Garzón who in 1995 uncovered evidence that Spanish police had tortured suspected Basque terrorists. He won a conviction against a former interior minister and 11 other officials accused of waging their own dirty war against the Basques and helped drive Socialist Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez from office. He also shuttered a Basque newspaper for supporting terrorism. Garzón, who is eager to see greater cross-border collaboration among criminal justice officials, is now investigating Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for alleged tax evasion in connection with Berlusconi's stake in Madrid-based television giant Telecinco. "Garzón has a character that pushes the limits," says Pilar Urbano, the author of a recent biography, Garzón: The Man Who Saw the Sunrise. Born to a family of middle-class farmers, Garzón studied in Catholic monasteries and considered the priesthood. He later switched to law and financed his education working as a gas-station attendant. By age 23, he was appointed a provincial judge and at 32 joined the National Court. A dashing figure with slicked-back hair and a bruising build who loves bullfights and flamenco, Garzón has become a national hero for his dedication to rooting out corruption. Critics say Garzón stretches the limits of his authority and relishes the limelight a little too much. But, after all, taking on everyone from the elite to the underworld is not for the faint of heart.

United Kingdom (Northern Ireland)

BBC 4 June, 2002, Reid bid to halt Belfast rioting The rioting left its mark on Lower Newtownards Road Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid has held talks with loyalists and republicans in an attempt to end the rioting in east Belfast. Four people were shot during the fourth consecutive night of sectarian violence in the Short Strand area on Monday evening. Dr Reid held separate talks with Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams and David Ervine, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party which has close links with the Ulster Volunteer Force. The police have confirmed loyalist and republican paramilitaries were behind the violence, which injured 19 officers. Reid is trying to broker peace A source close to Dr Reid said: "It is clear there is paramilitary involvement in these shootings. "The Secretary of State wanted to talk to parties associated with the various groups. "He spoke to Mr Adams and Mr Ervine to appeal to them to use whatever influence they could to bring calm to the area and to look for dialogue." Mr Adams said both Protestant and Catholic families had suffered in the recent explosion of violence. 'Violence must end' "Wherever the situation started from, it has to stop. I think it is nothing short of a miracle that people have not been killed," he added. Mr Ervine refused to discuss details of his conversation with Dr Reid but admitted members of the UVF were involved in the violence. It is nothing short of a miracle that people have not been killed Gerry Adams "The UVF are undoubtedly involved but I am not sure what he means about orchestrating violence." The PUP leader, who met the Sinn Fein leader last month, vowed to use whatever influence he had to put a stop to the rioting. He said he would continue to hold dialogue with republicans. "If we are to avoid the nightmare we have been going through we have got to make this process work." Every available police officer has been drafted in to help tackle the unrest. Alan McQuillan, assistant chief constable for Belfast, said: "The rest of my region will pay the price for that in terms of reduced police service, but this has to be the priority to deal with this violence." 'Ceasefire review' Monday night's trouble involved up to 1,000 people on the Lower Newtownards Road, where Protestants clashed with Catholics living in the adjacent Short Strand area. Four people, including one policeman, were shot as gunmen opened fire during the rioting. Two Protestants were wounded by a republican gunman while a bus driver was injured by flying glass after his vehicle came under attack from loyalists in the area. And a police officer sustained a gunshot wound to his lower leg. Mr McQuillan said the Ulster Defence Association, Ulster Volunteer Force and the IRA were all driving the violence. And security minister Jane Kennedy said that the status of the loyalist and republican ceasefires may be reviewed as a result.

BBC 3 June, 2002, NI police chief warns of 'fresh nightmare' - Houses were set on fire by petrol bombs Northern Ireland is heading for "a fresh nightmare" following further sectarian rioting, the acting chief constable has warned. Colin Cramphorn said someone would be killed unless steps were taken to move back from "the abyss". Three people were shot and wounded in rioting in east Belfast on Sunday. Two 15-year-old youths and a 39-year-old man were shot during the trouble in the Short Strand/Albertbridge Road area, although none of them are described as seriously injured. These people have gone through a weekend of terror PUP leader David Ervine During the fighting, houses were set on fire by petrol bombs and families were moved out of a loyalist district after they were targeted by nationalists across a peace line in the Short Strand. Speaking at police headquarters in Belfast on Monday, Mr Cramphorn said: "We are only just at the beginning of the summer season and yet we have seen truly disturbing incidents of public disorder during the weekend. "Everybody needs to understand that they are the losers in this. "Not only are police and military colleagues suffering by acting as a buffer between the communities and thereby preserving life, but both communities are suffering. "We have seen pensioners forced out of their homes on both sides, property set on fire and persons shot." Mr Cramphorn said both sides had to realise the severity of the situation. "They are sleepwalking into an abyss. It is only a question of time before somebody is killed unless steps are taken to de-escalate the situation." The police chief also said that because the situation across Belfast had been deteriorating for a number of weeks, about 250 troops drafted back into the province for the Queen's Jubilee last month had been retained. "It's a very good job too," he said. Lower legs Meanwhile, there was a short protest at Alliance councillor David Alderdice's home by loyalist residents angry that he is supporting a Sinn Fein mayor. He later travelled to east Belfast to see the damage caused by the rioting. The Housing Executive said 34 homes on either side of the peaceline had been damaged during the rioting. Six householders from the loyalist Cluan Place asked to be rehoused. Earlier on Sunday, police came under attack as they dealt with sectarian disturbances in north Belfast. Sunday's violence, in an area where Protestants and Catholics live side-by-side, followed several nights of fighting between rival mobs in east Belfast, which left 10 police officers injured. Progressive Unionist Party leader David Ervine, who was at the scene when the violence flared in Short Strand, said the man injured in Sunday night's shootings was taken to hospital after being hit in the back and lower leg. He said the two youths had suffered bullet wounds to their lower legs. Petrol bombs As blast bombs continued to rain down, Mr Ervine said: "These people have gone through a weekend of terror." Mr Ervine accused the Provisional IRA of orchestrating the trouble. However, Sinn Fein's Alex Maskey said no one could be sure who was involved. Residents forced to flee their homes, including several pensioners, were taken to other houses and church halls. Police said trouble erupted when stones and missiles were thrown into Cluan Place from the Short Strand, a Catholic enclave in Protestant east Belfast. Later petrol bombs were lobbed at loyalist homes. David Ervine called for calm Two houses were set alight, with fire crews being called to extinguish the blaze. Meanwhile, the police are treating a fire at a Catholic Church in east Belfast as arson. The fire was discovered shortly before midnight on Sunday at St Anthony's on the Woodstock Road. It caused damage to a wall and carpet as well as smoke damage inside the church. Earlier on Sunday, a crowd of about 200 Catholics and Protestants began fighting in the Whitewell Road area of north Belfast. As police moved in to clear the crowds, they had bricks, stones and petrol bombs thrown at them. A police service spokesman said no officers were injured. Two men were arrested and charged with riotous behaviour. Fireworks thrown On Saturday night, police came under renewed attack from groups of rioting youths in east Belfast. Gangs threw missiles at police and soldiers during the disturbances. Bricks, bottles, petrol bombs and fireworks were thrown at security lines. There were no reports of any injuries and order was later restored to the area which has been the focus for sectarian fighting in recent weeks. On the previous night, 10 police officers were injured during sectarian rioting in the same area sparked by loyalists hanging Jubilee bunting outside their homes, close to a Catholic community. The BBC's Ireland correspondent Kevin Connolly said it was predictable there would be disturbances in north and east Belfast because it was a holiday weekend. He said: "It was quite noteworthy over the last year or so that on summer bank holidays weekends, rioting has been particularly bad. "Very often that's because the kind of people who are involved in this rioting don't have to go to work the following day, or in most cases, don't have to go to school the following day."