Africa

Chad (see Sudan)

BBC 18 June 2004 Chad fears spread of Darfur war The Janjaweed are accused of chasing black Africans from their homes Chad's government is worried that Sudan's Arab militia is trying to export ethnic violence from Darfur. Chad says that it killed 69 Sudanese "Janjaweed" fighters on its territory. The pro-Sudanese government Janjaweed have been accused of carrying out ethnic cleansing against Darfur's black African population. Some 10,000 people have been killed and more than a million have fled their homes. Chad's border region has the same ethnic make-up as Darfur. 'Hidden force' The BBC's Abakar Saleh in the Chad capital, Ndjamena, says the authorities there are "very worried" that the Janjaweed are trying to stir up trouble amongst Chad's Arab population. "There is a hidden force trying to export the conflict between the Sudanese into Chad," said Allami Ahmat, diplomatic advisor to Chadian President Idriss Deby. How to help Big country, big problems The Janjaweed were killed after attacking the village of Birak, some 6km inside Chad's territory, said Communications Minister Mouckhtar Wawa Dahab. He said that two militiamen were captured but had no information on Chad casualties. Our correspondent says that President Deby is himself from the Zagawa group which straddles the border and which is being targeted in Darfur. The Arabs are one of Chad's biggest groups but do not control the government as in Sudan, he says. 'Not genocide' Aid workers describe Darfur as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. But United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan says it is not the "genocide", which some human rights groups have called it. President Deby has ethnic ties to those being targeted in Chad They say they are in a "race against time" to get aid to those who have fled their homes in Darfur before the rainy season makes the areas impassable. The first rains have already started to fall and the BBC's Hilary Andersson says that some children in camps for the displaced are starving to death because there is not enough food aid. Chad has been trying to mediate between the Darfur rebels and the government. A ceasefire was signed in Ndjamena but both sides accuse the other of breaking it.

Côte d’Ivoire

BBC 8 June, 2004 Ivorian air strike on rebel zone New Forces rebels denied attacking the army The Ivory Coast army has attacked rebel forces for the first time in almost a year, casting new doubts on the fragile peace process. A rebel commander said that 12 people had been lightly wounded. The army said the strike was in retaliation for an earlier attack on its positions by a "renegade group". Ivory Coast has been split in two since September 2002 and a power-sharing government appears shaky after Mr Gbagbo sacked rebel ministers. 'Manipulation' Military spokesman Colonel Jules Yao Yao said that five vehicles had been destroyed in the helicopter air-strike. The New Forces, who control northern Ivory Coast, have denied responsibility for the attack on the central town of Gohitafla. They said their convoy was returning from the town to their stronghold in Bouake to restore order after the fighting, and denounced the air-strike as a breach of the ceasefire. It said the attack was an act of "manipulation" to allow Mr Gbagbo to justify renewed fighting against them. Gohitafla is at the south of the "confidence zone", or no-man's land, between the rebels and government forces, monitored by 4,000 French and 2,500 United Nations peacekeepers. According to a French military spokesman, two French and several Ivory Coast soldiers were lightly injured, while the attackers suffered heavy losses. The French say they have captured prisoners. The BBC's James Copnall in the commercial capital, Abidjan, says that tensions have been rising in Ivory Coast since New Forces leader Guillaume Soro was sacked from his position as minister of communication last month. Newspapers close to the former rebels have carried many recent articles alleging the government is massing forces near the confidence zone. French targeted Following Monday's attack on Gohitafla, about 200 supporters of Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo attacked the French embassy in Abidjan. They threw stones before being driven back by riot police using tear gas. Further protests have continued on Tuesday. Ivory Coast has been split since rebels seized control of the northern half of the country in September 2002. Rebels hold the mainly Muslim north, while forces loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo control the south. The conflict was declared over in January 2003, but the power-sharing "government of unity" outlined in the peace pact has never lived up to its name.

DR Congo

AP 1 June 2004 Cease-Fire in Eastern Congo Fails By RODRIQUE NGOWI Associated Press Writer Article Tools Print E-Mail Article Bookmark Discuss A Congolese soldier stand soutside a shop, Monday, May 31, 2004 in Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Congolese fighters loyal to a renegade commander clashed with government troops near a strategic airport in eastern Congo, escalating tension in the unstable region.The rival forces fought for four hours with heavy weapons and small arms north of Kavumu airport on Sunday, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of Bukavu, before the Congolese army withdrew to the south.( AP Photo/Riccardo Gangale) Congolese soldiers battled troops loyal to a renegade commander in eastern Congo on Tuesday, breaking a shaky cease-fire and spurring U.N. peacekeepers to try to negotiate an end to the violence, a United Nations spokesman said. Brig. Gen. Laurent Nkunda, a former rebel commander whose troops marched on the airport in the town of Bukavu on Monday, had earlier declared an end to the conflict after the government set up arrangements in Congo's troubled South Kivu province to prevent the persecution of the minority Tutsi community. Nkunda said he ordered his troops to halt their advance early Tuesday near the airport 15 miles north of Bukavu to allow a Congolese vice president to visit the city to investigate grievances of the Tutsi community, known as the Banyamulenge. U.N. spokesman Sebastien Lapierre, though, said fighting broke out again Tuesday morning near the airport, which is controlled by U.N. forces. He said there were no immediate reports of casualties, but that U.N. peacekeepers were trying to negotiate a new cease-fire. Troops loyal to Nkunda, a commander in the former rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy, advanced on Bukavu after fighting broke out last week between rival factions of the Congolese army. That violence erupted on Wednesday and pitted troops loyal to Brig. Gen. Mbuza Mabe, the commander of the army in South Kivu, against Banyamulenge fighters loyal to Col. Jules Mutebutsi. At least 27 people were killed and another 81 wounded in three days of clashes. Banyamulenge residents fled Bukavu and others took shelter at U.N. compounds during the fighting after several were killed and detained by government troops. "We were fighting because no one wanted to stop the genocide" of the Banyamulenge, Nkunda said. Nkunda said he ordered the earlier cease-fire after talks with Vice President Azarias Ruberwa, a former rebel leader and a Banyamulenge, who "pleaded with us to observe a cease-fire and let him come to Bukavu to assess the situation." But the cease-fire was conditional and Mabe decided to attack instead, security officials said on condition of anonymity. The conditions included the recovery of Banyamulenge killed during the clashes, the return of those forced to flee their homes and the release of those detained by the government, Nkunda told The Associated Press. "There should also be new security arrangements in Bukavu that would ensure that every one can live in the city in peace," Nkunda said. Mutebutsi's gunmen were staying in buildings belonging to their commanders in Bukavu on Tuesday, U.N. officials said. Bukavu itself was calm and hundreds of Mayi-Mayi tribal fighters walked into the city from neighboring towns to reinforce government troops, said Didas Namujimbo, spokesman for the provincial governor. The war in Congo ended last June when the rebels and the government set up a transitional government in Kinshasa, Congo's capital. But eastern and northeastern Congo have remained volatile. "What happens after this will determine whether we continue fighting or not," Nkunda said. "If they fail to solve this problem, I will solve it myself."

www.baltimoresun.com 30 May 2004 For Iraq, lessons of another June 30 Congo: Forty-four years ago, a nation on the brink of civil war was granted sovereignty before it was ready. By Bruce Oudes Special To The Sun May 30, 2004 It happened amid a hotly contested presidential election campaign during an era of global turmoil - an occupying power granted sovereign independence to a distant and highly unstable colonial territory on June 30. Chaos ensued. One region declared itself independent. Civil war broke out. Less than a month after independence, the president of the United States turned to the U.N. Security Council for help. For years, troops under U.N. command struggled to sort things out amid seemingly endless violence and confusion about whether the United Nations or the newly independent government was in charge. Meanwhile, the president of the United States, operating largely out of public view, guided the actions of the United Nations as well as the new government. Does that sound familiar? But it's not the future of Iraq under discussion, it is the history of the Belgian Congo, which became independent June 30, 1960. But there are lessons from that transfer of power that could apply June 30, 2004 when Iraq is due a measure of sovereignty. Namely, why did Belgium, the occupying power in the Congo, convey sovereign authority to an unstable Congolese government rather than entrusting that power to the United Nations? Years ago I put that question to Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster, who was President Dwight D. Eisenhower's senior White House aide in 1960 when the Congo became independent. Copper-rich Katanga province seceded a few days later. U.N. forces were sent, and these troops brought down the secession in early 1962, thus preserving the territorial integrity of the Congo. Would Eisenhower have persuaded Belgium to turn sovereign responsibility for the Congo over to the U.N. Security Council rather than granting independence directly to the vast territory? Yes, Goodpaster replied without hesitation. Eisenhower "loved" the U.N. mechanism for handling such problems, he added. So, why hadn't that happened? No one thought of it, Goodpaster said with a wistful smile. Eisenhower's strong confidence in the Security Council mechanism amid the Cold War stands in sharp contrast to another Republican president 44 years later. Had President Bush not been so reluctant to take advantage of the Security Council option, U.S. troops - operating under a U.N. flag - might have suffered far fewer casualties in the past 12 months. The prisoner abuse may well never have happened. The relationship of the Security Council to U.S. national security is simple. Because the permanent members have absolute veto power over Security Council decisions and actions, the council can't take any action or alter it without at least the tacit approval of the United States. In Eisenhower's time, U.S. policy was that it was vital that the Security Council succeed in a visible way. In the past four decades, millions of Republicans have come to despise the United Nations. In that, they find themselves in agreement with Osama Bin Laden, who promised a bag of gold to anyone who assassinates U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. If President Bush had let the Security Council assume sovereignty for Iraq a year ago, we might not be facing Congo-like chaos in that country. It is not too late to correct that mistake. The critical choice that Bush and the United Nations face is between two very different alternatives: One is the wobbly Anglo-American draft resolution presented May 24 that gives Iraq its odd form of sovereignty and continues current U.S. policy, which views the United Nations as "them." Or, the Bush administration could present a strong "us" resolution that makes it clear the United States regards itself as an integral part of the United Nations and places all international forces, including those of the United States, under the U.N. flag, as is the case in Korea. The procedure involved is simple. On June 30 the U.S. flag over Iraq is replaced by the U.N. flag at the top of the pole with the Iraqi flag right below. Then, after the interim Iraqi authority produces a constitution and holds a fair election in about 18 months, the U.N. flag is lowered and replaced at the top by the Iraqi flag. The country is again fully sovereign. This would reassure a skeptical world - including plenty of nervous Americans and Iraqis - that the Congo syndrome will not be repeated. In this scenario, any issues between the interim Iraqi government and the U.N. representatives in Iraq would be publicly aired in the U.N. Security Council, subject to U. S. veto. The fact that the Security Council was not given interim "title" to the Congo by Belgium before June 30, 1960, meant years of political intrigue and jockeying for influence there by France, the Soviet Union and the United States. In 1960, the Congo chaos strengthened the impact of John F. Kennedy's national security message throughout the presidential debates and made a major contribution to the defeat of Richard M. Nixon. In early 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson made the fateful decision to allow U.N. troops to be withdrawn from the Congo, by, once again, June 30. A few days later, a Congolese rebel force emerged in the northeast and captured Stanleyville - the provincial capital since renamed Kisangani - and took scores of foreigners hostage, including the staff of the U.S. consulate there. On August 7, 1964, the U.S. Senate passed the historic Tonkin Gulf Resolution on Vietnam. Shortly after Johnson's landslide election in November, a U.S.-Belgian coalition force operating outside the U.N. framework freed the hostages and ended the Stanleyville rebellion. This swift success reinforced Johnson's confidence and created the climate in which he sent American ground units into Vietnam in February 1965. Now, with this year's June 30 deadline ahead, and with France, Russia, and China squabbling with the United States and Britain over the new U.N. resolution, the Big Four meeting at Normandy next Sunday - the 60th anniversary of D-Day - offers solemn occasion to remember why we created the United Nations in the first place. There - and at the G-8 Summit at Sea Island, Ga. - starting June 8, Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin have an historic window of opportunity to save Iraq from itself while sending an equally historic message about the future of the U.N. Security Council. If the Big Four remember the vital lessons of the Congo experience of the 1960s, they also will give the world - and Iraqis - confidence that Iraq's territorial integrity will be preserved. That will be especially reassuring to Turkey, which is anxious that the Kurds of Iraq not follow the course Katanga chose. Turkey will host President Bush and the NATO Summit just before June 30. But if the Big Four - and China - persist in refusing to put the U.N. flag atop the flag poles of Iraq, then hope for some sort of peaceful resolution - there will be that much dimmer. If Nixon could go to China, then why can't the president celebrate the United Nations as Dwight David Eisenhower did? Bruce Oudes, a former Sun staff writer, was press attache at the U.S. consulate in Congo's Katanga province during the Stanleyville hostage crisis in 1964."

www.mg.co.za 2 June 2004 Heavy fighting in Bukavu Rodrique Ngowi | Cyangugu, Rwanda Heavy fighting broke out early on Wednesday as Congolese troops and fighters loyal to a renegade commander battled for control of the centre of the troubled Congolese city of Bukavu, residents said. The crack of assault rifles and explosion of mortar shells began at 5.30am (3.30am GMT) after soldiers loyal to Brigadier General Mbuza Mabe, the Congolese army commander in South Kivu province began fighting troops loyal a former rebel commander who had sneaked into the town, residents said. However, Brigadier General Laurent Nkunda, the commander of renegade troops who marched on Bukavu's airport on Monday, denied reports that his fighters were involved in the latest clashes that began hours after Mabe agreed to observe a shaky ceasefire late on Tuesday. United Nations peacekeepers were blocking the advance into Bukavu of the bulk of troops loyal to Nkunda, UN spokesperson Sebastien Lapierre said. A UN helicopter gunship began patrolling the skies of Bukavu after troops under the command of another renegade commander opened fire inside the city, Lapierre said. Congolese troops battled at the center of Bukavu, capital South Kivu, as soldiers who deserted Mabe and elements of fighters loyal to Nkunda fought for control of the city, Jean-Baptiste Baderwa said by telephone from Bukavu. The sound of gunfire and explosion of ordinances carried over the river separating Bukavu from this Rwandan border town. Nkunda declared on Tuesday that he would end the conflict once the government set up security arrangements in the Democratic Republic of Congo's troubled South Kivu province to prevent the persecution of the minority Tutsi community. Mabe sent troops to attack Nkunda's positions on Tuesday, but the offensive was beaten back and Congolese President Joseph Kabila later ordered his commander to accept the ceasefire. The violence in Bukavu erupted on Wednesday and pitted Mabe's troops against Congolese Tutsi, or Banyamulenge, fighters loyal to Colonel Jules Mutebutsi. At least 39 people were killed and another 81 wounded in three days of clashes, Red Cross officials said. Banyamulenge residents fled Bukavu and others took shelter at UN compounds during the fighting after several people were killed and detained by government troops. Nkunda said he marched on Bukavu to "stop the genocide" of the Banyamulenge. Nkunda said he ordered the earlier ceasefire after talks with Vice-President Azarias Ruberwa, a former rebel leader and a Banyamulenge, who wanted to visit the city to find a political solution to the conflict. Ruberwa was expected to visit Bukavu on Wednesday after the lack of security foiled his plans to go there Tuesday. The war in the DRC ended last June when the rebels and the government set up a transitional government in the capital Kinshasa. But eastern and northeastern DRC have remained volatile. - Sapa-AP

Reuters 3 June 2004 Rwanda Warns Congo Against 'Genocide' in Bukavu Thu Jun 3, 2004 04:57 AM ET By Robert Walker BUKAVU, Congo (Reuters) - Rwanda said on Thursday any attempt by the Democratic Republic of Congo to target Tutsis in their effort to regain control of the eastern town of Bukavu would amount to "ethnic cleansing or genocide." Congolese President Joseph Kabila accused Rwanda of helping renegade soldiers seize Bukavu and said Congo's army was being mobilized to retake control. Rwandan Foreign Minister Charles Muligande told Reuters in Kigali that Kabila had a right to retake the town but he said the international community should intervene if that military effort was seen as targeting one tribal group. "Such an action would amount to ethnic cleansing or genocide, Rwanda is part of the international community and would definitely play its role in opposing genocide," he said. For the first time in nearly a week there was calm on Thursday in the eastern Congo town at the center of a battle that has sparked fears of a resumption of war between the two countries. There were reports of looting, but no shooting. Civilians looted two barges loaded with 300 tonnes of food aid on Wednesday, said Ndeley Agbaw, head of the World Food Program office in Bukavu. Former rebel fighters from the Rwandan-backed RCD-Goma, the biggest rebel faction during the Democratic Republic of Congo's five-year war which was officially declared over last year, remained in control of the town one day after seizing it. There were no signs of Congolese army troops on the streets, still littered with broken glass from a week of fighting. Bukavu was largely deserted except for fortified vehicles speeding through town filled with renegade soldiers, kitted out with brand new uniforms and guns. Local residents remained indoors and aid workers were confined to their compounds. But in the capital Kinshasa, about 2,000 students were heading to the headquarters of the U.N. peacekeepers armed with stones and tires, after attacking the U.N. mission there on Wednesday, furious that the United Nations let Bukavu fall. Even before Kabila's comments, analysts said the insurgency threatened to derail the peace process in Congo, where a transitional government is struggling to restore central administration after the devastating war. Under a 2003 agreement, former rebel fighters are supposed to be incorporated into a new national army, but some RCD-Goma commanders have refused to take up their posts or fallen out with rival government army chiefs. After taking control of Bukavu, the commander of the renegade troops said his troops were fighting to protect their fellow Banyamulenge tribesmen -- Congolese ethnic Tutsis who have long complained of attacks and killings by security forces. Some 2,500 have fled to Rwanda since fighting started. At least 65 people have been killed since then. "We must make sure that the Banyamulenge are safe in Bukavu," the commander, Laurent Nkunda, told reporters. But a statement issued after a government meeting in Kinshasa, Kabila called the protection of the Banyamulenge "a ploy by Rwanda to enter Congo." He blamed the crisis on Kigali. "It's an aggression against our country by Rwandans who control the town of Bukavu. We have decided to mobilize our resources and men and finances to defend ourselves," he said on state television. Muligande said Kabila's allegations were a face-saving effort occasioned by the shame of losing Bukavu to "rebel soldiers within the Congolese army." He said U.N. peacekeepers were in Bukavu "and they can attest that there is no single Rwandan soldier in there. There is no single Rwandan soldier anywhere in (Congo)." Sebastien Lapierre, a spokesman for the United Nations mission (MONUC) in Bukavu, said he could not confirm the presence of Rwandan troops in the town. About 1,060 U.N. peacekeepers are deployed in and around Bukavu, while the regular Congolese army is thought to have some 1,000 soldiers on the ground. Colonel Clive Mantell, MONUC's chief of staff, said Nkunda may have up to 4,000 soldiers. (Additional reporting by Finbarr O'Reilly in Kinshasa and Mary Kimani in Kigali)

IRIN 4 Jun 2004 DRC: Now rebels withdraw from Bukavu, MONUC takes over KIGALI, 4 June (IRIN) - The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), known as MONUC, has taken control of security in the volatile eastern Congolese city of Bukavu after leaders of dissident army troops agreed to withdraw their men, a senior UN official said on Friday. "UN forces are going to increase patrolling, right now we have redeployed inside the town," Brig-Gen Jan Isberg, the UN commander in charge of the provinces of North and South Kivu, said. He said the UN redeployment would defuse a crisis that had threatened to plunge the Congo back into civil war. "MONUC has verified that withdrawal has begun and there's still movement of troops out of town," Isberg said. Gen Laurent Nkunda, one of the renegade commanders, told IRIN that he had already ordered 300 of his soldiers out of Bukavu and was in talks with UN peacekeepers to have them take control of the town. "Our forces are pulling out as we speak," Nkunda said. "We want to show loyalty to the transitional government." Nkunda and Col Jules Mutebutsi, formerly with the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Goma and who were briefly commanders in the new Congolese army, seized Bukavu on Wednesday. They had complained that the regional military commander assigned by the government, Brig-Gen Mbuza Mabe, was persecuting one of the ethnic communities in the region, the Banyamulenge. Meanwhile, in Rwanda's western province of Cyangugu, Congolese refugees continued to arrive on Friday, fleeing the fighting in Bukavu. A field officer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Fabien Nsengiyumva, told IRIN that 2,200 Congolese refugees had so far registered with agency, but only 905 of them were staying in a designated camp. He added that the rest were staying with friends and relatives in Cyangugu. "We are now working on expanding the camp to accommodate more refugees crossing over," he said.

telegraph.co.uk 5 June 2004 Congo on the brink of new civil war amid genocide accusations By Adrian Blomfield in Bukavu (Filed: 05/06/2004) The rebel commander who could re-ignite Africa's bloodiest war relaxed in his deckchair yesterday, admiring the view across Lake Kivu. As United Nations peacekeepers spent a third day trying to end fighting in the Congolese town of Bukavu, Brig Gen Laurent Nkunda, who made cheese before he took up arms, insisted he is not trying to topple President Laurent Kabila. Renegade troops prepare to leave the Congolese town of Bakavu He marched into the eastern city at the head of 4,000 renegade soldiers on Wednesday, sending troops loyal to the government fleeing into the hills. But he invaded, he said, to prevent alleged attempts by the army's commander in Bukavu to carry out genocide against Congolese Tutsis, known as Banyamulenge. "I cannot break peace but I cannot accept a peace where the Banyamulenge are being killed," said Gen Nkunda. After a year of shaky peace, Congo faces renewed civil conflict and possible war with neighbouring Rwanda, which is accused of backing the mutineers. For all that, Gen Nkunda seemed remarkably nonchalant, chatting with officers in the garden of the governor's colonial mansion while his troops supposedly withdrew to positions outside the town under a UN-backed deal. Few, in fact, appeared to have left. Soldiers loyal to Gen Nkunda still swaggered through the streets, although in smaller numbers than a day before. Under the deal, the government will investigate Gen Nkunda's claims. That there were attacks on the Banyamulenge is not in doubt. Congolese Tutsis who fled to Rwanda tell of soldiers searching for them from house to house. Three-year-old Felice Mukongo bears a terrible face wound inflicted by soldiers loyal to Bukavu's government commander, Mbuza Mabe. Gen Nkunda says such incidents prompted his invasion. But many say the mutiny preceded the attacks and government soldiers and civilians took advantage of the mayhem to turn on the Banyamulenge.

AFP 6 Jun 2004 Rwanda closes border with DR Congo KIGALI, June 6 (AFP) - Rwanda closed its border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) overnight as a "precautionary measure", the Rwandan interior ministry said Sunday. "The border has been closed since last (Saturday) night," the interior ministry's Secretary General Joseph Mutaboba told AFP. The border was still closed midday Sunday, he added, without saying how long it would remain so. The border lies next to DRC's Kivu provinces, where dissident troops last week captured the key town of Bukavu, prompting DRC President Joseph Kabila to accuse Rwanda, whose troops backed rebels during DRC's 1998-2003 war, of being behind the takeover. The leader of the dissidents, General Laurent Nkunda, said Sunday he was pulling out of Bukavu. Both he and Rwanda have denied Kigali's involvement in his actions. On Friday, Kabila said in a broadcast address that Rwanda was trying to prevent "the effective reunification of the country (DRC) and the re-establishment of state authority across the national territory." The same day, Rwandan Defence Minister Marcel Gatsinzi insisted his government had "absolutely no involvement in the crisis in eastern Congo. It's an internal affair." Rwanda has twice deployed troops in the DRC, first in 1996 to back rebels who ousted dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and again in 1998 to support the Congolese Rally for Democracy, a former rebel group of which Nkunda is a member.

UN News Centre 16 June 2004 www.un.org/News/ No genocide took place in eastern DR of Congo, UN mission says – A human rights team from the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) sent to investigate allegations of rights violations in the eastern part of the country said today, contrary to claims by a dissident general from the national army, that no genocide took place there. Preliminary results indicate that every community in Bukavu, especially civilians, suffered in the insurgency that started on 26 May and climaxed with the brief seizure of the town in the beginning of June, said Roberto Ricci, chief of the humanitarian section of the UN Organization Mission in the DRC (MONUC). In the extortion and the fighting 66 people died, 77 were injured and 31 raped, while 147 houses were plundered, he said, adding “Anyone who opposed the pillaging was killed.” Certain members of the DRC’s Armed Forces (FARDC) attacked civilians, killing 4 and injuring 12, but there was no evidence that the military command ordered these attacks. On the contrary, Gen. Mbuza Mabe turned over 51 Banyamulenge – or Congolese Tutsi – families to MONUC for their protection. The inquiry would continue with interviews of Congolese refugees in Cyangungu, in neighbouring Rwanda, MONUC said. The recent crises had only one clear objective, which was to destabilize the transition, put it in danger and make it end in failure, said the Mission’s Director of the Department of Public Information, Patricia Tome. The opponents of the transition, which is designed to lead to elections, have been using every means at their disposal – ethnicity, force, lying and rumour-mongering, welcoming fear and hate – because any method would seem good to them, she said.

MONOC 17 June 2004 www.monuc.org MONUC's preliminary report rules out the possibility of genocide in Bukavu Yulu Kabamba The MONUC Human Rights team dispatched to Bukavu to investigate the allegations of human rights abuses in the region has come to the conclusion that there was no genocide in Bukavu as alleged by Laurent Nkunda, the dissident general of the Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC). Mr. Roberto Ricci, the head of MONUC's Human Rights section, reports that the preliminary information gathered by the investigative team suggests that the recent fighting affected all the communities in Bukavu without distinction, more particularly the civilians. All the belligerent factions committed exactions in the town, he further said, indicating that from 26 May to 1 June, when the town was under control of the troops of the 10th military region, some FARDC troops conducted targeted attacks on civilians. MONUC counted 4 dead and 12 injured as a result of the exactions. Mr. Ricci said there was no indication that the DRC Armed Forces (FARDC) masterminded the attacks. He however underscored the goodwill of the commander of the military region, general Mbuza Mabe, to keep order and protect all civilians indiscriminately. He likewise transferred 51 Banyamulenge's families to MONUC on May 29 for protection. MONUC however registered cases of looting and rape committed by the FARDC troops. From 2 to 10 June, the town of Bukavu was under both the control of General Nkunda and colonel Jules Mutebutsi. During that period, Mr. Ricci indicated, the dissident military troops of the FARDC committed targeted killings and systematic lootings along with rape and humiliation. "Those who were opposed to the lootings were killed", Mr. Ricci said, adding that about 147 houses were looted. Altogether, the fights in Bukavu left 143 victims including 66 dead, 31 cases of rapes. MONUC's preliminary report says. Investigations will proceed in Cyangungu after securing a clearance from Rwandan Government to access its territory. While briefing on the military situation in eastern DRC, MONUC's military spokesman, commander Abou Thiam declared that the situation was calm, more particularly in Kamanyola where fighting was reported between the loyalist forces and the dissidents. He underscored that MONUC has contributed to the protection of communities and helped limit the lootings. As a result 1,300 people were accommodated in MONUC compound. The Mission also provided transportation assistance to FARDC to allow them to visit troops. That is part of the coordinating measures reached by General Iliya Samailia of MONUC and admiral Mata Liwanga, FARDC chief of staff, commandant Thiam disclosed. The three weeks of violence in Bukavu had serious repercussions on the vulnerable people who were assisted by humanitarian agencies in eastern DRC, according to Ms. Patricia Tome, head of MONUC Public Information Division. The weakening of the peace process will affect the future of the Congolese child, Mr. Tome said, recalling that the Day of the African Child will be celebrated on 16 June. Ms. Tome used the opportunity to call on the Congolese people to reflect on the future of the transition in the Democratic Republic of Congo, wondering, in light of the recent events, whether the transition's key players would be able to carry through the process. This transition, she indicated, has no alternative. She condemns the attitude of those who want "the transition's boat to sink along with everything on board: the people and the properties; this would enable them to pick up, fraudulently, all the debris. Those people are unfortunately among "those participating in the transition, those not participating, those manipulating directly or indirectly the situation, all those who do not believe in the DRC and have no faith in the Congolese people and in their capacity to mobilise for a noble cause, such as peace". For Ms. Tome, the renewed fighting in the East has one clear objective: to destabilise, jeopardize and undermine the transition. "Therefore, the perpetrators are using every mean available: ethnicity, putsch, lies, rumour; they fuel fear and hatred, in a nutshell, all the means are good." Responding to the criticisms against MONUC, that the Mission does not meet the populations' expectations, Ms. Tome said that MONUC was not free from blame. "Indeed, no one is free from criticisms, we do assume ours, when they are justified but not when they aim to destabilise a whole process, such as the transition, which has yet to demonstrate all its credibility, through the performance of its actors in the parliament, government, army and police. Ms. Tome warned that "if MONUC leaves, all the rest will also leave, the international assistance first and then the elections".

Ethiopia

Reuters 31 May 2004 Ethiopia urges Zimbabwe to hand over Mengistu Zimbabwe should hand over ousted Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam to stand trial for genocide and human rights violations in the Horn of Africa country, a top Ethiopian diplomat has told a newspaper. Mengistu is being tried in absentia with 37 former top soldiers accused of genocide during his 17-year rule, which ended in 1991 when he was toppled and fled to Zimbabwe. "It is in the interest of the Ethiopian people that this criminal be returned to be tried in Ethiopia," Duna Mufti, Ethiopia's ambassador to Zimbabwe, said in an interview with weekly newspaper Capital, which hit newsstands this morning. "For sure the government of Zimbabwe is aware of the fact that the Ethiopian people are looking forward to the day Mengistu will be handed over to Ethiopia," he added. Suspects could face the death penalty if convicted in the trial which began in December 1994. Since then more than 5 000 people have been tried or await trial in Ethiopia on charges of murdering thousands of people during the Marxist dictator's iron-fisted rule. In a separate report, the newspaper accused Mengistu of unleashing a reign of terror, mass murder, torture and killings. It said between 100 and 150 people were being killed every night in the capital Addis Ababa during the "Red Terror" purges of the late 1970s. "Victims bodies were left lying on the streets and relatives were forced to pay for the bullets that caused the death of their loved ones," the paper said. "Mengistu's security forces tortured political prisoners, dipping bodies in hot oil, raping and inserting bottles and heated metals in bodies of female prisoners," the paper said. The charges against former officials languishing in prison for the last 13 years include the killing of more than 1 000 people including Emperor Haile Selassie, who was dethroned in 1974 by Mengistu's junta known as the Dergue. Human rights groups have expressed alarm at the time the trial is taking. The prosecution says the complex nature of the evidence has prolonged the case.

Kenya

BBC 17 June, 2004 Kenyan army 'abusing human rights' The Kenyan army has been accused of committing human rights abuses in recent operations near Ethiopia. The army had imposed an "undeclared state of emergency" around the border town of Moyale, the Kenyan Human Rights Commission said. The army had rounded up suspected Ethiopian rebels and held suspects without trial, the commission said. The Ethiopian rebel Oromo Liberation Front, based across the border, denies operating in Kenya. "We have never had a camp in Kenya all our camps and military operations are inside Ethiopia," OLF spokesman Lencho Bati told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme. Immunisation identity Ethnic Oromos live on both sides of the border, but Mr Bati insisted his organisation was solely fighting for the self-determination of Oromos in Ethiopia. The district commissioner for Moyale, Joshua Chepchien, told the BBC that some foreigners were among those arrested last week in the operation which had recovered some weapons. But the deputy director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, Steve Ouma said that the army was acting illegally and had imposed a curfew around the town, beaten up locals, killed their cattle, and held suspects for up to two weeks without trial. Soldiers and policeman arresting suspected OLF sympathisers did not determine nationality from identification documents, the commission claims. "Our monitors are telling us the army say: 'Let us see your immunisation.' If you don't have an injection in your arm, 'Oh you're definitely an Ethiopian and you're arrested by the army or police,'" Mr Ouma told the BBC's Network Africa. In April, hundreds of Ethiopian students fled to Kenya, complaining of persecution at home. .

Liberia

AP 1 June 2004 Ousted leader faces war crimes prosecution U.N. court nullifies head-of-state claim FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — A U.N.-backed court for Sierra Leone ruled Monday that ousted Liberian leader Charles Taylor is not immune from prosecution for war crimes. Taylor, in exile in Nigeria, is the most prominent figure indicted by the war crimes court. He is accused of backing Sierra Leone's rebels in a brutal civil war while he was president of neighboring Liberia. The court's three judges, in a brief ruling, said that Taylor's claim of immunity as a former head of state did not apply, because the U.N.-Sierra Leone court is international, not national. The court is scheduled Thursday to begin trying indicted figures from Sierra Leone's 10-year war, in which rebels waged an escalating terror campaign for control of the country's diamond fields. Armed intervention by neighboring Guinea, Britain and the United Nations finally broke the rebels, who signed a peace deal in 2002. Taylor, a former warlord blamed for much of West Africa's bloodshed, fled rebels in his own country in August. He entered exile in Nigeria, which has agreed not to extradite him to the U.N.-Sierra Leone court.

BBC 1 June 2004 Child recruitment 'was war crime' By Elizabeth Blunt BBC Africa analyst Child soldiers have been used in conflicts across West Africa The appeals panel of the Special Court for Sierra Leone has ruled that recruiting child soldiers was established as a war crime at the time of the civil war in that country. This opens the way for what will be the first ever prosecution for child recruitment at an international war crimes tribunal. The picture of a child soldier, clutching a gun almost as big as himself, has become the enduring image of West Africa's civil conflicts. Both sides in Sierra Leone used very young fighters, in defiance of international conventions on the rights of the child, and leaders from both sides now face prosecution. But former Defence Minister Hinga Norman, who recruited and armed pro-government militias, argued that despite these international conventions, and despite general disapproval of under-age recruitment, it actually was not a war crime under international law at the time the acts were committed. Individual responsibilities One of the appeal judges agreed with him. But in the end the panel ruled, by a majority of 3-1, that it was indeed internationally recognised as a war crime in 1996, and the prosecution can go ahead. The decision turned on the exact point at which something accepted as being against an international convention crystallises into a crime for which an individual can be prosecuted. By the time the statute of the International Criminal Court was drawn up in 1998, child recruitment was there in black and white as a serious violation of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict. The appeal judges ruled that the ICC Statute merely codified the existing accepted situation, so Hinga Norman and other defendants can be prosecuted for underage recruitment, even two years previously.

SAPA-DPA 5 June 2004 Bones of Liberian massacre victims dug up June 05 2004 at 03:39PM Monrovia - The skeletons of 75 people massacred by former Liberian president Charles Taylor's militia have been found in a football field in north-west Liberia, Catholic-run Radio Veritas reported on Saturday. The skeletons were found in Suehn-Mecca in Bomi county, about 40km from Monrovia, the report said. A radio Veritas reporter, who accompanied politician Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to the site Friday, quoted residents saying government militia had massacred the people shortly after rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) forces retreated in 2003. "It is disheartening that former government militia could perpetrate such atrocity merely on suspicion that residents were rebel collaborators," Johnson, the only female presidential candidate in the 1997 elections, told Radio Veritas. Government forces are reported to have rounded up the residents, including children and shot or hacked them to death on suspicion of supporting the rebel Lurd. Only residents who fled into the bushes are believed to have escaped the massacre. Militia loyal to exiled, former president Taylor are reported to have turned their anger on innocent civilians when they sustained casualties on the battlefield. According to the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission, the most credible rights group in Liberia, Taylor's militia are also believed to have rounded up hundreds of civilians shortly after Lurd rebels retreated from the provincial town of Tubmanburg and massacred them on the banks of the Maher River on the Monrovia Tubmanburg highway in 2003. - Sapa-DPA

Nigeria

www.dailytimesofnigeria.com 31 May 2004 Towards a lasting peace in the endanger Plateau HAMMED SALAWU DEMOCRACY is seriously on trial in Plateau State. The trial, a symptomatic bye-product of the state of emergency slammed on it by President Olusegun Obasanjo on Tuesday, May 18, is not in a conventional court. The trail is a court marshal, in which only God and President Obasanjo could acquit Plateau. Since the first salvo was fired at the peace of the state on September 7, 2001, the state had been grappling with crises from all fronts. First, it was political leaders that ganged up against the then state governor, Joshua Dariye, in an effort to ensure he was removed from saddle of leadership, even before the 2003 general elections. Dariye survived their onslaught only to face the unending crises that led to his eventual suspension, his deputy, Chief Michael Botmang and the state House of Assembly, which also went with the political whirlwind unleashed on Plateau people by Aso Villa. Before the declaration of the state of emergency by Mr. President, there had been serious preparation towards making the fifth anniversary of rebirth of civil rule in the state after the military had dominated its landscape for years a huge success. The occasion would have been used to also mark the first year of the second tenure of the suspended Governor Dariye in the state. But all those were not to be as the angels of death, who went about the state killing and maiming of innocent citizens without regard to the norms of nature that, “thou shall not kill”, have stopped that. The recent massacre, or, even genocide against the people of Yelwa-Shendam in Shendam Local Government Area of the state was the straw that truncated democracy in the state and the appointment of undemocratic administrator, Major-General Chris Alli (rtd) into the state. Although, the third tier government, that is, the local government administration that gave a semblance of psuedo- democracy in the state is still in place, observers believed that such could not be held as a weapon to defend the democratic institutions that suffered tremendously in the wake of the state of emergency. They argued that even during the full-blown military rule in the country, there was local government system in place. And be that as it may, Plateau people are craving for a return of their hard earned democracy like other Nigerians. But the high wired maneuverings against the suspended governor might not make the interests of the people feasible after the first six months of the state of emergency. A new dimension of economic crime, has been handed down to Dariye, who was said to have engaged in money laundering to the tune of about N300 million, leading to his detention in London. In fact, some people believed that the detention was what delayed him when the Yelwa-Shendam crises broke out. While some interest groups are saying that the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) led by retired Justice Mustapha Akanbi would come in at the end of the day to handle the matter, another faction noted that the suspended governor would be tried by Nuhu Ribadu’s Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EECC) thereby compounding the woes of Dariye. Lamenting this new tend, a stakeholder stressed that the web against Dariye has been woven, at least, three steps ahead of the imbroglio and uncertainty in the political realm of the state at the moment. The stakeholder, who craved anonymity believed that only miracle could bring the suspended governor back to saddle the leadership in the state. Though, he exonerated the governor of any blame in the whole episode, he bemoaned that the high level of propaganda against Dariye has succeeded in nailing him without being able to fight back. However, he prayed that God would acquit the troubled Dariye in the unjust court of President Obasanjo. Also, the state chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Reverend Yakubu Pam, while commenting on the state of emergency declared in the state by the President was of the belief that the travail of Dariye was a systematic manipulation of the views and opinions of Mr. President against Plateau State by those suspected to be Hausa/Fulani, with their agenda to annihilate the state completely from the map of the Nigeria. Pam stressed that the outburst against his person and the body he represents, CAN, at a parley before the declaration of state of emergency was enough testimony that the President had a hidden agenda against Plateau. But John Shagaya, a retired Brigadier-General and former Internal Affairs Minister, would not want to blame the President for his proclamation on the state. He believed that the state was drifting towards anarchy and only such step could save the state from impending calamity. Moreso, retired Air Commodore Jonah David Jang, former governor of Benue and old Gongola states, who contested against the suspended governor in 2003 governorship election on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) believed that President Obasanjo must have had access to some indicting security report against Dariye before his proclamation of state of emergency. He believed that if what Obasanjo did was in the best interest of the Plateau people, so be it. On her part, former Minister of State for Science and Technology, Mrs. Pauline Tallen, who has had a running battle against Dariye over the control of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) machinery in the state, hailed Obasanjo’s broadcast, insisting that such was what God wanted for the Plateau people and prayed that the elusive peace would return to the state. Meanwhile, many Plateau youths have been calling for the head of Deputy Senate President, Alhaji Ibrahim Nasiru Mantu, who was believed to be the arrowhead of Dariye’s travails. In fact, a constitutional process of recalling him from the Senate has been set in motion by leadership of PDP in central Plateau and only God could help Mantu scale through the constitutional process. In fact, as at the time of filling this report, security operatives have been deployed to all his houses and interest in the state for fear of their destruction by desperate and restive youths, who wanted to take their pound of flesh from him for stopping their man, Dariye from performing his mandate as the state governor. And as all the interests engage in accusation and counter-accusation, the state administrator, Chris Alli, has been going round the troubled spots, meeting and speaking with the people to bury the hatchet and embrace peace. He also visited the internally displaced people and assured them of hope of returning to their ancestral home. Anywhere he went, he was received with enthusiasm by mammoth crowd, who prayed for him to succeed in his effort to return peace to the endangered Plateau.

Reuters 2 Jun 2004 Nigerians question unity after religious bloodshed By Tom Ashby KANO, Nigeria, June 2 (Reuters) - Until last month, Maureen Agu, a 28-year-old factory worker, was a model of Nigerian integration. A Christian from the east, she moved north to the predominantly Muslim city of Kano to find a job. Chased from her house by rioting Muslims last month, she has fled to a police barracks for protection where she sleeps on a mat under a tree. "If the Muslims do not want us here, we will go home. But is this not one Nigeria?" Agu said. Many Nigerians have been asking themselves this since religious and tribal fighting that killed more than 1,000 people in a month. The scale of the latest violence, described by some as genocide and ethnic cleansing, is shocking even by the standards of Nigeria, where at least 2,000 have died every year in ethnic, political and religious fighting since the return of democracy to the oil exporting country five years ago. The latest cycle of killing started with a simmering tribal conflict in central Plateau state, where majority Christians are trying to drive out Muslim tribes. In early May, Christian militia massacred hundreds of Muslims in the remote farming town of Yelwa, sparking revenge riots in Kano, where hundreds of Christians were hacked and burned to death in two days of mayhem. Both conflicts have created tens of thousands of displaced people who, like Agu, are fired with bitterness and eager for revenge, carrying messages of ethnic and religious hatred across the vast country of more than 300 ethnic groups, split about equally between Muslims and Christians. Nigeria's second largest city was an obvious focus for reprisals because it is a bastion of Islamic activism and the Muslim majority has already clashed repeatedly with Christians over Islamic sharia law. The city has seen half a dozen anti-Christian riots in the last 13 years. SHARIA Sharia law was introduced in 12 northern states soon after the return of democracy in 1999 and Kano's Muslim elders are pressing for wider implementation of the laws to stop alcohol sales in the state, including in Christian enclaves. Muhammed ibn Usman, a Kano preacher, says the bid to enforce sharia is an attempt to reclaim the city's history as an Islamic capital before the British colonisers took over in the late 19th century. A member of the influential Sharia Implementation Committee, Usman ultimately wants a religious state in Nigeria. "We want to go back to our origin because Nigeria was not meant to be a secular geopolitical entity," he said in an interview on a prayer mat outside the Sahaba mosque. Christians say sharia challenges the basic tenets of the nation and is forcing strangers from northern Nigeria. "Sharia is a threat to the corporate existence of this country," said Boniface Ebekwe, head of the predominantly Christian Ibo minority in Kano. GRIEVANCES The conflicts in Plateau and Kano both pit Muslims against Christians, and they also pit locals against outsiders, creating a tribal ghetto mentality that would wreak havoc if translated to other big cities across the country of 130 million people. "They want a Muslim religious state in Kano," said the Reverend Andrew Ubah, head of Kano's Christian Association of Nigeria. "That means if you are not Muslim, don't stay in Kano. Let's be clear. Let's forget about one Nigeria. And by the time I go home, any Muslim in my place should go also," said Ubah in his church in the main Christian enclave of Sabon Gari. President Olusegun Obasanjo was alive to these dangers when he assumed emergency powers to govern Plateau state last month, saying that the "near genocide" between Muslims and Christians there could engulf the whole country in crisis. There is a precedent. The last time a state of emergency was declared in Nigeria was 1962. It was a first link in a chain of events that led to the collapse of democracy and a three-year civil war that killed more than a million people. The Nigerian constitution recognises only "citizens". Ethnic leaders increasingly discriminate against those they consider settlers in their tribal lands. These divisions can be exploited by unscrupulous local politicians who maintain power through violence and corruption. Ubah showed Reuters a letter purporting to come from a group called the Islamic Revolutionary Committee, celebrating the Kano riots and promising more. "We have taught the Kafiris (infidels) a big lesson in Kano," the letter reads, promising to slay 20 Christians for every Muslim killed. "We are appealing to all faithful to prepare for the great show-down in Kaduna and Zaria," it said, apparently in reference to planned anti-Christian riots in two other northern cities. .

Rwanda

BBC 29 May 2004The language of diplomacy By Barnaby Mason BBC diplomatic correspondent 800,000 people were killed in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 In May 1994 I found myself in New York covering the United Nations Security Council for a few weeks. It was the height of the genocide in Rwanda; unspeakable massacres were taking place every day. "It's so awful, we must do something," an aide to the UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros Ghali, said to me. Instead, the members of the security council argued about something called the concept of operations for an expanded UN mission. A senior American official said it had to be a do-able operation; expectations of what the UN could achieve should not be exaggerated. Using the word itself would have mattered because, if it was genocide, how could you not act? Scarred by the painful experience of Somalia the previous year, the Clinton administration delayed a vote on a resolution to send 5,500 troops, even though there was no question of American soldiers taking part. "Everyone is very conscious of the urgency of the matter," said a British representative, but the dry as dust haggling went on. Strikingly, the big powers, especially the United States, resisted the use of the word "genocide" to describe what was going on in Rwanda. So the resolution eventually passed talked instead of mindless violence and carnage, the death of many thousands of innocent civilians. Plain language There was only one oblique reference recalling that the killing of members of an ethnic group with the intention of destroying it was a crime under international law. Using the word itself - calling a spade a spade - would have mattered because, if it was genocide, how could you not act, however difficult it was? In a similar way, British officials in the early 1990s tended to describe the fighting in Bosnia as civil war rather than Serb aggression - the phrase implied that all the parties were as bad as each other and weakened the demand for intervention. In the end, the pretence over Rwanda at the UN was swept aside. Mr Boutros Ghali appeared before the media to declare: "Genocide has been committed - and we're still discussing what is to be done. I've begged them to send troops; I failed. It's a scandal." It was a rare instance of emotion bursting its diplomatic bonds - the kind of moment that diplomatic correspondents relish, as compensation for the amount of time they spend studying ambiguous phrases to find out what lurks beneath them. Boris Yeltsin defied the 1991 Soviet coup attempt I can remember others - Boris Yeltsin, for example, ailing but still larger than life, at a summit of more than 50 leaders in Istanbul in 1999, angrily rejecting western criticism of the behaviour of Russian forces in Chechnya as interference in an internal matter. Bill Clinton publicly turned the tables on him by recalling Mr Yeltsin's stand for freedom on a tank in Moscow. "If they'd put you in jail," he said, "I hope every leader round this table would have stood up for you and not dismissed it as an internal Russian affair." Then there was British Foreign Secretary (as he then was), Robin Cook, the previous year visiting a Jewish settlement site at Har Homa in torrential rain. The Israeli Government accused him of breaking an agreement not to meet Palestinians there. Demonstrators called him an anti-Semite and the then Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, cancelled a dinner with him. Mr Cook proclaimed: "I did not submit to Israeli pressure." Instruments of policy His officials, for once, were just as undiplomatic, accusing the Israelis of a fantastic over-reaction, of being in an ugly and defensive mood. Those were moments of plain speaking. Usually, words are carefully chosen as instruments of policy. The leaders of the big powers try by constant repetition to get their terms adopted by everyone, because they carry with them value judgements and a particular view of the world. The most obvious example is the word "terrorist". When President George W Bush calls someone a terrorist, he thinks that is all that needs to be said. The word is intended to close off argument, ignoring the disagreement across the world about who is a terrorist and who is not. It has become just a term of abuse. There are similar objections to the label "war on terrorism" but it still flourishes. Can you have a war on a technique, since that is what terrorism is? Can the war ever end? Words do matter The attraction for Mr Bush is that Iraq can be verbally neutralised as the central front in the war on terror. Diplomatic correspondents worry about this sort of thing. Who has "sovereignty" over Iraq? American and British politicians - and the media - now talk of transferring sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government at the end of June. Pedants object that they cannot do that because they do not possess the sovereignty in the first place. All right, then, they are going to hand over power. Are they? Really? Perhaps a transfer of "limited administrative authority" would be more accurate. But that does not have the right ring to it. It certainly does not sound like a clear end to the occupation. So you see, words do matter, even if facts on the ground matter more.

BBC 8 June, 2004 Rwandan trial 'bad for democracy' Pasteur Bizimungu was on trial with six others Former Rwandan Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu has criticised the jailing of the country's first post-genocide president as politically motivated. Pasteur Bizimungu was sent to prison for 15 years on charges of inciting civil disobedience, associating with criminals and embezzling public funds. Mr Bizimungu was arrested in 2002 after trying to form a political party. Mr Twagiramungu said the case showed current Rwandan President Paul Kagame, did not want any opposition. Critic "Frankly this is a shame on our justice in Rwanda," he told the BBC's Network Africa programme. "This is a negative sign of the future of Rwanda. We have to react," he said. Human rights group Amnesty International said some of the evidence during the trial had been obtained under torture. "It's very rare for a head of state to be imprisoned and any time that happens you have to have really solid evidence - that doesn't appear to have been the case here," said Stephanie Brancaforte, of Amnesty International. Critics accuse Kagame of suppressing dissent Profile: Pasteur Bizimungu Correspondents say Mr Bizimungu's trial raises questions about the independence of Rwanda's judiciary. Mr Bizimungu, his former minister of transport and six others were cleared on charges of threatening state security. He was jailed for five years on each guilty count. Prosecutors had called for him to be sentenced to life in prison. He denied the charges. His seven co-accused were also jailed for associating with criminals. Mr Bizimungu's defence lawyer said they had not decided yet whether to appeal. Past Mr Bizimungu was one of only a handful of Hutus to join the Rwandan Patriotic Front - the RPF - the rebel movement formed among Tutsi exiles in Uganda. The verdict against Mr Bizimungu has been largely orchestrated by his political opponents Benson Moono, USA Your reaction: A threat to democracy? The RPF took control of Rwanda in July 1994, putting an end to the genocide organised by extremist Hutu leaders. But after his resignation, the former president became a vocal critic of the RPF-led government. The BBC's Rob Walker in Rwanda says that the trial was seen as particularly sensitive for the authorities as Mr Bizimungu is one of the few moderate Hutu politicians to publicly oppose the government and remain in the country. While the RPF says it has introduced stability and multi-party democracy, its critics claim it has centralised power within a Tutsi elite and crushed potential opponents - by accusing them of promoting ethnic divisions. The trial saw moments of drama in the courtroom. One prosecution witness withdrew his testimony, claiming it had been made under police duress. Mr Bizimungu's lawyer was also briefly jailed by the judge for contempt of court.

Sierra Leone

www.telegraph.co.uk 4 June 2004 Three charged at landmark atrocity trial By Tim Butcher, Africa Correspondent (Filed: 04/06/2004) The first three suspects in a landmark war crimes trial in Sierra Leone appeared in court yesterday charged with cannibalism, human sacrifice and rape. All were senior militiamen in a conflict that cost 200,000 lives and shocked the world with its images of mutilated civilians and drugged child soldiers. Sam Hinga Norman: former interior minister The trial is backed by the United Nations. In a packed courtroom in the capital Freetown it was described as a seminal event in international justice. "The ghosts of thousands of murdered dead stand among us," said David Crane, a former American paratrooper and the chief prosecutor. "They cry out for a fair and transparent trial to let the world know what took place in Sierra Leone." But for many victims, including those who had limbs hacked off by drug-crazed rebels, there is little hope that their tormentors will be brought to justice. The court has focused on only the strategists and leaders of the warring factions - the big fish, or kakatua, in the local Krio language - not the foot soldiers who committed the atrocities. Kadiatu Fofanah, 44, a woman whose legs were chopped off at the thigh, said: "The guns have been taken from the children and you don't hear gunshots now. But the commanders are still out there. They continue to survive." The three defendants - Sam Hinga Norman, Moinina Fofana and Allieu Kondewa - were members of the civil defence forces known as the Kamajors. But while the prosecution argues that they are war criminals, many people in Sierra Leone support them, as they fought for the government to defeat the rebels from the Revolutionary United Front. President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah was so pleased with the Kamajors that he rewarded Norman with the cabinet post of interior minister two years ago. Norman was arrested at his ministerial office last year. While insiders praise the setting up of the court, many will harbour doubts about its effectiveness until Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, appears in custody. Taylor, blamed for arming, supporting and encouraging the RUF, is living comfortably in a villa in southern Nigeria, part of a peace deal agreed last August to remove him from power. Only 13 people have so far been indicted by the court and three of them are either dead or believed to be dead. They include Foday Sankoh, the RUF leader, who died in custody from natural causes last year. The court, which is smaller and less expensive than the UN tribunals for the Balkans and Rwanda, is seen by many as the template for the tribunal that will try Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Its workings will be scrutinised closely to ensure that it proves to be fair and efficient as a testing ground for international justice. Britain, which sent 800 soldiers to Sierra Leone to defeat the rebels in 2000, has a key interest in seeing the country return to normality. While almost all British troops have left, a large United Nations peacekeeping force remains.

IRIN 4 Jun 2004 - First war crimes trial starts at UN-backed court FREETOWN, 4 June (IRIN) - A Special Court that includes five judges appointed by the United Nations has begun the trial of those deemed primarily responsible for war crimes and human rights abuse committed during Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war. The first three individuals to stand trial for commiting atrocities during the 1991-2001 conflict were led into the dock of a specially built court house in the capital Freetown on Thursday. Controversially, they were not leaders of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel movement which sought to overthrow the elected government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. They were members of the Civil Defence Force (CDF), a civilian militia group, based on traditional societies of hunters known as Kamajors, which fought alongside the Tejan Kabbah's army against the rebels. Special Court Prosecutor David Crane, a former lawyer with US Department of Defence, said in his opening statement that the CDF had brutally killed and raped and terrorised thousands of people, recruited child soldiers and commited acts of cannibalism during the decade-long conflict. "The just cause of a civil defence force in Sierra Leone, set up to defend a nation, became distorted and twisted beyond measure," Crane told a packed court room. "The ghosts of thousands of the murdered and dead stand among us. They cry out for a fair and transparent trial to let the world know what took place here in Sierra Leone," he added. Before him in the dock stood the three top leaders of the CDF: Sam Hinga Norman, the National Coordinator of the militia movement, who went on to become Interior Minister, Moinina Fofana, the National Director of War of the militia force, and Alieu Kondewa, the High Priest of the CDF, who supervised the traditional initiation rites that its members were obliged to go through. Crane said he would produce evidence of several atrocities for which these men were directly responsible. He cited one incident in which CDF gunmen arrested 65 people who had been forced to work in a diamond mine by the RUF and shot them dead in groups of three or four. When the executioners realised they were running low on ammunition, they resorted to beheading the last 10 one at a time, he added. Deputy prosecutor Joseph Kamara meanwhile explained that witnesses would testify how Kondewa, the High Priest of the CDF, repeatedly raped a woman over the course of a week and how some CDF militia men cleaned out the intestines of some of their victims and roasted and ate them with cassava. While these allegations of brutal murders and cannibalism were being recounted to the spellbound court, Hinga Norman smiled and began writing a note to the judge, dismissing his defence team. Kondewa looked shocked as rape allegations against him were recounted. Fofana, the third accused, listened to a translation of the proceedings through headphones with a smile crossing his face now and then. Presiding judge Benjamin Itoe of Cameroon adjourned the proceedings after the prosecution's 100-minute opening statement upon receiving the hand-written note from Hinga Norman stating that he would conduct his own defence before the court. "It is a fundamental issue which the chamber would like to address and deliver a reasoned decision on," he said. The trial was due to resume on Tuesday 8 June. A second separate trial of three RUF leaders, Issa Hassan Sesay, Morris Kallon and Augustine Gbao, is due to begin on 5 July. The Special Court is an international war crimes tribunal set up under the terms of an agreement between the Sierra Leone government and the United Nations signed in January 2002. It has so far indicted 13 people of whom two have since died. The remaining nine accused are currently in custody, but court officials have hinted that other indictments may follow. This is the second international war crimes tribunal to be set up in Africa after the international court established in Arusha, Tanzania, to try those responsible for the genocide in Rwanda. Itoe, the presiding judge, said in his opening remarks at the CDF trial that the proceedings would be fair and the accused would be presumed innocent unless proven guilty "beyond all reasonable doubts" by the prosecution. "We, as a court....are not bound by the findings or conclusions of these investigations or the contents of the indictments, which so far are mere allegations," Itoe said. "Our decisions will be entirely based on the best oral, documentary and other evidence that is advanced by the parties before us." But Itoe also stressed the role of the court in combatting impunity and contributing to the process of national reconciliation in Sierra Leone following the brutal decade-long conflict. In recent months, the relevance of the tribunal, where five UN-appointed foreign judges sit alongside three Sierra Leonean judges, has been questioned by many Sierra Leoneans. Critics have pointed out that the four men widely seen as those most responsible for the atrocities of the civil war are beyond the Special Court's reach. The two top leaders of the RUF, Foday Sankoh and Sam Bockarie are now dead, while two other key indictees; former Charles Taylor of Liberia, who armed and backed the RUF rebels, and Johnny Paul Koroma, the leader of a military junta which tried to join forces with the rebels in 1997 and 1998, have escaped its clutches. Koroma went into hiding in January 2003 following an abortive attack on an army barracks in Freetown, in which his followers were implicated. Taylor, who was forced out of power in August last year, has been granted political asylum in Nigeria. Some supporters of Tejan Kabbah, who was re-elected for a second term as president in 2002, have also questioned why the leaders of the CDF, which was supporting a constitutionally elected government, should be put on trial at all. All the same, the court, financed by foreign donors, is being keenly watched as a potential model for war crimes tribunals in other conflicts. Reuters news agency quoted Robin Vincent, the Special Court's UN-appointed Registrar, as saying he had been invited by the US State Department to take part in a planning mission to Iraq "because they felt quite strongly there were similarities."

Somalia

AFP 1 Jun 2004 At least 31 killed in Somali clashes MOGADISHU, June 1 (AFP) - At least 31 people were killed and around 40 wounded Tuesday amid clashes in the southern Somali town of Bulohawo, near the Kenyan border, militia sources and witnesses said. The bodies of the dead, 25 gunmen and six civilians hit by stray bullets as they were going to morning prayers, littered the streets of the town, eyewitnesses said. An earlier toll put the number of dead at five. Around 18 people who sustained serious gunshot wounds were rushed to nearby hospitals while a dozen others were seen seeking treatment in local phamarcies. The clashes erupted after about 200 fighters from a breakaway group of the Somali National Front (SNF) faction attempted to retake the town from a rival SNF faction. "Fifteen of the dead were attacking militia, 10 were the ones who were defending the town and six are ordinary civilians caught by stray bullets," said an eyewitness, who did not want to be named. Residents began burying their dead in line with the Muslim practice of doing so on the day death occurs. A source in the defending SNF faction said they had killed on of the attackers' commanders and captured two pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns. He added that he thought the attackers had fled across the Kenyan border. Bulohawo businessman Ahmed Yassin told AFP: "The fighting, early today (Tuesday), is a continuation of earlier clashes between two rival groups in SNF," which is dominated by the Marehan clan. Another Bulohawo resident, who did not want to be named, said the fighting had subsided after the attackers were repelled. The SNF, which controls Gedo region and parts of central Somalia, has been divided, mainly by a struggle for its leadership, since 1996. Somalia descended into anarchic bloodletting in 1991 when dictator Mohamed Sia Barre was toppled. Since then the country in the Horn of Africa has been divided into fiefdoms governed by unruly warlords. .

Sudan

www.npr.org 26 May 2004 Reports Suggest Acts of Genocide in Sudan Morning Edition audio May 26, 2004 Stories from Sudanese refugees in neighboring Chad describe attacks on villages, rapes and murders by a government-backed Arab militia in western Sudan. The Holocaust Museum's Committee on Conscience warns the ethnically based violence represents a grave threat of genocide. Hear NPR's Steve Inskeep and Jerry Fowler of the Holocaust Museum.

AFP 27 May 2004 Rights group: Genocide in Sudan Conflict in the west has displaced more than a million people The Sudanese government is continuing a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the western region of Darfur, an international rights group has claimed. Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned on Thursday that Khartoum was "taking a terrible step backward" despite having signed a peace accord with rebels to end 21 years of civil war in the south. "The government's campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur raises real questions about whether Khartoum is really willing to comply with Wednesday's peace accord in the south," their statement said. The rights watchdog added that pro-government militias had attacked five villages 15km south of Nyala in Darfur as recently as last Tuesday. The raids killed 46 civilians and wounded at least nine others, the statement said, citing local sources. The group has documented how the Janjawid have been armed, trained, and uniformed by the Sudanese government. Agreement in south Meanwhile, Khartoum and the southern-based rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) signed agreements on the last outstanding issues barring the way to a definitive end to the civil war on Wednesday. "The government's campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur raises real questions about whether Khartoum is really willing to comply with Wednesday's peace accord in the south" Human Rights Watch statement The agreement came after marathon talks between Vice President Ali Usman Taha and SPLA leader John Garang that started in September 2002. But HRW said: "Darfur remains a cloud over Sudan and it would be inappropriate for the United States to hold a high-level celebration of the peace accord while the ethnic cleansing continues in western Sudan." Late Wednesday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell also tempered his praise for the peace accord by saying: "Sudan will not be at peace until the problem of Darfur is resolved." Terrible toll Khartoum has faced mounting international anger over the humanitarian crisis in the western region. The government has been accused of operating a scorched earth policy in the face of the rebellion launched by members of the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa minorities in February 2003. At least 10,000 people have been killed and more than a million driven from their homes.

NYT May 29, 2004 OP-ED COLUMNIST Bush Points the Way By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF I doff my hat, briefly, to President Bush. Sudanese peasants will be naming their sons "George Bush" because he scored a humanitarian victory this week that could be a momentous event around the globe — although almost nobody noticed. It was Bush administration diplomacy that led to an accord to end a 20-year civil war between Sudan's north and south after two million deaths. If the peace holds, hundreds of thousands of lives will be saved, millions of refugees will return home, and a region of Africa may be revived. But there's a larger lesson here as well: messy African wars are not insoluble, and Western pressure can help save the day. So it's all the more shameful that the world is failing to exert pressure on Sudan to halt genocide in its Darfur region. Darfur is unaffected by the new peace accords. I'm still haunted by what I saw when I visited the region in March: a desert speckled with fresh graves of humans and the corpses of donkeys, the empty eyes of children who saw their fathers killed, the guilt of parents fumbling to explain how they had survived while their children did not. The refugees tell of sudden attacks by the camel-riding Janjaweed Arab militia, which is financed by the Sudanese government, then a panic of shooting and fire. Girls and women are routinely branded after they are raped, to increase the humiliation. One million Darfur people are displaced within Sudan, and 200,000 have fled to Chad. Many of those in Sudan are stuck in settlements like concentration camps. I've obtained a report by a U.N. interagency team documenting conditions at a concentration camp in the town of Kailek: Eighty percent of the children are malnourished, there are no toilets, and girls are taken away each night by the guards to be raped. As inmates starve, food aid is diverted by guards to feed their camels. The standard threshold for an "emergency" is one death per 10,000 people per day, but people in Kailek are dying at a staggering 41 per 10,000 per day — and for children under 5, the rate is 147 per 10,000 per day. "Children suffering from malnutrition, diarrhea, dehydration and other symptoms of the conditions under which they are being held live in filth, directly exposed to the sun," the report says. "The team members, all of whom are experienced experts in humanitarian affairs, were visibly shaken," the report declares. It describes "a strategy of systematic and deliberate starvation being enforced by the GoS [government of Sudan] and its security forces on the ground." (Read the 11-page report here.) Demographers at the U.S. Agency for International Development estimate that at best, "only" 100,000 people will die in Darfur this year of malnutrition and disease. If things go badly, half a million will die. This is not a natural famine, but a deliberate effort to eliminate three African tribes in Darfur so Arabs can take their land. The Genocide Convention defines such behavior as genocide, and it obliges nations to act to stop it. That is why nobody in the West wants to talk about Darfur — because of a fear that focusing on the horror will lead to a deployment in Sudan. But it's not a question of sending troops, but of applying pressure — the same kind that succeeded in getting Sudan to the north-south peace agreement. If Mr. Bush would step up to the cameras and denounce this genocide, if he would send Colin Powell to the Chad-Sudan border, if he would telephone Sudan's president again to demand humanitarian access to the concentration camps, he might save hundreds of thousands of lives. Yet while Mr. Bush has done far too little, he has at least issued a written statement, sent aides to speak forcefully at the U.N. and raised the matter with Sudan's leaders. That's more than the Europeans or the U.N. has done. Where are Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac? Where are African leaders, like Nelson Mandela? Why isn't John Kerry speaking out forcefully? And why are ordinary Americans silent? Islamic leaders abroad have been particularly shameful in standing with the Sudanese government oppressors rather than with the Muslim victims in Darfur. Do they care about dead Muslims only when the killers are Israelis or Americans? As for America, we have repeatedly failed to stand up to genocide, whether of Armenians, Jews, Cambodians or Rwandans. Now we're letting it happen again.

WP 30 May 2004 The Darfur Catastrophe By Susan E. Rice and Gayle E. Smith Sunday, May 30, 2004; Page B07 Ten years ago CNN ran footage of bloated corpses floating down Rwanda's rivers, while Washington debated whether to call it "genocide." As U.S. officials who later were responsible for U.S. policy toward Africa, we helped plan several subsequent military interventions in Africa. But, like many others, we remain haunted by the Rwandan genocide. So it is with some humility and a full appreciation of the complexity of decisions to deploy U.S. forces that we hazard to recommend how to deal with a new Rwanda now unfolding in the Darfur region of western Sudan. There, the government of Sudan and its proxy, the Janjaweed Arab militia, are attempting to crush a rebellion by Muslim Africans with the same vicious tactics they have used for years against Christian and animist opponents in southern Sudan. While negotiating a peace agreement with southern rebel forces, the government and its militia have killed, raped, kidnapped, bombed, enslaved, displaced, starved and burned countless innocent civilians in Darfur. U.N. officials have called this ethnic cleansing the "world's greatest humanitarian catastrophe." Some 10,000 civilians have been killed. At least 130,000 refugees have fled to neighboring Chad. Over a million more have been internally displaced and are trapped by the militia in disease-ridden camps without adequate food or water. They face the imminent threat of starvation. The U.S. Agency for International Development estimates another 300,000 or more could die. Though the parties agreed to a cease-fire in Darfur last month, insecurity still reigns. The Sudanese government persists in denying its responsibility for the growing crisis, refuses to restrain its militia and impedes humanitarian access. President Bush, members of Congress and U.N. officials, including Kofi Annan, have condemned the atrocities and urged Khartoum to stop them. But the United States and European and African governments have been loath to take action for fear of undermining the substantial progress being made toward a final peace agreement between Khartoum and its southern opponents. Inaction sends a dangerous signal to Khartoum that if necessary the United States will overlook war crimes in Darfur to achieve north-south peace. Much more must be done, and soon. First, the United States, acting through the U.N. Security Council, must pressure the government of Sudan to halt the killing, disarm the militia and allow full, unimpeded access for humanitarian workers and supplies. This pressure should include travel and financial sanctions, as well as a ban on the purchase of Sudanese oil, effective automatically within 14 days unless the government takes immediate and effective action. Many foreign governments will resist such sanctions. Some might accuse the United States of hypocrisy in light of the Abu Ghraib scandal. We should have none of it. Instead, we should challenge fellow Security Council governments to live with their consciences if they choose to acquiesce in another genocide. Simultaneously, the United States should tell Khartoum no current U.S. sanctions will be lifted unless and until the government relents in Darfur. Second, the United States should press the Security Council to grant member states the authority to intervene militarily to protect innocent civilians and ensure the security of humanitarian workers and assistance. Such mili- tary action might entail airdrops, a no-fly zone to protect civilians from government bombing, the establishment of humanitarian safe zones and security for critical deliveries by rail and road. Third, the United States should press European and capable African countries to lead this humanitarian intervention with U.S. support. Given the demands on U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti, it is reasonable to ask Europe and Africa to play a key role. Finally, the United States should begin urgent military planning and preparation for the contingency that no other country will act to stop the dying in Darfur. The administration has worked hard to end Sudan's long-running civil conflict. But this effort will have been wasted if we allow the Sudanese government to continue committing crimes against humanity. Not only will the international community have blood on its hands for failure to halt another genocide, but we will have demonstrated to Khartoum that it can continue to act with impunity against its own people. In that case, any hard-won peace agreement will not be worth the paper it's signed on. It is too late to change the historical record on Rwanda. But it is not too late to set a better precedent for the future. Susan E. Rice, assistant secretary of state from 1997 to 2001, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Gayle E. Smith, special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council from 1998 to 2001, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

www.islam-online.net 31 May 2004 Weeping Darfur: The Tragic Saga of Skin and Bones By Lamya Tawfik 31/05/2004 The Darfur region is inhabited by the African tribes of Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa communities As Arab leaders mulled over the mere idea of holding a face-saving summit in Tunis , a gargantuan humanitarian crisis was rapidly unfolding under their noses in the Darfur region in western Sudan . Twenty-two deaf ears were turned towards the catastrophe, which includes malnutrition, rape, genocide, famine and destruction of an ecological system to name a few. The summit also coincided with the International Day of Biological Diversity, on May 22, and as far as Darfur is concerned “diversity” is the last thing on the minds of those committing the ethnic cleansing in the region. What IS going on in Darfur ? A crisis that started over a fight over pastures and resources in the late 1980s metamorphosed into one of the worst cases of ethnic cleansing and man-made famine. Known locally as the “zurga” (or blacks), the Darfur region is inhabited by the African tribes of Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa communities. They have been the victims of “indiscriminate aerial bombardment, militia and army raiding and denial of humanitarian assistance” by the Janjaweed, an Arab militia closely linked to the Sudanese government, said the Human Rights Report issued in April 2004 under the title Darfur In Flames: Atrocities in Western Sudan.[1] According to the report, around a million Darfurians have been “forced to flee their homes in the past 14 months”. The region under conflict has three main ecological bands: “desert in the north, which is part of the Sahara and the least densely populated and most ecologically fragile zone; a central, fertile belt which includes the Jebel Marra mountains and is the richest agriculturally; and the southern zone, which, although more stable than the north, is also prone to drought and sensitive to fluctuations in rainfall.”[2] The conflict is between the agriculturalists who belong to non-Arab ethnic groups (the “Zurga” or blacks) and the pastoralists who are mainly from Arab descent who live in the northern area. The Zurga tribes include groups such as the Fur, Masaalit, Tama, Tunjur, Bergid, and Berti, who live and farm in the central zone. The pastoralists include nomadic and semi-nomadic camel herding tribes.[3] “Pastoralists from the north, including the northern Rizeigat, Mahariya, Zaghawa, and others, typically migrate south in search of water sources and grazing in the dry season (typically November through April). Beginning in the mid-1980s, when much of the Sahel region was hit by recurrent episodes of drought and increasing desertification, the southern migration of the Arab pastoralists provoked land disputes with agricultural communities.”[4] During these disputes, clashes would get bloodier and the Sudanese government would favor the Arabs (the pastoralists). The Sadiq El Mahdi Government (1986-89) developed the policy of arming Arab militias from Darfur and Kordofan known as “muraheleen.” These were used as a counterinsurgency force against the rebels of the area.[5] Water sources have been destroyed or buried and wells have been bulldozed. Today forces called the “Janjaweed” (Arab militias allied to the Sudanese Government) are given complete backup and impunity by the Government, that pays its arms and uniforms to commit the atrocities and to quell two insurgency groups in Darfur that are perceived as a threat to the regime in Sudan: the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).[6] “While many of the abuses are committed by the Janjaweed, the Sudanese Government is complicit in these abuses and holds the highest degree of responsibility for pursuing a military policy that has resulted in the commission of crimes against humanity,” said the report. The situation in Darfur “is beyond description”, according to Gamal Adam, a PhD candidate in the Anthropology Department of York University in Canada and an expert in Sudanese affairs. “Elderly people and children under 5 years of age are dying in large numbers everyday of famine and famine-related diseases. Water sources were destroyed or buried,” said Adam in an interview with IslamOnline.net, adding that wells were sometimes bulldozed. As a result, more than 110,000 Darfurians have fled across the border to Chad and nearly 750,000 people are internally displaced within the region. Chad itself has inhabitants of the Zaghawa, Masaalit and Arab ethnic groups involved in the conflict. Speaking to IslamOnline.net, Awatef Mustafa, lecturer at the Ahdaf University in Sudan said that while it may be “too early to predict the long-term implications of the conflict on either the internally displaced persons (IDPs), the refugees or the host populations in the areas they have fled to” there will always be the problem of food shortages and “dependency on food aid will be an ongoing problem.” Because of the fact that the farming community is fleeing for their lives, it is highly likely that this year’s harvest will be severely affected. “There are increasing signs that Darfur could face a man-made famine if no intervention takes place, adding thousands of lives of men, women and children to the unknown number of victims the Government of Sudan has already destroyed.”[7] Mustafa added that the farming conditions are so bad in Darfur that even if “the displaced were able to return to their farms immediately to benefit from the current planting season, they would still be dependent on food aid until the end of 2004 as reported by the World Food Programme (WFP). If, on the other hand, this year’s April to June planting season is missed, the next harvest of staples like millet and sorghum will not be available until the end of 2005,” she added. Among the organizations that have been active in providing relief in the crisis-struck region, is Medicins Sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders). According to recent releases issued by the organization, MSF currently has 22 international volunteers and 46 national staff in Darfur . “In Birak, MSF is running a Health Center and a mobile clinic, which carries out consultations at Koulongo refugee camp. The team performs 500 new consultations each week. The main health problems are diarrhea, severe respiratory infections, conjunctivitis, intestinal parasites, gastritis and urinary infections,” the organization said, adding that in Iriba some cases of meningitis have been found early March and that the epidemic threshold has been reached. [8] More than 1000 people a day are being vaccinated by MSF in conjunction with the local health authorities and the Red Cross. In addition to the famine, civilians are being raped, assaulted and abducted by the Janjaweed. Attempts to make the villages uninhabitable include destroying “key village assets, such as water points and mills,” said the Human Rights Watch report, adding that even underground granaries were dug up and destroyed. [9] “For obvious reasons, cutting off all sources of food and water to civilians in their homes will inevitably lead to their displacement - or starvation.”[10] The report included accounts of destroyed mango trees, and camels that were allowed by the Janjaweed in the fields in order for the crops to be consumed quickly. The Janjaweed also threw bodies in the wells in order to contaminate them and make it impossible for them to be used by the villagers. As they flee their homes, the residents of the villages are looted and abused at Janjaweed checkpoints by Janjaweed militias themselves and are even attacked after they reach larger towns in Darfur . [11] Hair-raising accounts of sexual assault and rape have been reported despite the social stigma of women not wanting to identify themselves as rape victims in Sudanese and Chadian cultures. “Incidents of rape appear to have increased over the past six months, part of the ever-increasing brutality of attacks.” [12] Denying Humanitarian Access The Sudanese government, for four months, from October 2003 to January 2004, obstructed international assistance to displaced civilians in Darfur and provided no assistance of its own. [13] Despite the government’s promises to open access to humanitarian organizations by February 16, the UN says - according to a report published by the International Crisis Group in March 2004 - that it only has access to 25-30 percent of the persons in need. [14] Could we be witnessing another Rwanda : genocide with the silent blessings of the international community? Mustafa disagrees. “I do not think it is the case, as the international community, mainly the UN Humanitarian Committee and the Sudan Government are aware of the situation and are trying their best to work urgently to alleviate the crisis,” she said. However, Adam seems to think otherwise. “Indeed the silence of the international community on what is happening in Darfur reminds us of what happened in Rwanda ten years ago. It is a pity that it has been stated in several occasions that the world will never experience again what had happened in Rwanda .” Media Blackout Yet, it is not sufficient that the humanitarian committee in the UN knows about the situation. There seems to be a media blackout that is overshadowed by other, no less shocking news items such as the prisoners’ abuse in Iraq and the escalating crisis in the Palestinian territories. The Sudanese Government too has done its share to hide the conflict from the world. On November 24, 2003 , the independent (arguably) Khartoum Monitor and on December 3, 2003 Al Ayam newspapers were banned for criticizing the situation. On December 17, the Al Jazeera Khartoum office was shut down. “Travel restrictions have kept foreigners, including relief workers, away from the fighting. Activists who tried to alert the international community have been subjected to preventive detention.”[15] Arab Silence Despite the government’s promises to open access to humanitarian organizations by February 16, the UN says that it only has access to 25-30 percent of the persons in need In an open letter directed to Arab leaders published on May 19 on Sudaneseonline.com, intellectuals from Darfur questioned Arab silence, drawing resemblance to situations in Iraq, Palestine, Somalia, Bosnia and the Gujarat in India adding: “Muslims in all these places are being killed and no one in any Arab or Islamic country does anything positive until Allah makes the non-Muslims move to their rescue.” [16] “The Arab World is always silent, as in the case of what is happening in Palestine and Iraq ! The Arab relief organizations have started to move (e.g. United Arab Emirates and Kuwait) after the UN Humanitarian Committee sent an appeal to those organizations to provide help,” said Mustafa. The reason behind the Arab world’s silence, according to Adam, is that people in those countries “know very little about Sudan let alone about Darfur and consequently they believe in the misleading information which the Sudanese Government agencies present. Moreover, the culture of NGOs and civil society is not fully-grown in the Arab world and therefore the absence of Arab relief organizations from Darfur is based on the lack of such culture.” Yet to remain silent is to become an accomplice in the catastrophe. The Sudanese president, Omar Al Bashir, said he could not attend the Arab summit citing “internal reasons”.[17] Would the catastrophe in Darfur qualify to be one of those? Perhaps. 1 Darfur in Flames: Atrocities in western Sudan. HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, APRIL 2004, VOL. 16, NO. 5 (A), pg. 1 2 Ibid, pg. 8 3 Ibid, pg. 8 4 Ibid, pg. 9 5 Ibid, pg. 9 6 Ibid, pg. 10 7 Ibid, pg. 3 8 Catastrophic Conditions for Sudanese Refugees in Chad, MSF, May 11 9 Darfur in Flames, pg. 14 10 Ibid, pg. 16 11 Ibid, pg. 14 12 Ibid, pg. 29 13 Ibid, pg. 35 14 Darfur rising: Sudan’s new crisis. International Crisis Group, March 25, 2004 , pg. 3 15 Ibid, pg. 20 16 http://www.sudaneseonline.com/anews/may19-93616.html 17 Al Bashir Apologizes for not attending Arab (Arabic) - * Lamya Tawfik has a master’s degree in Journalism & Mass Communication with a specialization in Children’s Media Education from the American University in Cairo (AUC). She also works as a reporter for AUC’s publications, and as a part-time lecturer at the Faculty of Mass Communication in the Modern Sciences and Arts University in Cairo . She has previously worked as a news editor at Islam Online. You can reach her at lamyatawfik@islam-online.net

www.guardian.co.uk 1 June 2004 'They came at dawn and killed the men' Sudan refugees tell of world's worst humanitarian disaster Ewen Macaskill in Darfur Tuesday June 8, 2004 The Guardian For hundreds of thousands of refugees like Souad Omar Mousa the rain that fell yesterday in the Darfur region of Sudan is something to dread. "If I was in my village, I would welcome it," she said. "But here we are exposed." Home for Mrs Mousa is now the Kalma camp, near Nyala, one of hundreds scattered throughout Darfur. Refugees live under straw matting or in the open. In what the United Nations describes as the world's worst humanitarian disaster, the arrival of the rains means that life for the refugees will become even more grim and the death toll will almost certainly rise. About 30,000 are estimated to have been killed in the last year, victims of a government-armed militia that has terrorised and destroyed villages throughout Darfur, where 1.2 million have been displaced, with a further 100,000 taking refuge in neighbouring Chad. A UN official who has travelled extensively throughout the region said yesterday: "If you go 1,000km from here to Chad you will not see a single village intact." During a three-hour flight over Darfur, hundreds of blackened and scorched villages were starkly visible against the red desert. Mrs Mousa walked for three days to reach Kalma after the Janjaweed militia attacked her village, Shatee, west of the Mara mountains, two months ago. "They came at dawn, at 4am. They came on horses, donkeys, camels and Land Cruisers. They burnt the houses and killed the men and many of the male children. I don't know if my husband is alive or dead." She fled with her four sons and three daughters, but one of her children, Omar Abdul Rahin, seven, died on the way. The refugees claim the government is engaged in ethnic cleansing, using the Arab Janjaweed to force out black Africans. The Sudanese government denies the charge and blames rebel forces rather than the militia. The government has allowed few journalists into Darfur to see what is happening. Kalma is one of the better camps because of the presence of Médecins sans Frontières, the international medical relief charity. But the death toll is still very high, way above what aid agencies regard as crisis point. There are about 10 deaths a day, most of them children. Tom Quinn, the MSF medical team leader in the camp, said he went to five graveyards ringing the camp last week and counted 131 mounds of earth, gauging the size of the body by the length of the mound. "Of the 131, only 13 were adults," he said. There was a desperate need for aid, especially plastic sheeting to provide some protection from the rain. He complained of obstruction by the government, saying that 30 tonnes of medicine has been lying at Port Sudan since early May. The rain, he added, was another concern: "This whole area will be flooded." Even if the camp survived there would be pollution, malnutrition and disease. A British delegation led by the international development secretary, Hilary Benn, yesterday had a confrontation with the governor of South Darfur, General Hamid Mussa, who insisted that the instability in the region should be blamed mainly on rebel forces. Mr Benn questioned him about allegations that the government had provided the militia with weapons. One of Gen Mussa's ministers replied that weapons were readily available throughout Sudan because of wars in neighbouring countries. The camps throughout Darfur range from places like Kalma, which at least has medical facilities, to Meshtel in the north of the country in which refugees are living in the open and are forcibly removed at frequent intervals by the government. Meshtel is beside a river which will almost certainly flood when the rains arrive. The refugees arriving at all the camps tell of fresh attacks. Aisha Yunis Suleiman, 35, reached the Kalma camp five days ago from Mugdi. She said her village had suffered an aerial bombardment in which her husband had been killed and that the militia had gone into the village immediately afterwards. Asked who had been responsible she said: "The government." She would only return to the village "when it is secure". Mrs Mousa too will not go back until she is sure there is peace. She was prepared to risk the devastation and possible death from the rains because, she said: "There is a bigger risk of dying in the village." .

IRIN 1 Jun 2004 Access to Darfur for aid workers improves despite persistent problems NAIROBI, 1 June (IRIN) - Just over a week after the government of Sudan said it would allow aid workers into the western region of Darfur within 48 hours, humanitarian access was "fairly smooth," according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Khartoum. OCHA had managed to deploy seven field staff members since 20 May, several of whom had been waiting for up to two months for a travel permit, said Ramesh Rajasingham, the head of OCHA Sudan. In one or two cases, visas were still being delayed, but these were being followed up, he said, noting that in Southern Darfur it appeared that the message had not filtered down to local authorities by last Saturday. At the same time, however, some relief assistance, equipment and vehicles essential to the delivery of aid were still being delayed, said Rajasingham. Khartoum recently announced that with effect from 24 May it would issue visas within 48 hours and waive the requirement for travel permits to Darfur, which had been causing huge delays in delivering aid. Staff already in Darfur still had to give the local humanitarian aid commissioners 24-hour notice when they were travelling outside the three main towns of Nyala, Al-Junaynah and Al-Fashir, but the procedures seemed to be working in general and travel was being undertaken "fairly freely", Rajasingham added. A more serious impediment to the delivery of aid was the reported "requirement" by Khartoum that agencies only use local NGOs to deliver aid, he told IRIN. The new policy had "hampered effective distribution of assistance, including food", the UN reported last week, stating that the existing local NGOs were limited in number and lacked the necessary capacity. Rajasingham confirmed that capacity building of local NGOs was a priority but, but added: "This is an emergency and we have to use the best and most reliable capacity on the ground. We have to rely on partners who can deliver rapidly and reliably, whoever they are," he said. The advocacy group Refugees International (RI) said last week that Khartoum was continuing to place "obstacles" in the way of agencies seeking to respond to the Darfur crisis by requiring relief supplies to be transported on Sudanese trucks and distributed by Sudanese agencies. The World Food Programme (WFP) confirmed that it had only been able to deliver three quarters of the food it planned to distribute in May, due to a combination of insecurity, bureaucratic and logistical problems. "We are not reaching as many people as we ought to and we don't have much time left," commented WFP spokeswoman, Laura Melo. MSF warned last month that the entire population of Darfur, numbering several million, was "teetering on the verge of mass starvation" as a direct result of the conflict. A further problem was Khartoum's insistence that all medical supplies being shipped into Sudan needed to be tested before they were used, RI added. "The only plausible explanation of these regulations is that the government of Sudan, despite its repeated pledges to the contrary, simply does not want a large-scale presence of international agencies in Darfur," said RI. A 20 May statement from the Sudanese foreign and humanitarian affairs ministries said Khartoum had an "open-ended vision to guarantee and facilitate humanitarian efforts" in Darfur. "In fulfillment of its responsibilities and obligations toward its citizens and to ensure their wellbeing", Khartoum "recognises the crucial need for immediate humanitarian assistance in the region and is determined to alleviate the suffering that has resulted as a by-product of the war". But the US Agency for International Development (USAID) reported last week that Khartoum was "interfering" in humanitarian aid efforts. Government officials had questioned relief workers on their reporting of human rights abuses, told agencies not to carry out protection activities, and threatened to expel organisations failing to comply with restrictions, it said. In May an OCHA official was expelled and NGOs were accused of supporting the rebellion in Darfur. Khartoum also required 72-hour advance notification for passengers travelling on UN flights to Darfur, which was "an impediment to the rapid deployment of emergency staff and equipment," USAID added. Meanwhile, no UN agencies were delivering aid to rebel-held areas because of a mixture of insecurity and a lack of permission from Khartoum to access the areas, according to OCHA. USAID said that armed Janjawid militia were continuing to attack civilians in all three states of Darfur and that killings, rapes, beatings, looting and burning of homes were still being reported. In Northern Darfur State, attacks on villages had only decreased because "a significant number" of villages had already been destroyed, while attacks on camps for internally displaced persons were continuing, it said. On 28 May, the parties to the conflict agreed to the deployment of African Union (AU) ceasefire monitors in Darfur. Desmond Orjiako, an AU spokesman, told IRIN that the first 10 monitors, comprising seven military observers and three support staff, would be deployed on Wednesday. A further 90, including 60 soldiers, would be deployed as soon as conditions were ready and vehicles and accommodation had been organised. The ceasefire monitors would be based in al-Fashir, northern Darfur, but would travel within the three states, he told IRIN. The status of the 45-day renewable ceasefire, which has been broken numerous times, has remained unclear since it expired on 26 May. The UN said it had received no information regarding a renewal or further peace talks. On Friday, the political director of the Darfur rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Army, Abu al-Qasim told IRIN the SLA was continuing to respect it, "so as to let the organisations provide aid for people in the region", but that nothing formal had been arranged.

IPS 3 June 2004 Darfur 'World's Worst Humanitarian Crisis' Gustavo Capdevila GENEVA, Jun 3 (IPS) - Everyone seems to agree on the severity of the crisis that threatens some two million people in the Sudanese region of Darfur, but governments are focussing on a response based on humanitarian aid, while human rights groups are calling for urgent protection for the civilian population. Even in the best-case scenario, humanitarian experts estimate that more than 300,000 people will die as a result of violence and starvation. Amnesty International, based in London, holds the Janjaweed -- militias backed by Sudan's armed forces -- responsible for the massive human rights violations suffered by hundreds of thousands of civilians in Darfur, a region in the country's northwest. Human Rights Watch, another powerful non-governmental organisation, headquartered in the United States, maintains that Darfur is carrying out a campaign of ”ethnic cleansing” promoted by the government of Sudan against three communities located in the Darfur area. This persecution has left some two million people, or a third of the Darfur population, in a situation of grave danger, according to the European Humanitarian Aid Office. (Sudan has a population of more than 32 million.) As a result, between 750,000 and one million internally displaced peoples are spread throughout Sudan, and another 110,000 have crossed the border into Chad as refugees, European aid director Constanza Adinolfi told reporters here Thursday. Officials and activists gathered in Geneva Thursday for a donors meeting on Darfur sponsored by the United Nations, United States and European Union. Amnesty International research ”confirmed again the systematic and well-organised pillaging and destruction of villages which led to the forced displacement of the rural population of Darfur,” said Liz Hodgkin, a spokeswoman for the organisation. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), stressed that Darfur is not seeing a mere problem of spontaneous ethnic conflict. On the contrary, the Khartoum government is ”sponsoring ethnic atrocities against African ethnic populations... in order to clean the region of the three targeted African ethnic groups.” HRW says the non-Arab African communities of the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa, mostly settled farmers, are the target of attacks by some 20,000 Janjaweed, militias emerging from Arab nomadic tribes whose arms and uniforms are provided by the Sudan government.. The ethnic makeup of Sudan is complex, with more than 500 groups, some of Arab descent, particularly in the north and central regions of the country. The national government is controlled by Arab Muslim sectors. The humanitarian angle was taken up Thursday in a meeting of representatives from donor countries with international officials. They all agreed that Darfur today is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Jan Egeland, coordinator of U.N. emergency aid, estimated that 236 million dollars are needed for the rest of the year to attend to the urgent needs of the communities of Darfur and the refugees in neighbouring Chad. Those funds would be earmarked for food, medicine, housing, agriculture, potable water and sanitation, as well as for education and protection of human rights. Egeland said there are an estimated one million internally displaced people and 150,000 who have sought refuge in Chad. An additional 700,000 to 800,000 will be severely affected by the conflict by the end of the year, predicted the U.N. official. A more sombre outlook came from the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Andrew Natsios: ” Even in a best-case scenario, under optimal conditions, we could see as many as 320,000 people die. Without optimal conditions, the numbers will be far greater.” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had warned the international body's Commission on Human Rights in April that the threat of genocide was brewing in Darfur, just as it had a decade earlier in Rwanda. Egeland noted that the situation could be complicated in the coming weeks as the rainy season begins in northwest Sudan, increasing the threat of starvation and spread of disease, as well as making roads impassable. Khartoum is creating obstacles for the efforts of international agencies and non-governmental groups to provide aid to the region, says James Morris, head of the World Food Programme (WFP). ”If we are to prevent a famine occurring we need the government to lift these restrictions without delay. I am heartened to see that the government has responded in several instances to our requests. At the same time, however, it is crucial that we impress on them their obligation to do more,” Morris said Thursday. Oxfam, a Britain-based humanitarian group, is the only NGO that has received authorisation to work in the area, according to the WFP executive director. The government must also ”improve the security environment in the region to allow unimpeded humanitarian operations, and create the environment of security necessary for people to return to their homes.” ”In particular, this means that the government must work harder to control and disarm the Janjaweed militia groups in order to stop the violence,” said Morris in a statement. At the meeting of donor countries and international agencies, Natsios announced that the United States is pledging 188.5 million dollars for humanitarian efforts in Darfur.

AFP 4 June 2004 UN and US warn that huge toll in Sudan's Darfur crisis is now inevitable GENEVA : A humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions is now inevitable in western Sudan's Darfur region and up to one million people could die if aid cannot be delivered there swiftly, international officials warned. "We estimate right now if we get relief in, we'll lose a third of a million people, and if we don't the death rates could be dramatically higher, approaching a million people," US Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Andrew Natsios predicted after a high-level UN aid meeting. More than one million African civilians have been forced to flee their homes because of an onslaught by government-backed Arab militia and Sudanese troops in Darfur over the past year, and atrocities are continuing, the United Nations said. The United States, European Union, France and the UN warned Khartoum that it must put a stop to atrocities by militia in the strife-torn region, and iron out "severe restrictions" which are still hampering aid deliveries. Nearly half of the victims are in the westernmost part of Darfur, where aid agencies are struggling to provide help before the impending rainy season. "This is also the region where the Janjaweed militia is at its strongest and in spite of the ceasefire agreement... the internally displaced report that they are seeing more atrocities, more rape, more pillage, more murder," said UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland. Another 700,000 to 800,000 more people in Darfur are likely to run out of what they need to survive within months, the UN added. Some 150,000 Sudanese refugees have fled across the border to Chad, 50,000 more than previously estimated. "We admit we are late. Constraints have been so great, some agencies have been so slow, some donors have been so slow, the government restrictions have been so many," Egeland said. "And the Janjaweed militia have been so harsh on the populations that we will have a humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions even in the best of circumstances," he warned. The UN said it faced a funding gap of about 236 million dollars for aid in the region until the end of the year. At the meeting, the United States pledged 188 million dollars over 18 months and the European Union's Commission said it would come up with 10 million more euros, while France promised another 1.4 million euros for refugees in Chad. Officials were adamant that the pressure was firmly on Sudan's government, amid the "most violent, mean-spirited kind of human conduct imaginable" in Darfur, said World Food Programme (WFP) chief James Morris. Representing the European Union, Ireland's Minister for Development, Tom Kitt, said: "We must also send a strong unequivocal message to the Sudanese government that it live up to its obligations to protect its citizens and, in accordance with the ceasefire agreement, disarm the militia and give access". The meeting in Geneva brought together donors, Sudanese and Chad officials, Darfur rebel groups, the United Nations and aid agencies. "Humanitarian aid is urgent but it is not enough. A political solution is necessary: the Sudanese government's ethnic cleansing must not stand," Kenneth Roth, head of the advocacy group Human Rights Watch Roth said here. Six human rights monitors were due to be deployed in an area equivalent to the size of France, the UN announced at the meeting. They will join African Union monitors who are due to oversee a frequently broken ceasefire agreed in April. On Tuesday, one of two rebel groups -- the Justice and Equality Movement -- said 24 people had been killed in a two-day assault by government forces in the west Darfur village of Adjidji. A UN human rights report released last month accused the Sudanese government of committing massive human rights violations in Darfur that may amount to crimes against humanity.

IRIN 4 Jun 2004 Armed and angry - Sudan's southern militias still a threat to peace [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] NAIROBI, 4 June (IRIN) - The Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) have taken major steps towards ending their 21-year old conflict. After two years of negotiations, they have signed six key protocols governing a referendum on southern Sudan after a six-year interim period; security, wealth-sharing and power-sharing arrangements during the interim; the status of Abyei; and the status of southern Blue Nile and the Nuba mountains. On 5 June, they will resume negotiations to thrash out implementation details, as well as a formula for a comprehensive ceasefire and international monitoring and peace-keeping. Two annexes plus the six protocols will then make up the comprehensive peace agreement. Last week's breakthrough that officially ended the bilateral "political" negotiations was welcomed by all concerned and widely hailed as the beginning of the end of Africa's longest-running civil war. But, Sudan watchers say, a number of potential spoilers remain, not least the numerous armed militias in the south. According to the South Africa-based think-tank, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), an umbrella of southern militias known as the South Sudan Defence Force (SSDF) poses a serious threat to harmony in the whole of Sudan. "Armed, angry at being left out of the peace process, and fearful that decisions are being made that will affect its interests, the SSDF poses a major challenge to both the peace process and to the success of the proposed six-year transitional period," says a report entitled "The South Sudan Defence Force: A Challenge to the Sudan Peace Process". To view the report go to www.iss.co.za The SSDF demands attention for a number of key reasons, says ISS. Although its membership is constantly in a state of flux, it has several thousand members who could mobilise thousands more, particularly among the Nuer community, who constitute southern Sudan's second largest ethnic group after the Dinka. Its precise areas of control are debatable, but certainly cover much of Upper Nile, parts of northern and western Bahr al-Ghazal, Bahr al-Jabal and much of Eastern Equatoria. "What can be said with confidence is that claims made by the SPLM/A and its supporters to hold sway over 80 percent of southern Sudan and to surround all of the government towns in the region are clearly false," says the report. Thirdly, the SSDF provides strategic security around the oilfields of western and eastern Upper Nile and many of the garrison towns in the south. Lastly, it contains a substantial number of Nuer, who had a series of clashes with the Dinka-dominated SPLM/A in the 1990s that led to tens of thousands of deaths. "Given the SSDF's size, strategic location, and propensity to fight and resist whatever the odds, a viable and sustainable peace process that does not have its support (and that of a large majority of the Nuer in particular) is hard to imagine," says ISS. The SSDF, which comprises about 25 militias, was formed in 1997 following the signing of the Khartoum Peace Agreement between the Sudanese government, Riek Machar's South Sudan Independence Movement (SSIM) and five other southern factions. The agreement committed the government to a vote on self-determination for the south after an interim period of unspecified length, while the militias agreed to a tactical alliance with Khartoum. The biggest concentration of SSDF members are based in oil-rich Western Upper Nile where they have been used to depopulate and gain control of the oilfields. They are usually based close to garrison towns - from which they are supported logistically and supplied with arms - recruited locally, and are personality- and ethnicity-driven. Despite their significance, however, they have been almost entirely left out of the peace process. According to the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) mediators it would have been impossible to negotiate with all of Sudan's different armed goups at the same time. "There was not a single militia included because they are either represented by the government or the SPLM/A. So they were indirectly included," Lazarus Sumbeiywo, IGAD's chief mediator told IRIN. Samson Kwaje, the SPLM/A spokesman told IRIN that all of the militias had either been absorbed into the SPLM/A or the Sudanese army. "There is no threat, they have been absolved into the army. So actually they don't exist now." In January 2004, Khartoum reportedly appointed some 60 SSDF commanders to senior ranks. But ISS says that Khartoum, the SPLM/A and the international community - including the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development mediators - have all wrongly assumed that the SPLM/A and the government are in control of Sudan's destiny. "The first shock to the holders of this myopic view was the rapidly escalating war and humanitarian crisis in Darfur. The second shock could well be a demonstration of the inability of either the government or the SPLM/A to control and pacify the disparate elements of the SSDF." PEACE NEGOTIATIONS The SSDF did manage to send a delegation of 17 officials to Kenya for discussions between the government and the SPLM/A on security arrangements during the interim period, and appointed an SSDF member, Martin Kenyi of the Equatoria Defence Forces (EDF), to the government negotiating team. But the protocol on security arrangements reached on 25 September 2003 repeatedly acknowledges only two military players in Sudan: the government forces and the SPLM/A. Moreover, it makes clear that "no armed group allied to either party shall be allowed to operate outside the two forces". Instead, the unacknowledged groups in the south will be absorbed into the army, prisons, police and wildlife services, it says. By contrast, the Khartoum agreement signed in 1997 identified the SSDF as the only southern agent charged with providing security in southern Sudan. Nevertheless, the protocol on security arrangements was originally welcomed by SSDF members, who accepted that the SPLM/A was negotiating in their best interests, according to ISS. But since then much of the goodwill has dissipated, while violence in southern Sudan is on the increase. "Positions have hardened, and clearly there are sections of the government, SPLM/A and the SSDF now actively opposed to reconciliation between the SPLM/A and the SSDF," says the report. The protocol on wealth-sharing signed in January 2004 exacerbated the differences even further by agreeing to provide only 2 percent of the oil wealth to oil-producing states, as against 40 percent allotted by the Khartoum agreement. The response of many Nuer was one of "extreme anger", said ISS. VIOLATIONS OF CEASEFIRE Since the beginning of 2004, and despite an ongoing cessation of hostilities between the government and the SPLM/A - which governs allies of both the government and the SPLM/A - a number of conflicts in the south have intensified. From January to March 2004 areas in the oil-rich western Upper Nile region were torn apart by militia in-fighting, leading to dozens of deaths and injuries, looting, abductions and the displacement of thousands of people, as well as the destruction of schools and hospitals. In the Shilluk Kingdom of northern Upper Nile, an undetermined number have been killed this year, and tens of thousands displaced by forces formerly loyal to Lam Akol - who defected to the SPLM/A in October 2003 - which were allegedly accompanied by government forces. See: Displaced in Shilluk Kingdom in urgent need of aid, says rebel leader "The government supported one faction and brought in other groups from the SSDF, who were in turn divided, and for the first time in many months government forces became engaged in the conflict," ISS reported. Lam Akol warned last month that the attacks had stopped for now, but that fighting could flare up again, threatening the entire Sudanese peace process. "It is not a tribal conflict. It is a conflict between the government and the SPLM/A," he repeated. Key to the clashes in Shilluk was the vacume created by Akol's defection and a struggle to take over his area of control - which is in southern Sudan - with both the SPLM/A and government-allied forces laying claim to it. NEW AND OLD ALLEGIANCES For the last two years, the SPLM/A has been striving to realign itself with the southern militias - many of which originally belonged to the rebel movement. A number of successes have been notable including defections to it by Riek Machar (Sudan People's Democratic Forces), Lam Akol (SPLM/A-United), Tito Biel and James Leah (leaders of SSIM) and Dr Theophilus Lotti (EDF). But territorial control and rivalry, ethnic tensions, competition for the spoils of war, and distrust of the Dinka-dominated SPLM/A mean that many forces, or individuals within forces, are unwilling to realign themselves. The result is a large number of armed men who control large areas of land and have shifting and opportunistic allegiances to different factions and leaders, say regional analysts. Furthermore, the SPLM/A is not supporting a "genuine reconciliation", according to ISS. During a high-level SPLM/A visit to Khartoum in December 2003, it did not meet either its major military foe, the SSDF, or government-backed southern politicians belonging to the Southern States Coordination Council. A regional analyst told IRIN that those in the SSDF with a political agenda would most likely realign themselves with the SPLM/A in the near future, in a pragmatic attempt to carve out a niche for themselves in the new Sudan. Muhammad Ahmad Dirdeiry, the Sudanese deputy ambassador in Nairobi, told IRIN the militias did not pose a threat to the peace process if commitments made to them were followed through during the interim period. But Sudan watchers say "the warlords" may well continue to cause trouble. Given Sudan's recent history, many observers agree that southern Sudanese have as much to fear from south-south strife as from north-south strife. "If the peace process does not pay more attention to these local factors, it could easily break apart even if a national-level agreement were to be signed under the auspices of IGAD," according to ICG. For further information on Sudan's militias go to ICG report entitled "Sudan's Oilfields Burn Again: Brinkmanship Endangers The Peace Process" available at www.crisisweb.org

AFP 4 Jun 2004 Khartoum, observers sign deal on monitoring Darfur ceasefire KHARTOUM, June 4 (AFP) - International observers heading for Sudan's Darfur region to monitor a ceasefire on Friday signed an agreement with the government setting out the terms of their mission, the Sudanese news agency Suna reported. The deal was signed on behalf of the government by Abdel Wahab Al Sawy, the director of the African Union department at the foreign ministry, Suna said. It notably sets out the relationship between Khartoum and the ceasefire committee in Darfur and gives the observers free entry into Sudan and free movement inside the country. The observers are expected to arrive in the impoverished western Sudanese region where a rebellion broke out in February 2003 on Saturday to begin their mission. The Sudanese government and the rebels signed a ceasefire on April 8, also agreeing to deployment of African Union (AU) observers. But both sides accuse each other of having violated the deal. Last week, they signed signed an accord in Addis Abeba, where the AU is based, allowing for the deployment of the first international peace observers. In total, some 120 observers from the AU, the European Union, the United States, the Sudanese government, the two rebel groups in Darfur and the mediation team from neighbouring Chad will be deployed in the region, according to the AU. Fighting in Darfur has killed 10,000 people and displaced about one million, with up 100,000 of them taking refuge in Chad according to UN figures.

WP 6 June 2004 In Sudan, Staring Genocide in the Face By Jerry Fowler Sunday, June 6, 2004; Page B02 In the cool desert dawn on May 16, at the Touloum refugee camp in eastern Chad, 2-year-old Fatima put her hands on her stomach, groaned and died. Her mother, Toma Musa Suleiman, in describing the death to me the next day, said that Fatima had been sick for 10 days. By the time she died, her skin was pallid and felt like plastic -- the effects of malnutrition. I was seeing with my own eyes what I had been hearing about for several months: Children are dying almost every day in refugee camps in eastern Chad, despite a vigorous international effort to get food, water and other essentials to the more than 100,000 who have fled in fear from the Darfur region of neighboring Sudan. They are among the 1 million Darfurians who have been displaced from their homes, most of whom are still in Sudan , according to aid groups. Abukar Adam Abukar, a member of a community health team organized by Doctors Without Borders in the Iridimi refugee camp, one of half a dozen such sites, told me that seven children had died there between May 3 and May 14. He took me to the dusty flat on the edge of the camp where some of them were buried, in a forlorn line of small mounds of earth. Why did Toma and thousands like her leave their homes and walk for days through the desert, risking their own lives and those of their children? Their stories were remarkably consistent. Person after person in the camps told me that they had fled after attacks on their villages by Arab Janjaweed militias, who have burned hundreds of villages and killed thousands of civilians belonging to black African ethnic groups. To make matters worse, the Janjaweed are backed by the Sudanese government, which wants to put down rebels drawn from those tribes. Many of the refugees said that the Janjaweed had stolen their animals and other property and that relatives or neighbors, usually men and boys, had been killed before their eyes. The refugees fled with little more than the clothes on their backs and the few things they could load onto a donkey. Many also said they were attacked from the air by the Sudanese government's Antonov bombers, either in their villages or as they fled toward the border. I went to Chad last month on behalf of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience, which has issued a genocide warning for Sudan. Having now heard firsthand the refugees' accounts of the terror they faced in Sudan and of being driven into the desert, where their government is blocking assistance from the outside world, I have no doubt whatsoever that mass death will ensue in Darfur unless far more international assistance is immediately allowed to reach the displaced who are still there. In short, I fear the specter of genocide. I interviewed refugees spread over hundreds of miles in eastern Chad. One woman, Hadiya Adam Ahmed, had crossed into Chad only two days before and was living under a tree near the remote border town of Bahai. Spread around her were her few remaining possessions: a blanket, some water jugs, a few bowls. She had left home without food and in two weeks of travel had depended on her fellow refugees for occasional handfuls of soaked sorghum for herself and her nine children. Hadiya had two bullet wounds in her right leg. She said she had been shot by a Sudanese soldier when she and a 17-year-old girl went to draw water from a well for themselves and others who were fleeing. When asked why their villages were attacked and burned, most of the refugees said it was because of their black skin. They believe that the Khartoum-based government of President Omar Hassan Bashir wants to give their land to his Janjaweed allies who, like him, are Arab. Members of the Zaghawa, Masalit, Fur and other black African tribes will simply have to go. Like the Janjaweed, the Darfurians are Muslims. But culturally and ethnically they retain an African identity, of which they are proud. They also tend to be more settled than the nomadic Janjaweed. Racism undoubtedly does play a part in Bashir's support of the Janjaweed, as the blacks are seen as inferior. Ironically, the prospects for peace in southern Sudan also contribute to the conflict. Fearing that an end to the generation-long rebellion in southern Sudan will divide access to the country's resources between the ruling elite in Khartoum and the southerners and condemn Darfur to permanent second-class status, some Darfurians launched an armed rebellion in early 2003. Khartoum responded by unleashing the Janjaweed and its own military on the black African civilian population. The result was what a team of U.N. investigators last month called a "reign of terror." Those who have crossed into Chad are relatively lucky. An underfunded international relief effort by organizations such as Catholic Relief Services and Doctors Without Borders is providing some food, water, shelter and health care. For the displaced Darfurians who are still in Sudan, however, the situation is more dire. Khartoum has severely limited international access to them. And in the unforgiving desert, the stealing of food and animals, burning of homes and blockage of access to wells -- in short, the campaign of the Janjaweed and the government -- is tantamount to a death sentence. The U.S. Agency for International Development estimates that 350,000 Darfurians will die in the coming months unless the government in Khartoum allows international aid groups dramatically better access to the region. That raises the question of genocide. Under the U.N. Genocide Convention, adopted in 1948 in the shadow of the Holocaust, genocide is defined as certain actions undertaken "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such." The actions include "killing members of the group," "causing serious bodily and mental harm to members of the group" and -- particularly relevant to Darfur -- "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part." The convention obliges parties to the treaty, including the United States and 130 other nations -- to "undertake to prevent and punish" the crime of genocide. In cases like Darfur, there is always a great deal of hand wringing about what is and is not genocide. But such discussion misses the point: A key element of the Genocide Convention is prevention. It calls for action once it is apparent that genocide is threatened. There is no need for an absolute determination, which is inevitably elusive, that genocide is underway. And in Darfur there can be no doubt that genocide is threatened. As former U.S. Ambassador David Scheffer once said of Kosovo, there are "indicators of genocide." Whatever the formulation, there is more than enough going on in Darfur to justify preventive action. Time is of the essence. The rainy season will begin in the next few weeks, making access to Darfur -- where major roads become impassable with flooding -- difficult, if not impossible. The government in Khartoum will do whatever it can to forestall any decisive international action. It is well practiced at giving the illusion of taking a step forward while really taking two steps backward. For example, it now is making a show of promising to streamline humanitarian access. But the record suggests that the government simply cannot be trusted. Even as it was claiming that the situation in Darfur was stable, its Janjaweed allies killed several dozen people on May 22. Allowing better access to aid groups will mean little if the militias continue to run rampant in the countryside. What is needed now is a U.N. Security Council resolution mandating unrestricted humanitarian access to Darfur and laying the groundwork for the displaced Darfurians to return home safely. The Security Council should invoke the collective obligation to prevent genocide as well as its authority to maintain international peace and security, which is threatened by Janjaweed incursions into Chad and conflicts between the Chadian and Sudanese militaries. A statement issued by the Security Council on May 25, expressing "grave concern" about Darfur, is a step in the right direction. But it is no substitute for a formal resolution. The United States has been lobbying in the Security Council, but it cannot do it alone. Darfur presents an opportunity for Secretary General Kofi Annan to avoid a repetition of the United Nations' failures during the Rwanda genocide of a decade ago, when warnings of mass murder were ignored. Indeed, in marking the 10th anniversary of the start of the Rwanda genocide on April 7, Annan said that reports from Darfur filled him "with a sense of deep foreboding." Since then, however, he has said little in public other than to welcome Khartoum's promise to ease restrictions on international relief. His reticence is all the more remarkable because other U.N. officials, such as Mukesh Kapila, until recently the top U.N. humanitarian official in Sudan, have been outspoken in sounding the alarm. Annan must say, simply, "This must stop" and use all his skill, energy and influence to forge an international consensus to back up that statement. To do otherwise, to welcome empty gestures from perpetrators of the gravest abuses, merely encourages them to continue to murder and pillage. During both the Holocaust and the Rwanda genocide, warnings were received and ignored. Today we say "never again." The question now is whether we will ignore the warnings while the Africans of Darfur perish and then -- once again -- say "never again." Or will we act while lives can still be saved? Jerry Fowler is staff director of the Committee on Conscience, which guides the genocide prevention activities of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

BBC 10 June, 2004 Sudanese tell of mass rape By Alexis Masciarelli and Ilona Eveleens Darfur The pro-government Janjaweed Arab militia has been accused of using systematic rape, as well as killing and destroying the villages of black Africans, in the conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region. The women are most at risk when they fetch water Behind the closed door of a classroom, in the school compound where she has been living for the last two months, 35 year-old rape-victim Khadija, spoke of her ordeal. "The Janjaweed arrived one evening in February in our village near Kaileck, they had guns," she says in a quiet voice. "They followed us when we tried to escape. The group of people I was with was forced back to Kaileck. They had surrounded the whole town." "They separated men and women. Then the Janjaweed selected the prettiest women." "Four men raped me for 10 days." "Every day, women were picked up, taken to the bush where they were raped and brought back to Kaileck. The next day it would start again." Hostage population Khadija is one of some 40,000 people to have found shelter in the town of Kass, in the south of Darfur. In the past 16 months, the conflict opposing the Sudan government and its militia allies to the rebels of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), has killed at least 10,000 people and displaced more than one million across the large western Sudanese region. Kaileck is now a ghost town "Rape appears to be a feature of most attacks in Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa areas of Darfur," says the latest Human Rights Watch report on the Darfur conflict. "The extent of the rape is difficult to determine since women are reluctant to talk about it and men, although willing to report it, speak only in generalities." Many witnesses say the population of Kaileck was held hostage by the Janjaweed for two months, despite repeated appeals to the commissioner of Kass. Men were also picked up daily and killed. The accounts are difficult to verify, but accord with the findings of human rights workers in recent months. Kaileck is now an empty desolated town, with every single house and hut burnt or destroyed. Ethnic choice "It is very difficult for me as I am a Fur women and these are Arab men", says Khadija, covering herself with an orange scarf. "These are my only clothes. My sister gave them to me, because the Janjaweed abandoned me naked." "Now I am three-months pregnant. It will be a child from the Janjaweed. But I won't reject this baby. He will be my baby." "When he grows up, he will decide whether he wants to be a Fur or an Arab. If he chooses to be an Arab, he could go with them. If he decides to be a Fur, he will be welcome to stay with us." In the same classroom, a much younger woman listens. Fifteen-year-old Aziza says she was also raped by the Janjaweed back in February. "When Kaileck was attacked, I fled towards the mountains, but five horsemen caught me and took me far away in a field," she says. "All five of them raped me twice. They kept me for 10 days. They whipped me." "I could not say anything because they were armed. All I could do was to cry." "They tied up my arms and my legs and would only release me when they raped me. They called me Abeid (slave in Arabic)." "Eventually they abandoned me. Someone told my mother where I was and she came to take me back. I could not walk by myself." Pain But the ordeal did not stop then. The women now venture out in large groups for protection "When I arrived in Kaileck, I learnt that the Janjaweed had killed my father." "I am still in pain and I can't really control myself. But I have not seen any doctor." In Kass, like many other towns and camps in Darfur, women are still at the risk of being rape when they go out to gather firewood or fetch water. Their best protection, they say, does not come from the army or local police force, but by going in large groups which are more able to defend themselves.

Africa Action 15 June 2004 www.africaaction.org Africa Action Launches Petition to Stop Genocide in Sudan Will Collect 10,000 Signatures by end of June; Calls on Secretary of State Powell to Name the Genocide, Support Immediate Intervention Tuesday, June 15, 2004 (Washington, DC) - As horrifying reports of genocide continue to emerge from Darfur, western Sudan, Africa Action today launched a petition aimed at US Secretary of State Colin Powell, urging him to use the word "genocide" to describe the crisis and calling for immediate intervention to stop the killing. Up to one million people are now at risk in Darfur as a result of an ongoing government-sponsored campaign to destroy a portion of its population. The petition aims to collect more than 10,000 signatures by the end of June. Africa Action’s Executive Salih Booker said this morning, "The failure of the US and the international community to act in Rwanda a decade ago cost 800,000 lives. Now, up to one million people face a similar fate in Darfur, western Sudan. Unless there is an immediate military intervention to stop the killing and facilitate a massive humanitarian operation, the loss of life in Darfur may even dwarf the horrific toll we saw in Rwanda." The petition launched by Africa Action today states, "the term ‘genocide’ not only captures the fundamental characteristics of the Khartoum government’s intent and actions in western Sudan, it also invokes clear international obligations." Africa Action notes that all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - including the US - are parties to the 1948 Convention on Genocide, and are bound to prevent and punish this crime under international law. Genocide is described as the commission of acts with "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." As US officials consider what word to use to describe what is taking place in Darfur, Booker emphasized, "US Secretary of State Colin Powell must call the genocide in western Sudan what it is, and ensure that the US fulfils its obligations to halt the killing. And surely Secretary Powell knows, this requires the involvement of US troops." Africa Action notes that the US has almost 2,000 troops in nearby Djibouti, some of which could be quickly mobilized to lead a multinational force to secure the region, to facilitate humanitarian assistance and to enforce the cease-fire until a UN peacekeeping force can be assembled. Booker continued, "Everyone in this country and around the world who was horrified by what happened in Rwanda a decade ago must now stand up and say "not again." We will not allow our policy-makers to fail the people of Darfur. This is why we call on Colin Powell to show clear US leadership in stopping genocide." Africa Action will circulate the petition to hundreds of organizations and networks across the US and internationally, generating thousands of signatures before the end of this month. To sign the petition, visit Africa Action’s website at http://www.africaaction.org

NYT 17 June 2004 Nicholas D. Kristof: If this is not genocide, what is? Nicholas D. Kristof NYT Thursday, June 17, 2004 ALONG THE CHAD-SUDAN BORDER The Bush administration says it is exploring whether to describe the mass murder and rape in the Darfur region of Sudan as "genocide." I suggest that President George W. Bush invite to the White House a real expert, Magboula Muhammad Khattar, 24, a widow huddled under a tree here. The world has acquiesced shamefully in the Darfur genocide, perhaps because 320,000 deaths this year (a best-case projection from the U.S. Agency for International Development) seems like one more boring statistic. So listen to Khattar's story, multiply it by hundreds of thousands, and let's see if we still want to look the other way. Just a few months ago, Khattar had a great life. Her sweet personality and lovely appearance earned a hefty bride price of 40 cattle when she was married four years ago to Ali Daoud, a prosperous farmer. The family owned 300 cattle and 50 camels, making them among the wealthiest in their village, Ab-Layha in western Sudan. Khattar promptly bore two children, the youngest born late last year. About the same time, though, the Sudanese government resolved to crush a rebellion in Darfur, a region the size of France in western Sudan. Sudan armed and paid a militia of Arab raiders, the Janjaweed, and authorized them to slaughter and drive out members of the Zaghawa, Masalit and Fur tribes. On March 12, about 4 a.m., Khattar was performing her predawn Muslim prayers when a Sudanese government Antonov aircraft started dropping bombs on Ab-Layha, which is made up of Zaghawa tribespeople. Moments later, more than 1,000 Janjaweed rode into the village on horses and camels, backed by Sudanese government troops in trucks. "The Janjaweed shouted: 'We will not allow blacks here. We will not let Zaghawa here. This land is only for Arabs,'" Khattar recalled. Khattar grabbed her children, and, as shots and flames raged around her, raced for a nearby forest. But her father and mother tried to protect their animals - they were yelling, "Don't take our livestock." They were both shot dead. The attack was part of a deliberate strategy to ensure that the village would be forever uninhabitable, that the Zaghawa could never live there again. The Janjaweed poisoned wells by stuffing them with the corpses of people and donkeys. They also blew up a dam that supplied water to the farms, destroyed seven hand pumps in the village and burned all the homes and even the village school, clinic and mosque. In separate interviews, I talked to more than a dozen other survivors from Ab-Layha, and they all confirmed Khattar's story. By most accounts, about 100 people were massacred that day in Ab-Layha, with a particular effort to exterminate all boys and men, even the very young. Women and girls were sometimes allowed to flee, but the prettiest were kidnapped. Most of those raped don't want to talk about it. But Zahra Abdel Karim, 30, told me how in the same attack on Ab-Layha, the Janjaweed shot to death her husband, Adam, and her son, Rahshid, 7, as well as three of her brothers. Then they grabbed her other son, Rasheed, 4, from her arms and cut his throat. The Janjaweed took her and her two sisters away on horses and gang-raped them, she said. The troops shot one sister, Kuttuma, and cut the throat of the other, Fatima, and they discussed how to mutilate her. (Sexual humiliation has been part of the Sudanese strategy to drive out the African tribespeople. The Janjaweed routinely add to the stigma by branding or scarring the women they rape.) "One Janjaweed said: 'You belong to me. You are a slave to the Arabs, and this is the sign of a slave,'" she recalled. He slashed her leg with a sword before letting her hobble away, stark naked. Other villagers confirmed that they had found her naked and bleeding, and she showed me the scar on her leg. By comparison, Khattar was one of the lucky ones. She lost her parents, her home and all her belongings, but her husband and children were alive and she had not been raped. Unfortunately, Khattar's luck would soon run out. I'll tell you more of her story in my next column, because if she and her people aren't victims of genocide, then the word has no meaning. E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com

Daily Star (Lebanon) 17 June 2004 www.dailystar.com.lb Editorial: A word of advice on Darfur for the Arab body politic Thursday, June 17, 2004 There are a number of festering wounds marking the collective body of the Arab world, and not all of them can conveniently be attributed to the aggression of outsiders. Thus, while the ongoing tragedy and disgrace of Palestine and the humiliation of Iraq are well-known international issues and do indeed owe much to foreign interference, there are other sores that are at least as bad and that are entirely homegrown. One of these sores is Darfur in western Sudan. Mass displacements and killings have been carried out there against the indigenous African population by proxy tribal militias allied to Khartoum. At least 200,000 people have fled to neighboring Chad, and around 30,000 have been killed in what amounts to an unofficial but systematic program of ethnic cleansing. International neglect led to near-genocide a decade ago in Rwanda, while NATO went to war in Kosovo in 1999 for the sake of a few hundred thousand refugees. While the United States is considering formally labeling the Darfur crisis as a genocide in progress, the world - the world beyond the Arab world that is - is justified in asking the following question: "What are the Arabs doing about this atrocity in their own back yard?" The answer, of course - as usual - is nothing. At the conclusion of this year's annual Arab League summit just a few short weeks ago, a statement was issued. On Sudan, the statement "reaffirm(ed) ... the Arab states' solidarity with the sisterly Republic of Sudan and their keenness to preserve its territorial integrity and sovereignty and reinforce all peace initiatives started by the Sudanese government with the international and regional parties." Many fine words on "human rights" were also committed to paper in the summit statement. It is time for a word of advice for the Arab League: We are sick of vacuous statements - the time for action is now. In fact, the time for action was yesterday, last week, last month, last year, last decade. It is also time for the wealthy Arab oil-producing states to contribute to a solution to Darfur in the interests of regional stability. While Arab leaders and governments do nothing, Israel will remain in Palestine, predatory super-states will always seize an opportunity to further their interests at Arab expense, and there will always be tyrants like Saddam Hussein terrorizing their own people.

IRIN 18 June 2004 Kofi Annan planning to visit Sudan United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday he was planning to travel to strife-torn Sudan, adding that the UN was pressing the Khartoum government to allow humanitarian workers freer access to Darfur. "I myself expect to visit Sudan soon," Annan told reporters at UN headquarters in New York. He called on the Sudanese government to protect its own civilians, saying: "It is the responsibility of the government to protect the population, and we need to encourage it and must insist it does it." Annan added: "We have asked the Sudanese government to take steps to contain the Janjawid militia, who are doing quite a lot of the killing and destruction of the lives of the people in the region." Over one million non-Arabs have been displaced within Darfur, predominantly by attacks conducted by Arab Janjawid militias, who are reportedly allied to the government. The government denies involvement in the attacks. Up to 200,000 people have fled to neighbouring Chad, while estimates of numbers killed vary from between 15,000 and 30,000. According to the US Agency for International Development, a further 350,000 may die over the coming months from a combination of hunger and disease. Asked if the situation in Darfur constituted a genocide, Annan said that, based on reports he had received, he could not at this stage term it as such. But there were "massive violations of international humanitarian law," he added. Last week, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the US government was considering whether the mass displacements and killings in Darfur constituted genocide. He said the matter was being discussed "inter-agency" and that lawyers and policy officials were looking into it. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide - to which the US is a signatory - defines genocide as acts "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, [ethnic], racial or religious group". Such acts include killing; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a group; and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group in whole or in part. Annan said he had discussed the Darfur issue with high-level representatives of the Sudanese government during a recent trip to Brazil. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, discussed the Darfur crisis with members of the US Congress, government officials, representatives of US NGOs and others in Washington. He told them that the greatest threat now facing civilians – especially children – was in the form of diseases that would spread if clean water was not available, and urged them to do all they could to alleviate needs created by the crisis. Egeland also met with InterAction, a consortium of humanitarian NGOs, and urged these organizations to redouble their efforts to save thousands of lives in Darfur. During the discussion, the NGOs described the many obstacles they still faced in delivering aid, including slow visa processing for staff wishing to get into Sudan and delays in getting urgently needed supplies and equipment through customs.

Minority Rights Group 18 June 2004 Security council silent amid killing in Dafur The United Nations Security Council, the body supremely charged with acting to ensure international peace and security, is failing in its responsibility to Darfur's victims of ethnic cleansing. The UN's own evidence of government complicity in attacks is now so great that further investigation must now be replaced by real and unequivocal condemnation at the highest level, states Minority Rights Group International (MRG). Efforts to halt the killings on the part of the Security Council Members had been 'half-hearted and ineffective' stated MRG, which suggested that Sudan was acting 'in the full and certain knowledge that the international community would fail to act against it'. The message that this sends out is that states can continue to violate the rights of their own citizens without interference. MRG's call for immediate and unequivocal condemnation by the Security Council comes as Asma Jahangir, the UN's own Special Rapporteur on executions, spoke of 'credible evidence' that Sudanese forces and government supported militias had carried out summary executions of civilians. 'Many of the militias are being integrated into the regular armed or the Popular Defence Forces. There is no ambiguity that there is a link between some of the militias and government forces', she stated. The situation has already been described by the UN and humanitarian agencies as currently 'the world's worst humanitarian crisis'. In May a UN mission to Darfur also reported, 'a reign of terror' and 'massive human rights violations perpetrated by the government of Sudan and its proxy militia' and yet the Security Council seems unwilling to fully support or act upon the findings of its own investigative teams. On 11 June a Security Council resolution on Sudan largely ignored the issue, including only a single paragraph on Darfur in which it notably failed to criticize or condemn the government in any way. Head of International Advocacy for Minority Rights Group International, Clive Baldwin, stated: 'Darfur is acknowledged by the UN itself to be one of the most serious situations of rights violations and humanitarian disaster in the world today. In the final analysis, the Security Council members will need to look hard at their own actions and ask if they truly did all within their power at an early stage to save lives in Darfur'. According to MRG, the situation is a clear example of the failure of existing preventive and reactive mechanisms, which can be triggered or strengthened by Security Council resolution. Attempts to secure peace in the war-torn south of the Sudan may have implications on the willingness for decisive UN action to stop human rights violations in Darfur, suggest MRG. However, the goals of the peace negotiations in one part of the country must not be allowed to detract from international obligations to prevent widespread and systematic violations in another. The priority of stopping attacks against minority communities is now matched by the need for the delivery of humanitarian aid. MRG stresses that the humanitarian crisis is wholly the result of attacks against communities, allowed, sponsored and supported by the government of Sudan, and points out that any delays and disruption of access to those in need by the Sudanese authorities would consitute a continuation of ethnic cleansing. There has been no shortage of criticism of Sudan by those, including the United States who were most roundly criticized for failing to act to prevent the Rwandan genocide in 1994. However this has once again failed to translate into decisive action and demonstrates clearly that effective mechanisms to prevent or halt massive violations still do not exist, stated MRG. MRG continues to campaign for such effective preventive measures to be put in place, most recently in a submission to Kofi Annan's High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change in which it calls for innovative mechanisms and approaches to potential genocide or mass violations, notably a Special Adviser on Minorities to the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights. The message that the Security Council must strengthen its efforts to protect civilians in armed conflict was clearly reinfoced by Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, who stated on 14 June that not enough progress had been achieved in establishing a culture of protection towards civilians.

AFP 26 June 2004 US to impose sanctions on Darfur militia members, may also target Sudan officials WASHINGTON: The United States will slap punitive sanctions on members of pro-Khartoum militias operating in Sudan's crisis-wracked western region of Darfur and might also apply penalties to Sudanese officials found to be complicit in atrocities there. The State Department said the sanctions would be imposed regardless of whether Washington makes a legal determination that the Arab militias, known as Janjawid, or government troops are committing "genocide" in Darfur. Such a determination is now under review. Advertisement "Whether you call it genocide or whether you call it ethnic cleansing, clearly there are atrocities being committed," deputy spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters. "We are going to identify individual members of the militia, the Janjawid, for sanctions based on their involvement in ethnic cleansing," he said. Asked if sanctions might also be imposed on Sudanese government officials who may have links to the militias, Ereli replied: "That's something we're looking at." Thursday, the US ambassador at-large for war crimes, Pierre Prosper, told lawmakers that there is evidence "genocide" may be taking place in Darfur, but that the United States had not yet been able to confirm that. "I can tell you that we see indicators of genocide and there is evidence that points in that direction," he said. Despite the uncertainty, Prosper said Washington had evidence of war crimes committed by seven militia members and associates and identified them by name. "These people need to be investigated and brought to justice," he said. Prosper identified the seven as: Musa Hilal, Hamid Dawai, Abdullah abu Shineibat, Omar Babbush, Omada Saef, Ahmad Dekheir and Ahmed Abu Kamasha. Ereli could not say whether the seven people identified by Prosper would be the first targets of the US sanctions -- which will likely include a travel ban and a freeze on any assets they may in the United States or under US jurisdiction. Ereli's comments came just days ahead of a landmark visit to Khartoum and Darfur next week by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said he would use the opportunity to press the government to end the crisis. At least 10,000 people have been killed and up to a million displaced in Darfur since black African rebels rose up in February 2003, accusing Khartoum of discrimination and neglect.

Tanzania

Hirondelle News Agency (Lausanne) NEWS June 15, 2004 Mugenzi Was Elated By the Large Number of Tutsis Killed in Kigali, Claims Witness Lausanne A prosecution witness, Tuesday told the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), that a former minister during the genocide, Justin Mugenzi, was pleased with the large number of Tutsis killed in Kigali in early April 1994. The witness code-named 006, was unable to come to the seat of the tribunal in arusha "for security reasons", but instead testified from The Hague via video conference. Mugenzi, a former Minister for Commerce, is on trial at the ICTR together with three other former ministers in the interim government that oversaw the 1994 genocide. They include the former minister of Health, Casimir Bizimungu, the former minister of Foreign Affairs Jérôme Bicamumpaka, and Prosper Mugiraneza, former minister of Public Service. They each face six counts of genocide and crimes against humanity. The witness stated that Mugenzi had shown happiness after he (witness), and five other people had been round the prefecture on a pacification mission and it was discovered that thousands of Tutsis had been killed in Kigali at the onset of the genocide in 1994. "Mugenzi and Edouard Karemera were very happy to hear that there was a very large number of Tutsis killed in Kigali", said the witness. Karemera is a former minister for Interior and former vice president of the MRND. He is also currently on trial for genocide at the ICTR. The witness said that his group had been tasked by the Secretary-General of the MRND, Joseph Nzirorera, during a meeting held at the Hotel Diplomat on April 10th 1994, to request the people of Kigali, on behalf of the government, to stop the killings of Tutsis in the prefecture. "The more numbers of dead we mentioned, the more pleased they became", the witness said. "The people whom we relayed the news and instructions promised to stop the killings". The meeting had also attended by Mugenzi and Karemera. The witness who is of Hutu ethnic group said he fled Kigali for Butare on April 12th 1994 because he felt unsafe. The so-called "Government Two" trial opened on November 6 last year. It continues Wednesday in Trial Chamber Two of the ICTR, composed of Judge Khalida Rachid Khan from Pakistan (presiding), judge Lee Muthoga of Kenya, and Emile Francis Short from Ghana.

BBC 17 June, 2004, Mayor gets 30 years for genocide Gacumbitsi told Tutsis they would be safe inside the church A former Rwandan mayor has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for organising the slaughter of 20,000 people during the 1994 genocide. Sylvestre Gacumbitsi led the massacre of thousands of people sheltering in Nyarubuye Church, which was one of the worst events in the genocide. He distributed weapons and urged ethnic Hutus to kill and rape their Tutsi neighbours. Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in 100 days in 1994. 'Megaphone' One girl told the court in the Tanzanian town of Arusha that Gacumbitsi, 57, had personally raped her. According to the official indictment, the former mayor drove around his district "announcing by megaphone that Tutsi women should be raped and sexually degraded." NYARUBUYE CHURCH MASSACRE Gacumbitsi, former mayor of Rusamo, told Tutsis they would be safe in Nyarubuye church but then led militias there to kill those inside. After the genocide, he fled to a refugee camp in Tanzania, where he was found by a BBC television crew. He denied all knowledge of the killings. He said he was not in the area when the massacres were committed. He was arrested in June 2001 in Tanzania and transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Gacumbitsi was found guilty of genocide, extermination and rape. But he was cleared of conspiracy to commit genocide and murder. He showed no emotion when the sentence was announced, reports Reuters news agency. The genocide ended when the then rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front came to power. Eight years after being set up, the ICTR has convicted 21 people of genocide - six of whom are serving their sentences in Mali. Twenty suspects are on trial, while another 22 are in detention, waiting for their trials to start. .

Uganda

New Vision (Kampala) 1 June 2004 Northern Atrocities Shock UNICEF By Hamis Kaheru Kampala UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy has deplored the plight of the 44,000 "night commuter" children in northern Uganda. "I have seen many disturbing images during my time with Unicef but few of them are as shocking as the sight of the 'night commuters," she said in a May 28 statement. Bellamy, who had just returned from visiting IDPs camps in the north, said the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the north had trebled to 1.6m people in the last two years, 80% of them women and children. She said the situation in northern Uganda, especially increasing incidences of disease and low rates of accessibility to education and healthcare showed that Uganda was home to one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. "HIV/AIDS is spreading in the north at an alarming rate. Basic literacy is in decline and far fewer children can speak English than in other parts of the country," Bellamy said. "In the district of Gulu, where 90% of the population has been forced from their homes by the conflict, less than 20% of the people have access to effective healthcare," she said. Bellamy said 7,000 children suffered from the most severe and deadly form of malnutrition every month but due to insecurity, Unicef and NGO partners reach only 700. Unicef supports the care of the 700 children in therapeutic feeding centres. She said there were 480,000 IDPs in the first half of 2002 but the figure had increased to 1.6 people. Bellamy said the Lord's Resistance Army rebels continued to use children as combatants and sex slaves.

New Vision (Kampala) 3 June 2004 Kony Kills 23 in Camp By Dennis Ojwee and Agencies Kampala At least 23 civilians have been confirmed dead in an attack by Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels Kalabong Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), in Namokora sub-county, Chwa County in Kitgum district. During the raid on Thursday, over 10 others seriously wounded by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels when they attacked The sources said the rebels also set ablaze the entire IDP camp including the ones of the LDU that was near the camp. One LDU soldiers was also killed by the rebels and some of them, number not indicated Other reports however put the figure to 35. "The rebels attacked Kalo-Obong Internal Displaced People's camp in Kitgum district towards midnight on Thursday, killed 35 people, and 10 others were admitted at Kitgum Hospital with injuries," Farah Muktar, an official at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told AFP by telephone from Kitgum. A Roman Catholic priest in Kitgum, Father Joseph Garnar, confirmed the attack. "We have not gathered detailed information about the attack, but many people were hacked to death, while others were burnt in their huts," Garnar said. Medical sources form Kitgum government hospital yesterday confirmed that at least 10 people had been admitted with critical injuries by morning as a result of the LRA attack on the IDP camp. The Commanding Officer of the UPDF fifth Division, Col. George Etyang said "by 4"00PM yesterday said he had not had not yet got the details. The figure however remained at either, 15, 20 and 23 by press time. But at what I can say at the moment is that, the place attacked was not an official IDP camp in the district. What I had learnt was that the LRA had attacked a place called Corner-Parabongo, but not Kalabong. Anyway, we shall get the details when the commander who went on ground comes back from the scene", Col. Etyang said. . Local authorities yesterday said the rebels attacked the small IDP from the direction of Lipan Game Reserve in the northern side of the camp that host about 400 people. The sources said the rebels struck the camp about at about 6:00PM on Thursday evening. Kalabong is about four Km from Namokora sub-county headquarters which is some 40 Km from Kitgum town. The sources said the rebels were suspected to be splinter group that had been sent from Southern Sudan by LRA's Charles Okot, estimated to between 80 and 100 fighters including abductees. The Resident District Commisioner (RDC) of Kitgum, Lt. Santo Okot-Lapolo who is also the chairman of the security committee in the district said, "By Midday yesterday, a source from Namokora informed me that over 15 dead bodies had been found on spot and several other people injured during the LRA attack". The RDC also said Kalabong was not among the official camps in Kitgum. He said about 300 people had settled near a detachment of the army who had established there just for military strategy. "The civilians there were told to camp at Namokora IDP camp where there is proper security deployment. Some of them went there in order to access their land", the RDC said. He said agroup of LRA rebels suspected to be either under Kony's LRA commander, Charles Okot-Odiambo which could have recently re-entered Kitgum from Southern Sudan, or another one under the LRAs' Acting army Commander, Raska Lukwiya Kitgum LC 5 boss, Nahaman Ojwee also reiterated that "Actually, Kalabong was not an official camp registered in the district. The people should have not been there. All of them should have camped in the main camp at Namokora, but due to the small security that was deployed in that area, part the people from Namokora IDP went and settled near the Local Defence Unit (LDU) that had established a small detachment there.

The Monitor (Kampala) 4 June 2004 Kony Promotes Himself to General By Andrew M. Mwenda & Alex B. Atuhaire Kampala The leader of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), Joseph Kony , has promoted himself to the rank of General. In a communication issued on June 1, 2004, Kony also promoted his deputy Vincent Otti to the rank of Lieutenant General. According to highly placed sources in the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF), Kony announced the promotions in a radio message. Military intelligence intercepted the message. UPDF spokesman, Maj. Shaban Bantariza said the army is not bothered by the LRA promotions. "We don't care whether he promotes himself to general. It makes him a general terrorist," Bantariza told The Monitor by telephone. "We are not bothered; he can even go ahead and make himself Field Marshal," Bantariza said. According to security sources, LRA commanders Kamuduli (whose alleged dead body was pictured in the press) and Ceaser Acellam (LRA's chief of military intelligence) who had earlier been announced dead are actually alive. The latter is reportedly ill in a sickbay. Security sources further told The Monitor that Kony also promoted one of his commanders, Lakati to Brigadier. The LRA leader has also called all his commanders back to the Sudan. Security sources say that in a radio communication, Kony instructed Otti to organise a celebration party for the promoted officers. Kony further told Otti that in spite of many difficulties, LRA would march to Lira town to loot goods for the party and that the celebrations should coincide with Independence Day anniversary celebrations. Ugandan security sources, who have listened to the intercepted LRA radio communication, say that Kony's self-promotion and of his rebel officers is a response to recent promotions within the UPDF. In one of the intercepted messages, Kony claims that Uganda's Army Commander, newly promoted Lt. Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, failed to dislodge the LRA during Operation Iron Fist. Security sources further say that Kony reasoned that how could Aronda, whom he (Kony) defeated in southern Sudan during Operation Iron Fist in 2002 become a Lieutenant General while the LRA commander himself remains at the rank of Major General. In another development, the LRA leadership has announced it is ready for peace talks; if government accepts its terms. Highly placed sources told The Monitor that in another intercepted radio message between Kony and Otti, the rebel army now has a contact through whom they want to negotiate with government. According to the source, privy to the radio intercept, Otti reported to Kony how he met a government peace emissary (names and code names withheld for security reasons). Army spokesman, Maj. Shaban Bantariza said the LRA could go ahead with the peace talks. He warned however, that preconditions would not be accepted. "No preconditions are permissible, especially those which make the population vulnerable to Kony's terrorist attacks," he said on phone, last evening. The source recounted that Otti told Kony that the peace emissary was very scared, but was handled well by the LRA commander. He added that Otti told Kony that he (Otti) had held a meeting with other LRA commanders - Lukwiya and Kwoyelo - and discussed the peace proposal. Otti further told Kony that he wrote a letter to government through the emissary, giving two conditions for peace talks: that the UPDF withdraws from southern Sudan and Northern Uganda. The second conditionality was that UPDF soldiers lay down their weapons before the LRA does so. Bantariza however said this was unacceptable. "For us, we shall implement what the Commander in Chief tells us. We don't envisage him instructing us to withdraw from southern Sudan or to lay down out tools. Such a thing has never happened and we shall not be the first ones to do it," he said. The source said that Kony was happy with Otti's report on the intercepted radio communication but was skeptical about the peace emissary whom he seemed not to trust. The source said however, that Otti told Kony that the peace emissary is well known to him (Otti) because he (the emissary) was born in Atyak and that both have been in contact for a long time.

AFP 4 June 2004 Rebels kill 35 people in Uganda Over one million people have been displaced by the fighting At least 35 people have been 'slaughtered' in an attack by Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels on a displaced people's camp in northern Uganda, UN aid officials and a priest have said. "The rebels attacked Kalo-Obong Internal Displaced People's camp in Kitgum district towards midnight on Thursday, killed 35 people, and 10 others were admitted at Kitgum Hospital with injuries," Farah Muktar, an official at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters on Friday. A Roman Catholic priest in Kitgum, Father Joseph Garnar, confirmed the attack. "We have not gathered detailed information about the attack, but many people were hacked to death, while others were burnt in their huts," Garnar said. The LRA has been fighting President Yoweri Museveni's secular government since 1988. It says its battle is aimed at setting up a government in Kampala based on the biblical Ten Commandments, but the rebel group is best known for its brutality against civilians and the kidnapping of young boys, who are recruited into rebel ranks, and girls who are used as sex slaves for rebel commanders. Over 1.5 million people have been displaced by the fighting and live in squalid camps dotted around north Uganda. The conflict in northern Uganda has been called the worst forgotten humanitarian crisis on Earth by a top UN official.

Americas

Bolivia

CICC 1 June 2004 www.iccnow.org NGOs Urge Bolivia to Resist U.S. ICC Immunity Agreement Bolivia Should Stand with Regional Allies in Defending ICC Integrity (New York, June 1, 2004) – The NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC) today is urging Bolivia to honor its obligations as a State Party to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and stand firm in its defense of international justice by voting against the ratification of a US bilateral immunity agreement (BIA) concerning the ICC due to come before the Bolivian Chamber of Deputies this week. Over a year ago, in May 2003, Bolivia signed an agreement with the United States that would require Bolivia to provide immunity for US nationals accused of the most atrocious international crimes – genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes – in return for military aid to Bolivia. However, it was only last month, after a year of debate, that the Bolivian Senate actually approved the BIA, then passing it on to the Chamber of Deputies where it currently awaits final ratification. Close to $5 million was budgeted for US military assistance to Bolivia during the 2004 US fiscal year, however it is unclear how much aid was delivered before the US ceased that flow of funds. Although some Bolivians have expressed support for the BIA because they assert that vital humanitarian aid would be jeopardized, it is important to note that under US law the aid cut-off relates only to military assistance. Resistance to the immunity agreement in Bolivia has been widespread, with opposition being voiced by the Deputy Minister of Justice, the Bolivian Ombudsman, and the Catholic Church, as well as many parlimentarians. Numerous international governmental, legal and non-governmental experts have concluded that these bilateral agreements are contrary to international law and the Rome Statute of the ICC. The CICC, which represents a coalition of more than 2,000 civil society organizations, and includes Associacion Pro Derechos Humanos (APRODEH), Federation Internationale des Ligues des Droits de L’Homme (FIDH), Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International among its steering committee members, has also noted the US administration’s continued failure to comprehend the pivotal notion of complementarity regarding the ICC’s jurisdiction. “These immunity agreements not only undermine the integrity of the Rome Statute of the ICC, they also disregard the clear safeguards already built into the ICC’s mandate, said Hugo Relva, Implementation Advisor of CICC. “The ICC will only act in situations where a sovereign state is unwilling or unable to prosecute the gravest of international crimes. A state need only worry if it fails to conduct adequate investigations and prosecutions themselves.” A notable supporter of the ICC who signed the Rome Statute of the Court in 1998, Bolivia also holds the honor of having one of its nationals, Rene Blattmann, elected to the ICC’s bench of 18 judges last year. Most allies in the region – including Argentina, Brazil and Peru – have refused to sign immunity agreements with the United States. To date, of the 94 ICC States Parties, only 34 have signed immunity agreements with the United States and a total of only 14 ratified BIAs around the world despite the Bush administration’s full-scale campaign to withhold military assistance from those countries who refuse them. A total of 45 countries have publicly refused to sign a BIA with the US. The majority of countries who have agreed to the US immunity scheme thus far have been fragile democracies or small, economically vulnerable nations including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, who have recently referred situations of alleged human rights violations to the Court. CICC Convenor William Pace expressed his hope that Bolivia would resist US pressure to ratify the BIA saying, “We hope that Bolivia will defend the highest principle of international justice – that no one is above the rule of law."

Canada

Toronto Star 9 June 2004 www.thestar.com Old peace model is dead ROSIE DIMANNO It is understandable that Canada, the nation that introduced to the world the very concept of peacekeeping, would be so reluctant to let it go. On the campaign trail, party leaders are dutifully paying lip service to the noble concept of the blue beret and the red maple leaf — whether they admire the military, abide the military, or abhor the military. All have laid claim to the legacy of Canada's peacekeeping tradition and somehow couch their policy platforms on defence within the framework of this country's respected soldiering. The Liberals, fond of deflective euphemisms, eschew military language in favour of a "Peace and Nation Building Initiative,'' where a Canadian Forces expanded by 5,000 would do, oh, good things, nothing that might offend the electorate's combat-averse sensibilities; the Tories portray the military as "a guardian of our sovereignty, a tool for peacekeeping and a vital contributor to national security,'' (Stephen Harper's words, a week ago, at CFB Trenton), ruinously starved by 10 years of Liberal budget slashing, a situation they would reverse to the tune of $1.2 billion, building up the forces to 80,000 and delivering all sorts of big-ticket goodies; the NDP, which has always tried to trademark the very notion of peace, carefully commits itself to asserting "our role in the world by working as an effective, trained peacemaker,'' and improving housing (naturally) for members of the armed forces. In the wake of last weekend's 60th anniversary of D-Day, when Canadians temporarily put aside their distaste for war-waging by honouring old soldiers who did exactly that, we return now to the over-arching view of Canada as benign peacekeeper, securing beachheads of calm in a storm-tossed sea of global turmoil. "The mythology of Canada as peacekeeper is deeply ingrained,'' says Douglas Bland, a retired lieutenant colonel who now chairs the Defence Management Studies Program at Queen's University. "But in 2004, that peacekeeping model is passé. It's like the parrot in the Monty Python skit — dead.'' Canada's political leaders, specifically those contending for the Prime Minister's job, can't quite bring themselves to speak honestly about this matter with the public, even when, like incumbent Paul Martin, they acknowledge that the reality has changed and the demands put on Canada's forces — far too onerous and ambitious for their size at present — have shifted. "The Liberals still are leery about proclaiming that the world is a dangerous and nasty place and that we need force to back up foreign policy,'' says Bland. "They're trying to explain defence spending in a cautionary way that links it completely to generally benign peace operations. "In fact, peacekeeping today means imposing order on people. Our troops are saying: `Stop fighting. And if you don't, we're going to shoot you.''' Peacekeeping, as a formal concept, was a creation of the Cold War: Multilateral missions standing in for combat, on the assumption that belligerent factions could be separated and sent to their respective corners, allowing diplomats to step in and resolve the conflict. In practice, resolutions remained stubbornly elusive and the peace was kept only so long as all parties accepted the continuing presence of a neutralizing authority, one that claimed not to take sides. In what now feels like the halcyon days of the Cold War, there was actually very little old-fashioned soldiering required. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, everyone envisioned a new world order, marked by international harmony, a universe where the rule of law and consensual authority would be respected. Surely, the day was not so far off when countries might even eliminate their standing armies, put those monies and skill to a better use.Canada, with its peacekeeping ideology, set itself on this very course. Under Jean Chrétien, the military shrank from 72,363 in 1994 to 62,086 a decade later. Defence budgets shrivelled and expenditures bottomed out at 1.1 per cent of gross domestic product (from 5.5 per cent at the height of the Cold War and 2.2 per cent during the Trudeau years). But the world did not unfold as it should. Indeed, the new world order turned out to be a new world disorder. Increasingly, Western leaders found themselves forced to respond rapidly, with force, and taking sides in combustible situations: The French in the Congo, the British in Sierra Leone, the Australians in East Timor. Multilaterally, there were massive missions in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan. There were not, and are not, peacekeeping missions. They are interventions — the vernacular is "stability campaigns'' — that required aggressive military operations, whether to remove cruel governing regimes or disarm and arrest lawless factions. When this has been attempted timidly (when, for example, the UN denied its "peacekeeping'' troops the authority and the manpower to properly tackle the task), the results were catastrophic — as in Rwanda. Similar dithering cost thousands of lives in East Timor, before the Australians chased marauding militias back over the border. There is no Cold War anymore and arguably only two enterprises — Cyprus and the Golan Heights — where the old, refereeing model of peacekeeping still applies. But there are plenty of regional hot wars, asymmetrical wars, resistant to conflict resolution and UN mediation. The human cost of failing to impose order in those wretched places cannot be underestimated. Entire populations have been displaced, youngsters dragooned into kiddie-armies, women raped by brutes deliberately spreading their particular ethnic seed, and genocide inflicted by tribal "thug-ocracies.'' Add to this the ever-present spectre of Islamic terrorism and, oh my, the world is a bloody mess. Canada, a civilized country with deep-held convictions about its moral obligations, wants to do its part. Prime ministers basking in the reflected glow of soldiers who acquit themselves well on foreign missions continue committing troops hither and yon — Bosnia, Afghanistan, Haiti, the Persian Gulf — exhausting the over-extended forces. We equip them poorly, don't have the means to transport them overseas, can't even dress them properly. But off they go, because they are very good soldiers, as combat-fit as any fighting force on earth. But the Canadian military has been robbing Peter to pay Paul for years, cannibalizing its capitals budget to maintain essential capabilities, endlessly doing "more with less.'' And that's caught up with us — helicopters that can't fly, grounded jets and insufficient pilots, ships held together with baling wire, submarines that leak, junky and dangerous jeeps, not even enough rifles to go around. The erosion — degradation — of the Canadian army has reached critical mass. Left to decay, the forces in this country will drift into irrelevance, no longer able to meet even basic international commitments, much less the pride-generating stabilizing assignments. Governments stumble from one foreign crisis requiring urgent intervention to another, slapping together deployments, putting insupportable strain on an army that's sinking to its knees. Scrambling to deal with the here-and-now, there's no cogent plan for the future, no sober consideration of how the army should look, its purpose, it composition, even whether there should be an army. The last White Paper on defence was 10 years ago, and that one never envisioned the world in which we're now living. The military needs money. But cash injections are one thing; facing up to what our troops are doing, must do, on these far-flung missions, is another. Canadians still have a dreamy notion about peacekeeping. Political leaders need to disabuse the public of this, replace the mythology with the hard-slogging reality. A peacekeeper, more than at any time since the early 1960s, is an infantryman: One pair of boots on the ground, with a rifle, and the authority to use it. Don't pretend otherwise. - Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

Colombia

Reuters 2 June 2004 Colombian Rebels Tough to Root Out After 40 Years By Jason Webb BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - If the reports of his death were to be believed, Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda should be riddled with bullets and ravaged with cancer, his bomb-blasted bones rotting somewhere in the Colombian jungle. Many times over the last 40 years, soldiers, journalists and guerrilla deserters have reported the now 74-year-old leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dead or close to it, cut down by gunfights, explosions or disease. But, while Marxist guerrilla armies are a fading memory in most of Latin America, Marulanda and the FARC, the country's biggest rebel group, have proved hard to wipe out. He founded the FARC after a government attack on a militant peasant collective in 1964. The latest in a long line of Marulanda death notices appeared earlier this year, when a Colombian journalist said prostate cancer would finish him off within months. But the FARC has said he is still alive, although he has not been seen publicly for more than three years. The cancer report coincided with hopes that the FARC was finally on the decline, forced into retreat by President Alvaro Uribe, a firm U.S. ally who has increased military spending and ordered security forces to round up guerrilla suspects. Uribe's success in reducing the number of kidnappings and attacks on villages carried out by the guerrillas has helped make him one of Latin America's most popular leaders. As troops have moved into rural towns long abandoned by the state, the FARC has retreated deeper into jungle and mountains. But it has not gone away and the government has not been able to eliminate top rebel leaders. The FARC still has an estimated 17,000 fighters and draws income from "taxing" the cocaine trade and extortion. If he is in fact still alive, Marulanda is believed to be hiding in a jungle stronghold. In a defiant communique e-mailed to mark the 40th anniversary of the FARC's creation, the rebels reaffirmed "their steely resolve to fight and profound faith in the triumph of the FARC's Bolivarian cause." On May 27, 1964, the government launched "Operation Marquetalia," sending troops and planes loaded with American-supplied napalm to wipe out a Marxist peasant collective which was trying to establish independence from state control. Marulanda and a few survivors got away and founded the FARC. BIDING THEIR TIME The rebels have not forgotten. In 1999, when former President Andres Pastrana began peace talks with the FARC, they listed losses at Marquetalia, including the number of pigs and livestock killed. Marulanda was last seen in 2001 at the negotiations, which collapsed the next year. The guerrillas are biding their time, according to Alfredo Rangel, a former advisor to Uribe on defense. "I think the FARC have made a tactical withdrawal," he said, adding that the rebels constantly harassed the armed forces but had abandoned large troop movements because improved government air power made them too risky. "It's a temporary tactic which is going to lead to a counter-offensive at some point. The question is when." Latin America once swarmed with Marxist insurrection, prompting the United States to encourage military dictatorships from Chile to Guatemala. Poverty and injustice are still widespread across the region, but the FARC seems like a relic from another age at a time when democratic politics have mainly replaced the guerrilla struggle. The group has survived partly because of Colombia's impenetrable terrain and partly because of a cocaine bonanza, which provided it with income which at one stage reached several hundred million dollars a year, according to U.S. officials. But another reason FARC is still fighting is that when it did move toward peace, establishing the legal Patriotic Union party in the late 1980s, right-wing death squads working with the armed forces killed 3,000 of its members. U.S. officials say the FARC is now more of a drug-trafficking gang than a Marxist insurgency. Retired Gen. Alvaro Valencia, who was army operations chief 40 years ago, said Uribe finally has it on the run. "I wouldn't say we're close to seeing the end of the FARC, but it is inevitable," Valencia told Reuters. "It is a terrorist group with no possibility of winning power through revolution, but which still has considerable capacity to damage the nation's economy," he said. Opinion polls show the rebels have almost no support, and much less than the similarly illegal far-right paramilitaries. But the polls are taken in cities, and the FARC's support has always been strongest among peasants. Hoping to deliver a deadly blow to the FARC leadership, Uribe has sent troops hunting for guerrilla leaders in the jungles of southern Colombia, dubbing it the "Patriot Plan." But the army is still under-equipped and military spending, is low by the standards of countries at war. "We shall be able to judge the success or failure of the government's security strategy on the results of the Patriot Plan," Rangel said. See http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/farc.htm AND FARC-EP http://www.farcep.org/pagina_ingles/ AND http://www.resistencia-nacional.org/

www.colombiajournal.org 7 June 2004 Another 40 Years? by Garry Leech In May, Colombia’s largest and oldest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), celebrated 40 years of existence. A group of peasants formed the FARC on May 27, 1964, following a military land and air assault on their “independent” village of Marquetalia in south-central Colombia. The FARC emerged out of a climate of repression in which state-sponsored violence targeted all opposition, particularly Liberals and communists. At the time, the U.S. framed its Colombia policy within Cold War ideology, supplying the Colombian military with weapons and training to target communists and suspected communists. Looking at Colombia today, little has changed. Many Colombian peasants, unionists, human rights workers and community leaders are labeled guerrilla sympathizers and targeted by the Colombian military and its right-wing paramilitary allies. The United States has escalated its military role in Colombia in recent years, first as part of the war on drugs, and since 9/11, under the war on terror. For its part, and to make matters worse, the FARC has increasingly targeted the civilian population. Over the past decade, the group’s ideological goals seem to have taken a back seat to its military objectives. This has resulted in attacks, not only against the country’s middle and upper classes, but also against peasants viewed as sympathetic to the government or the paramilitaries. Since assuming office in August 2001, President Uribe has militarized many parts of the country. The Colombian army has conducted mass round-ups of union leaders and human rights workers, accusing them of being guerrilla sympathizers. Increasing numbers of them are being “disappeared” by state security forces. A March 2003 United Nations report stated that the Colombian military had become more directly involved in human rights abuses under the Uribe administration. In September last year, President Uribe made public pronouncements that NGO workers, especially human rights defenders, are terrorists doing the bidding of the country’s guerrilla groups. He made these accusations against human rights workers at the same time he was proposing amnesty for the country’s worst human rights violators: the paramilitaries. Clearly, the principal targets of President Uribe have not only been guerrillas, but anyone critical of his security and economic policies. The Bush administration has openly supported Uribe’s authoritarian agenda. It has expanded U.S. military aid and even deployed U.S. Army Special Forces troops to Colombia to help defend an oil pipeline used by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum. Under the Bush administration, human rights have taken a back seat to combating terrorism globally. This is clearly apparent in Colombia with Washington’s ongoing support for a government that is blatantly targeting civil society groups under the guise of combating armed groups on the U.S. State Department’s foreign terrorist list. The social and economic inequalities, along with the government repression, that led to the formation of the FARC 40 years ago are clearly still prevalent in Colombia. Today, 64 percent of Colombians live in poverty. Tragically, instead of providing any viable alternatives, the FARC’s tactics are now contributing to the problem of social injustice in Colombia. But, regardless of what the Bush and Uribe administrations try to have us believe, the FARC are not the root of the problem, they are but a symptom. And if the gross inequalities and government repression that lie at the root of Colombia’s conflict are not effectively addressed, then the FARC may be around for another 40 years.

IPS 8 June 2004 Decades of War Over Land Constanza Vieira In Colombia ''it isn't that there are displaced people because there is war,'' but ''there is war so there will be displaced people,'' says peasant activist Gilma Benítez, unwittingly summing up the conclusion arrived at by researchers after five decades of armed conflict. BOGOTA, Jun 8 (IPS) - In Colombia ''it isn't that there are displaced people because there is war,'' but ''there is war so there will be displaced people,'' says peasant activist Gilma Benítez, unwittingly summing up the conclusion arrived at by researchers after five decades of armed conflict. In many rural areas of this South American country, life is measured from war to war, the first of which broke out in 1948, the second in 1954, the third in 1962 and the fourth, which is still raging, in 1964. The armed conflicts have all shared a central element: land has violently changed hands, and hundreds of thousands of peasants have been displaced from the countryside and forced to flee to towns and cities. As a result, ''0.4 percent of the population owns 61.7 percent of the best land in the country,'' Jorge Rojas, director of the Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement, told IPS. According to the local human rights group, since 1985, a total of 3.1 million people have fled their land, or had it seized from them. The displaced have lost at least two million hectares in all. Colombia now has the third largest displaced population in the world, only surpassed by Sudan and the Congo. Forced displacement has mainly occurred ''in areas where the land is in dispute, due to the riches found in the soil or underground, and because of 'megaprojects','' said Rojas. Daniel Manrique with the Latin American Institute of Alternative Legal Services said those who are keen on getting their hands on the land of peasant or indigenous communities have speculative interests: the property of the victims of displacement ''is likely to climb in value because it is located in the areas of influence of transport, agribusiness, tourism, energy or mining megaprojects.'' The war that began in May 1964 produced a rebel army of peasant origin that defines itself as Communist: the powerful Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), perhaps the world's oldest guerrilla army. Since its baptism of fire, FARC has been led by former peasant farmer Pedro Antonio Marín, whose nom de guerre is Manuel Marulanda, and whose enemies have dubbed him 'Tirofijo' or Sureshot. ''The self-organised and self-led resistance of the potential victims, the peasants, emerged'' in response to the ''reactionary violence'', Marulanda wrote in 'Cuadernos de campaña' (journals from the front), published in 1973. According to those involved in the creation of FARC 40 years ago, peasant farmers were forced to take up arms to defend themselves against the attacks of armed gangs created by the land-hungry elites with backing from the State. The argument that the armed conflict was triggered by rural poverty emerged at a later date. Twenty-eight percent of Colombia's 44 million people live in the countryside, and official statistics indicate that 82 percent of the rural population lives below the poverty line, including 43 percent living in absolute poverty. In the first and second armed conflicts, the plight of the peasants ''was truly appalling. A massacre today, the burning of every house in a village tomorrow, the members of an entire family taken prisoner and disappearing forever, insecurity and danger knocking on the door of every shack,'' Marulanda wrote in his journals. But today's civil war is not much different. In 1948, the rural population began to be attacked by pro-government armed gangs that roamed the countryside, sowing terror and seizing the property of peasant farmers seen as opponents of the government. ''The police and local authorities supported them,'' and the peasants began to arm themselves with old shotguns and revolvers to repel the attacks, wrote Marulanda. The first and second armed conflicts, comprising the period known as 'La Violencia' (1948-1958), left around 300,000 dead and two million displaced. FARC is no longer fighting only for the security and safety of rural communities and legal title deeds to the land worked by peasant farmers. But it does have an''agrarian programme'', dating back to July 1964, which proposes ''revolutionary land reform that would change the social structure of the Colombian countryside from the very roots''. In the third armed conflict, in 1962, the government attempted unsuccessfully to occupy the remote mountainous region of Marquetalia, in central Colombia -- around 800 sq km of inaccessible cloud forest where a group of peasant families had cleared land for farming, with the support of the Communist Party. The families, who described themselves as a movement of rural workers, had asked the government to build roads and schools in the area, and grant them access to loans to expand their herds and crops. During the Cold War, the perception arose that Marquetalia, home to Marulanda and around 50 families who still held on to their weapons from the period of La Violencia, was ''the epicentre of the revolution'', in the words of José Joaquín Matallana, then-commander of a battalion that ended up playing a decisive role in the final outcome. On May 18, 1964, some 2,000 soldiers surrounded the peasant enclave, blocking the entrance of even basic provisions like food and medicine. Operation Marquetalia lasted three months and formed part of the Latin American Security Operation, designed and supported by the U.S. military. The men soon realised that the women, children and elderly could not survive the siege. They were evacuated from Marquetalia along secret paths on the night of Jun. 14. Before the families left, they set fire to their own homes. That marked the end of their civilian lives, although FARC considers May 27, when Marulanda and his men engaged in fighting for the first time, as its date of birth. ''Since then, they have spread around the entire country, in mobile guerrilla'' brigades, says rebel spokesman Raúl Reyes. FARC now has some 30,000 combatants, backed up by 10,000 civilian 'milicianos' (militia-members), plus 60,000 members of the political wing, the clandestine Bolivarian Movement, and around two million sympathisers, two-thirds of whom live in rural areas, a spokesman for the Bolivarian Movement told IPS. ''If the attack on Marquetalia had not been carried out, it is very likely that FARC would never have been born,'' Jacobo Arenas, one of the movement's Marxist ideologues, reflected decades later. In 1984, FARC signed a peace accord with the government, seeking political recognition of the movement's influence in the regions under its control, through the creation of the Patriotic Union. The new political party achieved some success at the polls, but ceased to exist after 3,000 of its leaders were murdered. Since 1982, FARC defines itself as a ''people's army'' whose declared aim is to share power in a government of national reconstruction, after taking part in the design of a new constitution. The atrocities committed in the 1940s and 1950s by the semi-official armed bands known as 'chulavitas' continue to be carried out today by paramilitary groups that in many regions operate in coordination with the military. Today's paramilitary militias were set up in the 1980s by local elites, with army support, and by drug traffickers who owned vast extensions of the best land in Colombia. ''Around four million hectares are in the hands of drug traffickers,'' out of a total 45 million hectares of farmland, said Rojas. A majority of the paramilitaries are grouped in the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), which have escaped the control of their original promoters. The government, led by ultra-conservative landowner President Alvaro Uribe, is currently discussing a ceasefire with the paramilitary umbrella group, in exchange for guarantees that no legal action will be taken against its leaders. As in the mid-20th century, the original victims of the aggression, armed peasant farmers-turned-guerrillas, also wage violence, sometimes with as much cruelty as their adversaries. However, the United Nations and leading human rights watchdogs like Amnesty International and Americas Watch hold the paramilitaries responsible for at least 80 percent of human rights abuses in Colombia, like the torture and mass killings of peasant farmers. One common paramilitary technique is to dismember victims, including women and children, with chainsaws while they are still alive. According to human rights lawyer Alirio Uribe, the head of the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective, there is no possible military solution for the war, which ''has stretched on and on with grave consequences, especially for the civilian population,'' against a backdrop of a growing disregard for international humanitarian law. The State ''has been unable to check the expansion of the insurgent groups through its strategy of strengthening the armed forces and creating and supporting private armed groups like the paramilitaries,'' he told IPS. Of the average 100 people who die violent deaths each day in Colombia, five are killed in combat and 15 are civilians considered enemies or sympathisers of the adversary and murdered by one of the armed groups. Another 80 are killed in a context of crime and violence generated by growing poverty and marginalisation, said Uribe (no relation to the president). ''It would not be enough for the armed groups to stop shooting each other,'' because what is needed is ''a new pact that would guarantee economic, political, social and environmental rights, as well as the specific rights of women and children,'' argued the lawyer.

AP 4 June 2004 Rebel Leader Seeking Truce With Colombia KIM HOUSEGO Associated Press BOGOTA, Colombia - A guerrilla commander on leave from prison told legislators Friday that insurgents want a truce with the government and freedom for political prisoners, declaring it could lead to peace talks. "In their totality, these agreements can open a path to the political solution that all Colombians dream of," Francisco Galan, spokesman of the National Liberation Army, said, reading from a statement issued by the ELN's high command. The 5,000-strong, Cuban-inspired ELN and the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, have been battling successive Colombian governments for 40 years. The government of hard-line President Alvaro Uribe reacted cautiously to the ELN proposal, saying the rebels must cease firing first. "The government is asking for a unilateral cease-fire," Uribe's spokesman, Ricardo Galan, told The Associated Press. The spokesman is not related to the rebel leader. Galan was released from prison in Medellin and flown to this Andean capital to meet with government officials and discuss the possible start of peace talks, perhaps facilitated by Mexico's government. Mexico on Friday formally offered the ELN the use of its territory for any peace talks. Analysts say the ELN has been put under severe pressure since Uribe boosted military spending and ordered a sweeping army offensive on coming to office two years ago. Uribe is keen to reach a deal with the ELN as he currently has his hands full with bitter fighting against Colombia's larger Marxist group, the 16,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has all-but ruled out negotiations. Uribe is currently involved in peace talks with a handful of right-wing paramilitary groups, whose primary target has been leftist rebels but civilians have been frequently killing in the fighting.

Reuters 7 June 2004 Eight Colombians injured by car bomb, FARC blamed 07 Jun 2004 15:06:50 GMT BOGOTA, Colombia, June 7 (Reuters) - A car bomb exploded in the city of Medellin on Monday, injuring two pregnant women, a Catholic priest and five other people in an early morning attack authorities blamed on Marxist rebels. Without providing evidence, police said urban guerrillas with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, left a car packed with explosives in a parking lot in the center of the city, about 155 miles (250 km) northwest of Colombia's capital, Bogota. It was the second blast in a major urban center since Saturday night, when another car bomb -- also blamed on the FARC -- injured seven people in the southwestern city of Cali. "The car was completely destroyed. The only thing left is the crater," said Alvaro Gonzales, director of the city's security department, Metroseguridad. Monday's explosion ripped out 100-year-old, Italian stain glass windows from a nearby a Catholic church, injuring some of the 60 worshipers, and a priest praying in the sacristy. It was not clear whether the two pregnant women injured were attending mass when the bomb detonated, or were outside. "I thought we had been hit by lightning," said priest Jose Giraldo, who was presiding over mass at the time. "Then when I saw the damage, and the people, fortunately the injuries were nothing serious," he told local RCN radio. Gonzales said he did not expect the death toll to rise later in the day. "Up until now, and I hope everything stays the same, there are eight confirmed injured, almost all minor (injuries), thank God," he said. The Andean nation's 40-year-old guerrilla conflict, partly funded with revenue from the world's largest cocaine industry, claims thousands of lives a year. Many bomb attacks prove to be the work of criminal organizations, looking for extortion money.

BBC 11 June, 2004 Colombia offers rebels ceasefire By Jeremy McDermott BBC correspondent in Bogota The ELN is Colombia's second-largest leftist rebel group Colombia's government has offered to halt offensive operations against the country's second-largest rebel group, if it calls a ceasefire. The National Liberation Army (ELN) has opened channels for dialogue with the government of President Alvaro Uribe. But the government's ceasefire offer is surprising: it had earlier said it would force the rebels to the negotiate by weakening them militarily. The new aim is to separate the ELN from its more powerful cousin, the Farc. The Farc, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, with about 16,000 fighters, is the main threat to Colombian security. The ELN is smaller, with an estimated 3,500 fighters. The government's aim is to entice the ELN into a separate peace agreement, allowing the armed forces to concentrate on hitting the larger guerrilla force. The government proposal was made via an imprisoned guerrilla leader, Francisco Galan, who is serving a life sentence in Itaqui jail in Medellin. He has a radio in his cell with which to pass the proposal to his bosses in the mountains and jungles of Colombia. See http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/eln.htm AND Ejército de Liberación Nacional http://www.eln-voces.com/.

BBC 12 June, 2004 Colombia rebels 'name new leader' By Jeremy McDermott BBC News, Medellin Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) is said to have a new leader. Senator Jaime Dussan, of the left-wing Democratic Poll, said Farc commanders contacted the party and informed them that the new leader was Alfonso Cano. Cano's real name is Guillermo Leon Saenz and he has been the ideological head of the guerrilla army. Long-time leader Manuel Marulanda has died or is about to die of prostate cancer, say intelligence sources. Marulanda is reported to have been suffering from terminal cancer The news marks the end of an era for the Farc, one of the world's richest and most powerful guerrilla armies. Manuel Marulanda built the rebel force up from 48 fighters to the 16,000-strong army of today and, in doing so, became a legend in Colombia. His successor, Alfonso Cano, has been the movement's ideological head for over a decade. Analysts believe that the announcement reveals a shift away from the military emphasis of the Farc to more political activity. Many think this could raise the chances of a political dialogue with the government. The Farc have been fighting for 40 years to overthrow the government and install a Marxist regime. Cano is known as a committed communist and the movement's ideology is unlikely to change. What may change is that the group may move away from indiscriminate bombings and killings that have earned the Farc the label 'terrorist organisation' both in the United States and Europe.

AP 16 June 2004 Ex-Colombia Rebel Describes Recruiting GEORGE GEDDA Associated Press WASHINGTON - A former Colombian rebel leader who defected last year said Wednesday his one-time colleagues used "fascist-like techniques" to win new recruits for their goal of transforming the country politically and economically. Carlos Alberto Plotter, who once served as a commander of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, said he believes negotiations are the best way to end 40 years of civil war in his country. Plotter, who turned himself in to the government in May 2003, spoke to a gathering at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He said the FARC, the rebels' shorthand name, recruited peasants at gunpoint and "actually subjugated the population through force." Speaking through a translator, Plotter said peasants in some areas had a choice of joining the FARC or being forced from their homes. "The FARC is far from achieving their goal of transforming society," he said. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has stepped up pressure on the FARC since assuming office two years ago. The latest report on Colombia by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights criticized all parties to Colombia's conflict - the government, the FARC, the ELN leftist insurgents and rightist paramilitary forces. "The human rights situation remains critical," said the report, released in March. The war claims about 3,500 lives every year. Plotter took encouragement from political developments in countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, where, he said, traditionally underrepresented majority populations now have more political clout. He said he was unaware of any FARC ties to Cuba, Venezuela or the Irish Republican Army. On Tuesday, three Irish men, all IRA members, were convicted of using false passports when they entered Colombia several years ago. Earlier, the three - Niall Connolly, James Monaghan and Martin McCauley - had been acquitted on terrorism charges. They were ordered to remain in Colombia pending an appeal of their acquittal on charges that they had trained FARC rebels in bombing techniques.

AP 17 June 2004 Suspected Colombian Rebels Kill 34 People Thursday June 17, 2004 12:46 AM By JAVIER BAENA Associated Press Writer BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - The Colombian workers at a cocaine-producing ranch were sleeping when rebels burst in, tied them up with their hammocks, threw them to the floor and shot dead 34 of them - ``like dogs,'' a survivor said Wednesday. Tuesday's massacre near La Gabarra, 310 miles northeast of the capital, Bogota, was the bloodiest since President Alvaro Uribe took office nearly two years ago, pledging to bring order to the South American country, which produces most of the world's cocaine and where 3,500 people are killed each year in a three-sided civil war. Members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, gunned down the civilians in a remote ranch in eastern Colombia along the Venezuelan border, survivors and the government said. The FARC and a smaller rebel group are fighting outlawed paramilitary groups and U.S.-backed government forces in Colombia's war. ``They tied us up and threw us on the floor like dogs and shot us,'' said one of the peasants, who was shot once and pretended to be dead. There were a total of seven wounded survivors. The killers allowed two women to escape. Another survivor told reporters he also played dead, and he recalled how the wounded and dying called out for help after the killers left. ``They asked why they had been gunned down so miserably,'' he said. None of the survivors wanted to be identified for security reasons. One survivor said the killers were young FARC members who accused the field hands of being paramilitary members. He denied that the victims, who worked harvesting coca - the main ingredient of cocaine, were militia members. ``All we care about is (finding) work, not who the boss is,'' he said. Gen. Carlos Alberto Ospina, Colombia's armed forces chief, said the killings were provoked by a dispute between rebels and paramilitary gunmen over control over coca production, and the profits it brings when it is converted in clandestine labs to cocaine. The United Nations' human rights office in Bogota described the killing ``as a war crime, since the culprits carried out a premeditated murder of totally defenseless civilians.'' Interior Minister Sabas Pretelt said government forces were pursuing the killers. ``I hope ... they understand they can't keep committing these atrocities,'' Pretelt said. Uribe lashed out at Amnesty International for not denouncing the killings. Uribe has had bitter relations with international human rights groups, accusing them of being sympathetic to the rebels. ``You know what makes me sad?,'' Uribe said Wednesday during a military ceremony. ``That so far I haven't heard anything from Amnesty International ... Amnesty International stays silent, the same group that abuses its good name to go and accuse Colombian government forces (of committing abuses).'' The human rights group said it has not denounced the killings because it does not know all the facts, but it will condemn the massacres if the government reports prove true. ``We don't rely too much on the government because often times they don't have all the information or manipulate it,'' Eric Olson, Americas director for Amnesty International USA, told The Associated Press from Washington. ``We like to do our own verification.'' The worst previous mass killing happened in May 2002, when a homemade mortar round fired by FARC guerrillas landed on a church in Bojaya in Colombia's northwest, killing 119 civilians.

BC 18 June 2004 Farc admits coca farmers massacre Cocaine is a vital source of income for the Farc Colombia's largest left-wing rebel group, Farc, has admitted that it carried out the killings of 34 coca farmers earlier this week. A Farc statement said the farmers supported right-wing paramilitaries and accused the government of shedding "crocodile tears over the deaths". Tuesday's attack in Norte de Santander was the worst since President Alvaro Uribe took office two years ago. The United Nations has condemned the massacre as a "war crime". The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia described the attack as "the premeditated murder of unarmed and totally defenceless civilians". Dawn attack The farmers - who had been working at the farm for the past fortnight - were sleeping in hammocks, when the gunmen arrived at dawn on Tuesday in the village of Rio Chiquita. Uribe came to power on a pledge to curb violence They were bound hand and foot with ropes and shot with automatic weapons. "We saved ourselves by running toward the mountain," Jesus Bayona, 45, who survived after being shot in the foot, told the AP news agency. A regional police commander Lt Col William Montezuma later told the BBC that 50 gunmen took part in the attack. A government official said the farm appeared to belong to right-wing paramilitaries. Landless peasants often pick coca leaves and sell them to both left-wing guerrillas and their right-wing opponents, which can leave the farmers targets of reprisals. Other villagers and farmers have been fleeing the area, fearful of further attacks, according to a human rights monitor. President Uribe pledged to curb the violence which has plagued Colombia for decades, and increased military spending.

Haiti

NYT 2 June 2004 U.S. Begins Transfer of a Shaky Haiti to U.N. Hands By TIM WEINER PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, June 1 - United States commanders began turning over this anarchic, flood-ravaged, starving nation 500 miles from Florida to a handful of United Nations troops on Tuesday. The 3,600-member American-led military force brought a measure of stability to Haiti after the first Marines landed Feb. 29, the day President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced from power under rebel attack and American pressure. Despite its best efforts during the past three months, it leaves behind a mess. The United Nations mission is to help make Haiti a functioning democracy capable of holding national elections sometime next year. That task may take longer than the mission's six-month mandate. The rebels first rose up against President Aristide in February, and they still hold much of the countryside. Since their rebellion began, Haiti has been hit by disasters both natural and man-made. In March, political chaos led to looting and burning in the capital, destroying government offices, hospital clinics and warehouses holding food for the hungry in the poorest nation in the Western world. In April, a transitional government installed with American backing proved unable to provide most basic public services, surviving on a lifeline of foreign money and military force. Then came the torrential rains that killed thousands and left tens of thousands homeless a week ago. The United Nations force, now a few hundred soldiers but intended to become 8,000 strong, confronts the immediate crisis of the flood. The toll is more than 2,600 dead and missing in Haiti, 700 dead and missing over the border in the Dominican Republic. The missing are presumed dead. Some 75,000 people affected by the flood will need help to get through the rainy season, which officially started Tuesday. International aid agencies will bear the brunt of that task. They say they initially underestimated the scale of the disaster and are scrambling for food, money and transportation to flood-struck villages, where roads have been eradicated. American helicopters carrying tons of food to 15,000 survivors ceased flying Monday, a week after the floods struck. "The U.N. peacekeeping mission doesn't have helicopters right now, and it will take weeks for them to deploy some," said Íñigo Álvarez, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, which was already feeding half a million Haitians before the flood. "Without them, we have a big problem to solve. The helicopters were essential." Guy Gauvreau, the food program's director in Haiti, added, "We deeply deplore that the multinational force has other priorities." The aid workers are talking about using mules to ferry aid to thousands of victims. Given the state of Haiti's interim government, the agencies say they may have to rent bulldozers and rebuild the ruined roads themselves. All the while, Haitian politics continues, a discourse often carried out at gunpoint. The interim Haitian government is outgunned by rebel forces, who control many Haitian towns and villages. The rebels include former soldiers of the Haitian military, a force corrupted by Colombian cocaine kingpins and charged with political killings. In 1991, the military helped overthrow Mr. Aristide, Haiti's first - and only - democratically elected leader. These rebels are calling for the resurrection of the Haitian Army, disbanded by Mr. Aristide in 1995. American commanders say the last thing Haiti needs is the return of its military, long an instrument of political terror. Armed Aristide loyalists remain a force in Port-au-Prince, though Mr. Aristide is in exile in South Africa, and unlikely to be allowed to return anytime soon. Only a handful of the soldiers for the force cobbled together by the United Nations are now in Haiti. They have no headquarters and little money. Some troops from Canada, France and Chile, nations now in the American-led force, will remain in Haiti. A handful of Americans here might stay past June 30, the deadline for their withdrawal. The Americans may return. Gen. James T. Hill, chief of the United States Southern Command, is talking privately about rotating American forces through Haiti in military exercises later this year, a senior Western diplomat said Tuesday. Brig. Gen. Ronald S. Coleman of the United States Marines handed over the international military presence to Gen. Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira, of the Brazilian Army, at a ceremony held Tuesday morning at the National Police Academy here. He will lead the United Nations force. "The stakes are high," Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, said in a message read at the ceremony on Tuesday. "This time, let us get it right." The event at the academy was largely protocol. Actual command authority will be vested in the United Nations force on June 20. Some 1,200 Brazilian troops, 150 from Paraguay, 150 from Uruguay and 350 from Argentina should be on the ground in Haiti by June 30. The United Nations has mandated 6,700 troops and 1,622 police officers from 30 countries. The mission may never reach that force; less than half that number have signed on. The American-led disarmament effort rounded up fewer than 200 weapons. The new force has a mandate for disarmament, a task Haiti's interim government lacks the power to undertake. "Disarmament is very important," General Pereira said. "However, spiritual disarmament is even more important than physical disarmament." The United Nations troops, who are here as peacekeepers, are unlikely to try to disarm gunmen by force. Though American troops are leaving, American foreign policy stays the same. It seeks to stop the flow of refugees to Florida. It wants to fight cocaine traffickers' power to corrupt Haitian officials who help ship their drugs to the United States. It will assist Haiti's interim government as it tries to find its way to elections in 2005. The interim government was appointed in the chaotic days following the fall of Mr. Aristide, with armed rebels looting the capital and pro-Aristide militias shooting at the newly landed marines. It remains unrecognized by Caricom, the 15-member community of Caribbean nations. Many Haitians see the interim government as hand-picked or heavily influenced by the United States, which escorted Mr. Aristide out of Haiti on an American plane. In the slums of Port-au-Prince, where Mr. Aristide's rise from priest to president began, many still see him as Haiti's true leader. Leslie F. Manigat, who served as Haiti's president in 1991 and now leads a new political party, the National Democratic Progressive Coalition, said the desperate problems of the past three months will resound long after the six-month mandate of the new United Nations force. "These latest events are going to affect this country on the economic and the political level for a very long time," he said. "There have been mistakes, lots of mistakes since Aristide left, starting with the way in which he left, and the way things have been handled since then." "I am not a pessimist by nature," the former president said. "But I have gnawing doubts about the future."

United States

WP 28 May 2004 Holocaust Survivors, Veterans Celebrate an Unbreakable Link By Rosalind S. Helderman Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 28, 2004; Page B07 The weather was warming at last, the Allied armies were on the move and victory seemed possible in the spring of 1945 when 22-year old Army Capt. Willis Scudder stumbled upon the Holocaust. He was performing reconnaissance when, with no warning, he came upon Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the much larger Buchenwald concentration camp. Ohrdruf, the first camp discovered by U.S. troops in Germany, had been liberated by other members of the 89th Infantry Division just days earlier. The images he saw that day have been seared into his memory ever since, said Scudder, now 88 and a retired Army colonel living in Fairfax. Walking skeletons milled about with blank faces, seemingly gliding around dead bodies. Inside a weather-beaten barracks, sick and dying men lay stacked to the ceiling on wooden shelves. In a field were piles of half-burned bodies, where the retreating Nazis had made an attempt to hide their crimes. "There's no shock quite like seeing these things," Scudder said. "To understand and realize that people can do that. How could you dislike people that much?" Yesterday, Scudder shared his memories at an observance at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum honoring the soldiers who liberated the camps, timed to coincide with this weekend's dedication of the National World War II Memorial. He was joined by Holocaust survivors, museum dignitaries and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi in the museum's Hall of Witness, a cavernous space lined with the flags of U.S. Army divisions that freed the camps. Through tomorrow, the museum has extended its hours to accommodate the anticipated flood of visiting veterans in town for the memorial's dedication. There is a special exhibit examining the experiences of U.S. soldiers as they fought across Western Europe and a documentary shown twice an hour featuring soldier and survivor interviews. "Certainly by virtue of its setting and its message, the memorial implies what we were fighting for," said Sara J. Bloomfield, director of the museum. "When you come to this museum, you get a sense of what we were fighting against. I think it's important to see both sides." Despite some previous news reports and intelligence about the Nazi campaign of genocide against Jews and others whom the Nazis considered undesirable, most Americans were as shocked as Scudder when Allied soldiers began overrunning concentration camps in 1945. Newspapers had covered Germany's persecution of Jews in the 1930s, and stories about mass executions of Hungarian Jews appeared in 1944, said Peter Black, the Holocaust museum's senior historian. Even so, the U.S. government played down such reports, worried that domestic anti-Semitism might erode support for the war effort if Americans believed it was being fought on behalf of Jews, Black said. The stories were not front-page news, and many Americans only learned of the Holocaust when the camps were liberated. What soldiers found provided a horrific picture of Hitler's regime for a U.S. public that until then had reserved its most bitter hatred for the Japanese because of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Black said. "There wasn't much of a sense of who the Germans were and who the Nazis had been in concrete terms before the GIs hit these camps," he said. It also helped change Americans' perception of their country's role in the world, as they resolved to help make the United States a more active world player and try to stop such atrocities in the future, Black said. At the same time, he noted, many have since questioned whether the United States could have done more to save the victims of the Holocaust, particularly by allowing more European Jews into the country. Despite those questions, many Holocaust survivors feel they owe their lives to American participation in the war and revere U.S. veterans for it -- particularly those who were the first upon the camps, Black said. "That's a very close bond and a very moving bond," he said. Henry Greenbaum, 76, survived Auschwitz and a four-month death march through Germany. His first sight of freedom was the blond hair of an American soldier, popping out of the hatch of a tank, and at yesterday's ceremony, he thanked that soldier, whose name he never learned, along with all his comrades. "Your bravery allowed me to live again," he said. "Your courage gave me my freedom." In the audience listening stood Herman Zeitchik, who at age 20 was one of the first U.S. soldiers to arrive at a subcamp of Dachau. When inmates learned that the young American was Jewish, too, they pulled at his sleeve in disbelief, Zeitchik recalled. The Silver Spring resident said he plans to attend tomorrow's dedication of the World War II Memorial as well. "I think they should be tied together," he said of the memorial and the museum. "It'll be a last chance for many of the men who were at liberation. We're the last who saw this."

WP 27 May 2004 A Beachhead in the Dictionary Language Still Carries the Lively Speech of GIs By Manny Fernandez Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, May 27, 2004; Page B04 World War II gave us many political, social, economic and technological advances. But it also left its imprint on our language. It gave birth to "snafu," an acronym for an R-rated phrase that describes a situation in characteristic disorder. The small four-wheel-drive vehicles used in the war never lost the name "jeep." Portable two-way radios would forever be known by the more colorful label "walkie-talkies." And, on a darker note, one of the most horrific chapters of the 20th century gave extermination a new name: genocide. "Wars always leave their mark on the vocabulary as well as the citizens," said Joan Houston Hall, chief editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English. "Sometimes, they introduce new words that immediately take hold. Other times, they introduce words that are prominent and [then] fall out of use. And still other times, they take words that have been in the language and have not been prominent, and they make them prominent." Paul Dickson, an author of several books on language, including "War Slang: American Fighting Words and Phrases Since the Civil War," said World War II has had the biggest linguistic impact of any U.S. war. "World War II really changed the way we talked," Dickson said. The reason, he and other experts said, was that the U.S. armed forces were made up mostly of citizen-soldiers -- average men from different economic, regional and ethnic backgrounds whose speech was unvarnished and often cleverly funny. Their way with words was uniquely American, emphasizing simple descriptions over puffy jargon. "The language became much more informal, much slangier," said Dickson, who lives in Garrett Park. "The average guy was seeing things whimsically." For a 1994 book on military slang, Dickson researched terms that either were coined during World War II or became much more widespread during the war. Though some of the words have fallen out of favor -- few people today would say they are "in the gravy" to describe being in comfortable circumstances -- dozens of others still turn up regularly in conversation. "Gung-ho" was the motto Lt. Col. E.F. Carlson gave his Marine Raiders. "Blitzkrieg" was German for a sudden, swift attack before its shortened version gained popularity on the football field. A "dry run" was military slang for something done for practice only. According to the U.S. Army Center of Military History, the term "D-Day" describes the day on which a combat attack is to be initiated. The earliest use of "D-Day," the center found, came during World War I, with a 1918 field order. But it was during World War II and the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, that D-Day became cemented in the popular culture, Dickson said. "GI" once stood for "government issue" and described equipment and materials used by members of the armed forces, as in "GI soap." But in the last half of the war, the use of "GI" to refer to the soldiers themselves began to take hold, said Christine Ammer, a lexicographer and author of "Fighting Words: From War, Rebellion, and Other Combative Capers." "Sweat it out," meaning to endure, was strictly a Southern expression before the war, but during the war "it got picked up and spread around," said Jesse Sheidlower, principal editor of the American office of the Oxford English Dictionary. America's recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have introduced or popularized several words, such as "embedded," but Sheidlower and other experts said it's impossible to predict which ones will resonate in years to come.

independent.co.uk 27 May 2004 Amnesty: 'Bankrupt' war on terror is world's most damaging conflict in 50 years By Kim Sengupta 27 May 2004 Human Rights and international laws have come under the most sustained attack in 50 years from the "war on terror" led by the United States and Britain, Amnesty International says. The scathing indictment came in Amnesty's annual report, which accused the US administration of George Bush in particular of pursuing policies "bankrupt of vision and bereft of principles". The American government is charged with "sacrificing human rights in the name of security at home, turning a blind eye to abuses abroad, using pre-emptive military force where and when it chooses". This draconian approach, Amnesty says, has "damaged justice and freedom, and made the world a more dangerous place". In Iraq, "hundreds of civilians were killed and thousands injured" as a result of bombing by the US and Britain, it says. "Many civilians were killed as a result of excessive use of force by coalition forces. Scores of women were abducted, raped and killed as law and order broke down after the war. Torture and ill treatment by coalition forces were widespread." The report accuses the US and Britain of "failing to live up to their responsibilities under international humanitarian law as occupying powers, including their duty to restore and maintain public order and safety, and to provide food, medical care and relief assistance". While President Bush and Tony Blair proclaimed that they had liberated the people of Iraq from Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, "little action was taken to address past human rights violations, including mass disappearances, or to investigate and bring to justice those responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes", Amnesty says. Three years after the 11 September attacks, Amnesty paints a picture of governments around the world using "security" as an excuse to authorise killings and torture, introduce repressive legistlation and exploit people's fears and prejudices. These regimes, the report says, have behaved with impunity under the cloak of America's own global campaign against those it considers its enemies, and the results are instances of injustice such as the prisoners held without trial at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Hundreds of other detainees from 40 countries are also incarcerated in Afghanistan and Iraq. "The photographs of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is the logical consequence of the pursuit of the war on terror by the United States since 9/11," Irene Khan, the secretary general of Amnesty, said. Britain was singled out for criticism for keeping 14 foreign nationals in jail indefinitely under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act. "Among other reasons, the UK has justified these measures on the grounds that its rules of evidence are too stringent to allow successful prosecutions," the report says. It also points out that although 572 people were arrested on suspicion of "terrorist- related" offences, just one in five have faced charges. Britain, Spain, France, Portugal, Malta and Ireland, and Australia, a partner in the war on terror, are also censured for tough policies on asylum-seekers. And while international focus has been on the Iraq war, the report says, attention has been diverted from other bloody conflicts and human rights abuses in Chechnya, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Nepal, which remain "a breeding ground for some of the worst activities". The report concludes: "The current framework of international law and multilateral action is undergoing the most sustained attack since half a century ago. Human rights and humanitarian law is being directly challenged ... In the name of the 'war on terror', governments are eroding human rights principles, standards and values." The report was criticised last night by Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman. "The war on terrorism has protected the human rights of some 25 million people in Afghanistan, and 25 million in Iraq," he said. "The war on terror has led to the liberation of some 50 million people in those countries."

The Kansas City Star 31 May 2004 kcstar.com. Brownback Actions would speak louder than apology, tribes say By SCOTT CANON After centuries of deal-breaking, land-taking and what many tribes consider genocide, some Washington politicians want the government to offer American Indians an apology. U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, has sponsored a resolution apologizing “to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States” as a way to smooth the often-rocky relations between the two. “(But) before reconciliation,” Brownback said in remarks entered in the Congressional Record, “there must be recognition and repentance.” To that end, his resolution lists a few reasons for an apology — things like the deadly Trail of Tears march of Cherokee from North Carolina to Oklahoma — and mentions broader federal policies, now seen as racist, that killed people and shattered cultures. Finally, the resolution closes with a disclaimer: “Nothing in this Joint Resolution authorizes any claim against the United States or serves as a settlement of any claim against the United States.” A sampling of tribal groups greeted the gesture warmly, but they didn't view it as a salve to thousands of ongoing disputes between Washington and the hundreds of tribes in the country. “We appreciate it. … It's a recognition of the issue, of the past injustices,” said Steve Cadue, tribal chairman of the Kickapoo in Kansas. But others note an array of ongoing disputes over land, water and money. The Indian groups point out that an apology underlined with a disclaimer doesn't help resolve those disagreements. “An apology is just where you start,” said Deana Jackson, a spokeswoman for the Navajo Nation. “Now let's see you step to the plate and do what you promised you would do.” She cited recent funding cuts to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service, saying they essentially amounted to an abandonment of treaty obligations to provide for tribes' needs in return for concessions made over generations. “Obligations to native nations are always ignored,” Jackson said. Resolutions have been introduced to apologize for slavery, but have so far failed. President Clinton contemplated, but ultimately chose not to, unilaterally apologize for slavery. The government paid reparations to Japanese-Americans held in camps during World War II. And Congress has passed resolutions to study reparations for slavery, but payments remain highly controversial. Brownback timed the introduction of his resolution, which encourages the president to join in apologizing, to coincide with the September opening of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian. The resolution's co-sponsors in the Senate are Democrat Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and Colorado Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and the only American Indian now serving in Congress. According to U.S. Census figures, the American Indian, Eskimo and Aleut population is about 2.3 million, about 0.9 percent of the total U.S. population. Census figures predict a gradual climb in that group's percentage of the population. Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats have courted tribes increasingly in recent years as some — mostly those with land near densely populated areas on the coasts — have become wealthier by running casinos. The National Journal reports that the Agua Caliente of California, the Louisiana Coushattas, the Mississippi Choctaws, and the Saginaw Chippewas of Michigan pay an average of $5 million a year to Washington lobbying firms and that those tribes have spent $2.6 million over the past six years on campaign contributions. About two-thirds of those donations went to Republicans. Federal Election Commission reports for Brownback, however, show he has not received money from tribes in recent years. Rather, he has been at odds with the Wyandotte tribe, for instance, and its efforts to move graves from a Kansas City, Kan., cemetery and establish a casino there. Brownback has said he has been surprised by the anger he encountered while visiting Indian reservations in Kansas. In offering his resolution, he said he hoped for healing after “choices our government sometimes made to disregard its solemn word.” The apology “begins the effort of reconciliation by recognizing past wrongs and repenting for them,” Brownback said. Dennis Hastings, a member of the Omaha tribe from Macy, Neb., found the idea of an apology odd and inadequate. “In a way, you look at it as nice. But it's a little late and too far gone,” said Hastings, an anthropologist with Omaha Tribal Historical Research Project. “We want to resolve the issues before they put their sorry on the board. … I'd rather have them go home and read about our history and have their children read about our history, and then come and talk with us about it with a little meaning.” Instead, said historian Fergus Bordewich, the resolution treats the complex clash between American Indians and the federal government in only the broadest of terms. Almost without exception, he said, 85 percent to 90 percent of most tribes died from exposure to the diseases that Europeans brought to North America. But, said the author of Killing the White Man's Indian, that was not intentional and “no one is morally culpable for that.” Some tribes suffered much more severely in their dealings with the government than others, he said. Sometimes treaties bullied tribes — that's how Hastings talks about an 1854 pact that he believes stole millions from the Omaha — and sometimes deals served the interests of both sides. “Not everything happened in the same way in every place,” Bordewich said. “It's a very tragic history however you measure it. The government has a lot to be sorry about. But a blanket apology doesn't really recognize the complexity.” Still, tribes and their advocates tend to welcome an apology as at least recognition of the damage done to Indian welfare and culture. “These weren't just random or ad hoc actions of bad white people. These were the official actions of the United States government,” said Susan Harjo, who belongs to the Cheyenne and Muscogee and is president of the Morning Star Institute, a tribal advocacy group. “It's perfectly in order to apologize.” She sees Brownback as sincere. “There's no percentage in him doing this. It's not something he's going to get great kudos for in his usual circles,” she said. But Harjo said acts of good faith should follow — forcing the return of Indian burial remains from museums, for instance. Even then, “no living native person has the right to accept” the apology, she said. “It's too big,” she said. “Too much was done for too long, and too many people suffered." Seee http://brownback.senate.gov/

Text of S.J.RES.37: The following is the text of S.J.RES.37, a bill to acknowledge a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the United States Government regarding Indian tribes and offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States, as introduced on April 6, 2004. JOINT RESOLUTION To acknowledge a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the United States Government regarding Indian tribes and offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States. Whereas the ancestors of today's Native Peoples inhabited the land of the present-day United States since time immemorial and for thousands of years before the arrival of peoples of European descent; Whereas the Native Peoples have for millennia honored, protected, and stewarded this land we cherish; Whereas the Native Peoples are spiritual peoples with a deep and abiding belief in the Creator, and for millennia their peoples have maintained a powerful spiritual connection to this land, as is evidenced by their customs and legends; Whereas the arrival of Europeans in North America opened a new chapter in the histories of the Native Peoples; Whereas, while establishment of permanent European settlements in North America did stir conflict with nearby Indian tribes, peaceful and mutually beneficial interactions also took place; Whereas the foundational English settlements in Jamestown, Virginia, and Plymouth, Massachusetts, owed their survival in large measure to the compassion and aid of the Native Peoples in their vicinities; Whereas in the infancy of the United States, the founders of the Republic expressed their desire for a just relationship with the Indian tribes, as evidenced by the Northwest Ordinance enacted by Congress in 1787, which begins with the phrase, `The utmost good faith shall always be observed toward the Indians'; Whereas Indian tribes provided great assistance to the fledgling Republic as it strengthened and grew, including invaluable help to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their epic journey from St. Louis, Missouri, to the Pacific Coast; Whereas Native Peoples and non-Native settlers engaged in numerous armed conflicts; Whereas the United States Government violated many of the treaties ratified by Congress and other diplomatic agreements with Indian tribes; Whereas this Nation should address the broken treaties and many of the more ill-conceived Federal policies that followed, such as extermination, termination, forced removal and relocation, the outlawing of traditional religions, and the destruction of sacred places; Whereas the United States forced Indian tribes and their citizens to move away from their traditional homelands and onto federally established and controlled reservations, in accordance with such Acts as the Indian Removal Act of 1830; Whereas many Native Peoples suffered and perished-- (1) during the execution of the official United States Government policy of forced removal, including the infamous Trail of Tears and Long Walk; (2) during bloody armed confrontations and massacres, such as the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 and the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890; and (3) on numerous Indian reservations; Whereas the United States Government condemned the traditions, beliefs, and customs of the Native Peoples and endeavored to assimilate them by such policies as the redistribution of land under the General Allotment Act of 1887 and the forcible removal of Native children from their families to faraway boarding schools where their Native practices and languages were degraded and forbidden; Whereas officials of the United States Government and private United States citizens harmed Native Peoples by the unlawful acquisition of recognized tribal land, the theft of resources from such territories, and the mismanagement of tribal trust funds; Whereas the policies of the United States Government toward Indian tribes and the breaking of covenants with Indian tribes have contributed to the severe social ills and economic troubles in many Native communities today; Whereas, despite continuing maltreatment of Native Peoples by the United States, the Native Peoples have remained committed to the protection of this great land, as evidenced by the fact that, on a per capita basis, more Native people have served in the United States Armed Forces and placed themselves in harm's way in defense of the United States in every major military conflict than any other ethnic group; Whereas Indian tribes have actively influenced the public life of the United States by continued cooperation with Congress and the Department of the Interior, through the involvement of Native individuals in official United States Government positions, and by leadership of their own sovereign Indian tribes; Whereas Indian tribes are resilient and determined to preserve, develop, and transmit to future generations their unique cultural identities; Whereas the National Museum of the American Indian was established within the Smithsonian Institution as a living memorial to the Native Peoples and their traditions; and Whereas Native Peoples are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND APOLOGY. The United States, acting through Congress-- (1) recognizes the special legal and political relationship the Indian tribes have with the United States and the solemn covenant with the land we share; (2) commends and honors the Native Peoples for the thousands of years that they have stewarded and protected this land; (3) acknowledges years of official depredations, ill-conceived policies, and the breaking of covenants by the United States Government regarding Indian tribes; (4) apologizes on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native Peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native Peoples by citizens of the United States; (5) expresses its regret for the ramifications of former offenses and its commitment to build on the positive relationships of the past and present to move toward a brighter future where all the people of this land live reconciled as brothers and sisters, and harmoniously steward and protect this land together; (6) urges the President to acknowledge the offenses of the United States against Indian tribes in the history of the United States in order to bring healing to this land by providing a proper foundation for reconciliation between the United States and Indian tribes; and (7) commends the State governments that have begun reconciliation efforts with recognized Indian tribes located in their boundaries and encourages all State governments similarly to work toward reconciling relationships with Indian tribes within their boundaries. SEC. 2. DISCLAIMER. Nothing in this Joint Resolution authorizes any claim against the United States or serves as a settlement of any claim against the United States.

New York Daily News - New York,NY,USA 1 June 2004 www.nydailynews.com Disgraceful silence in face of genocide A generation has grown up in hell, or maybe it's two generations. Depending on how you read history, the civil war in Sudan has been raging for 21 years, or maybe 50. Suffice it to say, existence in the African nation has been - we resort to understatement - difficult. Note, "existence." Not "life." If you accept the 21-year estimate, 2 million Sudanese have failed to maintain existence, and the death toll is rising. For in Sudan, there is today the world's greatest humanitarian disaster - a polite way of describing genocide. A decade ago, the world turned its back on Rwanda, where ethnic cleansing claimed 800,000 lives in 100 days. Afterward: Oh the shock, oh the horror. Why didn't "civilized" society do something? Well, world, it's happening again. And, except for the U.S. and South Africa, no one seems to care much. The United Nations alleges some interest, pledging aid and comfort. But this is the same organization that deemed Sudan's Islamic government worthy of a place on the Human Rights Commission, even though said government is the antithesis of all the commission is supposed to represent. Last week, Sudan's leaders and the rebel forces that have been waging the eternal civil war signed a peace pact, brokered by the U.S. This, though, has no bearing on the abominations in the western part of the country, in the region called Darfur. There, Arab militias, supported by the government in Khartoum, have been slaughtering, raping, torturing and enslaving - yes, slavery thrives in Sudan - black Africans. The refugee estimate is between 1 million and 2 million, and the area, which is about the size of France, has been so decimated that one can reportedly drive for 50 miles without seeing a living being. What you will see are burned villages and scorched earth. And desecrated bodies. If a black African in Darfur is lucky enough to escape being butchered by the Arabs, he or she must still contend with enslavement, famine and disease. Refugee camps in neighboring Chad are overflowing. There is little food and no medicine. In a couple of weeks, the rainy season will make roads impassable so supplies cannot be delivered. That will give Khartoum a nice excuse, since it is generally accepted that supplies are not being delivered now because the Sudanese government has blocked relief organizations from reaching the refugees. Where are you, France and Germany? Where are you, Barbra Streisand? Where are you, Al Franken? When can we expect the documentary, Michael Moore? We do not mean to trivialize the tragedy, but loudmouths with a platform could be useful in galvanizing action. Or are we not supposed to care when the murderers are Arabs and the victims are black? America's best In April, after four Americans were fatally ambushed in Fallujah, writer Robert D. Kaplan went into that Iraqi city with the Marines. His report, "Five Days in Fallujah," appears in the coming issue of The Atlantic Monthly. An account of some of the heaviest close-quarter fighting of the Iraq war, the story vividly highlights the bravery of the troops, including Bravo Company, commanded by Capt. Jason Smith. Herewith an excerpt: "Smith did not have to order his Marines straight into the direction of the fire; it was a collective impulse - a phenomenon I would see again and again over the coming days. The idea that Marines are trained to break down doors, to seize beachheads and other territory, was an abstraction until I was there to experience it. Running into fire rather than seeking cover from it goes counter to every human survival instinct - trust me. I was sweating as much from fear as from the layers of clothing I still had on from the night before, to the degree that it felt as if pure salt were running into my eyes from my forehead. As the weeks had rolled on, and I had gotten to know the 1/5 Marines as the individuals they were, I had started deluding myself that they weren't much different from me. They had soft spots, they got sick, they complained. But in one flash, as we charged across [the street] amid whistling incoming shots, I realized that they were not like me; they were Marines."

Daytona Beach News-Journal, FL 3 June 2004 www.news-journalonline.com Abu Ghraib torture tests limits of understanding By DONNA CALLEA Staff Writer Last update: 03 June 2004 DAYTONA BEACH -- Even the word can make us wince. Make us wonder. Make us contemplate the capacity for cruelty that can lurk in ordinary human hearts. Torture, as a method of coercion and punishment, has been around since ancient times. And in some places it's never gone out of fashion. But when representatives of a culture that does not tolerate torture become torturers, it's especially troubling, according to some who might be considered experts on the subject. They include area veterans who were prisoners of war, a Holocaust survivor, a therapist at the Florida Center for Survivors of Torture, and a professor of ethics at the U.S. Army War College. "I just can't imagine them doing those things," says Edward Roser, 81, who was captured by the Nazis 60 years ago during World War II, and has only recently been able to talk about that time. Souvenirs of his yearlong captivity include the prison dog tag he was issued at Stalag Luft 4, two bum knees and a case of post traumatic stress syndrome that has never gone away. But his treatment in captivity, he says, was not anything like the abuse by U.S. soldiers that's been reported and photographed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He feels compassion, he says, for the victims. "They'll carry that for the rest of their lives," says the Daytona Beach retiree. "It stays with you." And for those responsible, he mainly feels shame. "It does really bother me. . . I can't see them doing that." But the sad truth is, officially sanctioned torture is a common practice in many countries around the world, and, "I don't think we're immune," says Veronica Lortz, program manager for the Florida Center for Survivors of Torture in Clearwater. The nonprofit agency, which receives funding from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement and the United Nations Fund for Victims of Torture, serves about 300 people from more than 20 countries. Those people have been resettled in Florida after suffering all kinds of abuses in their homelands -- often for religious and political reasons. Some have watched spouses, children, parents murdered before their eyes. Some have been starved, burned, raped, maimed -- "very cruel things you would not imagine," says Lortz, 60. "I've seen a lot of human devastation." And "every time you have a victim, you have a perpetrator," she notes. Coming to grips with the fact that American soldiers can be perpetrators is especially difficult, says Lortz, a self-described "military brat" who was also a military wife. Some of the culprits may be sadists, others may be "just following orders," she theorizes. "But where does that stop?" That's a question that's been hanging heavy on the heart of Asia Doliner, an 82-year-old concentration camp survivor whose entire family was murdered during the Holocaust. "My heart goes out to any human being who's been tortured," says the Daytona Beach resident, who believes such abuse can never be justified. But at least, she says, there's been a public outcry. Which should be, she says, the natural reaction when any group of people is treated as "subhuman." Doliner vividly remembers being 22, starved, frightened, and forced to parade naked in front of a Nazi doctor who decided which of the women were fit enough to work as slave laborers in a munitions plant, and which would die. "We were terribly abused," she notes, by a people who were considered among the most "civilized" in the world. But the rest of the world turned a blind eye to the torture and attempted genocide until it was too late. "Where was the outcry?" she asks. Joe Lukashevich , however, says he feels no compassion for the tortured Iraqis. "They're only getting back what they're giving out," says the 82-year-old former POW from Palm Coast. Although the World War II vet, who spent nearly a year in a German POW camp, acknowledges, "that doesn't make it right." "Nobody should be treated the way they were treated. Those people were abused," he says. But Lukashevich adds that "war is rough. It isn't a patty-cake game." "A lot of things it's better not to know," says Jim LaFond, 80, who thinks the media's preoccupation with the abuse is "un-American" and "blown out of proportion." "They should punish the people responsible for it, punish them good," says the former POW who was 19 when he was captured, and was disabled as a result. "No one has a right to stoop to that level." But focusing on the Iraqi torture is "tearing the whole country down. . . It makes me sick. I can't reconcile it. I don't understand it," he says. David Perry, a professor of ethics at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., contends it's both patriotic and necessary for everyone to try "to understand how things like Abu Ghraib can happen so we can prevent them from happening again. "I think it's a good sign that people are repelled," says the civilian ethicist whose specialty is ethics and warfare. At the War College, where military officers and civilians are trained for leadership positions, people "pretty much share the general sense of revulsion expressed by people on the street," he says. "In some ways they feel perhaps even more angry than the average person might. They feel it's shamed the military profession." Turning a blind eye to torture is something no one can afford to do, Perry says. "People can ask both the executive branch and the Congress to investigate the abuses fully and hold people accountable no matter how far up the chain it goes." It's important, he says, "to hold the country to the standards that it explicitly affirms." As for Asia Doliner, she says that when she came to America 57 years ago, "I thought I was in paradise." She had hope the world had learned its lessons, and there would be no more atrocities. But that can only happen, she now believes, when people everywhere learn to become tolerant of each other. "We have such a beautiful world, and violence gets us nowhere," says the survivor of torture. "I pray for peace every day." donna.callea@news-jrnl.com What is Torture? According to the United Nations, torture is defined as: "Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or confession, punishing him for an act he has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating him or other persons. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to, lawful sanctions to the extent consistent with the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. " SOURCE: Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Being Subjected to Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment, adopted by the General Assembly Dec. 9, 1975.

NYT 6 June 2004 Letters usan Sontag's assertion that the torture photographs of Iraqi prisoners ''are us'' drew a large and varied response. Others had stern advice -- and a little sympathy -- for the people in the post-9/11 romantic triangle. And the ''Lolita'' story may be old, some said, but it's not borrowed. - - - Regarding the Torture of Others Susan Sontag's essay (May 23) is the most beautifully written and frighteningly introspective I have ever read. Sontag not only expresses the inadequacies of the presidential response, but she probes further to find out why and how these atrocities could occur. Her insight on American society as a whole is both alarming and, after consideration, perceptive. Tanya Hajjar Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Sontag is almost completely right. The photographs are us, but they are everyone else, too. The behavior in the pictures is the very nature of the dark side of humanity. The minute we point our fingers at others, whether they are radical Muslims or United States troops, and ask, How could they? the point is missed. The same is true of genocide — in Germany, Cambodia or Rwanda. These dark capabilities exist in us all and can surface with the right potent mix of ingredients. That realization is the first step toward prevention. David Levy, M.D. Sloatsburg, N.Y.

The Miami Herald June 10, 2004 'Barbarous thinking comes easily' BY JEFFREY D. SACHS; www.project-syndicate.cz One consequence of the Iraq war is to expose (once again) the false divide between ''civilized'' and ''barbarous'' nations. The United States seems as capable of barbarism as anyone else, as the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison make clear. ….. Barbarous thinking comes easily, and right-wingers fuel the fervor, as when the radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh said: ''They're the ones who are perverted. They're the ones who are dangerous. They're the ones who are subhuman. They're the ones who are human debris, not the United States of America and not our soldiers and our prison guards.'' I am not saying that the United States is more depraved than other countries. But the idea that any nation is morally superior, or that it has been divinely chosen as a leader of nations, is dangerous. Once we recognize how vulnerable all of the world is to a descent into violence, the importance of international law and international institutions such as the United Nations becomes more obvious. The United Nations successfully resisted U.S. pressure to condone a war with Iraq despite repeated U.S. claims, now known to be false, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The U.N. process worked, while the U.S. policy failed. By putting itself above the law, America allowed itself to succumb to barbaric behavior. Similarly, the abusive treatment of Iraqi prisoners proves why the new International Criminal Court is vital. U.S. leaders have strongly resisted the jurisdiction of the ICC, but American wrongdoing at Abu Ghraib shows why the United States should be subject to international law. Perhaps that lesson -- the need to subject even the most powerful country to international law -- will be one benefit of the otherwise disastrous Iraq war. If this lesson is learned, the world will be far safer. America itself will be safer, in part because it will be less likely to unleash a spiral of violence fueled by irrational fears and misunderstandings of the world. Jeffrey D. Sachs is professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

BBC 11 June, 2004 US Christian ad stands by Iraqis Sebastian Usher BBC World Media correspondent The ad features a Muslim, as well as Christians and a Jew A Christian organisation in the US has prepared an advertisement for Arab TV condemning the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail. FaithfulAmerica.org has received donations from its supporters to pay for the ad. It features Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious figures offering their solidarity with the Iraqi people. The clip, which can be seen on the group's website, is to be shown next week on two Arab satellite channels. FaithfulAmerica.org says it seeks to show to Iraq and the Arab world that people of faith in the US stand shoulder with them in demanding justice for the sinful abuses committed in their name. We condemn the sinful and systemic abuses committed in our name, and pledge to work to right these wrongs. FaithfulAmerica.org The website has a link to a rough form of the ad, which runs for 30 seconds and has a simple set-up - four talking heads taking turns in reading out a statement in English, which is translated in Arabic subtitles. The speakers are, in order: Reverend Don Shriver; Imam Feisal Abdul-Rauf; Sister Betty Obal and Rabbi Arthur Waskow. They are all well-known liberal figures within their respective faiths in America. A caption at the end of the ad reads in Arabic: "This message was endorsed and paid for by thousands of Americans." FaithfulAmerica.org - a non-profit lobbying group that started a month ago - has paid $20,000 for the ad to be shown in several slots next Tuesday on the two biggest pan-Arab satellite TV stations, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. The money came from more than 1,000 donors. More than 15,000 others have endorsed the message. FaithfulAmerica.org is at odds with Bush over the scandal The ad mirrors recent appearances on Arab TV by senior US officials - most notably President George W Bush - promising firm action over the Abu Ghraib scandal. But FaithfulAmerica.org says the administration has not faced up to the moral wrong of what happened. A senior member of President Bush's own United Methodist Church, Bishop Melvin Talbert, is the public face of the campaign. He told the BBC he believes the administration should be more forthright and forthcoming in dealing with the abuse scandal and rectifying it. He said he hoped the ad would show people in the Arab world that many Americans do care about them and want for Arabs what they want for themselves. www.faithfulamerica.org

Winona Daily News 17 June 2004 www.winonadailynews.com (Minnesota, USA) Hoping to heal wounds, Winona will remember its earliest settlers with reconciliation ceremony By Jeff Dankert / Six Dakota Indians approached a handful of white pioneers who had settled on the sandy prairie without negotiating with its occupants. The Indians demanded that if the whites wanted a piece of Dakota land for their shacks, they must pay for it with a barrel of flour or its monetary equivalent. Chief Wapasha III, whose territory covered southeastern Minnesota, had issued a more severe warning: Those who refused to pay would lose their shacks to fire and the Dakota would remove them from the territory. It was May 21, 1852, and white settlers were occupying Wapasha's Prairie on the Mississippi River at a place they would later call Winona. Whites in the region knew they didn't yet have the full backing of two United States treaties, agreed to by chiefs the previous summer but not formally approved by the U.S. Congress and President Millard Fillmore until 1853. Whites' self-proclaimed superiority over the Sioux (French for "snake") and the promise of treaties emboldened their occupation of Wapasha's Prairie — later renamed "Wenonah," meaning first-born female in the Dakota language. What the Dakota may not have fully realized is that their people would lose 21 million acres — the southern half of Minnesota — for about 6 cents an acre upon ratification of the treaties. There were about 300 Dakota Sioux here in 1851 (when Winona is said to have been founded). One of the Mdewakanton Sioux tribes lived along the Mississippi River from 1810 to 1852, occupying the land from the Twin Cities to northeastern Iowa. In 1852, near present-day Minnesota City, the Dakota managed to get four barrels of flour from 500 white settlers building a town. It was the last official transaction on Wapasha's Prairie before the Dakota folded and left. The Dakota predicament here paralleled hundreds of plights in American Indian villages along repetitive story lines: whites and Indians met, sometimes in war, sometimes in brief and tenuous cohabitation followed by banishment or forced concentration of remaining Indians into reservations. But new efforts will try to help heal 150 years of American Indian exile during reconciliation ceremonies June 27-28 in Winona. Organizers met in late May in Winona and invited Lou Schoen to speak. Schoen is a Minneapolis consultant on race issues, retired commission director for the Minnesota Council of Churches and a former newspaper, radio and television journalist. Schoen said Columbus Day, a federal holiday, reflects imperial conquest of North and South America. Spanish and Portuguese invaders conquered, killed and exploited native people of the Americas and paraded captured Indians through the streets of Madrid, he said. Genocide of American Indians was the official policy of the U.S. government, Schoen said, forcing Indians to assimilate to white models of living with help from the church. American society still assures "unmerited power and privilege" to white people today, he said. "Institutional racism is perpetuated by the rules and regulations and laws that are discriminatory," Schoen said. The Rev. John Robertson, an Episcopal vicar in the Lower Sioux Reservation of Minnesota, also spoke during the meeting in May. White colonialists' goals obliterated opportunities for cohabitation with the Sioux and other American Indians and led to the institutionalization of racism into the education system, Robertson said. "That's the danger. That's the power of racism and institutionalization," Robertson said. "I got a master's degree in your system." In 1846, Wapasha's Dakota provided a home to Winnebagos being pushed northward from Iowa to a Minnesota reservation by U.S. troops. Government agents called in military weapons and soldiers from the north and south as the Winnebagos refused to continue northward to a reservation. On June 12, 1846, soldiers and Indians faced off on the prairie and river. Nearing full outbreak of battle, the Winnebagos made a last-minute concession to move northward peacefully. For encouraging the Winnebago resistance, soldiers arrested Chief Wapasha III and took him to Fort Snelling but released him back to his people two weeks later. The Grand Excursion of 1854 was a significant event for white leaders, who declared the opening of the West. For many of those leaders, native people only stood in the way of what they saw as inevitable and unalterable progress. Indeed, the media lauded the trip by President Millard Fillmore and the 1,200 dignitaries who journeyed up the Mississippi River. Fillmore and railroad contractors assured the accolades by inviting 38 newspaper editors. One historical writer said the trip was a means of "showing off, hyping and otherwise marketing a new territory just ripe for settlement." Whites in Winona recorded some of their impressions before the Sioux were gone. Mrs. Thompson said that the Indians "were troublesome" and "a nuisance." They asked whites for some of their food and held celebrations near the Mississippi River that awoke sleeping pioneers, she wrote. Thompson complained of their toilet habits. Myron A. Nilles wrote in 1978 that Winona's white settlers used a double standard in judging the Sioux. "Indian and white toilet habits differed little in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries … yet whites were critical of the Indian habits," he wrote. "And the Indians' use of liquor, a frequent concern of early Winona whites, was somehow more despicable than white liquor use." Before they fled Winona, the Sioux suffered whooping cough, cholera and smallpox. The U.S. government imprisoned the remaining Dakota Sioux in Minnesota at Fort Snelling and shipped them to South Dakota and Nebraska. In 1862, near the end of the Minnesota-Dakota war, the U.S. military hanged 38 Sioux in Mankato, Minn. In 1987, Minnesota Gov. Rudy Perpich proclaimed a "Year of Reconciliation" as a response to the Sioux for this episode in Minnesota and American history. This story took some of its historical accounts from Myron Arnold Nilles' booklet, "A History of Wapasha's Prairie," published in 1978 by the Winona County American Bicentennial Committee. Nilles died in 2002 at 56 in St. Paul and was a native of Rollingstone, Minn.

AP 18 June 2004 Stop shielding US from war-crimes issues, UN urged Annan seeks end to exemption By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press | June 18, 2004 UNITED NATIONS -- Defying the United States, Secretary General Kofi A. Annan urged the UN Security Council yesterday to stop shielding American peacekeepers from international prosecution for war crimes. ADVERTISEMENT Annan cited the US prisoner-abuse scandal in Iraq in opposing a US resolution calling for the blanket exemption for a third straight year. The United States introduced the resolution last month but has delayed calling for a vote. Despite intensive lobbying, Washington doesn't have the minimum nine "yes" votes on the 15-member council to approve a new exemption, council diplomats said. The current exemption expires June 30. The Bush administration argues that the International Criminal Court, which began operating last year, could be used for frivolous or politically motivated prosecutions of American troops. The 94 countries that have ratified the 1998 Rome Treaty establishing the court maintain it contains enough safeguards to prevent frivolous prosecutions. This year, human rights groups argue that another US exemption is unjustified in the wake of the Iraqi prisoner-abuse scandal. Council nations that support the court say nobody should be exempt. Annan backed both arguments. "For the past two years, I have spoken quite strongly against the exemption, and I think it would be unfortunate for one to press for such an exemption, given the prisoner abuse in Iraq," he told reporters yesterday. "It would be even more unwise on the part of the Security Council to grant it. It would discredit the council and the United Nations that stands for rule of law and the primacy of rule of law. Blanket exemption is wrong." Besides seeking another year's exemption from arrest or prosecution of US peacekeepers, Washington has signed bilateral agreements with 89 countries that bar prosecution of American officials by the court and is seeking more such treaties. The International Criminal Court can prosecute cases of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed after it was established, on July 1, 2002. . The court has no jurisdiction over the events in Iraq, because neither the United States nor Iraq has ratified the Rome Treaty, and because of the UN exemption.

WP 18 June 2004 Annan urges no renewal of criminal exemption By Colum Lynch WASHINGTON POST UNITED NATIONS - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday urged the Security Council to oppose renewal of a resolution that would shield U.S. troops serving in U.N.-approved peacekeeping missions from prosecution before the International Criminal Court, saying the "exemption is wrong." Annan noted that the United States is facing international criticism for abuses of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan and told reporters, "It would be unwise to press for an exemption, and it would be even more unwise on the part of the Security Council to grant it. It would discredit the council and the United Nations that stands for the rule of law." The U.N. chief's remarks added momentum to a campaign by supporters of the war crimes court to defeat the U.S.-sponsored initiative. Senior U.N. diplomats said Annan would press his case in a closed-door luncheon Friday with the 15 Security Council members. "Blanket exemption is wrong," Annan said. "It is of dubious judicial value, and I don't think it should be encouraged by the council." State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States was well aware of Annan's position but would press the council for renewal. The resolution, first adopted by the council two years ago, applies to "current or former officials" from countries that have not ratified the treaty establishing the court -- which includes the United States -- and exempts them from prosecution before the court for crimes committed in U.N.-authorized operations. The council expressed an "intention" to renew the resolution each year "for as long as may be necessary." "It should be renewed the way the council said it would," Boucher said. "And so we're still talking to other governments in New York and discussing this with them." The United States faces fierce resistance in the council as the July 1 deadline for renewal approaches. China has threatened to veto the resolution, citing concern that it could be used to provide political cover for abuses. U.S. and other Security Council officials say that China -- which also has not ratified the court treaty -- is confronting the United States because it recently supported Taiwan's bid for observer status in the World Health Assembly. "This could have an impact," said one council ambassador, who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue. China is sending a "signal" to Washington that this "will threaten the development of bilateral relations." U.S. diplomats acknowledge that they are struggling to line up the nine votes required to pass the resolution. Only six countries -- Russia, Britain, the Philippines, Pakistan, Algeria and Angola -- are expected to support the United States, according to council diplomats. France, Spain, Germany, Brazil, Benin and Chile have indicated they will abstain. Romania's U.N. ambassador, Mihnea Ioan Motoc, said his government would abstain unless its vote is responsible for defeating the American resolution. The International Criminal Court was established by treaty at a 1998 conference in Rome to prosecute individuals responsible for the most serious crimes, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The treaty, which took effect in July 2002, has been signed by 135 nations and ratified by 94. President Clinton signed the treaty in December 2000, but the Bush administration renounced it in May 2002, warning that it could be used to conduct frivolous trials against U.S. troops. The United States subsequently threatened to shut down U.N. peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and East Timor unless the council exempted U.S. personnel from prosecution. That strategy has fueled resentment against the Bush administration at the United Nations. More than 40 countries have a standing request to discuss the resolution in a public debate. A senior diplomat said the majority of states will use the event to criticize the resolution, and to draw attention to U.S. abuses of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We think the resolution is not compatible with the U.N. charter," said one Canadian diplomat. "It's harmful to international accountability for serious crimes and the rule of law."

Asia-Pacific

Afghanistan

IRIN 3 June 2004 UN expresses outrage over MSF attack KABUL, 3 Jun 2004 (IRIN) - The United Nations has expressed outrage over the killing of five staff members of the international relief agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the Qadis district of northwestern Badghis province on Wednesday. "The United Nations family in Afghanistan is deeply shocked and outraged by Wednesday's attack on a vehicle of the MSF staff," Manoel de Almeida e Silva, a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) in the Afghan capital Kabul, said on Thursday. Three aid workers - a Dutch man, a Belgian woman and a Norwegian man, along with two Afghan men - a driver and translator, were killed in the attack when the vehicle they were traveling in was ambushed, prompting MSF to temporarily suspend its activities in the country. According to the UN spokesman, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan (SRSG) Jean Arnault condemned in the strongest terms what appears to be yet another tragic and unacceptable act directed at the aid community. He expressed his solidarity with MSF, offering his deepest sympathies to the families and friends of the slain MSF colleagues. The SRSG called on the Afghan authorities to investigate and bring the killers to justice, as well as directing that all UN assets in Afghanistan be made available to support MSF at this most difficult time, the spokesman said. A UNAMA helicopter left Kandahar on Thursday morning and would be providing transport facilities to MSF between Herat and Badghis, to bring the bodies of three of the international staff members back to Kabul for repatriation. The UN spokesman noted that the Special Representative has called upon the Afghan people and leaders to reject those groups who commit acts of violence and to support the efforts to build a more peaceful, just and prosperous Afghanistan. According to a statement by MSF on Thursday, the international NGO would be temporarily suspending its activities in Afghanistan. "For the time being our activities will be suspended nationwide, except for life-saving activities," the read. MSF, which has been working in Afghanistan since 1979, has been active in Badghis province since 1999. With a staff of some 80 expatriates and around 1,400 national staff, MSF Afghanistan works in 12 provinces in activities ranging from primary health care to support for provincial and regional hospitals.

Daily Star (Lebanon) 4 June 2004 www.dailystar.com.lb Humanitarian ideals die with aid workers in Afghanistan By Marianne Stigset Daily Star staff Friday, June 04, 2004 BEIRUT: Five Medecins Sans Frontiere (MSF) workers were killed in an ambush in northern Afghanistan Wednesday. Helene de Beir, Willem Kwint, Egil Tynaes, Fasil Ahmad and Besmillah were travelling from Khairkhana to Qala-I-Naw, in the province of Badghis, when their car came under attack. The assailants on motorcycles sprayed the four wheel drive with assault rifles and grenades. The Taleban subsequently claimed responsibility for the attack. Correspondents say this was the deadliest assault since the fall of the Taleban regime in late 2001. To me it was more than that. It was a senseless act of violence that leaves thousands hurting in its wake. Afghan civilians who have benefited from MSF's health programs for over 25 years, will suffer: The mothers who finally had access to maternal health care in a country where going into labor otherwise meant risking one's life; the children who were given vaccines for the first time; and the sick who would previously walk for hours through dangerous areas to receive urgent hospital treatment. For now, the weak and the needy will be left to their own devices, as the attack has forced MSF to shut down its operations nationwide. There are others who hurt. Those for whom Helene, Willem, Egil, Fasil and Besmillah were more that just names in the news. Those for whom the attack means a voice, a laugh, a smile, cherished company has been lost for ever. Behind Helene's name was a blond, blue-eyed girl, with a love for life and a passion for her mission. A 30-year old Belgian, Helene had harbored the desire to do humanitarian work for many years. She finally put her dreams into action a few years back and joined MSF. It took her to Afghanistan and Cote d'Ivoire. It took her to the depths of human misery and suffering in the most remote areas. And it took its toll. "I am exhausted. I am exhausted, physically and emotionally," she confided to me in May at a university reunion in Italy. I asked her why she needed to go back so soon - she was due to return to Afghanistan the following week. "Because I have to," she replied. "It's what makes me happy." Helene told of little girls found crying over their mothers' dead bodies. She told of men carrying the remains of their relatives in plastic bags. "How do you deal with this?" I had asked her. "I go away for a little while and I cry, and then I pick myself up and I go on," she said simply. That was the kind of girl she was. And that was probably the kind of people Willem, Egil, Fasil and Besmillah were as well. May their senseless deaths not be in vain. May the rest of us go away for a little while and cry, then pick ourselves up and do our share for the mothers, for the children, for the sick, for the needy and for the memory of five remarkable people who risked their lives for their beliefs.

Reuters 10 Jun 2004 Eleven Chinese Workers Killed in Afghan Attack By Mike Collett-White and Sayed Salahuddin KABUL (Reuters) - Gunmen in Afghanistan killed 11 Chinese road workers after bursting into their compound early on Thursday, in one of the worst attacks on foreigners in Afghanistan since the Taliban's overthrow in 2001. The raid occurred 22 miles south of the northern city of Kunduz, until now deemed a secure area as Islamic insurgents concentrate their attacks in Afghanistan's south and east. The provincial governor blamed the raid on militants bent on destabilizing the government of President Hamid Karzai by attacking foreign and Afghan troops as well as aid and reconstruction workers ahead of landmark elections in September. The Taliban, the main guerrilla group opposed to Karzai's government, denied responsibility. "We were not behind this, we have not done this," said rebel spokesman Hamid Agha. The raid was another blow for Karzai, who is visiting the United States and faces growing instability that is undermining vital assistance missions and reconstruction in the war-shattered country of 28 million people. "For sure this was a politically motivated act," said Kunduz governor Mohammad Omar. "It was carried out by the enemies of Afghanistan," he added, using the euphemism for remnants of the ousted Taliban or their allies in al Qaeda and forces loyal to renegade warlord and former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. China condemned the killings as a "brutal terrorist act" but said it had no plan to pull its workers out of the country. "The Chinese side will not yield to any form of terrorism," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said. China backed the U.S.-led war on terror after the September 11 attacks but has expressed misgivings over the war in Iraq. Militant attacks on Chinese overseas have been rare. But a car bomb exploded at one of neighboring Pakistan's biggest construction projects in May, killing three Chinese technicians and wounding 11 people in what Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf called a barbaric act of terrorism. Liu said Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo had spoken to his Afghan counterparts by telephone and asked them to guarantee the safety of Chinese personnel still in the country. The ministry had also summoned the Afghan ambassador and called for an investigation into the attack and for the assailants to be brought to justice, he said. Hundreds of Chinese construction workers are working in Afghanistan, including more than 120 in Kunduz employed on a road paving project for a Chinese company that is being funded by the World Bank. The Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan, Sun Yuxi, told Reuters before boarding a plane for Kunduz that there were 20 unidentified attackers. Omar said they used assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades in the attack, which occurred at around 1 a.m. (4:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday). One Afghan guard was also killed and four Chinese nationals wounded. Some of Chinese workers at the site, many of them from the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, only arrived on Tuesday, according to Xinhua news agency. VIOLENCE SPREADS Militants have been most active in their old strongholds in the south and east, but an attack in the northwest last week that killed three foreigners and two Afghans from the Medecins Sans Frontieres aid group, and the Kunduz raid, have raised concern that the insurgency is spreading. More than 200 NATO-led German peacekeepers are based in the provincial capital of Kunduz. The wounded and the bodies were taken to a German-run hospital in the town, about 150 miles north of Kabul. Manoel de Almeida e Silva, spokesman for the United Nations in Afghanistan, said voter registration sites in Kunduz had been closed, and U.N. road missions in and out of the province were suspended. Kunduz was the scene of one of the fiercest clashes in the U.S.-led war on the Taliban in late 2001. Hundreds of militants were killed there and many were captured and imprisoned, but it has been largely peaceful since. (Additional reporting by Brian Rhoads, Benjamin Kang Lim and Cher Gao in BEIJING and Abdul Saboor in KABUL)

Australia

Australian Broadcasting Corporation Regional Online, Australia 3 June 2004 www.abc.net.au/darwin Achievements of Mabo celebrated A friend and relative of Eddie Mabo has marked the anniversary of his land rights win with a celebration at Northern Territory's Charles Darwin University. Murray Island elder Doug Bon says in the early 1970s, Eddie Mabo had to ask for Government permission to return to his island home from the mainland. He says at that time his request was denied because they were afraid Mabo wanted to talk to people about independence. Mr Bon says Mabo's victory in the High Court of Australia was a step forward for people all around the world. But he says Mabo Day is a time to remember that his full vision of independence is yet to be fulfilled. "I feel like celebrating, and to me it also gives me that inspiration to continue what he has achieved," he said. See http://www.tsra.gov.au/www/index.cfm?ItemID=26

Australian Broadcasting Corporation Regional Online, Australia 3 June 2004 www.abc.net.au/darwin Family wants Mabo Day public holiday Thursday, 3 June 2004 The son of the late land rights campaigner Eddie Koiki Mabo says his family will continue their push to have Mabo Day, June 3, recognised as an official public holiday. It is 12 years to the day that the High Court overturned the notion of "terra nullius" on the eastern Torres Strait Island of Mer, off far north Queensland. Eddie Mabo Junior says even though a petition to recognise the day only attracted 1,000 signatures, it is not the end of the matter. "Yes I was thinking probably on the 20th anniversary would be a good time to revisit it if nothing happens, so we just take a different approach next time and just do it again," he said. .

China

AFP 29 May 2004 China clamps down for anniversary of Tiananmen atrocity MONITORING: Police are monitoring campuses in Beijing and have placed a group of known dissidents under house arrest or strict surveillance BEIJING China's secretive state security police have set up a special task force to clamp down on students and political dissidents in the run-up to the 15th anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square massacre, sources said yesterday. "The universities are under strict control and there are several kinds of restrictions and regulations dealing with the anniver-sary," a Beijing academic said. "For the universities, there is a special organ run by the State Security Ministry. They are responsible for a wide range of monitoring in the university district," said the academic, who has been warned not to speak with foreign media. The 1989 massacre in the streets of Beijing killed hundreds, some say more than a thousand, unarmed students and citizens and has remained a highly sensitive topic, with students on the capital's campuses strongly discouraged from discussing the issue, he said. "The students don't dare to speak about this because they know they will get in trouble. They can discuss these things in an abstract way, but specific discussion will only lead to trouble," the academic said. While the security police are monitoring Beijing campuses, they have also placed a group of known dissidents under house arrest or strict surveillance. The 70-year-old leader of the Tiananmen Mothers, Ding Zilin, whose son was killed in the 1989 massacre, has been put under surveillance and told not to accept visitors in the lead-up to the anniversary. She is followed by police even when she leaves her home to buy food and daily necessities. Ding's 15-year effort demanding the Chinese government give a full accounting of the massacre and find out who was responsible for ordering the military to fire on unarmed civilians has led to her nomination for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Other members of her grouping, like Huang Jinping, whose husband was shot and killed in the crackdown, are also facing similar police harassment. Leading dissidents and social critics like Bao Tong (??), Liu Xiaobo, Hu Jia and Jiang Qisheng are all under police surveillance, they told reporters in recent days. Their visits and meetings with others have been recorded and their phones tapped since the National People's Congress met in March. "I don't think it is a very good idea to come and visit me right now," Liu said. "It's probably better to wait until after June 4." The police harassment has been condemned by the US and human rights groups, who have blasted as ineffective new constitutional amendments adopted in March that aim to safeguard human rights. "We oppose any efforts to limit freedom of speech and urge China not to restrict its citizens from engaging in debate on important and sensitive issues of public interest," US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on Thursday. Boucher said Washington was particularly troubled by reports indicating that some actions had been taken to prevent Chinese citizens from meeting with US officials.

NYT June 2, 2004 OP-ED COLUMNIST The Tiananmen Victory By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF On Friday, it will be 15 years since I stood at the northeast corner of Tiananmen Square and watched China go mad. The Communist Party was answering the demands of millions of protesters who had made Tiananmen Square the focus of their seven-week democracy movement. The protesters included students, Communist Party members, peasants, diplomats, laborers — even thieves, who signed a pledge to halt their "work" during the demonstrations. I was in my Beijing apartment when I heard that troops had opened fire and were trying to force their way to Tiananmen. So I raced to the scene on my bicycle, dodging tank traps that protesters had erected. The night was filled with gunfire — and with Chinese standing their ground to block the troops. I parked my bike at Tiananmen, and the People's Liberation Army soon arrived from the other direction. The troops fired volley after volley at the crowd on the Avenue of Eternal Peace; at first I thought these were blanks, but then the night echoed with screams and people began to crumple. The Communist Party signed its own death warrant that night. As Lu Xun, the great leftist writer beloved by Mao, wrote after a massacre in 1926: "This is not the conclusion of an incident, but a new beginning. Lies written in ink can never disguise facts written in blood." So, 15 years after Tiananmen, we can see the Communist dynasty fraying. The aging leaders of 1989 who ordered the crackdown won the battle but lost the war: China today is no longer a Communist nation in any meaningful sense. Political pluralism has not arrived yet, but economic, social and cultural pluralism has. The struggle for China's soul is over, for China today is not the earnest socialist redoubt sought by hard-liners, but the modernizing market economy sought by Zhao Ziyang, the leader ousted in 1989. The reformers lost their jobs, but they captured China's future. In retrospect, the Communist hard-liners were right about one thing, though: they warned passionately that it would be impossible to grab only Western investment and keep out Western poisons like capitalism and dreams of "bourgeois freedom." They knew that after the Chinese could watch Eddie Murphy, wear tight pink dresses and struggle over what to order at Starbucks, the revolution was finished. No middle class is content with more choices of coffees than of candidates on a ballot. So Communism is fading, in part because of Western engagement with China — trade, investment, Avon ladies, M.B.A.'s, Michael Jordan and Vogue magazines have triumphed over Marx. That's one reason we should bolster free trade and exchanges with China, rather than retreating to the protectionist barricades, as some are urging. The same forces would also help transform Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Burma, if only we would unleash them. We are doing a favor to the dictators in those countries by isolating and sanctioning them. If we want to topple them, we need to unleash our most potent weapons of mass destruction, like potbellied business executives and bare-bellied Britney Spears. So when will political change come to China? I don't have a clue, but it could come any time. While it might come in the form of a military coup, or dissolution into civil war or chaos, the most likely outcome is a combination of demands from below (perhaps related to labor unrest) and concessions from the top, in roughly the same way that democracy infiltrated South Korea and Taiwan. It's often said that an impoverished, poorly educated, agrarian country like China cannot sustain democracy. Yet my most powerful memory of that night 15 years ago is of the peasants who had come to Beijing to work as rickshaw drivers. During each lull in the firing, we could see the injured, caught in a no-man's-land between us and the troops. We wanted to rescue them but didn't have the guts. While most of us in the crowd cowered and sought cover, it was those uneducated rickshaw drivers who pedaled out directly toward the troops to pick up the bodies of the dead and wounded. Some of the rickshaw drivers were shot, but the rest saved many, many lives that night, rushing the wounded to hospitals as tears streamed down their cheeks. It would be churlish to point out that such people are ill-prepared for democracy, when they risked their lives for it.

AFP 4 June 2004 No remorse from China as survivors mark Tiananmen massacre quietly BEIJING : China showed no sign of remorse on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, with the government instead muzzling survivors and their families who privately mourned the hundreds mown down by machine guns. With the event remaining highly sensitive to the ruling Communist Party, few, if any, commemorations were taking place to mark the day when hundreds, if not thousands, of democracy protestors were killed by Chinese troops. On the vast square Friday, police vans criss-crossed constantly to maintain order, while on the majestic Chang'an Avenue running past Tiananmen, uniformed People's Armed Police and undercover teams made their presence felt. All traces of the bullet holes and tanks tracks that scarred the area have long since been erased. One wheelchair-bound man was seen protesting, wearing a headband with a slogan on it. He managed to unveil and hold up a slip of paper before security forces pounced and took him away, an AFP photographer witnessed. While few in the capital dare to publicly commemorate the massacre, an estimated 60,000 people are expected to gather in Hong Kong to light candles in memory of those who died. In Washington, many of the student leaders of the 1989 protests who now live in exile in the United States were to hold a candlelight vigil in front of the Chinese embassy. The only candles being lit in Beijing are behind closed doors, and even then it is far from safe. "They threatened to take me away if I lit a candle," Hu Jia, a leading Tiananmen and AIDS activist, told AFP from his Beijing home where he is under house arrest. In the lead-up to the anniversary, China's secretive state security police have placed known dissidents under house arrest and even forced some from their homes to hotels outside the Chinese capital. Universities, meanwhile, were being monitored by a state security police task force to prevent commemorations taking place, academics said. "The Chinese government is trying to wipe out the memory of Tiananmen Square, but the horror of what happened still resonates inside and outside China," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "We don't even know exactly who died in the massacre. The Chinese authorities need to punish those responsible, compensate the victims, and allow those who fled the country to return home." Qi Zhiyong, who lost his leg when he was run over by an armed personnel carrier on the night of June 4, said he would mark the event in his own way. "My heart feels very grieved. Democracy has eluded us for such a long time," he told AFP. "Democracy is the goal of freedom and Chinese people all strive for freedom. Today I will mourn for those that lost their lives 15 years ago and I will mourn with those mothers, fathers and relatives that have lost family." Many people in Beijing are too scared to talk about those fateful events, while others have moved on and are more concerned with jobs and money in a country where economic reforms have rapidly transformed lives. Some refuse to forget. "The police came to warn to me and told me not to leave my home and not to invite friends to the house," Zhou Duo, a former economics professor at Peking University who took part in the 1989 demonstrations, told AFP. "But this year, like every year on June 4, I will make a hunger strike during the day." The Chinese leadership has shown no sign of changing its position on the crackdown, defending its actions this week as necessary for economic growth and China's emergence on the world stage. State media, which is banned from using the phrase "liusi" or June 4, predictably made no mention of the anniversary.

Reuters 16 June 2004 China General Threatens War if Taiwan Targets Dam Wed Jun 16, 2004 By Benjamin Kang Lim BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese general denounced a U.S. suggestion that Taiwan's military target China's Three Gorges dam and said on Wednesday that any strike on the world's biggest hydropower project would lead to war. In its annual report to Congress on China's military power, the Pentagon suggested in May that Taiwan target the dam as a deterrent against any Chinese invasion of the island, which split from the mainland in 1949 but is still regarded by Beijing as a breakaway province. China will "be seriously on guard against threats from 'Taiwan independence terrorists,"' People's Liberation Army (PLA) Lieutenant General Liu Yuan said in a commentary in the official China Youth Daily, warning against such a move. "(It) will not be able to stop war...it will have the exact opposite of the desired effect," Liu said. "It will provoke retaliation that will 'blot out the sky and cover up the earth'," he said, quoting a Chinese idiom. The warning came as the Defense Ministry in Taiwan said it had test fired two Patriot anti-missile missiles to showcase its air defense capability. The test was part of a routine drill and was conducted at a military base in southern Taiwan, the ministry said. It did not say when the test was held or give any other details. Liu asserted that no country had conventional warhead missiles capable of critically damaging the dam -- made of concrete with a maximum thickness of more than 100 meters (328 feet). DAM WON'T COLLAPSE "The Three Gorges Dam will not collapse and cannot be destroyed," he said. Seismologists have said the dam is designed to withstand an earthquake measuring 10 on the Richter scale. The dam was first proposed decades ago, but construction was delayed because late Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong wanted to ensure the PLA could defend it against any attack by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops. Construction finally began in 1993 and China has expressed confidence it can defend it. But the Pentagon report stirred controversy in China. "Since Taipei cannot match Beijing's ability to field offensive systems, proponents of strikes against the mainland apparently hope that merely presenting credible threats to China's urban population or high-value targets, such as the Three Gorges Dam, will deter Chinese military coercion," it said. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said last week the report was "Cold War mentality harbouring evil intentions." President Bush has pledged to do whatever it takes to help democratic Taiwan defend itself against Chinese invasion. Tensions have simmered since Taiwan's March presidential polls, which incumbent Chen Shui-bian won by a razor-thin margin after a mysterious election eve assassination attempt. China suspects Chen will push for formal independence around 2008, when Beijing hosts the Olympics. Chinese officials have vowed to pay any price to stop him on his road to statehood -- even losing the Games. Liu, the general, called the Pentagon suggestion "petty psychological war." He likened Washington to "a prostitute pretending to be a gentleman" and no better than Osama bin Laden, whose al Qaeda group has been blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. The Three Gorges Dam, also the world's largest flood control project, is due to be completed in 2009 at a cost of nearly $25 billion. With total capacity of 18,200 megawatts, it will generate 84.6 billion kwh of electricity a year. China says it needs the dam to contain the Yangtze River's devastating annual floods and to meet future power demand. But critics say it is not a practical solution to either problem and could cause pollution and silting by slowing the river's flow.

India

Amedabad Newsonline 30 May 2004 cities.expressindia.com Vaghela, Gadhvi at odds over Article 356 Anand ST Das Ahmedabad, May 29: IN the euphoria in the State Congress over its impressive showing in the Lok Sabha polls, Shankersinh Vaghela, the most outspoken among Congress leaders, appears to be becoming a lone crusader. His tireless demand for imposing President’s rule in Gujarat by invoking Article 356 has created differences between him and the other two poles in the party: GPCC chief BK Gadhvi and Opposition Leader in Assembly Amarsinh Chaudhury. Gadhvi, who is going to Delhi on Monday, is planning to ask the party high command to rein in Vaghela. “When the BJP is itself in disarray, with a virtual revolt against Modi having shaken it, the demand for invoking Article 356 is needless. Besides, if it has to be demanded at all, the Congress high command is the right authority to demand it,” Gadhvi said on Saturday. “It is wiser for the Congress to keep quiet and watch the drama in the BJP. There is no need to poke into their affairs. The Congress also doesn’t have enough MLAs now,” said the leader who became GPCC chief after Vaghela was removed from this post four months back. Amarsinh Chaudhury says if anyone has to demand invoking of Article 356, it has to be him as the Leader of Opposition. “But I find no logic in it now. I am rather in favour of Modi being tried for genocide. This only can assuage the wounds inflicted on Gujarat,” he said, adding that Vaghela should concentrate on how to put in order the textile industry. Although Gadhvi says his trip to Delhi is “just a courtesy visit”, he is said to have decided to take up with the high command the issue of Vaghela’s speaking out of turn. “He will surely ask the high command to rein in Vaghela,” said a close Gadhvi aide. But Vaghela is sure he is doing the right thing at the right time. “I cannot comment on the opinion of other leaders, but this is the need of the hour and it is the voice of the party’s rank and file,” the Union Textile Minister said over phone. His demand for invoking Article 356 was not a political tool to be used by the Congress, but a “legal and logical step” that is long overdue, he said. “After such apex constitutional bodies like the Supreme Court, the NHRC, and the Minorities Commission have passed strictures against the Modi Government, there is no point in delaying invoking Article 356 in Gujarat. My demand for it is not politically motivated, it is my way of honouring the law,” said Vaghela. He said the yet-to-end anti-Modi rebellion among BJP legislators was spurred by his demand for invoking Article 356. ‘‘The BJP in Gujarat seems to be thinking that if they do not remove Modi, the surest thing to come their way very soon is Article 356,’’ said Vaghela. As for others in the party complaining to the high command, Vaghela remarked, “The Congress leadership knows my worth. I am always ready to obey the high command’s instructions”.

Calcutta Telegraph 30 May 2004 www.telegraphindia.com Minority ray of hope BASANT RAWAT Modi: Riot ghost returns Ahmedabad, May 30: The dissidence in the Gujarat BJP against chief minister Narendra Modi has brought hope to the riot-hit minority community in the state. Though the rebellion appears to have been quelled, at least for now, Muslims see the distinct possibility of getting justice that has been so far denied them under the Modi regime. Leaders of the community are even looking beyond Modi’s removal as chief minister, if it materialises. A team of legal experts is contemplating a genocide case against Modi. His ouster, the leaders say, would restore their faith in the political system and create a conducive atmosphere to book him for “genocide” as every Muslim blames Modi for the post-Godhra communal riots. But his ouster alone would not satisfy the community and “won’t make them happy”, said Raeesh Khan Pathan, a human rights activist who provides legal assistance to riot victims. The fall of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, which was protective of Modi, had boosted the community’s morale and made it feel that now its “voice” would not go unheard, he said. Pathan believes after the change of guard at the Centre, if Modi also gives away in Gujarat, it would help punish those responsible for the 2002 carnage, in which over 1,000 Muslims were killed. For instance, riot victims and witnesses would then be able to depose in court fearlessly, he said. Minority leader J.V. Momin claimed there was substantial material to file a genocide case against Modi and his senior officials who, he alleged, failed to perform their constitutional duties and “colluded with the rampaging mobs”, instead of protecting the people. Other community leaders like Safi Memon said there is a sense of relief among most Muslims now. The Supreme Court’s intervention in some high-profile riot cases such as the Best Bakery case, the fall of the NDA government and the “oust Modi campaign” have also apparently scared those involved in the riot cases. The accused who until recently used to roam freely are nowhere to be seen now. They have probably gone underground, fearing being brought to book. Momin claims some kind of positive psychological effect in the air as, he says, even government officials’ attitude towards the minority community has undergone a sea change. “The officials who used to talk rudely, are polite and receptive (now).” But the minority leaders and some rights activists are also determined to take their battle to a logical conclusion. They have decided to urge the Congress-led Centre to set up a committee to probe the riots. “We are writing to Congress president Sonia Gandhi to set up a committee, which will look into all aspects of the 2002 riots and suggest what is to be done,” a minority leader said. The rights activists also plan to ask the Congress to incorporate the issue into the coalition government’s common minimum programme. For instance, one of the burning issues for the community is the arrest of over 200 Muslims under the stringent Prevention of Terrorism Act. The activists want the concerns of Gujarati Muslims reflected in the common programme.

IANS 2 June 2004 Activists demand prosecution of Modi Ahmedabad, June 2 (IANS) : Human rights groups in Gujarat have asked the Congress-led federal government to prosecute state chief minister Narendra Modi, accusing him of aiding and instigating the communal carnage two years ago. "Gujarat...continues to be wounded by the genocide and wanton refusal of the state government to ensure justice and healing," said Cedric Prakash, director of the rights group Prashant, based in capital Ahmedabad. "The test case of the secular resolve of the new government will be its ability to take resolute and often difficult decisions to restore justice and hope to the people of Gujarat." Activists from a gaggle of groups like Action Aid, Centre for Social Justice, ANHAD (Act Now for Harmony and Democracy), Centre for Development and Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF) have demanded a slew of legal measures against the Modi government. Demands include setting up of a special judicial commission to inquire into the Godhra incident, where 59 people were burnt alive when assailants torched a compartment of the Sabarmati Express train on February 27, 2002, and a law to stop alleged state abetment of communal violence. The activists also want a retired judge of the Supreme Court and a police officer to re-examine all cases of closure, acquittal and bail related to the riot cases. If there were any evidence of wrongdoing, the activists said the investigators should be empowered to order reinvestigation or retrial. There is also a demand to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) and the cancellation of all POTA charges in Gujarat, for rehabilitation for the riot victims, action against state officials found lacking in their duties and the restoration and repair of nearly 700 places of worship destroyed in the riots.

OneWorld.org 2 June 2004 NGOs Ask New Indian Government to Punish Gujarat Guilty Rahul Verma OneWorld South Asia 02 June 2004 NEW DELHI, June 2 (OneWorld) - Leading human rights groups in India are urging the country's new government to prosecute the elected leaders of the western state of Gujarat for abetting three months of communal violence that claimed over 2,000 lives in 2002. In the initial petitions to the new government after it took over the reins of power late last month, members of leading nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have called for legal action against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi - the elected governing head of the state - and his colleagues in the Cabinet, for "planning, instigating and abetting the carnage, and refusing to perform duties for relief and rehabilitation." A charter of demands was chalked out at meetings in the Gujarat cities of Vadodara Wednesday and Ahmedabad Tuesday. The organizers of the meeting say their petition will be sent to the new Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, and others in the Cabinet later this week. Several Indian and international human rights bodies, including the United States-based Human Rights Watch, have accused government officials of failing to curb the anti-Muslim violence that broke out in Gujarat on February 28, 2002. The state - ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - witnessed days of mindless bloodshed after a Muslim mob set ablaze a train compartment carrying Hindu activists in Godhra on February 27, killing 57 people. The BJP was the majority partner in the coalition government at the center before this year's parliamentary elections. With its ouster, the NGOs believe the guilty in Gujarat will finally be punished. Activists expect the new United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government to take immediate steps on Gujarat. "There is hope in Gujarat now. The sense of relief is palpable," feels Shabman Hashmi, a member of the New Delhi-based of Act Now For Harmony and Democracy (ANHAD). The charter asks that machinery be established to prosecute civil and police officers for the violence that spilled over 100 days. "The paramount duty of the newly elected government of India is to take all measures possible to reclaim and defend the secular and democratic foundations of India," says a statement issued by noted dancer Mallika Sarabhai, social activists Shabnam Hashmi and Cedric Prakash, former bureaucrat Harsh Mander, graphic artist Parthiv Shah and others. Two years after the violence, human rights bodies stress that few of those guilty of the riots have been punished, and little has been given as compensation to the victims. The charter follows a letter to Manmohan Singh from a group of eminent citizens of Gujarat, who have also urged the new coalition government to take measures against the guilty and for the relief and rehabilitation of the victims. "We expect the government to give out a clear message that no one responsible for genocide and gross violation of human rights remains unpunished," the letter says. The activists have also called for setting up a special judicial commission to enquire into the Godhra train burning. "The people of India have the right to know the exact facts behind the fire," the NGOs stress. The new coalition government has already promised to repeal a controversial anti-terrorism act that its critics claim has been more abused than used. The Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) was used extensively in Gujarat and mostly against the minority Muslim community. The charter calls for the repeal of POTA and cancellation of all POTA charges in Gujarat, "in recognition of the painful fact that the state government openly misused this draconian act to victimize exclusively members of the minority community, with very little genuine evidence." The citizens' letter to the prime minister urges the government to set up a "high-level" committee to inquire into the role of the state government and to assess the damage done and lives lost in the violence. The petitions also call for a compensation package for those affected by the violence. The activists call for "a generous package of soft loans" for housing and livelihoods. "We hope the new government will now bring relief to the people of Gujarat," says Hashmi. Related links People's Union for Civil Liberties www.pucl.org Communalism Combat Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) http://www.sabrang.com/cjp/cjpindex.htm ActionAid India www.actionaidindia.org

AFP 6 June 2004 Vedanti breathes fire over Bluestar OUR CORRESPONDENT A Sikh reads from a holy book near the Golden Temple in Amritsar on Sunday. (AFP) Amritsar, June 6: Sikhs would not change their views about the Congress despite Manmohan Singh’s elevation as Prime Minister, Akal Takht jathedar Joginder Vedanti said today. In his address to the Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of the Sikhs, to observe the 20th anniversary of Operation Bluestar, Vedanti termed the Congress an organisation “that has always meted out atrocities and injustice” to the community. “The community has had to bear the brunt of army action during Operation Bluestar and the riots that followed Indira Gandhi’s assassination, when the offices of the President and the home minister were held by Sikhs,” he said. Jagdish Tytler’s induction into the Union cabinet, he said, had revived the “pain of the wounds sustained during the 1984 riots” that left over 3,000 Sikhs dead across the country. Vedanti praised Singh for his clean image, but hinted that the Prime Minister would not be able to do anything to assuage Sikhs’ hurt feelings. He was addressing thousands of Sikhs who had come to pay tribute to those killed during the army action. The Akal Takht jathedar regretted that Parliament and “advocates of democracy” had neither condemned nor apologised “for atrocities against Sikhs even after 20 years of the army operation”. The controversial operation codenamed Bluestar was launched on June 5 to flush out militants led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale from the Golden Temple. Tanks were used to neutralise the rebels and in the crossfire, the Akal Takht was destroyed. The Akal Takht observes every June 6 as a day of infamy, when a special prayer meeting condones the operation and pays tribute to those who died. “There was an attempt to demolish the symbol of international brotherhood and world peace Harminder Sahib (Golden Temple) and Akal Takht by our own elected government, particularly on a day when thousands of Sikhs had gathered here to commemorate the martyrdom day of our fifth guru, Arjan Dev,” Vedanti said. He also regretted that the large collection of books and paintings and other material seized during Bluestar had not been returned to the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee yet. Vedanti’s address is likely to determine the approach of Sikhs towards the Congress, which earned some goodwill by appointing Singh as Prime Minister. Shiromani Akali Dal chief Parkash Singh Badal attended the ceremony for the first time. Earlier, Gurcharan Singh Tohra had been regularly attending the ceremony. “I have come here as a Sikh who still feels hurt by the army action and the devastation that took place inside the complex. I have also come to pay tribute to all those who laid down their lives during the operation,” Badal said. Also present were former SGPC chiefs Jagir Kaur and Kirpal Singh Badungar, and SAD (Amritsar) chief Simranjit Singh Mann. Fiery speeches were few today but All India Sikh Students Federation activist Jaspal Singh created a stir by shouting “Khalistan zindabad” before Akali Dal activists shouted him down. Today, the temple complex was full of Bluestar witnesses and relatives of those killed. Many were seen taking devotees on a conducted tour of areas that were damaged and where bodies were piled up and Bhindranwale was found. Bhindranwale’s son Ishwar Singh and Manjit Singh, the brother of Bhindranwale’s closest aide Amrik Singh of the Damdami Taksal, were also there.

The Tribune, India 6 June 2002 www.tribuneindia.com Khalistan slogans mark Ghallughara Divas Tribune News Service Amritsar, June 6 Mr Parkash Singh Badal, President, Shiromani Akali Dal, today participated in Ghallughara Divas (genocide day) for the first time after Operation Bluestar. The Jathedar of Akal Takht, Giani Joginder Singh Vedanti, honoured family members of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Bhai Amrik Singh and other slain militants by presenting ‘sirop as' (robes of honour). Slogans like “Khalistan zindabad”, “Bhindranwale zindabad” were raised by activists of the Sikh Students Federation and the SAD (Amritsar) in the presence of the Jathedar of Akal Takht, Mr Badal and senior leaders of various Panthic organisations. The Jathedar, in his speech, equated the Army operation on the Golden Temple and Akal Takht with attacks by Mughals. He regretted that the operation had not yet been condemned on the floor of Parliament. He said instead of giving punishment to those involved in the anti-Sikh riots, the Congress had inducted Mr Jagdish Tytler and Mr Sajjan Kumar into the Union Cabinet, hurting Sikh sentiments. He emphasised the need for releasing Sikh youths from various jails in the country. Jathedar Vedanti urged Sikh organisations to help in proper rehabilitation of the Sikh Army personnel who had deserted their barracks in protest against the operation. During his term as Chief Minister, Mr Badal used to discourage the holding of Ghallughara Divas at Akal Takht. The SGPC, which virtually is being run by pro-Badal SGPC members, had never made any efforts to observe the divas at Akal Takht in the past. However, the SGPC elections seem to have forced Mr Badal to participate in the function, organised at the behest of the Jathedar of Akal Takht to woo Sikh voters. The SAD (A) chief, Mr Simranjit Singh Mann, urged the Sikh Sangat to defeat the ‘traitors of the Sikh Panth’ in the SGPC elections. He held the SAD (Badal) responsible for the SYL Canal controversy.

BBC 6 June, 2004 UK Sikhs remember Amritsar attack Every practising Sikh aspires to visit the temple at least once Sikhs from across the UK have gathered to mark the 20th anniversary of the storming of their holiest shrine. Communities and temples congregations met in central London to remember the Indian Army's storming of the Golden Temple of Amritsar. The temple, which lies at the centre of the faith, was the scene of fierce fighting in 1984 as India's government sought to destroy Sikh militants. British Sikhs say they still want the government to pressure India and the United Nations for a full investigation into the events. Operation Bluestar In June 1984, India's late former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave personal approval to Operation Bluestar. All we say is let the truth come out - let people in the community judge what happened Dabinderjit Singh, Sikh Federation Golden Temple at last The objective was to flush out militant Sikhs who were fighting for an independent homeland in Punjab. Bluestar achieved its military objectives - but its costs were enormous. Although there has never been any agreement on the numbers killed, Sikhs say thousands were massacred by Indian troops, many of them innocent bystanders. The military action led to Mrs Gandhi's assassination later that year by her Sikh bodyguards. That in turn triggered a wave of anti-Sikh rioting which left nearly 3,000 dead. Dabinderjit Singh of the UK Sikh Federation, said the arrival of a new Indian government, now led by a Sikh prime minister, had given hope to the Diaspora that the truth could eventually come out. Sunday's march and rally in central London, which was expected to be attended by a number of MPs and London mayoral candidates, included demands on the British government to pressure Delhi to open up the episode to full international scrutiny. "This temple is the holiest of holies," Mr Singh told the BBC. "And while trying to flush out a small number of militants, the Indian army killed enormous numbers of innocent pilgrims. "During the operation there was a complete media blackout in Punjab. But 20 years later and the blood still cannot be washed from the marble floors." Mr Singh said that while the attack had shocked Sikh communities around the world, it had also led to a reawakening of identity. "People [in the UK] who had drifted away from their faith start practising it again," he said. "India actually laid the foundation stones for an independence movement and a more aware Sikh community." Hopes on new PM He said British Sikhs were hoping that the new Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh would open up the past to "put the record straight". He was already recognised as a "straight politician" - but the community wanted to see him act as an "honest man". This could be done by allowing Amnesty International, the United Nations and other organisations fully investigate the events of 1984. Sikhs campaigning over the Golden Temple attack have long enjoyed the support of many MPs and they want more pressure put on the Foreign Secretary to speak out over what happened. Mr Singh said: "All we say is let the truth come out. Let people in the international community judge what happened."

AP 7 June 2004 PT Indian govt. will fight religious hatred By NEELESH MISRA ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER NEW DELHI -- India's new government will fight religious hatred and pursue the privatization of state industry without harming millions of poor, the president promised Monday in his address to the new Parliament. The first speech to Parliament by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam - who is the constitutional head of state and has little role in the running of government - was drafted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's administration. Singh became prime minister last month after his Congress Party ousted the Hindu nationalist-led government of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in April-May elections. He called the rise of religious divisions "a matter of serious concern" and said it had poisoned Indian society, "leading to the outbreak of riots, the most gruesome face of which was witnessed recently in Gujarat." Hindu-Muslim riots in the western state of Gujarat in 2002 killed more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. The local government, run by Vajpayee's Bharatia Janata Party, was accused by many residents of looking the other way. "My government is determined to combat such forces," Kalam said in his speech to a joint sitting of both houses of Parliament - the Lok Sabha, or lower house, and the Rajya Sabha, or upper house. Ruling coalition members repeatedly applauded and thumped their desks. Vajpayee's government is credited with giving India's economy one of the fastest growth rates in the world, but the boom bypassed tens of millions of people who live in rural villages and urban shanties in this developing nation. They voted Vajpayee out. "The outcome of these elections is indicative of people's yearning for inclusiveness - economic, social and cultural - and their rejection of the forces of divisiveness and intolerance," Kalam said. "The verdict is for establishing the rule of law and repairing our secular fabric." While more than 80 percent of Indians are Hindu, their secular constitution provides equality for all religions and castes. Kalam promised the government would maintain 7 percent to 8 percent economic growth, encourage foreign investment and increase employment. But the government's compulsions were apparent in the address, which sought to please the government's leftist allies by subsidize the poor and protect workers and farmers. The government has promised to sell off state enterprises that lose money, but not profit-making ones. Kalam also promised the government would continue peace efforts with longtime rival Pakistan and strengthen ties with the United States.

Times of India 9 June 2004 timesofindia.indiatimes.com Did lax police help the Ode accused escape? PRASHANT RUPERA T ANAND: A week has passed since the startling revelation about the two accused in the Ode village massacre during the 2002 communal riots having possibly fled the country and the Anand district police appears to have no clue to their whereabouts. The police had got indications of at least two accused having fled the country for the United States and the UK, when they went to their houses in the village to issue the Supreme Court notices, since the case for the transfer of the case is to be heard soon, and found them “missing”. Curiously Anand district superintendent of police, BS Jebalia confirmed that most of the accused in the case had stopped registering their presence at Khambolaj police station since long! And their ‘absence’ was completely ignored despite the fact that their bail conditions warranted them to report to the police station on the first day of every month. The then investigating officer, KR Bhuva confirmed that most of the accused were granted bail with this condition. "I am not sure about the bail condition of the two accused, who have fled the country but most of them were bound by this condition when they were bailed out", said Bhuva. When asked since when the two absconding accused, Natubhai Patel and Nikul Patel, had stopped reporting at the police station, Jebalia said, "Most of them had stopped admitting their presence since quite some time." Asked if the district police authorities had reported the matter to the court, he said, "the case had started two years back and by the time I took charge in the district, the trial was stayed by the Supreme Court. I cannot confirm since when they stopped registering their presence but it must have been since long, even before I took charge of the district." Khambolaj police sub-inspector, NV Patel says, "I took charge of the station eight months ago. The police station officers, who record the entry of the accused, too have been posted elsewhere. There is a possibility that some may have skipped this formality." Some 95 persons were arrested and chargesheeted in the case.

Indonesia

BBC 2 June, 2004 Indonesia to expel terrorism expert Sidney Jones criticised Indonesia's intelligence authorities An expert on Indonesian militant groups has criticised a decision to expel her from the country. Sidney Jones, an American analyst from the International Crisis Group (ICG), said she was issued with the expulsion order on Tuesday. Immigration officials said she was asked to leave due to visa violations. But Ms Jones said the expulsion order may have been prompted by her recent criticism of Indonesia's army and intelligence agencies. "I was devastated to learn that I had to leave Indonesia, but now I am just furious," Sidney Jones told the Associated Press news agency on Wednesday. As the director of the ICG in Indonesia, Ms Jones is regarded as an expert on the region's militant groups, in particular Jemaah Islamiah, which has been linked to the Bali bomb attacks in 2002. She said no official reason had been given for her expulsion, nor had any government figure formally told her what she had done wrong. But the order comes just days after the head of Indonesia's intelligence services told a parliamentary committee that ICG and 19 other unnamed local non-governmental organisations were a threat to national security. The ICG's chief, Gareth Evans, said the expulsion order was a blow to press freedom in Indonesia and was driven by "a desire to smother legitimate criticism". "To shoot the messenger doesn't say much for the state of political liberty in Indonesia under the Megawati government," the Reuters agency quotes him as saying. President Megawati Sukarnoputri is gearing up for elections on 5 July. Opinion polls show her trailing her main rival, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Ms Jones' work examined the rise of extremism in Indonesia Mr Yudhoyono criticised the expulsion order, saying the government had to properly explain what was going on. "Let us hope the expulsion does not damage the democracy that we are building," he told reporters on the campaign trial. Human rights activists fear Ms Jones and her Australian colleague Francesca Lawe-Davies - who has also been issued with an expulsion order - are being punished for speaking out against sensitive government policies. The ICG has recently published a number of reports on Indonesia's Islamic extremists, and the separatist conflicts that are simmering in the provinces of Aceh and Papua. The reports criticise the way these situations have been handled, particularly by the army and intelligence services. According to Tim Johnston, a BBC correspondent in Jakarta, there is a fear that Indonesia's security organs are again moving to intimidate their critics into silence.

ICG 2 June 2004 MEDIA RELEASE FROM THE INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP ICG Indonesian Deportation Order Indefensible Jakarta/Brussels, 2 June 2004: ICG's Southeast Asia Director Sidney Jones and Analyst Francesca Lawe-Davies were yesterday ordered to leave Indonesia "immediately". Immigration department officials of the Jakarta provincial government delivered the order to ICG's office at 6 pm on 1 June (11:00 GMT). The letter made no specific charges against Jones and Lawe-Davies but stated that they were in violation of immigration laws. The order follows public statements by National Intelligence Agency head, General Hendropriyono, that ICG's reports were "not all true" and "damage the country's image". ICG's President, former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, said "the expulsion order is outrageous and indefensible, utterly at odds with Indonesia's claim to be an open and democratic society, and is bound to damage Indonesia's reputation far more than ICG's". Since establishing its Jakarta office in 2000, ICG has published 37 reports and briefing papers on conflict related issues, including Aceh, Papua, the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist movement, communal violence and the transition from military to civilian rule. The reports and analyses, all publicly available in both English and Bahasa Indonesia on ICG's website www.icg.org , have been widely praised inside and outside Indonesia. No member of the government will take responsibility for initiating moves to expel Jones and her assistant but moves against ICG began early this year, when a letter from the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) to the Ministry of Labour resulted in a freeze on work permits for ICG staff. No one from ICG ever saw that letter, but it is understood it stated BIN was unhappy with ICG reports on Aceh and Papua. But to date, not a single Indonesian government department or official has made any complaints directly to ICG. Sidney Jones said, "We haven't even been told directly what we've done wrong - the officials concerned won't meet with us. We have not been able to respond to any charges, and there is no legal mechanism to challenge the expulsion." "ICG has been working with Indonesians to try and understand the sources of conflict in this country for the last four years" said Evans, "and we urge the government to allow us to resume our activity. To shoot the messenger doesn't say much for the state of political liberty in Indonesia under the Megawati government." "I deeply regret the expulsion of ICG staff from Indonesia, particularly in these bizarre circumstances", says Chairman of ICG's board in Indonesia, Mulya Todung Lubis. He noted that ICG was among twenty NGOs named as potential security risks for the upcoming presidential elections.

www.chinaview.cn 10 June 2004 Profile of Indonesian presidential candidate -- Wiranto by Heru Andriyanto JAKARTA, May 9 (Xinhuanet) -- General (ret.) Wiranto has won a presidential nomination from the country's largest party Golkar to make a comeback in public life after being dismissed from the security minister post by then President Abdurrahman Wahid in 2000. Wiranto has served three presidents and now enjoys support fromGolkar, which won the legislative elections in April, to bid the presidency himself after edging out party chairman Akbar Tandjung in a tense head-to-head contest in April. Born on April 4, 1947, Wiranto started his military career in 1968 when he graduated as a second lieutenant from the national military academy in the Central Java town of Magelang, just north of his hometown of Yogyakarta. In 1989, Wiranto became a key aide of former president Soeharto,who has ruled the country for 32 years also with support from Golkar. The brightest period of his military career came in February 1998 when Soeharto appointed him as the armed forces commander, only eight months after Wiranto was installed as the army chief ofstaff. Soeharto at that time was under mounting pressures to step downamid the bitter financial crisis hitting the country and Wiranto won credit for persuading Soeharto to peacefully give up power in May 1998. Wiranto maintained his post in the short-lived presidency of Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, who under international pressures gave nod for East Timor to hold a referendum for independence in 1999. Wiranto was accused of being responsible for the massacre in East Timor before, during and after the UN-sponsored ballot, whichended 24 years of Jakarta rule in East Timor. Abdurrahman Wahid, who won presidency in 1999, dismissed Wiranto from his position as a security minister in February 2000 over allegations of human right abuses in East Timor. The UN-sponsored prosecutors in East Timor have indicted Wiranto for crimes against humanity and the court in East Timor issued on May 10 a warrant for Wiranto's arrest. But the human rights tribunal in Jakarta has never charged him. His critics said the prospect of a president from the military with Golkar backing will become a perfect duplication of the dark era during Soeharto's 32-year autocratic regime. But times change everything. Wiranto on May 29 had a friendly chat with East Timor President Xanana Gusmao, who has repeatedly said it is not in his government's interest to prosecute Wiranto and that establishing good relationship with its giant neighbor is much more important for East Timor. For the July 5 election, Wiranto has teamed up with Solahuddin Wahid, one of leaders of Indonesia's largest Muslim group Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and the younger brother of Abdurrahman. His selection of Solahuddin has helped increased his chance forthe presidency. Wiranto last week won official support from NU-affiliated the National Awakening Party (PKB), which became the country's third largest party in the April 5 legislative election. A group of highly respected clerics of the 40 million-strong NUalso issued an edict that encourages the group's followers to votefor Wiranto, who among the five presidential contenders gets number one in the ballot paper. The appointment of Solahuddin as his running mate is seen here as Wiranto's attempt to ease pressures on human right issues at home. Solahuddin was a deputy chairman of the National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM) in 2002. This is not only Abdurrahman who then gave his blessing to the prospect of a president Wiranto, but also the Soehartoes reportedly lend their support to the former general. Local newspapers said the Concern for the Nation Functional Party (PKPB), founded by Soeharto's daughter Siti Hardiyanto Rukmana, has vowed supports to Wiranto along with six other parties which failed to meet the minimum threshold of 3 percent ofpopular votes in the legislative election. Wiranto already won support from Golkar that garnered 24 million votes in the April 5 general election and PKB with 12 million votes. The widening support and successful attempts to ease his critics has made Wiranto a serious contender in the presidential race.

Iraq

WP 28 May 2004 Gaining The Iraqis' Toleration By James Dobbins and Philip H. Gordon Friday, May 28, 2004; Page A23 With all the disastrous news coming out of Iraq, increasing numbers of Americans are starting to believe the United States is doomed to failure and must soon get out. According to the Pew Research Center, 42 percent of Americans now favor bringing U.S. troops home, up from just over 30 percent at the start of the year. Leading elected officials, and not only opponents of the war, are starting to sound the alarm, as has Sen. Lincoln Chafee, that the United States may be headed for a strategic defeat. On the right, retired Lt. Gen. William Odom argues that the occupation is already a "failure" and that it is time to withdraw the troops. On the left, former Clinton deputy national security adviser James Steinberg and analyst Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution believe the United States should set a date for departure sometime next year and stay thereafter only if specifically asked by a new Iraqi government. Centrists such as Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, suggest that the United States should acquiesce in a three-way division of Iraq among the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites. Some critics, such as retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, argue that insufficient planning, inadequate resources and poor execution have doomed the enterprise. Others feel that the task of turning Iraq into a functioning democracy was always beyond the capacity of the United States. Reaching the goal of a stable, unified and non-threatening Iraq does look increasingly difficult, but the consequences of abandoning even that minimalist objective could be severe. Leaving Iraq under the pressure of terrorist attacks would be viewed as a strategic defeat of historic proportions for the United States. The message sent around the world would be that enough roadside bombs, suicide attacks and beheadings of civilians can succeed in forcing the United States (and by extension, any government) to abandon its goals. Success in driving out the American superpower would go down in terrorist lore as a great "victory," inspiring new campaigns on new battle fronts all around the world. Withdrawal under the current circumstances would also entail the very significant risk -- if not probability -- of turning Iraq into a failed state. The departure of U.S. troops would create a security vacuum that would quickly be filled by the most heavily armed and violent groups in Iraq. Iraqi ethnic, religious and linguistic communities would probably struggle to establish control over that country's vast energy riches. Civil war, ethnic cleansing and genocide on a scale exceeding the breakup of Yugoslavia would be a likely result. Iraq's neighbors -- including Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Turkey -- would probably be drawn in, supplying arms and money to their preferred factions and perhaps even intervening directly. The great irony is that the United States would be left with a new Afghanistan -- a haven for terrorists -- even as it continued to work to stabilize the old one. While the Bush administration has pledged to stay the course, it has already made several major course corrections, accelerating the return of sovereignty to Iraqis and expanding the role of the United Nations. On June 30 Iraq will cease to be an occupied enemy and become an ally and partner. As Secretary of State Colin Powell has made clear, American troops will then remain at the sufferance of the Iraqis. If it is to retain that sufferance or, more accurately, if it is to regain it, the United States will need to make adjustments in its military strategy commensurate with the changes it has introduced in its political and diplomatic approaches. Henceforth, American forces cannot afford to destroy villages to save them. They cannot afford to use artillery, gunships and ordnance from fixed-wing aircraft in populated areas, regardless of the provocation. They cannot afford to sacrifice innocent Iraqi civilians to reduce American casualties. They cannot afford to sweep up, incarcerate and hold for months thousands of Iraqis -- many of them innocent -- to apprehend a smaller number of guilty ones. They cannot afford to use pain, privation or humiliation to secure information. Whether such actions are consistent with the laws of armed conflict is not the relevant criterion. What matters most is that such actions are inconsistent with the treatment of an allied population upon whose sufferance and support this mission depends. The objective of insurgent tactics is to show that coalition forces cannot protect the civil population while simultaneously provoking responses that will drive up civilian "collateral damage." Our forces cannot entirely escape this dilemma, but they can demonstrate greater sensitivity for Iraqi civilian casualties, first by beginning to keep track of how many innocents are indeed being killed and wounded by insurgent or coalition actions, and then by adjusting tactics and rules of engagement to reduce the figure. American spokesmen in Iraq might talk less about offensive operations to win the war on terrorism and more about protective measures to improve security for the Iraqi public. Emergency and long-term medical attention for civilian victims can be improved and highlighted. Coalition commanders can defer to Iraqi authorities when considering operations likely to produce high collateral damage, and explore the possibilities for local accommodation with tribal, communal and religious elements. An insurgency cannot be defeated without the support of the population. The United States will not secure that support unless it puts public security at the center of its military strategy. Strong presidential leadership will be required to effect such a fundamental shift in that strategy. In the absence of such a shift, early withdrawal may be the only alternative, with all the consequences that could ensue. James Dobbins is director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corp. Philip H. Gordon is a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution.

AP 7 June 2004 Nine Iraqi Political Parties Agree to Disband Militias One Killed, Eight Wounded in Kufa Mosque Explosion By Jim Krane The Associated Press Monday, June 7, 2004; 10:00 AM BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Nine major political parties agreed Monday to disband their militias, the interim prime minister said, although radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's fighters did not join the agreement. In the southern city of Kufa, explosions rocked the compound surrounding the central mosque after ammunition used by fighters loyal to al-Sadr apparently caught fire, witnesses and Shiite militia members said. At least one person was killed and eight others were wounded. Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said about 100,000 armed individuals will enter civilian life or take jobs in the state police force or security services. The militias have been credited with an active role in the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam Hussein. "By doing this, we reward their heroism and sacrifices, while making Iraq stronger and eliminating armed forces outside of government control," Allawi said in a statement. None of the nine militias has been fighting the government and most are controlled by mainstream political movements represented in the government. The U.S.-led coalition tried to persuade the militias to disband last year but failed because leaders were unwilling to give up their armed fighters at a time of deteriorating security. Al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army did not join the agreement. It has been fighting coalition forces since an uprising in early April, although an agreement with Shiite leaders to stop the violence appears to be taking hold in Kufa, and its twin city, Najaf. Under the agreement, most of the militias are to be phased out by 2005, in a countrywide program worth about $200 million. The militias who signed up would be treated as army veterans -- eligible for government benefits, including pensions and job placement programs, depending on their service, according to coalition officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. Participating militias would hand in their weapons to the Ministry of Interior and join the program as individuals, not as units or groups, coalition officials said. All the rest, including al-Sadr's militia, will be declared "illegal armed forces" that could be arrested when the Coalition Provisional Authority order is signed later Monday, the officials said. According to the order, which coalition officials said will be part of Iraq's transitional administrative law, nonparticipating militias will also be barred from political office for three years. The deal includes militia members who fought for the Kurdish parties -- the Kurdish Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. They battled Saddam's forces in the northern part of the county. Allawi said the Badr Brigade of the Supreme Counsel of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq also agreed to disband, although representatives of the party claimed negotiations had not even begun. "The completion of these negotiations and the issuance of this order mark a watershed in establishing the rule of law, placing all armed forces under state control, and strengthening the security of Iraq," Allawi said. Other militias affected by the agreement include those of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Iraqi National Accord, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), Iraqi Hezbollah, the Iraqi Communist Party, and Dawa, a Shiite party. About 75,000 of the 100,000 militiamen expected to take part are northern Kurds who will either be integrated into the new 35,000-man national army or serve as police, border guards, mountain rangers or counterterrorism agents in Kurdish zones, coalition officials said. In Kufa, firefighters and ambulances went to the site of the explosions near the mosque, where fighters in al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army had been holed up. One militiaman blamed an American missile attack, but the U.S. military said it had no troops in the area. Tensions remained high in Iraq after a car bomb outside an American base killed nine people Sunday and injured 30 others -- including three U.S. soldiers. Insurgents also blasted police stations in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad and in a town south of the capital, and a U.S. soldier was killed in a mortar attack. Riyadh Moussa, a militiaman who had been sleeping in the Kufa mosque compound, said he heard a "whoosh of a missile in the air" and a strong thud when a projectile hit the storage area. "I'm sure it was the Americans who did it," he said. "We have no other enemies." A spokesman for the coalition said no forces were near the mosque at the time of the blast. Iraqi police took small arms fire when they tried to approach to see what was going on, the U.S. military said. The mosque had been the site of near-daily clashes between American troops and al-Sadr's forces. However, the site had been peaceful since Thursday under a deal meant to end the fighting. Under the plan, al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army is supposed to pull back from the Islamic shrines in Kufa and Najaf, and hand over security to Iraqi police. The U.S. Army agreed to a request from the local governor to keep U.S. troops away from the Kufa mosque, where al-Sadr preaches, to give Iraqi security forces a chance to ease tensions. Al-Mahdi Army members were gathering outside the mosques Monday, some armed with rifles, and stopped reporters from approaching the mosque. Nine people, including civilians and militiamen, were hospitalized in Kufa with injuries from the explosions, mostly burns, and one died, said Mohammed Abdul-Kadhim, a nurse. However, the number of the injured may be higher since the al-Mahdi militia doesn't always take their injured to hospitals. Also Monday, Marine officers said assailants fired two 122mm rockets at a Marine base outside Fallujah but caused no damage or casualties. The attack came hours after the Marines of the battalion suspended assistance and reconstruction projects in Fallujah's eastern suburb of Karma following the kidnapping of an Iraqi interpreter. Sunday's car bombing occurred at the gate of the Taji air base, which is used by the U.S. Army, about 12 miles north of Baghdad. It was unclear if it was a suicide attack. The U.S. command also reported an American soldier was killed Sunday and another wounded in a mortar attack on a base near Balad, north of Baghdad. A U.S. security company confirmed Sunday that four of its employees -- two Americans and two Poles -- were killed the day before in an ambush on the main road to Baghdad airport. The company, Blackwater USA, lost four employees in an ambush in March in Fallujah that triggered the bloody three-week siege of the restive Sunni Muslim city. The British Foreign Office reported a British security contractor was killed and three colleagues wounded in a drive-by shooting Saturday in the northern city of Mosul. The four worked for ArmorGroup, which has 1,000 employees in Iraq.

Los Angeles Times 8 June 2004 Sadr City's 'daily massacre' rages as death toll soars By Edmund Sanders BAGHDAD, Iraq — The neighborhoods of Baghdad's worst slum are draped in black. Scores of mourning banners bearing the names of those killed in recent weeks hang from fences, balconies and buildings along Sadr City's dusty, garbage-strewn streets. One banner laments a son killed "defending his country." Some bear photographs of the dead. A few have two, three, even four names squeezed onto a single black banner. As Iraqi and U.S. leaders focus on ending the bloodshed in the southern holy cities of Najaf, Kufa and Karbala, Baghdad's back yard is quietly boiling over. U.S. military officials estimate they have killed more than 800 Iraqis in Sadr City over the past nine weeks — nearly a dozen a day — in battles with the al-Mahdi Army, the militia of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. That is more than twice as many as the number reported killed in similar fighting in southern Iraq. "It's a daily massacre," said Qassim Kadim, a native of Sadr City, also known as Thawra. At least 14 U.S. soldiers have died in and near Sadr City since April, including five killed Friday when their convoy was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade on the outskirts of Sadr City, and two killed Saturday by a roadside bomb at the same location. The cycle of violence began two months ago after al-Sadr's militia seized control of mosques, government offices and police stations in several Shiite Muslim cities and neighborhoods, including Sadr City, which was named after al-Sadr's father, a revered cleric who was assassinated during the Saddam regime. Most of the Iraqi dead are young, unemployed men who joined al-Sadr's militia and have orders to shoot U.S. forces on sight. Others are bystanders caught in the cross fire, such as a 14-year-old boy killed Sunday by a roadside bomb targeting a passing U.S. convoy. There are no gold-domed mosques here, no historical sites to draw the world's attention. As it has been for decades, residents complain, the suffering in Sadr City, a sprawling neighborhood of 3 million Iraqis who were severely oppressed by Saddam Hussein, goes largely unnoticed. "So many people are dying here, and no one cares," said Mohammed Khala, 57, a video-arcade owner whose apartment was recently riddled with bullets and shrapnel from U.S. tanks attacking militiamen who had taken refuge behind his home. His hand was broken and his 5-year-old daughter suffered shrapnel wounds in the head, he said. With few exceptions, street fights and gunbattles have been a nightly ritual. Al-Sadr's forces regularly mortar U.S. bases and Iraqi police stations used by American soldiers. U.S. troops razed al-Sadr's office last month, but his followers defiantly rebuilt it in a day. When residents emerge in the mornings, they confront a trail of burned cars, bullet casings and bodies. "The other day I was walking home and found a man just lying in the street," said Raad Mehemdawi, 32, a warehouse worker. "When I went to help him, I realized he was dead. I called his friends in the Mahdi Army and they came and carried him away." Sadr City residents once welcomed U.S. soldiers. But over time, they say, many have lost patience with lingering electricity outages, sewage problems and perceived disrespect by soldiers of the community's religious leaders and symbols. Last summer, soldiers knocked a religious banner off a transmission tower, sparking a small riot that ended with a U.S. helicopter firing into a crowd. More recently, residents say soldiers have taken to removing the ubiquitous pictures of al-Sadr from billboards and fences. "People are very resentful," said Jalbar Braian, 45, a car salesman. "We just want the Americans to go away." U.S. military officials note that the slum's problems predate the U.S.-led invasion, which began in March 2003. They say most residents support the U.S. presence but are afraid to speak out for fear of retribution by the al-Mahdi Army. About a month ago, a local councilman who was working with the United States was kidnapped and hanged from an electricity pole. "If we just pulled out, the militia would take control, and 90 percent of the people here don't want that to happen," said Lt. Col. Gary Volesky, battalion commander of the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division in Sadr City. "The police can't handle it." He said the area has 500 Iraqi police officers but needs nearly 7,000. Police in the community are trying to avoid taking sides. One officer was demoted when he said he would refuse to fight the militia, according to Lt. Col. Raheem Qadir of the Nasr police station. U.S. soldiers occupied Qadir's station house for nearly a month until he finally asked them to leave because their presence was drawing attacks from the militia, damaging nearby homes, Qadir said. After the soldiers left, al-Mahdi Army fighters told him to remove the sandbags from his roof, which was being used by U.S. snipers. He complied. "I don't see this as an army," Qadir said. "It's an uprising against the occupation. Citizens of any country being occupied by another country would react in the same way." But on Sunday, 15 Mahdi Army members attacked his police station again, first ordering officers to leave the building, then setting off a small explosion that destroyed some ammunition and a roomful of furniture. Unlike southern Iraq, there are no truce talks or cease-fire negotiations in Sadr City. But Volesky's unit is stepping up efforts to win over residents with humanitarian projects, spending $1.1 million to fix the sewage system, which leaks into the streets. Over the weekend, troops began distributing several hundred thousand dollars in supplies to pediatricians. But such efforts are often overshadowed by street fighting and attacks. In one day last week, al-Sadr's militiamen and U.S. troops engaged in 21 battles. Volesky insists that the vast majority of those killed are al-Mahdi Army fighters, not civilians. "We are very precise," he said. The heavy losses of the militia reflect the youth and inexperience of the ragtag army. Some are still in their teens. At times, even U.S. military officials express concern about the one-sidedness of the battles. "As a soldier, it's tough to go out and have to fight, and I can tell you it's even tougher when you've got 17-year-old kids picking up (rocket-propelled grenades) and aiming them at you," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the top U.S. military spokesman, said in a recent briefing. "It's very tough to have to do your job at that time, and we don't take any glory and we don't take any pride in having to do it. So, frankly, any time we have to kill one of those kids because he's aiming a weapon at us, aiming an RPG at one of our soldiers, aiming a rifle at one of our tanks, it's not a good day." Los Angeles Times special correspondents Raheem Salman, Saif Rasheed and Caesar Ahmed contributed to this report.

The Australian 9 June 2004 www.theaustralian.news.com.au Saddam prosecution falters By Michael Evans, London and Catherine Philp June 09, 2004 THE case against Saddam Hussein is being undermined by the lack of a star prosecution witness or any "smoking gun" evidence directly linking him to atrocities. US-led coalition forces have caught 40 of the 55 associates of the former Iraqi leader on the "most wanted" list, but have been unable to persuade any to cut a deal with the prosecution, according to a senior British official. "It's the fear factor. Saddam may be in custody but the other detainees know from past experience that if they turn Queen's evidence, revenge would be taken against members of their families," he said. The coalition is also having difficulty finding written evidence that shows the former president personally ordered atrocities. Large amounts of material have been collected without success, "Saddam was very clever at power-laundering, which meant decisions were filtered down to junior levels, making it difficult to prove a direct line of responsibility," the official said. Prosecutors in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian president accused of genocide and crimes against humanity, have faced similar problems. Despite calling more than 100 witnesses, they have struggled to prove a link between Milosevic and the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, and many observers believe he will beat the genocide charge. Fear was also hampering the Iraqi tribunal that would eventually try Saddam and scores of his associates, said the US lawyer setting up the court, Salem Chalabi. Many potential candidates refused to act as judges or prosecutors for fear of attack, he said, and the identities of those who have signed up are being kept secret. "Mine is the only name which is public," Mr Chalabi said. Since being appointed last year, he has received numerous death threats. He now works in a secret location, rarely sleeps in the same house for two nights running and is accompanied by bodyguards around the clock. To entice witnesses to testify against Saddam, the tribunal plans a witness protection program similar to that used by the UN tribunal for former Yugoslavia. Security costs will be almost half the tribunal's $US75 million ($107million) budget. The conflict in Iraq has made it almost impossible for the tribunal's investigators to start work, and the coalition forces will not hand over suspects until investigations are sufficiently advanced for charges to be brought. That raises the prospect of Saddam and his associates remaining in US custody long after the transfer of sovereignty to an interim government on June 30. The Times

NYT 9 June 2004 CONSTITUTION Kurds Threaten to Walk Away From Iraqi State By DEXTER FILKINS BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 8 — A crisis for the new Iraqi government loomed Tuesday as Kurdish leaders threatened to withdraw from the Iraqi state unless they received guarantees against Shiite plans to limit Kurdish self-rule. In a letter to President Bush this week, the two main Kurdish leaders, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, wrote that the Kurds would "refrain from participating in the central government" in Baghdad if any attempt was made by the new government to nullify the interim Iraqi constitution adopted in March. Shiite leaders have said repeatedly in recent weeks that they intend to remove parts of the interim constitution that essentially grant the Kurds veto power over the permanent constitution, which is scheduled to be drafted and ratified next year. The Shiite leaders consider the provisions undemocratic, while the Kurds contend they are their only guarantee of retaining the rights to self-rule they gained in the past 13 years, protected from Saddam Hussein by United States warplanes. In their letter, Mr. Talabani and Mr. Barzani wrote that the Kurdish leadership would refuse to take part in national elections, expected to be held in January, and bar representatives from going to "Kurdistan." That would amount to something like secession, which Kurdish officials have been hinting at privately for months but now appear to be actively considering. "The Kurdish people will no longer accept second-class citizenship in Iraq," the letter said. The two leaders also asked President Bush for a commitment to protect "Kurdistan" should an insurgency compel the United States to pull its forces out of the rest of Iraq. To assure that Kurdish rights are retained, Mr. Talabani and Mr. Barzani, whose parties together deploy about 75,000 fighters, asked President Bush to include the interim Iraqi constitution in the United Nations security resolution that governs the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty. But American officials rejected the Kurdish request after appeals from Shiite leaders, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the nation's most powerful Shiite, who threatened "serious consequences" if any such move was undertaken. That seemed to set the stage for a showdown between Kurdish and Shiite leaders over the future of the Iraqi state. A senior American official in Washington cautioned against reading the letter as a firm threat to abandon the central government, saying he expected the Kurds and Shiites to reach an agreement ultimately. But in Baghdad, a rupture seemed quite possible. The Shiite leaders, whose people make up a majority in Iraq but who have been historically shut out of power, say the provisions that would allow the Kurdish minority to nullify the constitution would diminish the Shiites' historic opportunity to claim political power. Adil Abdul Mahdi, Iraq's finance minister and a leader of one of the country's largest Shiite parties, said Tuesday that the country's Shiite leadership was determined to remove the provisions that could allow the Kurds to veto the permanent constitution, even at the risk of driving them away. "It's not against the Kurds, it's against the procedure," Mr. Mahdi said. Adam Ereli, deputy State Department spokesman, did not offer details on the American decision to refuse the Kurdish request regarding the United Nations resolution. But he offered general assurances that Kurdish rights would be protected. "We in the international community will work with you to make this democracy a success, to ensure that the rights of all Iraqis are honored and respected," he said. But a senior United Nations official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said American officials rejected the Kurdish request because of concerns over offending the country's Shiite leaders. In a letter released Tuesday by his office, Ayatollah Sistani warned the Security Council against incorporating the interim constitution into the United Nations resolution. "This law, which was written by a nonelected council under occupation, and under the direct influence of the occupation, would constrain the national assembly," Ayatollah Sistani wrote. "It is rejected by the majority of the Iraqi people." The signing of the interim constitution, shepherded by American officials here, was regarded as a historic achievement that tried to reassure the country's long-suppressed Shiite majority without alienating the Kurds. The crucial compromise was contained in the provision that the permanent constitution would pass with a majority vote of the Iraqi people unless voters in three of the country's 18 provinces opposed the constitution by a two-thirds vote. Ethnic Kurds, who make up a fifth of the Iraqi population, are a majority in three provinces. Kurdish leaders say they are concerned that the new Iraqi government will not honor the interim constitution unless it is forced to. Iraqi leaders and United Nations officials say that under generally accepted principles of international law, the new Iraqi government will not be bound by any of the laws passed during the American occupation. A source close to the Kurdish leadership, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Kurdish leaders concluded that the interim constitution needed some sort of reaffirmation to compel the new government to adhere to it. The Kurds say they do not expect the Shiite-dominated interim government to provide such reaffirmation, so they asked the Bush administration to make sure it was included in the United Nations resolution. Bush administration officials have maintained publicly that the interim constitution, as well as all the laws approved during the occupation, will continue to have legal force in Iraq after June 30. But privately, a senior official acknowledged that the interim constitution would need to be reaffirmed to have legal force. The turning point for the Kurds, the source close to the leadership said, came last month when Robert Blackwill, President Bush's special envoy to Iraq, told the two Kurdish leaders that no ethnic Kurd would be considered for the post of either president or prime minister. After that, Kurdish leaders began preparing to cut their ties to Baghdad. In an ominous sign, most of the senior leadership of both Mr. Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Mr. Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party had left Baghdad Tuesday and gone to the Kurdish areas. Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting from Washington for this article. .

AP 15 June 2004 Iraqi: U.S. to Transfer Hussein BAGHDAD, June 14 -- Iraq's interim prime minister said Monday that the United States would hand over former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and all other detainees to Iraq's new government over the next two weeks, as the transfer of administrative power is effected. U.S. officials have said they plan to continue to hold up to 5,000 prisoners deemed a threat to U.S.-led forces even after administrative powers are handed over at the end of this month. Occupation officials have said that as many as 1,400 detainees will be either released or transferred to Iraqi authorities. The interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, however, said in an interview on the al-Jazeera satellite television network that Iraqi officials expected to take custody of Hussein and all other detainees with the transfer of power. "All the detainees will be transferred to the Iraqi authorities, and the transporting operation will be done within the two coming weeks," Allawi said on the Arabic-language network. "Saddam and the others will be delivered to the Iraqis." He said the former Iraqi president would stand trial "as soon as possible," but gave no specific timetable. The detainees and "Saddam as well will be handed to the Iraqi government, and you can consider this as an official confirmation," he said. Hussein has been in U.S. custody at an undisclosed location since his capture last December near Tikrit, about 90 miles north of Baghdad. His status has been under discussion as the formal end of the U.S.-led occupation approaches. A spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad said occupation authorities must file criminal charges against Hussein or let him go when sovereignty is transferred. Under international and military law, prisoners of war and civilian internees are to be freed at the end of conflict and occupation unless there are charges against them, Red Cross spokeswoman Nada Doumani said. The former Iraqi leader was granted prisoner of war status after his capture, and no criminal charges have been filed against him. In Geneva, the chief spokeswoman for the Red Cross, Antonella Notari, said that "a prisoner of war who is suspected of having committed a crime must not just be released. Of course, he must be prosecuted, tried, through a legal proceeding." She said it was up to U.S. authorities to decide whether to charge Hussein or hand him over to Iraqis for trial. Although Iraq's interim government will assume administrative powers on June 30, an estimated 138,000 U.S. troops will remain in the country to maintain security under a resolution approved unanimously last week by the U.N. Security Council. After the handover, detainees held by the Iraqi authorities will be subject to Iraqi law.

WP 18 June 2004 Bomb Kills At Least 35 In Baghdad Recruiting Center Hit; 6 Dead in Second Blast By Edward Cody Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, June 18, 2004; Page A01 BAGHDAD, June 17 -- A devastating car bomb killed at least 35 people Thursday in front of a Baghdad recruitment center, terrorizing residents of the capital and sapping their confidence in the new U.S.-sponsored interim government. Another car bomb went off hours later in a village 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing six members of the paramilitary Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and wounding four, according to the U.S. military. The two explosions added to a list of attacks directed against Iraqis cooperating with the new administration, which U.S. occupation authorities set up with hope that it can gradually begin governing the country. Seeking to reassure Iraqis that his government can still assert control, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi ventured from his U.S.-protected office and visited the blast site in downtown Baghdad. Against a background of charred wreckage, he pledged anew to overcome the bombings, assassinations and other assaults by insurgents that have risen in a mortal crescendo in the days leading to June 30, when Iraq is scheduled to recover limited sovereignty after 14 months of U.S. military occupation. "We are going to face these escalations," he declared. "The Iraqi people are going to prevail, and the government of Iraq is determined to go ahead in confronting the enemies, whether they are here in Iraq or whether they are anywhere else in the world." Allawi's suggestion that a foreign country could be involved in the increasingly violent insurgency was echoed in a more explicit way by Interior Minister Falah Naqib, who said support for the violence was coming from some of Iraq's neighbors. Although pressed at a news conference, he declined to name the countries. To a question about whether Kuwait or Iran might be involved because of past wars with Iraq under former president Saddam Hussein, Naqib responded: "There are other countries. They have strategic aims, because Iraq is of strategic importance. They want to weaken Iraq." The explosion at the Baghdad recruitment center ripped into a line of men waiting to collect their military salaries or to sign up to become soldiers or members of the Civil Defense Corps. It tore apart the vehicle carrying the bomb so thoroughly that a blackened engine block lay in one spot in the street and charred pieces of chassis were strewn about for yards. Another car, a battered blue sedan, was left straddling a concrete median more than 80 yards away. Wailing ambulances carried dead and wounded would-be soldiers and policemen to several Baghdad hospitals. Most were former members of Iraq's disbanded armed forces or police services, or poor men without experience eager to get any available job to feed their families. Iraqi military policemen and members of the U.S.-organized civil defense force came out of the center, waved their sidearms and shouted excitedly, venting their frustration. Their U.S.-supplied combat boots crunched on shattered glass as they milled about on the blackened pavement -- at one point shooting in the air to drive back television cameramen. The Iraqi Health Ministry said at least 35 people were killed and more than 130 were wounded. The U.S. military said no American soldiers were among the dead and wounded, although they share use of the facility and frequently patrol the area. The same recruiting center was hit on Feb. 11 by a bomb that killed 47 people, including passersby and Iraqi men signing up for duty. A U.S. soldier who declined to give his name said Iraqi officers at the center had repeatedly refused to heed suggestions from him and other American troops patrolling the area that prospective recruits should line up inside the facility, behind a concrete wall that would offer some protection against suicide bombers. U.S. forces, numbering 138,000 and augmented by more than 20,000 from allied nations, have remained in charge of security throughout Iraq, and U.S. officers have made it clear that this will continue after June 30. At the same time, they are eager to train as many Iraqi security personnel as possible and turn over more duties to local police and civil defense forces. The process has been slow, however, and Iraqi forces on at least two occasions have refused to move against fellow Iraqis resisting U.S. occupation troops. U.S. Marines on Wednesday arrested five civil defense corpsmen on suspicion that they helped in a car bombing that killed one policeman and injured five civilians near Ramadi, 60 miles west of the capital. Thursday's car bomb was the deadliest in Baghdad since the Feb. 11 blast. But more disquieting to many residents of the capital, it was only the latest in a succession of bombings and assassinations that U.S. occupation forces and their proteges in the Iraqi security forces seem unable to prevent. A bomb exploded Monday, for instance, just off Liberation Square, the heart of Baghdad, killing eight Iraqi civilians and five foreign contract workers. U.S. military officials had predicted that the tempo of violence would rise as the date for turning over formal sovereignty to Allawi's interim government approached and insurgents sought to undermine confidence in what has been described as the new Iraq. Their prediction has proved accurate, with bombings reaching a rate of more than one a day during June, reinforced by the assassinations of several senior civil servants, including a deputy foreign minister. A frightened-looking Iraqi man near the scene of Thursday's blast said that, for him, the campaign of violence has had a detrimental effect. A former first lieutenant in the Iraqi air defense command, he was driving up to the recruiting center to rejoin when the bomb exploded. Now, he said, has no intention of returning. "I'll never go back to this place or the army, no matter what happens to Iraq," he said. "Nothing is worth giving my life for." With that, he hurried off to make the round of hospitals, seeking to learn the fate of a cousin who he said was standing in the line when the bomb-laden SUV plowed into it and went up with a burst of flames and shrapnel. "Never, never, never," said Majeed Hameed Mikhlef, 29, who was hospitalized after being wounded in the blast, when asked if he would go back to the center to renew the enlistment application he had submitted. "It is not worth it anymore." Dhia Kahtan Muhammed, 36, a former warrant officer in the Iraqi army, said from a neighboring hospital bed that he had applied to enlist in a special forces unit but was no longer interested in the job. "I will not go back to that place," he said, "even if they make me a general." Bashar Mizhar Hamoud, 25, a former sergeant who was hoping to reenlist, said that before the bomb went off, wounding him and so many others, he had received a piece of paper ordering him to return June 26 for processing. "But after this, I am not going back," he said from his hospital bed. "I have had enough." Capt. Mohammed Imad, a 30-year-old civil defense officer, said that despite the attacks, he would persist in his job. "If I quit, who is going to stop these attacks?" he said. "If we quit, only terrorists will have jobs in Iraq." The owner of a fruit and vegetable market in Baghdad's middle-class Karadah neighborhood, Jalal Abu Seif, said the drumbeat of violence had cut deeply into his business by instilling a climate of fear. A recent and potentially lucrative deal for supplying fresh produce fell through, he said, because the customer was afraid to pick up the fruit and vegetables and he was afraid to deliver. "Look at my hair," he said when asked his age, gesturing at his white crew cut. "I am 42 and look at my hair, with all these wars. Look at it."

Washington Times 18 June 2004 Iraq officials seek death by hanging for Saddam By Sharon Behn THE WASHINGTON TIMES Iraqi authorities hope to see Saddam Hussein face capital charges punishable by hanging when he stands trial sometime after June 30, the head of Iraq's special tribunal on war crimes said yesterday. Salem Chalabi also said the Iraqi government expects to file charges quickly against Saddam and other top members of his regime once it assumes authority at the end of the month. Saddam "may be charged relatively soon," said Mr. Chalabi from Baghdad. "We can expect movement after June 30. We are working the arrangements out." Although the charges remain to be decided, Saddam has been widely accused of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes. According to the Statute of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, if any of these acts was committed by a subordinate, he would not be relieved of criminal responsibility. Asked whether Saddam could face the death penalty, Mr. Chalabi answered "Yes," adding that Iraqi law stipulated death by hanging for civilians and by firing squad for soldiers. The death penalty in Iraq has been suspended by U.S. Administrator L. Paul Bremer, but the law is still on the books and Mr. Chalabi said members of the Iraqi government have discussed reinstating it after June 30. "I suspect it is not unlikely they will do that," he said. Complicating the decision, however, is pressure from international donor countries trying to tie aid to keeping the moratorium in place. U.S. and Iraqi officials were at odds this week on when Saddam would be handed over to the Iraqis, with President Bush insisting that the new government first demonstrate that it can hold him securely. But Mr. Chalabi said the sides were negotiating a compromise, possibly involving an arrangement in which Iraq would have formal custody of Saddam and other detainees, but coalition forces would continue to secure them. U.S. forces have not disclosed where they are holding Saddam, who was captured Dec. 13, and his family-appointed lawyer, Jordanian Mohammad Rashdan, has complained loudly of his inability to meet his client. "They started on December 14 to work against Saddam Hussein, and they will give me [only] a small period to prepare my case against them. Is this justice?" asked Mr. Rashdan from his home in Amman, Jordan. "I want permission to visit my client. If I don't get it, they must tell the people in the U.S.A. why. We are not in the jungle," he said. Mr. Chalabi argued yesterday that Saddam and the other high-value detainees did not require legal representation until they are formally charged. "Once he is charged or an arrest warrant filed, then he gets these rights as an accused party in a criminal trial and then he may be entitled to counsel," Mr. Chalabi said. Retained by Saddam's exiled wife and three daughters, Mr. Rashdan has accused U.S. authorities of physically abusing Saddam during questioning and branded Iraq's newly formed government as an illegal entity that has no right to try the former president. He made available an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) form dated Jan. 21 that said Saddam was injured. The brief report, which is mostly written in Arabic, checked off a box stating that Saddam was in good health, but also checked off a box affirming that the deposed leader was "slightly wounded." "After one and a half months of detention, how come he is 'slightly wounded' unless he was treated in a bad way?" asked Issam Ghazani, one of a number of lawyers who work with Mr. Rashdan in Jordan. But ICRC officials said reports of the kind shown by the lawyer normally are filled out by the prisoners. They also said "slightly wounded" was a vague term that could cover anything from a graze to a more serious injury. The ICRC did not visit Saddam in Iraq until February. ICRC representatives in Washington said confidentiality practices prevented them from discussing specifics of that visit. Mr. Rashdan's team also provided The Washington Times with a copy of a letter from Saddam to his daughter, which was delivered through the offices of the ICRC. Two large sections of the handwritten missive were blacked out by U.S. authorities for security reasons before it was delivered. Mr. Rashdan and his team said they had been given full power of attorney to defend Saddam and were demanding all information pertaining to his case. "We had a strong meeting with the Red Cross and told them we wanted all their documents," he said, adding that Red Cross officials reported Saddam had been questioned by both the CIA and Marines. "We are very worried. Until this moment, no one has been able to meet him," Mr. Rashdan said. He said he had written to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanding the right to meet with his client.

Israel

www.zaman.org (Turkey) 30 May 2004 Vanunu Shared Israeli Nuclear Secrets to Prevent Jewish Genocide Mordehay Vannu, the man who revealed Israel's nuclear weapon program to the world, said in the first interview given after his release from prison, that he revealed the nuclear weapon program's details 'to save his country from a new Jewish genocide.' Vanunu (50) was an employee at Dimona nuclear central. He said in an interview to be broadcast on BBC tonight: 'I don't think there was betrayal. It was about saving Israel from a new genocide.' Vanunu said: 'what I did was to announce what was secretly going on. I did not say Israel and Dimona should be destroyed. I just said see what the Israelis did and decide what to do.' Vannue said he did not regret paying heavily for it, 'anyone would have done the same.' Vanunu has been banned by Israeli officers from leaving the country for one year and forbidden to approach ports and airlines for 6 months. He repeated his wish to leave Israel and noted that he wanted to have a life either in the U.S. or in Europe.

BBC 29 May, 2004 Vanunu 'wanted to avert holocaust' Vanunu: Widely regarded as a traitor in Israel The former technician jailed for 18 years for leaking Israel's nuclear secrets has said he was trying to prevent a nuclear holocaust. In his first interview since his release, Mordechai Vanunu said he did not feel he was a traitor. "I felt it was not about betraying; it was about reporting. It was about saving Israel from a new holocaust." In the interview for the BBC's This World programme, Mr Vanunu said he had no regrets over his actions. "I have no regrets despite the fact I have paid a heavy punishment, a large price," he said. Mr Vanunu, 50, who is widely regarded as a traitor in Israel, spent nearly 18 years in prison for revealing details of Israel's clandestine nuclear arms programme. Supporters welcomed his release in April, calling him a "hero of peace". Under the terms of his release, Mr Vanunu is forbidden from leaving Israel, meeting foreigners and revealing secrets about the Dimona nuclear plant. He was interviewed for This World by an Israeli journalist. "What I did was to inform the world what is going on in secret. I didn't come and say, we should destroy Israel, we should destroy Dimona. I said, look what they have and make your judgement." Kidnapped in Italy Mr Vanunu went on to say: "I want to leave Israel, I'm not interested in living in Israel. I want to start my new life in the United States, or somewhere in Europe, and to start living as a human being." Mr Vanunu was kidnapped in Italy by Israeli agents in 1986 following a Sunday Times article, based on an interview with him, which exposed Israel's atomic secrets. He described how a female secret agent lured him from London to Rome and distracted him in the car. "We sat in the back. She used the time for kissing me, to divert my attention by a lot of kissing," Mr Vanunu said. In Rome, Mr Vanunu was overpowered and drugged, then shipped back to Israel to be tried in secret. Now living in Jerusalem's St George's Anglican cathedral, Mr Vanunu is banned from using the internet or mobile phones, and may not approach embassies or borders. Journalist arrested Israel's Deputy Prime Minister, Joseph Lapid, defended the restrictive terms of Mr Vanunu's release. "We think he still knows secrets and we don't want him to sell them again," he told This World. "We think there are things he knows that he hasn't divulged yet. He may do so - he's hell-bent to harm this country, he hates this country." British journalist Peter Hounam, who wrote the original Sunday Times article, was arrested in Tel Aviv earlier this week and held in custody for a day. Israel's Nuclear Whistleblower was broadcast on BBC Two on Sunday 30 May at 2245 BST.

Jerusalem Post, Israel 31 May 2004 www.jpost.com Ya'alon letter angers MKs - Nina Gilbert MKs expressed anger at Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon in the Knesset on Monday, after Ya'alon sent a complaint to Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin against sharp criticism of the army that was voiced during the operation in Rafah. Rivlin opened Monday's Knesset session by reading Ya'alon's letter of protest. MKs immediately criticized Rivlin for his move. In an earlier meeting with Mofaz, members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, including its chairman MK Yuval Steinitz (Likud), said the complaint to the Knesset should not have been relayed by the chief of staff himself but by Mofaz. Ya'alon's complaint focused on a May 19 debate in which several Arab MKs accused the IDF of having engaged in "war crimes" and "genocide" during military activities in the Gaza Strip. MK Ahmed Tibi (Hadash) said mothers of pilots should be ashamed that their sons are "cold-blooded murderers." Ya'alon said in the letter that the remarks cause "harm" to soldiers and officers whom, he said, "work night and day, while risking their lives, to protect the citizens of Israel." Rivlin said the IDF is not a "foreign legion" but an army in which "our sons are serving." Tibi responded to Rivlin's recitation of the letter by saying that Ya'alon is an "officer in uniform," whereas he is a member of parliament who has a "right and duty" to offer his opinion. MK Zehava Gal-On (Meretz) said Rivlin had "legitimized the delegitimization of the Knesset," adding that Rivlin had acted as if he is in a "banana republic." If Ya'alon wanted to send a message to the legislature, Gal-On said, he has a defense minister who can appear in the Knesset on his behalf. The role of the Knesset is to review the operations of the executive, she said. MK Roni Bar-On (Likud) suggested that Ya'alon's letter should have been forwarded to the Knesset Ethics Committee, where steps could be taken against the offending MKs. MK Gideon Ezra (Likud), the government's liaison to the Knesset, said he was "shocked" by the attitude of MKs toward civil servants. "The IDF and defense establishment are our emissaries. They endanger themselves every day for the good of the state. Instead of respecting them, members of the Knesset call the murderers."

Haaretz 1 June 2004 www.haaretz.com 111 Palestinians killed in May By Arnon Regular The number of Palestinians the IDF killed in the territories or in foiling attempted attacks in May was the highest since Operation Defensive Shield in the spring of 2002 - 111 compared to 55 in April and 79 in March. Among the dead were 74 armed members of militant organizations, who were killed mostly during army operations in Gaza's Zeitoun neighborhood following the detonation of an IDF armored personnel carrier, and in Rafah operations after another attack on an APC on the Philadelphi road. In March 2002, 240 Palestinians were killed and in April 2003, over 300 were killed. In the ensuing months, the Palestinian casualty list stabilized at a monthly rate of 50-60 deaths, until late April, 2003, when the Abu Mazen government was established and negotiations began for a hudna (cease-fire) with the various Palestinian organizations. During July 2003, the main month in which a hudna was observed, seven Palestinians were killed, but when the hudna collapsed in August, the number rose steadily each month, from 26 killed in August 2003 to 79 in March 2004, and up to the present record number of 111 last month - a figure comparable to the first two months of the intifada in October-November 2000. Since Operation Defensive Shield, most of the Palestinians killed have been residents of the Gaza Strip because of the operational methods the IDF has adopted in the Strip. These include assassinations from the air, which cause heavy casualties particularly in operations following the assassinations themselves, and ground operations involving dozens of armored vehicles in the heart of populated areas in the Strip, such as the Rafah refugee camps in the south of the Strip. Heavy casualties also characterized incursions into open spaces in the Strip that served as sites for launching mortar shells and Qassam rockets, operations that sparked mass demonstrations and clashes with IDF troops. One striking aspect of the data since the beginning of 2003 is the ratio between the number of armed combatants and civilians killed. Haaretz has found that since January 2003, 907 Palestinians were killed in the territories, of which 306 were civilians. The number of civilians killed last month rose in line with the general increase, to 31.

AFP 1 Jun 2004 Trauma soaring among Palestinian children, says UN by Sophie Claudet QALANDIYA REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank, June 1 (AFP) - Trauma and stress-related troubles have risen among Palestinian children since the beginning of the intifada, psychologists working in this UN-run refugee camp near Ramallah said Tuesday. "Palestinian children have lost all sense of normalcy. They don't know whether they'll be able to go to school, whether they'll come home safely because of curfews and (Israeli) army incursions," Yoad Ghanadreh told reporters at a visit in Qalandiya's community center managed by the UN agency for refugees (UNRWA). "They often suffer from psychosomatic troubles, depression and low concentration that are related to their fear of the present and the future," she amid boys and girls, most sporting brightly painted faces, celebrating International Children's Day. Ghanadreh, who oversees all of UNRWA psychological support programs in 95 schools, 30 clinics and 105 community centers on the West Bank, said the agency had to step up counselling as a result of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which began in September 2000. "Violence outside has become a reference. It's part of our lives and reproduced by children at school and at home," she said, as she stressed the number of stone-throwing children had gone down with the militarization of the intifada. "We originally thought that children's participation in non-armed demonstrations was empowering but research later showed it was bad for them because it is violent," she said. Fresh statistics released by UN agencies Tuesday showed that more than 670 children have been killed in the past four years of the conflict -- of which 573 were Palestinian and 105 Israelis. Close to 2,000 Palestinian children have been arrested, interrogated and detained, with 337 currently in jail. Nearly 1,500 school days were lost and pass rates in UNRWA-run schools sharply declined in 2003/2004. In a survey on its schools, UNRWA found a 20 percent rate of hypertension symptoms, 16 percent low achievement rate and 11.5 percent rate of fear and anxiety. Yet, the study concluded that most children display high optimism and resilience. On the community center playground, 13-year-old Rana said she hoped there would soon be peace. "Sometimes we can't go to school because of curfews. Sometimes, soldiers will raid Qalandiya and Ramallah and we'll be stuck inside the classroom," she also said. "They're dangerous, they kill and injure," she said of Israeli troops. Marwa, 13, said she hated the eight-meter (26 feet) wall being built at Qalandiya's entrance and which, once completed, will separate this West Bank community from Jerusalem. "It's tall and ugly. Once there is peace, we will destroy it," she said. In a bid to prevent would-be Palestinian attackers, Israel is erecting a controversial barrier around the West Bank, which Palestinians brand as an "Apartheid wall" and slam for taking in some of their land. In the center's main room, dozens of children were kneeling down to paint on sheets of paper scattered on the ground. "It's the Palestinian flag because I want to free my people," said Mussa, 13 applying himself to fill in a black and white sketch with the flag's red and green colors. Amer, seven, explained the elusive shape he drew was an Israeli jeep. "I see them, the tanks, the planes and the jeeps," he said. Splattering black paint on the shapeless armor he first drew in red, Amer said it was "because they are dark." "Children use black and gray colors a lot as if that was the only thing coming out of them. They tend to draw weaponry and armor," said Dawlat Siam, a social worker. "Our goal is to make them forget the occupation. Progressively, they will draw happier things in bright colors," she added.

Pakistan

NYT 1 June 2004 14 Die in Bombing of Shiite Mosque in Karachi By SALMAN MASOOD ARACHI, Pakistan, May 31 - At least 14 people were killed and 38 wounded Monday night when a powerful bomb exploded in a Shiite mosque here, police officials said. The attack set off a wave of violent protest, and angry demonstrators clashed with riot police officers across the city. At least two people were killed in the rioting, local news media reported. The bombing was the fourth terrorist incident in a single month in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and a center of sectarian attacks in recent years. President Pervez Musharraf, who has vowed to crack down on Islamic militancy and has banned several sectarian groups, expressed his deep concern and vowed to take serious action to stop violence in the city. The attack happened around 7:45 p.m. at Imambargah Ali Raza Mosque in an upscale Karachi neighborhood. According to witnesses, the blast resonated for blocks around the mosque and blew out windows. Local news channels were filled with images of badly burned worshipers being carried to ambulances and of rescue workers scrambling to help the wounded. After the blast, young demonstrators gathered on various streets in Karachi and damaged public and private property, the police said. The police said officers used tear gas and batons to disperse the rioters and also exchanged gunfire with demonstrators in several districts. Dozens of people were reported wounded in the clashes, and at least two people were killed by police gunfire, a private news channel reported. Some government officials speculated that the explosion could have been in retaliation for the killing of a prominent Sunni leader, Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, by unidentified gunmen in Karachi on Sunday. That killing sent thousands of the mufti's angry supporters, mostly students, into the streets, fighting with the police and vandalizing property. The city had barely calmed down by Monday evening, when the explosion struck. Leading religious scholars, both Sunni and Shiite, and politicians all condemned the bombing as an attempt to create chaos. The governor of Sindh State, Ishratul Ebad Khan, described it as an "incident of terrorism and part of a conspiracy to pit brother against brother and destabilize the country." He appealed to residents for patience and restraint. The sectarian violence in Karachi has followed a distinct pattern, with Sunni leaders singled out individually for attack while Shiite mosques have been hit by bombings. The recent spate of violence has set off a wave of panic, creating unrest especially among the minority Shiites, who make up about 20 percent of the population. Violence between Sunnis and Shiites has killed more than 1, 200 people in Pakistan in the past 15 years. The terror attacks this month began May 7, when 22 people were killed by a suicide bomber at a Shiite mosque. On May 26, a police officer was killed and 26 people were wounded when two car bombs went off outside an English-language school in Karachi, near the residence of the American consul general.

BBC 1 June 2004 Violence at Karachi Shia funerals Clashes brought the city to a standstill Police in the Pakistani city of Karachi have fired tear gas at thousands of angry mourners after an attack on a Shia mosque killed at least 20. Trouble erupted after funeral prayers for 14 of those killed in Monday's attack, which officials believe was a sectarian suicide bombing. The funerals follow overnight unrest in which three people died in clashes with the police. President Musharraf has pledged action to deal with the sectarian violence. This is war between the law enforcement agencies and terrorists Sindh police chief Kamal Shah Tuesday's clashes began in the city centre, but disturbances were reported from other parts of the southern port. Violence started when the funeral procession made its way towards the graveyard where victims were to be buried, and a section of the Shia youth clashed with riot police. Protesters set fire to several cars and motorcycles, and torched a number of shops before paramilitary troops moved in to disperse them. 'Serious action' Thousands of troops and paramilitary forces are on maximum alert to prevent further clashes between extreme Shia and Sunni factions in Karachi. PAKISTAN'S SECTARIAN DIVIDE Shias revere Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed Pakistan is 20% Shia, 70% Sunni Violence between Sunni and Shia factions began from early 1980s Over 150 people have died in the past year alone Around 4,000 people have been killed in total Most violence takes place in Sindh, Balochistan and Punjab Shia-Sunni schism The latest violence followed Monday's mosque attack, which also injured another 40 people. It was believed to have been triggered by the killing of the senior Sunni cleric, Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, over the weekend by unidentified gunmen. The BBC's Zaffar Abbas in Islamabad says Karachi has a long history of religious and ethnic violence, but the month of May was the worst in recent years - with more than 50 people killed in different incidents of violence. President Musharraf said he would take tough measures to restore order in the city - but did not specify what they would be. "I will take serious action, this is the second incident within 24 hours, following Mufti Shamzai's killing," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed quoted the president as saying. The minister denied the authorities had lost control of Karachi. Sindh police chief Kamal Shah described the violence as a war between the militants and the police. "Police are after them and they are after the police. Many of the terrorists have been arrested but it is an ongoing war against terror," he said. Senior Shia leader Hasan Turabi has meanwhile appealed for calm in the aftermath of the violence, which he said was the worst since 1984 and was intended to divide the two main Muslim factions. "There is no Shia-Sunni conflict and we will never allow the two sects to fight against each other," he said. Mosque destroyed Sunni-Shia sectarian violence has killed as many as 4,000 people in the past 15 years in Pakistan. Monday's explosion was so powerful it knocked down a pillar and one of the side walls of the mosque. An office building belonging to the trust that manages the mosque also collapsed. A night of violence followed the attack An emergency was declared at three hospitals and appeals were made for blood donations. Police had been trying specifically to protect Shia mosques following Mufti Shamzai's death. The attack on his car came three weeks after at least 14 people were killed in Karachi when a man, apparently dressed as a Shia cleric, blew himself up in a Shia mosque. The police have accused militants of deliberately trying to foment sectarian violence following the recent arrests of hard-line militants. The authorities were investigating reports that a person pretending to be a worshipper had left a briefcase in the mosque shortly before Monday's explosion. But police are now saying there is a strong possibility the blast was caused by a suicide attack. "We did not find any crater in the mosque, which shows that it was a suicide attack," senior police investigator Manzoor Mughal told the Associated Press news agency.

Pakistan News Service 2 June 2004 www.paknews.com APHC Urges Stopping Kashmiris' Genocide In IHK Kashmir Media Service SRINAGAR, IHK : June 03 (PNS) - The Human Rights Bureau of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference has urged world community to get India stop genocide in occupied Kashmir. In this connection, the Bureau, in a statement Srinagar today pointed out that in the past five months, 830 Kashmiris were martyred, including 34 women and 22 children. Forty-two people were killed in custody and 82 declared missing. 1519 Kashmiris were injured and 1384 arrested during the period. The Indian troops used brute force against peaceful demonstrators in Shopian injuring several of them including a pregnant woman, whose condition is said to be critical. The protest was sparked when Indian troops besieged Shah Lattu village and ordered the people even those working in the fields to gather in an open ground where they were subjected to physical torture leaving several of them in pool of blood. The demonstrators marched to Shopian and staged protest sit-in in front of Tehsil office. They raised high-pitched slogans against Indian state terrorism and in favour of liberation. Violent crackdown was carried out in rural areas of Budgam district. The besieging troops raided houses and carried out ransack. Inmates including women were subjected to cruel violence and humiliations. Valuables were plundered.

Philippines

The Manila Times 6 June 2004 www.manilatimes.net Bloody October for Chinese Filipinos By Go Bon Juan , Research Director, Kaisa para sa Kaunlaran, Inc. EVERY October, the Chinese community celebrates two Chinese national days. The pro-mainland group celebrates the national day of the People’s Republic of China on October 1 while the pro-Taiwan group commemorates the Double Ten Day of the “Republic of China” on October 10. But there are two very significant days in the history of the Chinese in the Philippines that not so many people, including the Tsinoys, are aware of: October 3 and October 25. For the first time this year, these two dates will be remembered. On October 3, 1603, the Spanish colonial regime carried out the first massacre of the Chinese in the Philippines, in which more than 23,000 died. October 3 this year marks the 400th year of the massacre. October 25, 1593, on the other hand, was the date of the first uprising of the Chinese against the Spaniards. This uprising was led by Pua Ho Go (P’an Ho Wu in Mandarin) who, along with 250 Chinese, was conscripted as boat rower for a military expedition to Moluc­cas led by then-Spanish governor general Gomez Perez Dasmariñas. Dasmariñas was killed in this mutiny. This year marks the 410th anniversary of the uprising. (Complete details of these two historical events in Tulay’s October 7 issue). What I want to emphasize is that if we have our first national hero, Lapu-Lapu, who killed the Spanish colonizer Magellan in 1521, then we have another hero, Pua Ho Go, who killed a Spanish governor general in an uprising against colonial oppression 72 years later. Like the Filipinos, the Chinese then were subjected to colonial exploitation and oppression. Like the Filipinos, they revolted against the colonizers. During the 333-year Spanish rule in the country, about 200 revolts broke out, but none cost the life of the highest Spanish colonial official, except the uprising led by Pua Ho Go. Dasmariñas was the only Spanish governor general in the Philippines ever killed in a revolt. In light of this, it is but fitting to recognize Pua Ho Go as one of our national heroes. Although the Chinese in our country 410 years ago were not Filipino citizens, they were also subjects of colonial rule and an integral part of our community. As for the 1603 Chinese massacre, it must be pointed out that it was the first Chinese massacre that occurred in Southeast Asia, where most of the overseas Chinese were concentrated. The Red Creek massacre in Indonesia happened much later in 1740. Furthermore, the Philippines recorded the most number of Chinese massacres (six in all); only one took place in Indonesia during the colonial period. The victims in the Philippines were also the most numerous. Around 100,000 lives were sacrificed in the six massacres, while only 10,000 were killed in Indonesia. I do not know if there is an accounting of how many Filipinos were killed during the Spanish period by the colonial authority. What I do know is hundreds of thousand Filipinos were killed during the Filipino-American war. The numerous lives lost in the six Chinese massacres should serve as reminder of the untold sufferings of the Chinese during this dark period in our colonial history. We can’t afford to forget that where and what we are today is partly due to the high price our ancestors had to pay early in our history. Kaisa para sa Kaunlaran, Inc, / Kaisa Heritage Center Established in 1987 ar an archive and cultrual center for nearly a million Chinese Filipinos or Tsinoys, whose heritage in the Philippines spans much of the past 10 long centuries. www.kaisa.ph

The Manila Times 7 June 2004 www.manilatimes.net Other victims of 1603 massacre By Go Bon Juan, Research Director, Kaisa para sa Kaunlaran, Inc. Unknown to many people, the first Chinese massacre in the Philippines in 1603 took as its victims not just the Chinese who were killed in the Philippines, but many of their wives in China as well. The wives perished not by the hands of Spanish colonial authorities, but by their own. Feudal customs in China dictated that the wife follow her husband to his death, and it is no surprise that many wives of the Chinese killed in the Philippines blindly practiced this. The cruel practice was praised as a noble act on the part of the women. Those who committed this final act of fidelity were held up as martyrs entitled to have their names recorded in the genealogy’s female martyr section. Of the 21 massacre victims we were able to identify, the wives of three of them committed suicide upon learning of their husbands’ death. This is roughly 15 percent of the 21 victims. Applying this figure to the more than 23,000 Chinese killed during that first massacre, it is possible that as many as 3,000 wives of the Chinese took their own lives after the massacre. If we were to include the 3,000 women, then the death toll in the 1603 massacre could exceed 26,000. Our research shows that the family of Tan Dian Chiem of W’ahai County in Fujian province alone had six victims. Dian Chiem, his son Tan Chiong Hian, son-in-law Ng Chong Sok, and a maid whose name we do not know were killed during the massacre in the Philippines. The other two victims were the wives of Tan Dian Chiem and of Ng Chong Sok. Both of them committed suicide in China. According to W’ahai Records, in the early 17th century, the county of W’ahai had 46 inhabitants who went overseas. Among them, 43 went in Luzon. They suffered two massacres—in 1603 and in 1639. Among the 15 who carried the surname Gan, seven were killed; among the 11 Ngs, five were killed; nine of the 13 Tans were killed; and three of the four Cuas were killed. This great tragedy that befell both the Chinese in the Philippines and their wives in China reminds us that our ancestors had suffered alongside indios. With our shared histories, it is important that we remind ourselves of our roles as responsible citizens of this country.

Saudi Arabia

NYT 1 June 2004 After the Saudi Rampage, Questions and Few Answers By NEIL MACFARQUHAR HOBAR, Saudi Arabia, May 31 - The Iraqi-born American engineer stood listening to two of the four terrorists who had attacked his luxurious residential compound in this Persian Gulf oil center wrangling over his fate. "He's an American, we should shoot him," he recalled the younger of the two as arguing. He looked about 18 and was wearing desert camouflage. "We don't shoot Muslims," responded the older man, perhaps 25, with wispy facial hair. The argument seesawed for several minutes, both men displaying a certain calm determination. The engineer had a stark example of just how determined they were because a few yards away lay the body of a Swede he knew, oozing blood. Two other militants cradled guns as they paced nearby. The engineer stood there silently, hoping, praying the older man would prevail. "I was on the borderline," he said, "but finally the older one said, 'We are not going to shoot you.' " Instead, they gave him a brief lecture about the merits of Islam and their cause, then tried to make him point out the houses of infidel neighbors. The engineer, who has a fringe of black hair and gold-rimmed glasses, only wanted to be identified by his adopted name of Mike because three of the four gunmen remained at large on Monday. He remains too nervous even to have his current home mentioned. While the 242 residents rescued from the upscale Oasis compound here were departing the country as quickly as possible, the way the hostage drama ended Sunday, with three militants escaping and with 22 people dead and 25 wounded, left more questions than answers in the heart of the kingdom's oil industry along the Persian Gulf. Many Saudis and expatriates wondered aloud whether the gunmen and the police had struck a deal, speculating about how it was possible that the militants could escape from a walled compound surrounded by hundreds of police officers. "It makes me very nervous," said Ismail Rahim, a 33-year-old Saudi computer technician. "We are all really upset about how these people left, how they just ran away from that compound." Hours after the standoff, the Interior Ministry said the gunmen had taken hostages with them. But Western diplomats and some Saudis discounted that argument, saying that at some point the militants had released the few residents they still had with them and had managed to get away in a stolen car. "We don't really know what happened yet; the Saudis haven't given us a readout," said one Western diplomat. He pointed out that the compound is huge, but he believes that the official explanation remains too vague. Saud al-Musaibeh, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the safety of the residents still trapped in the compound during the ordeal, about 41 of whom were actually held captive, was the primary concern. "The release of the hostages was the main goal," said Mr. Musaibeh, emphasizing that a nationwide dragnet would surely find the men. There were few developments on Monday in the case, although rumors ricocheted around of gunfights, explosions and dead bodies found. A radical prayer leader in a mosque in Khobar was picked up on suspicion of having a link to the men, said a Saudi close to the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Saudi also said the leader of the militants, Nimr al-Bigami, who had recently been released from jail and is the son of a Riyadh businessman, remained in a coma after being wounded in the shootout with the Saudi special forces early Sunday. For Mike, the 45-year-old Iraqi-American engineer, the ordeal started early Saturday morning as he was trying to leave the Oasis compound. As the heavy metal gate clanged open to let him out, he heard gunfire and drove home to wake up his wife. Coming downstairs afterward, he saw blood on the carpet and smelled smoke. A quick check of the family, including his daughter and son, revealed no wounds, so he went to summon security. On the way, he encountered four men in uniforms carrying guns and asked them if they were security officers. They said yes, and he began detailing the problems in his villa. At that point they demanded his residency card, which indicates nationality and religion, setting off the argument over whether to kill him. Mike shook his head at the memory, noting that it shows how little he was expecting an attack to succeed inside the heavily guarded compound. "I mean, until the very last minute I thought the terrorists were security guards," he said. After deciding not to shoot him, the men tried to justify their cause. "They told me: 'We are here because we want to promote Islam. We don't want non-Muslims to come to our country. We are promoting a Muslim cause,' " Mike recalled. They asked him to point out the houses of non-Muslims. The Saudi public was particularly disturbed by the killing of Muslims in previous attacks. He lied and said he had only recently moved there, although he had been in the Eastern Province since 1999, building a gas and oil development company that he now hopes to transfer to Bahrain. The gunmen let him go, apologizing as he left that they had searched his house and that one of them had bled on his carpet. Mike went home and gathered some neighbors, calling the American Embassy and the Saudi police to sound the alarm. He says he has still not heard back from the embassy, but the police eventually sent three armored personnel carriers to rescue him and about 15 neighbors. The owner of the compound came with them. Since Mike got out, the calls have poured in from friends as far away as Dearborn, Mich., and from family members still living in Najaf, Iraq, and from his brother in Baghdad. "He told me I should come there,'' Mike said. "It's safer."

Today (Singapore), Singapore 31 May 2004 www.todayonline.com Hostage-takers singled out foreigners KHOBAR — People who witnessed Saturday's terror attack in Saudi Arabia told of how suspected Al Qaeda militants had singled out Westerners and their families. . The gunmen had gone systematically from house to house, rifling through papers, studying home decorations for clues and rounding up the foreigners. . The Guardian quoted Arab survivors as saying that the militants had tried to separate the non-Muslims by asking if they were Muslim or Christian. Mr Abu Hashem, an Iraqi who escaped unharmed, said the militants had asked for proof that he was a Muslim and had said: "We don't want to kill Muslims. Show us where Americans and Westerners live." . "They have one attitude toward Muslims and another for non-Muslims. Islam does not sanction this," AP quoted the Iraqi as saying. . Lebanese financial director Abdulsalam Hakawti, said a militant greeted him with the traditional Muslim greeting of "Asalam Alaykum" when they raided his home. . They told him: "Our jihad is not against Muslims but against Americans and Westerners," Reuters reported. . The 22 dead include an American, a Briton, an Italian, a South African, a Swede, eight Indians, two Sri Lankans, three Filipinos, an Egyptian and three Saudis.

Arab News 31 May 2004 www.arabnews.com Sri Lankan Becomes Widow Within 3 Months of Marriage Mohammed Rasooldeen, Arab News RIYADH, 31 May 2004 — A young woman, Malika, who has been married only three months, is in a state of shock and disbelief over the killing of her husband in the terrorist attack on the Oasis Compound in Alkhobar. Sri Lankan Chandana Pradeep Anthony, 25, was one of the hostages savagely killed by terrorists yesterday. Anthony had been working at the Oasis Compound for the past three years as a chef. When he went on vacation three months ago, he married Malika and returned to the Kingdom, planning a happy and prosperous life. Another Sri Lankan worker who was among the rescued hostages was full of praise for Saudi commandos who ended his 25-hour ordeal at the Oasis Compound. Muhammad Ismail Muhammad Muhajireen, who works in the Oasis Restaurant in the compound, counted a total of 41 expatriate hostages. He said the uniform-clad terrorists initially posed as Saudi security forces. They told the hostages to follow their orders since they would help them escape from the terrorists who came to kill the Americans and Englishmen. The first thing the terrorists did was to establish the religion of all their captives. They separated the Muslims from non-Muslims by checking the Iqamas of those claiming to be Muslims. “Even after checking the Iqama, they still wanted us to recite a surah from the Holy Qur’an,” Muhammad Muhajireen said. When this oral exam was over, the terrorists were distracted by the sound of gunfire. The captives took the opportunity to run helter-skelter and hide, locking themselves in three or four rooms on the first floor of the building, where they stayed for the rest of the day and the night. “We came out when we heard the sound of the helicopter over the building and somehow we got to the rooftop. The security forces then gave us instructions to climb down using ladders they had dropped,” he said. “On my way to the roof I saw my colleague, a non-Muslim, lying dead on the staircase,” Muhajireen added. Nalaka Vasantha Kumara, who works as a storekeeper on the compound, was in tears at the hospital when he saw the dead body of his supervisor, Magnus Johansson, 60, a Swedish national. “He was such a good person and he treated everybody like his close friend,” Kumara told Arab News.

Reuters 31 May 2004 Christian lied about faith to survive Saudi siege By Samia Nakhoul KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia, May 31 (Reuters) - A Christian Arab who was held captive by al Qaeda militants in Saudi Arabia said on Monday he lied to them about his faith and praised their battle against the West, to save his life. Nizar Hajazeen, a Jordanian software businessmen who was at the Tower hotel in the Oasis compound during the 25-hour drama in Khobar, said the militants lectured him about Islam and their aim to liberate Saudi Arabia from "infidels and crusaders". The complex where the militants held about 50 foreigners -- including some Westerners -- was their last target in the violence in the eastern Saudi oil city in which they killed at least 22 people. Hajazeen, 32, had tried to call a cab to go to work on Saturday but the phone lines were jumbled. "I went down and the Filipino receptionist told me there were terrorists in the compound and gunshots were heard," he told Reuters. He tried to help security guards close the hotel entrance gate but the lock did not work and a manager recommended he hide, Hajazeen said. "I went to the room of a Jordanian colleague. Someone banged violently on the door. We opened and there were two men, one with a machinegun, another with a revolver. They were wearing black track suits," he said, adding that one had a wounded arm. Both were in their twenties. "They asked us if we were Arab or Westerners. We told them: 'We're Arab'. "One then asked if I was a Christian or a Muslim. I told him we were Muslims and showed him my colleague's Koran as proof. I told him we supported them and that we were against America and Europe. I had to say that." "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" Residents of the compound said the attackers asked everyone they encountered if they were Muslim or Christian, before taking them hostage or killing them. An Oasis manager said the gunmen shot and killed several Westerners as soon as they entered the complex. The gunmen made two Indian hotel staff with master keys show them where the Westerners were, Hajazeen said. His brother called him on his mobile phone to wish him a happy birthday -- a day late -- just as the militants were saying their motive was to drive Americans and Christians from their country. "They asked me to turn off my mobile but did not take it away as they did with others," Hajazeen said, adding that they told him and his colleague to stay in the room and left. "We stayed locked in our room. One of us was hiding in the shower, another one was hiding in the bathtub," Hajazeen said, adding that from time to time they sneaked back into the bedroom to watch the news on television. He said that before commandos freed them on Sunday, compound security guards called his mobile to ask him to check if the militants had rigged his floor with explosives. He found nothing. "Before the commandos came, there was heavy gunfire and one explosion shook the hotel. We could hear glass being smashed, screams... It sounded like someone was giving out orders." Saudi security forces later called them out, saying: "Do not be scared." Making his way to freedom he saw the bodies of four Indians and an Italian cook. "They had been shot dead. Some were on the staircases."

Guardian UK 31 May 2004 Militants flee after chaotic Saudi hostage rescue · 22 dead as shoot-out ends rampage · Violence raises fear of oil price rise Brian Whitaker A dramatic attempt by Saudi commandos to free dozens of hostages held in a housing complex ended in disarray last night when all but one of the gunmen escaped using hostages as shields and several captives were found dead. The security forces claimed to have defused the hostage crisis in the dawn operation after a bloody rampage by four armed men in the oil city of Khobar. At least 22 people were killed, including a British businessman. But three of the four suspected Islamist militants escaped during the operation by breaking through the security cordon while holding their captives at gunpoint. The human shields were later apparently released unharmed. The two-day drama was the latest in a succession of violent attacks on western interests in Saudi Arabia by militants linked to al-Qaida aiming to topple the Saudi regime. The onslaught in the world's biggest crude producer has raised the fear of further shocks to the already high crude prices. The US embassy reminded its nationals that they should leave Saudi Arabia, and the Foreign Office said all but essential travel to the country should be deferred. "We believe further attacks may be in the final stages of preparation," the British ambassador, Sherard Cowper-Coles, said last night. The warning was "based on continuing information". Commandos jumped from helicopters on to the roof of the building in the Oasis Residential Resorts where about 50 foreigners were being held, to begin the rescue. Security officials gave victory signs as residents and hostages streamed out of the compound, but the jubilation was later tempered by news of the militants' escape and the discovery that several hostages had died during the rescue or shortly before it. "Nine bodies were found on the premises of the building where the hostages were held when Saudi security forces stormed it," Jamal Khashoggi, a media adviser to the Saudi ambassador in London, told the Reuters news agency last night. "They were nine hostages. I believe the security forces stormed the building when they [the militants] started killing hostages." These were in addition to 17 or more people killed earlier. The exact number of casualties was still unclear last night, when the interior ministry gave the total as 22 dead and 25 injured. Those killed included eight Indians, three Filipinos, three Saudis, two Sri Lankans, an American, an Italian, a Swede, a South African and an Egyptian, the ministry said. The Briton who died was named as Michael Hamilton, 62, an oil company executive. Witnesses said militants tied his body to a car and dragged it down the streets before dump ing it near a bridge. The gunmen made no attempt to negotiate with the authorities, Mr Khashoggi said. "They didn't have any demands; they just started killing people. When security forces stormed the building they found the nine bodies there." He said the security forces had arrested the leader of the militants, a man called Nimr al-Baqmi who was already wanted by the authorities. A man who identified himself as Abdulaziz al-Muqrin, who is believed to be in charge of al-Qaida's activities in Saudi Arabia, boasted about the killings in an audio message pos ted on the internet yesterday. "Among those killed was a Japanese who was slaughtered and sent to the sons of his tribe which America has implicated in a war against Muslims, especially in Iraq," the voice said, adding that an Italian had been killed "as a gift to his government and leader". The speaker accused the Saudi government of providing America "with oil at the cheapest prices, according to their masters' wish, so their economy does not collapse". The struggle with America would be pursued "in the Arabian peninsula, Afghanistan, in Iraq", the speaker said, and the battle with the Saudi government would continue until the "crusaders are expelled from the land of Islam". Accompanying the eight-minute recording was a 700-word written statement which claimed that "infidels and crusaders" among the hos tages had been killed, including 10 Indians, "those cow worshippers who killed our Muslim brothers in Kashmir". The carnage began on Saturday morning when the gunmen opened fire at the al-Rushaid Petroleum Centre building, which is believed to house the offices of big western oil companies, then stormed into compounds containing oil services offices and staff homes. Witnesses said the gunmen drove cars with military markings into the Apicorp oil investment company compound and opened fire. An Egyptian boy was killed when a school bus came under fire. The attackers fled, exchanging shots with security agents before taking the 50 hostages in the Oasis complex.

NYT 1 June 2004 After the Saudi Rampage, Questions and Few Answers By NEIL MACFARQUHAR HOBAR, Saudi Arabia, May 31 - The Iraqi-born American engineer stood listening to two of the four terrorists who had attacked his luxurious residential compound in this Persian Gulf oil center wrangling over his fate. "He's an American, we should shoot him," he recalled the younger of the two as arguing. He looked about 18 and was wearing desert camouflage. "We don't shoot Muslims," responded the older man, perhaps 25, with wispy facial hair. The argument seesawed for several minutes, both men displaying a certain calm determination. The engineer had a stark example of just how determined they were because a few yards away lay the body of a Swede he knew, oozing blood. Two other militants cradled guns as they paced nearby. The engineer stood there silently, hoping, praying the older man would prevail. "I was on the borderline," he said, "but finally the older one said, 'We are not going to shoot you.' " Instead, they gave him a brief lecture about the merits of Islam and their cause, then tried to make him point out the houses of infidel neighbors. The engineer, who has a fringe of black hair and gold-rimmed glasses, only wanted to be identified by his adopted name of Mike because three of the four gunmen remained at large on Monday. He remains too nervous even to have his current home mentioned. While the 242 residents rescued from the upscale Oasis compound here were departing the country as quickly as possible, the way the hostage drama ended Sunday, with three militants escaping and with 22 people dead and 25 wounded, left more questions than answers in the heart of the kingdom's oil industry along the Persian Gulf. Many Saudis and expatriates wondered aloud whether the gunmen and the police had struck a deal, speculating about how it was possible that the militants could escape from a walled compound surrounded by hundreds of police officers. "It makes me very nervous," said Ismail Rahim, a 33-year-old Saudi computer technician. "We are all really upset about how these people left, how they just ran away from that compound." Hours after the standoff, the Interior Ministry said the gunmen had taken hostages with them. But Western diplomats and some Saudis discounted that argument, saying that at some point the militants had released the few residents they still had with them and had managed to get away in a stolen car. "We don't really know what happened yet; the Saudis haven't given us a readout," said one Western diplomat. He pointed out that the compound is huge, but he believes that the official explanation remains too vague. Saud al-Musaibeh, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the safety of the residents still trapped in the compound during the ordeal, about 41 of whom were actually held captive, was the primary concern. "The release of the hostages was the main goal," said Mr. Musaibeh, emphasizing that a nationwide dragnet would surely find the men. There were few developments on Monday in the case, although rumors ricocheted around of gunfights, explosions and dead bodies found. A radical prayer leader in a mosque in Khobar was picked up on suspicion of having a link to the men, said a Saudi close to the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Saudi also said the leader of the militants, Nimr al-Bigami, who had recently been released from jail and is the son of a Riyadh businessman, remained in a coma after being wounded in the shootout with the Saudi special forces early Sunday. For Mike, the 45-year-old Iraqi-American engineer, the ordeal started early Saturday morning as he was trying to leave the Oasis compound. As the heavy metal gate clanged open to let him out, he heard gunfire and drove home to wake up his wife. Coming downstairs afterward, he saw blood on the carpet and smelled smoke. A quick check of the family, including his daughter and son, revealed no wounds, so he went to summon security. On the way, he encountered four men in uniforms carrying guns and asked them if they were security officers. They said yes, and he began detailing the problems in his villa. At that point they demanded his residency card, which indicates nationality and religion, setting off the argument over whether to kill him. Mike shook his head at the memory, noting that it shows how little he was expecting an attack to succeed inside the heavily guarded compound. "I mean, until the very last minute I thought the terrorists were security guards," he said. After deciding not to shoot him, the men tried to justify their cause. "They told me: 'We are here because we want to promote Islam. We don't want non-Muslims to come to our country. We are promoting a Muslim cause,' " Mike recalled. They asked him to point out the houses of non-Muslims. The Saudi public was particularly disturbed by the killing of Muslims in previous attacks. He lied and said he had only recently moved there, although he had been in the Eastern Province since 1999, building a gas and oil development company that he now hopes to transfer to Bahrain. The gunmen let him go, apologizing as he left that they had searched his house and that one of them had bled on his carpet. Mike went home and gathered some neighbors, calling the American Embassy and the Saudi police to sound the alarm. He says he has still not heard back from the embassy, but the police eventually sent three armored personnel carriers to rescue him and about 15 neighbors. The owner of the compound came with them. Since Mike got out, the calls have poured in from friends as far away as Dearborn, Mich., and from family members still living in Najaf, Iraq, and from his brother in Baghdad. "He told me I should come there,'' Mike said. "It's safer."

Background articles :

Reuters 23 Apr 2004 Top Saudi cleric condemns bombers for killing Muslims Group linked to al-Qaeda says it carried out Riyadh attack, vows to continue targeting symbols of Saudi regime By DOMINIC EVANS RIYADH -- Saudi Arabia's top cleric said yesterdaythe people behind a suicide car bombing in Riyadh will burn in hell for killing innocent Muslims, and a militant group linked to al-Qaeda said that it carried out the attack. The Islamist group al-Haramain Brigades said it was responsible for the blast that destroyed a security-force headquarters on Wednesday and vowed to carry out more bombings against government symbols. The Saudi state news agency said a security officer died of his wounds yesterday, raising the official death toll to five. Nearly 150 were hurt. Witnesses and medics said the explosion killed 10 people. Meanwhile, state television said security forces killed two "terrorists" and injured another in heavy gunfire in the Red Sea city of Jeddah yesterday night. It added that a fourth person had been arrested. An officer at the scene said police had sealed off a street where a number of wanted men were believed to be holed up. The condemnation of Wednesday's attack came from the kingdom's highest religious authority, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Sheik. "God has promised wrath, damnation, painful torture and an eternity burning in hell for he who deliberately kills a Muslim. . . . Unjustly killing a Muslim is the gravest crime which cannot be atoned," he said in a statement. "I tell all Muslims that this act is a sin; it is one of the greatest sins. Aiding, calling for, or facilitating the murder of a Muslim is tantamount to involvement in murder, and all who do so will be thrown by God into the flames of hell," the sheik said. Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally and the birthplace of Islam, has been battling a surge in militant violence blamed on supporters of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. More than 50 people were killed in suicide bombings in Riyadh last year. Al-Qaeda has vowed to fight the United States and the "ungodly" Saudi rulers, who it says are U.S. agents. Wednesday's violence, the first major attack on a government symbol and the third in the capital in a year, shocked Saudis and brought wide condemnation. Days earlier, the United States had warned of a possible attack in the kingdom. In a statement published on two Islamist websites, the al-Haramain Brigades said it was following in the path of al-Qaeda. "This bombing completely destroyed the targeted building, and killed and injured dozens of soldiers and commanders of the criminal, apostate mechanism which is fighting God, his Prophet and the faithful," it said. "This operation which broke your backs, you tyrants, is but one shade of the many shades of pain which we will make you taste, God willing, and revenge by bombings and assassinations and other means shall not stop," the statement continued. Saudi newspapers condemned the attack. "[Militants] started by targeting civilians, and today they are moving to betray the guardians of national security, who are all Muslim citizens," the daily newspaper Al-Watan said. Some analysts have said that public support for militants had fallen from a silent but substantial majority during the 1990s, when bombers struck U.S. military targets, to a small minority after last year's attacks that killed mostly Arabs.

Arab News 12 April 2004 www.arabnews.com Smart Card IDs, Iqamas Soon P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab News An official at the National Data Center explains the features of the new national ID and the resident permit (picture below), during a press conference in Riyadh. (AN photo) JEDDAH, 12 April 2004 — As part of the Kingdom’s introduction of e-government, the Interior Ministry says the long-awaited smart Saudi IDs and family cards, expatriates’ resident permits and driving licenses will be introduced “soon”. Dr. Khaled Muhammad Al-Taweel, director of the National Data Center at the ministry, said the new electronic cards with high security features would prevent forgery. The new cards will have a luminous strip where information is stored. He explained that the new electronic residence permit for expatriates, replacing the old iqama, would contain all information about the holder. A picture of the holder will be included on the card, he added. The permit will bear the full name of the worker in both Arabic and English, the number, expiry date, photo, date of birth, nationality, profession, religion and the employer’s full name. Al-Taweel said the cards were designed to accommodate new information related to the holder including his or her family. “The new smart card contains a number of applications related to driving license, passports, fingerprints, electronic signature, etc.,” the Saudi Press Agency quoted him as saying. The information on the card cannot be changed or removed, according to Al- Taweel. “They also contain security features of high quality to prevent forgery,” he added. Nasser Al-Hanaya, assistant deputy interior minister of civil affairs, said ID cards would be issued to women who requested them. He said the new family card would hold information for up to 13 members. The ministry has already trained 600 employees to process the applications and issue new IDs and residence permits. Al-Hanaya said the present IDs and iqamas would remain valid until the new electronic cards are issued in their place. “It will take some time to issue the new cards,” he said. He also announced plans to issue special IDs for tribal nomads. “These will be different from Saudi IDs,” he added. The ministry has been working on the new electronic personal documents for the past three years. “They will first be introduced in Riyadh and then in other parts of the Kingdom,” Al-Taweel said. Col. Abdul Rahman Al-Rasheed, head of technical affairs at the Passports Department, said there will be no additional fees for the new electronic IDs and residence permits. Asked whether the new IDs would help Saudis travel to GCC countries without their passports, Al-Rasheed said, “We are now coordinating with the GCC member states in order to identify the technical requirements."

SPA 27 Jan 2004 www.spa.gov.sa Grand Mufti warns against terrorism Makkah, 27th January 2004 The Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah Al Al-Sheikh said that Islam does not tolerate the shedding of blood or the random killing of either Muslims or non-Muslims. In a lecture given at King Faisal Auditorium on Monday evening, Al Al-Sheikh warned against acts of terrorism, and emphasised the detriment they cause to society. Al Al-Sheikh stressed the importance of honouring agreements and treaties, and said that Islam does not tolerate any form of betrayal and dishonesty. He said that Islam has nothing do with terrorism, which utterly contradicts the teachings of Islam and rulings of the Islamic Shariah. He said that terrorism, which is a result of deviant ideas, destabilizes society and threatens the welfare of all citizens. “The Ulema (Muslim scholars) utterly oppose terrorism, and believe in obedience to rulers,” he noted. Calling for the enlightenment of youth, Al Al-Sheikh stressed the importance of protecting youth from deviant ideas. “The terrorist acts that have been committed in Makkah, Madinah, and Riyadh are completely contrary to the teachings of Islam,” he added. Source: SPA

AP 31 Jan 2004 Top Saudi religious authority condemns terrorists Respected cleric addresses pilgrims on hajj MOUNT ARAFAT, Saudi Arabia (AP) --Saudi Arabia's top cleric used the high point of the annual Muslim pilgrimage to denounce terrorists, calling them an affront to Islam. But he defended the kingdom's strict interpretation of the faith. Delivering a sermon Saturday to 2 million pilgrims, Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Sheik said those who claim to be "mujahedeen," or holy warriors, were shedding Muslim blood and destabilizing the nation. "Is it holy war to shed Muslim blood? Is it holy war to shed the blood of non-Muslims given sanctuary in Muslim lands? Is it holy war to destroy the possession of Muslims," he said, adding that their actions gave enemies an excuse to criticize Muslim nations. Al-Sheik, who is widely respected, spoke at Namira Mosque, which is close to Mount Arafat, the place where in 632 A.D. the Prophet Muhammad delivered his last sermon. Al-Sheik's sermon was likely watched on television by millions of Muslims in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states. In speaking about terrorists who killed fellow Muslims, al-Sheik was referring to the Prophet Muhammad's final sermon, which contained the line: "Know that every Muslim is a Muslim's brother, and the Muslims are brethren. Fighting between them should be avoided." The hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca required of all able-bodied Muslims, is taking place after a series of suicide bombings and police gunbattles with suspected terrorists in Saudi Arabia last year. The bombings killed 51 people, including many Saudis, other Arabs and eight Americans. Muslims have also died in terror attacks in Turkey, Iraq, Morocco and elsewhere. On Thursday, suspected terrorists shot dead six Saudi security personnel in a shootout in a house in suburban Riyadh. Al-Sheik also criticized the international community, accusing it of attacking Wahhabism, the strict interpretation of Islam that is applied in Saudi Arabia. "This country is based on this religion and will remain steadfast on it," he said. "Islam forbids all forms of injustice, killing without just cause, treachery ... hijacking of planes, boats and means of transportation. After all this, our religion is still described as terrorism?" he said. Saudi Arabia came under Western pressure after the attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States. Fifteen of the 19 suicide hijackers were Saudis. The government cracked down on extremist groups after a suicide bombing in Riyadh in May. Saudi and U.S. officials blamed the attack, and a similar suicide bombing in November, on groups linked to al Qaeda, led by former Saudi citizen Osama bin Laden. The United States also has pushed the Riyadh government to censor its mosque sermons and school books to eliminate phrases that encourage hostility toward Christians, Jews and other non-Muslim faiths. Liberal intellectuals in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have also called for such revisions in the teaching of Islam in schools and mosques. Governments in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan have taken steps toward purging school books of terms offensive to other religions. But Al-Sheik warned against "changing the religion's basics" in school curricula. "The minds of youth in the Islamic nation need to be shielded with Islamic sharia (law), and good manners and deeds," he said. Pilgrim Milhim Tuleimat, a Syrian dentist, said he agreed with the sermon, saying that "God's enemies" were targeting Islamic countries because they wanted to dominate them. Another pilgrim, Mustafa al-Shawwaf, a Canadian of Syrian origin, said terrorists had tarnished Islam but that Muslims themselves had given the West a chance to interfere. "Muslims are divided among themselves. They are split between extremists and moderates," he said. Al-Shawwaf criticized Muslim fundamentalists, including the Wahhabis, for practicing an exclusive form of the faith. "This was not even how things were back in the days of the prophet who respected all other religions and backgrounds," he said. "Such rigidity of thought needs to be changed." The pilgrims arrived at Mount Arafat in the early hours of Saturday. Worshippers of all ages and origins, moving slowly, shoulder-to-shoulder, shaded themselves from the sun with white umbrellas, chanting in unison "at thy service, at thy service, oh God." Emergency workers directed the crowd as it converged 20 kilometers (12 miles) southwest of Mecca, in a ritual believed to represent the Day of Judgment, when Islam says every person will stand before Allah, or God, and answer for his or her deeds. "Oh my God, oh my God, we are actually here. There is nothing better than responding to God's call and being here," said Zainab Menaid, a Tunisian pilgrim. Temperatures approached 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit). The sunshine made umbrellas a popular purchase at 5 riyals ($1.30) apiece, and street vendors sold fruit, mats and drinks. Along the path to Mount Arafat, sprinklers mounted on poles cooled worshippers. Free water and milk were handed out. "I could not wait to reach here. This is primarily what we came for," Egyptian Abdel Aziz al-Jezairi said. "This is the worst day for the devil. When he sees thousands of Muslims gathered in such a show of force and piety." Fatima Farouk, a Nigerian who was performing the hajj for the first time, said that despite the demanding journey, she was thrilled "because after Mount Arafat, you're almost promised heaven."

BBC 7 October, 2001 Bin Laden's warning: full text Message first broadcast on Arabic station Al Jazeera Osama Bin Laden has issued a strongly-worded warning to the United States in a recorded statement broadcast on al-Jazeera television. Below is the full text of his statement. Praise be to God and we beseech Him for help and forgiveness. We seek refuge with the Lord of our bad and evildoing. He whom God guides is rightly guided but he whom God leaves to stray, for him wilt thou find no protector to lead him to the right way. I witness that there is no God but God and Mohammed is His slave and Prophet. God Almighty hit the United States at its most vulnerable spot. He destroyed its greatest buildings. Praise be to God. Here is the United States. It was filled with terror from its north to its south and from its east to its west. Praise be to God. What the United States tastes today is a very small thing compared to what we have tasted for tens of years. Our nation has been tasting this humiliation and contempt for more than 80 years.Its sons are being killed, its blood is being shed, its holy places are being attacked, and it is not being ruled according to what God has decreed. Despite this, nobody cares. When Almighty God rendered successful a convoy of Muslims, the vanguards of Islam, He allowed them to destroy the United States. I ask God Almighty to elevate their status and grant them Paradise. He is the one who is capable to do so. When these defended their oppressed sons, brothers, and sisters in Palestine and in many Islamic countries, the world at large shouted. The infidels shouted, followed by the hypocrites. One million Iraqi children have thus far died in Iraq although they did not do anything wrong. Despite this, we heard no denunciation by anyone in the world or a fatwa by the rulers' ulema [body of Muslim scholars]. Israeli tanks and tracked vehicles also enter to wreak havoc in Palestine, in Jenin, Ramallah, Rafah, Beit Jala, and other Islamic areas and we hear no voices raised or moves made. But if the sword falls on the United States after 80 years, hypocrisy raises its head lamenting the deaths of these killers who tampered with the blood, honour, and holy places of the Muslims. The least that one can describe these people is that they are morally depraved. They champion falsehood, support the butcher against the victim, the oppressor against the innocent child. May God mete them the punishment they deserve. I say that the matter is clear and explicit. In the aftermath of this event and now that senior US officials have spoken, beginning with Bush, the head of the world's infidels, and whoever supports him, every Muslim should rush to defend his religion. They came out in arrogance with their men and horses and instigated even those countries that belong to Islam against us. They came out to fight this group of people who declared their faith in God and refused to abandon their religion. They came out to fight Islam in the name of terrorism. Hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, were killed in the farthest point on earth in Japan. [For them] this is not a crime, but rather a debatable issue. They bombed Iraq and considered that a debatable issue. But when a dozen people of them were killed in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Afghanistan and Iraq were bombed and all hypocrite ones stood behind the head of the world's infidelity - behind the Hubal [an idol worshipped by pagans before the advent of Islam] of the age - namely, America and its supporters. These incidents divided the entire world into two regions - one of faith where there is no hypocrisy and another of infidelity, from which we hope God will protect us. The winds of faith and change have blown to remove falsehood from the [Arabian] peninsula of Prophet Mohammed, may God's prayers be upon him. As for the United States, I tell it and its people these few words: I swear by Almighty God who raised the heavens without pillars that neither the United States nor he who lives in the United States will enjoy security before we can see it as a reality in Palestine and before all the infidel armies leave the land of Mohammed, may God's peace and blessing be upon him. God is great and glory to Islam. May God's peace, mercy, and blessings be upon you.

BBC 14 Oct 2001 In full: Al-Qaeda statement The statement was transmitted on al-Jazeera TV Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a spokesman for Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda group, has said the group will retaliate against the US and UK for the air strikes on Afghanistan. Below is the full text of his videotaped statement: "Praise be to God, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds, and may God's peace and blessings be upon our Prophet Muhammad, may he and all his household and companions be blessed by God. "Based on the questions and queries that we have received regarding how we view the incidents that have taken place over the past five days, we would like to say that the crusade spearheaded by the two crusaders Bush and Blair is continuing on the territory of Muslim Afghanistan and its population, who are demonstrating day in and day out their sacrifices, firmness and determination to uphold their religion and creed. "We pray to the Almighty God to hold their feet firmly, to strengthen their resolve, and to grant them victory over the infidels. "We also would like to declare our full support for this emirate and for the Muslim Afghan people in the face of this ferocious assault, offering all the material and moral resources that we have under the command of Mullah Muhammad Omar, commander of the faithful, may God protect him and grant him certain victory. "This holds true regardless of the duration of the war. The issue at hand is the issue of an entire nation that opposes humiliation and subservience under the yoke of US arrogance and Jewish persecution. "The Al-Qaeda organization declares that Bush Senior, Bush Junior, Clinton, Blair and Sharon are the arch-criminals from among the Zionists and Crusaders who committed the most heinous actions and atrocities against the Muslim nation. "They perpetrated murders, torture and displacement. Millions of Muslim men, women and children died without any fault of their own. "Al-Qaeda stresses that the blood of those killed will not go to waste, God willing, until we punish these criminals. 'Enduring freedom' "Bush, in the midst of his arrogance, media frenzy, and the enduring freedom that he boasts about must not forget the video footage of Muhammad al-Durrah [a Palestinian child killed by Israeli troops in the early days of the Palestinian intifada in the Gaza Strip] and his brothers, Muslim children in Palestine and Iraq. "If he forgot that scene, then we will never forget it. He must know that his 'enduring freedom' which he boasts of has wiped out entire villages in Nangahar near Jalalabad in Afghanistan. "Villages were completely wiped out. It was not a mistake but a deliberate action. What mistake is that which is repeated three times? "This village was bombed in the beginning of night, in the middle of the night, and before dawn. "Those who supported this Crusader campaign should realise after things have been clarified that it is a Crusader campaign against Islam and the Muslims. "Those who supported those criminals go away from Prophet Muhammad, may God's peace and blessings be upon him, who said that the destruction of earth is more tolerable to God than killing a believer without cause. "What would they say when their deeds are displayed in front of God, praise be to him? What would they say when the female infant buried alive is questioned? 'Leave the Arabian peninsula' "In this regard, we support the religious rulings issued by senior clerics in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, led by His Eminence Shaykh Humud Bin-Uqlah al-Shu'aybi, who said that it is impermissible to co-operate with Jews and Christians and that he who co-operates with them and gives them his opinion or take actions in supporting them becomes apostate and revokes his faith in God and his Prophet, may God's peace and blessings be upon him. "Al-Qaeda organisation orders the Americans and the infidels in the Arabian Peninsula, particularly the Americans and the British, to leave the Arabian peninsula. "If the mothers of these need their sons then they should ask them to leave the Arabian peninsula, because the land will be set on fire under their feet, God willing. "In this regard we greet the mujahidin youths who knew their role and the way to respond to the aggression of the unjust, and killed them. "We also greet the Muslims, both in the East and West, who staged demonstrations rejecting this criminal aggression, repression, and injustice. "We say to them that they should continue this pressure, especially since the Islamic countries' foreign ministers announced their support for this unjust campaign. "These do not represent the nation in any case. They do not have the legitimacy that qualifies them to dispose of the nation's destiny and resolutions. "As for the decisions made by Bush and the US administration to prevent satellite channels and world news agencies from making our voice heard in the world, then this is clear evidence that the US administration fears the revelation of the truth that led to the Tuesday events. "This truth shows that Bush is an agent of Israel and sacrifices his people and his country's economy for those and helps them occupy the Muslims' land and persecute their sons. 'Aircraft storm' "Finally, I address the US secretary of state, who cast doubt about my previous statement and downplayed what we said that there are thousands of Muslim youths who are eager to die and that the aircraft storm will not stop, God willing. "Powell, and others in the US administration, know that if al-Qaeda organisation promises or threatens, it fulfils its promise or threat, God willing. "Therefore, we tell him tomorrow is not far for he who waits for it. What will happen is what you are going to see and not what you hear. "And the storms will not calm, especially the aircraft storm. "These storms will not calm until you retreat in defeated in Afghanistan, stop your assistance to the Jews in Palestine, end the siege imposed on the Iraqi people, leave the Arabian Peninsula, and stop your support for the Hindus against the Muslims in Kashmir. "We also say and advise the Muslims in the United States and Britain, the children, and those who reject the unjust US policy not to travel by plane. "We also advise them not to live in high-rise buildings and towers. "But honour belongs to God, and his Apostle, and to the believers; but the hypocrites know not. "Peace and God's blessings be upon you." BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages

BBC 24 October, 2001 Saudi mufti bans killing non-Muslims Many in the Gulf back Bin Laden By Frank Gardner BBC Middle East Correspondent The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Shaikh, has issued a ruling banning the killing of non-Muslims in Islamic countries. The senior Saudi cleric's words were carried on Wednesday by the government-controlled newspaper, Al Riyadh. The statement follows a recent warning by Osama Bin Laden's organisation, al-Qaeda, for all Britons and Americans to leave the Arabian peninsula. The latest ruling or fatwa to come from the government-appointed Grand Mufti is clearly aimed at dissuading attacks on Westerners. Sheikh Abdulaziz said those who kill non-Muslims with whom Muslims have treaties will never see paradise. The senior cleric added that people should not be punished for a mistake that others have committed - in other words, however angry some Saudis may feel about the US attacks on Afghanistan, they should not vent their anger on the estimated 60,000 Americans and Britons living in Saudi Arabia. Uncertain import Soothing words for Western expatriates perhaps, but Britain's leading Saudi dissident was quick to downplay the importance of the statement. King Fahd's support of the US is unpopular Dr Saad al-Faqih, who heads the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform, told the BBC that the Grand Mufti would have been ordered to say these words by the government. Dr Faqih, who is in constant touch with other dissidents inside Saudi Arabia, said that government-appointed clerics like the Grand Mufti have lost almost all credibility in the eyes of the people. The Saudi Government is acutely aware of the unpopularity of its close relationship with the United States. Opposition to attacks The country's ruling al-Sa'ud family have defied popular opinion both by continuing to allow US forces to be based on their soil and by quietly supporting America's campaign against terror. There is mounting opposition in Saudi Arabia to America's attacks on Afghanistan. According to the London-based Saudi dissident, Saudis have reacted to the Grand Mufti's call not to harm non-Muslims with a question of their own. He said Saudi subscribers to internet chatrooms were now asking "What about a fatwa condemning the killing of Muslims in Afghanistan?"

DPA 26 October 2001 Saudi mufti slams Osama threat to kill non-Muslims DUBAI, Oct 25: Saudi Arabia's grand mufti, the highest religious authority in the kingdom, has said the killing of non-Muslims in Islamic countries is forbidden by Islam, the Saudi newspaper Arab News reported on Thursday. He made the statement following recent threats by Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group against Westerners in the Gulf region. "Those who kill (non-Muslims) with whom Muslims have treaties, will never see paradise", Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al Sheikh said. "We must have strong faith in God, look into issues very carefully and not punish people for a mistake that others have committed. Islam is based on justice", the mufti said. "The consequences of such behaviour are far-reaching on Islam and Muslims, in this life and the hereafter", warned the mufti, who heads the Council of Senior Religious Scholars in Saudi Arabia. Al Sheikh also criticized the September 11 attacks in the United States as a "terrible crime".

Knight Ridder News Service 4 June 2004 Saudi head of al-Qaida vows more bloodshed Al Qaeda's branch in Saudi Arabia is now under the leadership of a career militant who is threatening to ratchet up terrorism in the desert kingdom. BY DAVE MONTGOMERY KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia - After a year of attacks that have taken at least 85 lives, the Saudi branch of the al Qaeda terrorist network has undergone a succession of leaders who differ in style and tactics but share an impassioned hatred of Westerners and the Saudi royal family. Now the desert kingdom's branch is under the leadership of an elusive new chieftain who vows to pursue an even bloodier agenda ``decorated with body parts and the smell of guns.'' Alienated from his family and steeled by terrorist conflicts in five countries, Abdulaziz al Muqrin took over the Saudi operation after the last leader was killed in a shootout with police in March. Since then, authorities say, he has emerged as the architect of the network's most brazen attacks, including last weekend's 25-hour rampage in the oil-hub city of Khobar. Unlike previous leaders, who were hunted down or arrested, Muqrin has managed to escape a nationwide manhunt while showing a flair for publicity. After each violent episode, Muqrin, believed to be in his mid-30s, airs defiant statements over the Internet, claiming responsibility for the attacks and threatening more. Taken together, the messages constitute Muqrin's manifesto for open warfare against the Saudi monarchy, Jews, Westerners and Christian missionaries trying to convert Muslims. He also declares an alliance between his Saudi terrorists and anti-Western insurgents in Iraq. Jamal Khashoggi, an advisor to Saudi Arabia's ambassador to London, calls Muqrin the ''toughest'' in a series of perhaps a half-dozen leaders who have headed the Saudi network since the first of five major attacks, beginning in May 2003. Three took place under Muqrin's watch within the past three months, suggesting that he plans to strike with increased frequency, flamboyance and ruthlessness. In April, after two earlier attacks in 2003 aimed at residential compounds, al Qaeda struck directly at the Saudi government with a massive suicide car bombing at police headquarters in the heart of Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Next came an assault on the Red Sea port city of Yanbu, where four terrorists sprayed gunfire in an oil company office, killing six people, including two Americans. One of the bodies was dragged behind a car past horrified high school students, according to the Associated Press. The attack last weekend in Khobar was even more brutal. Traveling across the kingdom to the heart of Saudi Arabia's oil industry along the Gulf Coast, terrorists stormed through office buildings and city streets before descending on a luxury residential compound and seizing more than 50 hostages. The extremists singled out non-Muslims and Westerners, according to witnesses, and slit the throats of nine hostages. A total of 22 people were killed, according to news reports. Commandos swept into the compound from helicopters to end the siege, but three of the terrorists escaped. If his handiwork thus far is any indication, Muqrin appears to be shifting away from suicide car-bombings to commando-style raids. The Khobar attack was the first in which guerrillas carried out wholesale executions and took hostages. Muqrin is believed to have a longtime relationship with al Qaeda's Saudi-born founder, Osama bin Laden, but many authorities and experts assume that he exercises a fair amount of autonomy in overseeing his terrorist dominion in Saudi Arabia.

Al-Ahram (Egypt) weekly.ahram.org.eg 3 - 9 June 2004 Issue No. 693 Gilded cage with bearded guards Karim El-Gawhary, in Riyadh, gauges the mood in residences of Western foreigners after the attacks in Al-Khobar this week in which 22 people were killed It is gilded, and it is indeed a cage: the Al-Eid compound for foreign residents is located south of the capital Riyadh, close to the airport and near the Imam University, the very establishment in which the religious figures of the country receive their education. The Al-Eid compound looks like any other compound in Al-Khobar in eastern Saudi Arabia, which was stormed by a group of Islamic militants this week. The attackers went from house to house looking for "infidels" to take as hostages, shooting or cutting the throats of 22 people. The new entrance to Al-Eid -- meaning "feast" in Arabic -- is like the entrance to a fortress. Three police cars are positioned at the entrance and cars entering the compound can barely pass between them. A few metres behind sits a military Jeep under a sand-coloured camouflage net, machine gun at the ready. Several bored soldiers are standing in the street, sweating in the midday sun, observing visitors closely from the side of the road. Positioned directly behind the soldiers are massive concrete roadblocks, around which the cars have to slalom before entering the area. After the police have checked passports, only residents of the compound are permitted to proceed further. After a quick body search, visitors are allowed to enter the grounds on foot. The path along the concrete roadblocks is reminiscent of the US administration centre in Baghdad, except here it is not Paul Bremer in Iraq who is under protection, but the 1,000 Western foreigners living in 70 villas in Saudi Arabia. But there is a difference: the security personnel radio through a request for an electric cart -- like the ones used on golf courses -- to take visitors the final 100 metres to the actual entrance of the compound. This is the real border to the compound. Abayas, the black capes worn by Saudi women, are "not permitted" says one sign. Saudi Arabian citizens are not allowed in here at all; other Arabs are only allowed access as long as they dress according to Western fashion. The compound may be geographically located in Saudi Arabia but nothing within it should remind visitors or residents of the fact that we are, indeed, in one of the most conservative Islamic countries. And the heart of the gilded cage shines too. Each villa, for which residents pay tens of thousands of euros per month, is fronted by a manicured lawn. The centre of the compound sports a huge swimming pool and leisure centre with a spiral waterslide several storeys high. Al-Eid is a typical example of "foreigners hostel ˆ la Saudi Arabia" in which the majority of the Western foreign workers who chose to remain here -- less than 100,000 -- reside. This particular residence is not quite as luxurious as the compound in Al- Khobar where the attacks took place, which boasts an indoor skating rink where residents can go to cool off when ambient temperatures breach the 50 degrees Celsius mark. There is no evidence of panic around the Al-Eid pool, nor is there evidence of the exodus of foreign specialists as prophesied by some diplomats. Some families, it seems, will not return after the next school holiday that will be starting soon. Still though, a group of screaming children splash happily in the pool while bikini-clad mothers lie in the shade -- the nearest Saudi citizen is far away, safely behind the wall which separates the bikini culture from the abaya culture. Michel, a Belgian engineer and one of the few fathers at the poolside, is absorbed in the various English-language Arabian daily newspapers, drinking in every word on the attacks in Al-Khobar. He is reading about how the attackers went from house to house asking if Muslims or "infidels" were living there, and about how entire families of Western foreigners hid for hours inside wardrobes and managed to escape the 24-hour terror. Michel has three children and has no idea what he is going to do next. He has been living in Saudi Arabia for the past 16 years. The idea of packing his bags and leaving is, of course, in his mind. Particularly since the US Embassy has advised its citizens to leave the country. "I think I should wait and see what happens," he said. Which is exactly the way he was thinking after the last attacks in Yanbu three weeks ago in which five foreigners were murdered, or last week when a German was shot in the street in Riyadh: wait and see what happens. Al-Khobar is 400 kilometres from Riyadh. He laughs because he can't convince himself to make a decision. "Everything is going through my head," is how he describes his mood. He earns good money, tax-free, and has no idea where he could find a job with similar conditions in Europe. So he will wait and see what happens. Almost all foreigners are afraid to make statements. "Low profile -- show as little presence as possible," is their motto. Some refuse even to give their first names, like another tax-free engineer who has been living in Saudi Arabia for a long time. "The situation for foreigners has become more critical since the last Iraq war," he said. Everybody is afraid of looking like an American. He is not panicked, but is plagued by a "constant uneasy feeling". Hundreds of brainwashed youths have been organised into independent cells, ready to attack at any time in the name of Al-Qaeda. Bubbling under the surface is a widespread hatred of Western foreigners, stoked by daily horror stories from Iraq and the Palestinian territories. "A person beside you at the traffic lights is gesturing with his hands that he'd like to slit your throat," he described. He is not really afraid, but still takes precautions and takes a different route to work each day. And he no longer takes his family to the huge shopping centres, one of the few most popular leisure activities for foreigners in Riyadh. "If we go, then it's usually in the late afternoon when most Saudis are having their siesta," is how he described his strategy. When would he consider leaving the country? "If the rate of attacks increases. There were three last month," he replied. He is not under the impression that the situation will improve. The deteriorating situation in Iraq is fuelling the fire of hatred of Western foreigners in Saudi Arabia. And even if the situation in Iraq is concluded peacefully, the Saudi Arabian young people who went there to fight in the jihad will return looking for new battlefields for their holy war. Foreigners initially moved into compounds simply because life was more comfortable and secure there. "This was before they became targets for Islamic militants," says Michel. "Just after we moved in here, a Briton was shot right in front of our eyes," he says, shaking his head. Most residents are pleased about the gate security introduced last year. But not many trust the local security guards. The person sunning himself next to Michel sums it up: the soldiers at the gate have recently had two pay increases of 25 per cent each but, he says, "they still have their fundamentalist beards, like the Al-Khobar attackers". None of the sunbathers at the pool really believes any of the guards would "lay their heads on the line for any of us here if the situation arose".

BBC 6 June, 2004 Two BBC men shot in Saudi capital Gardner has been BBC security correspondent for the last two years BBC cameraman Simon Cumbers has been killed and correspondent Frank Gardner injured after gunmen opened fire near the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Cumbers, 36, was a freelance journalist and cameraman working for the BBC, the BBC said in a statement. Frank Gardner, 42, is the BBC's security correspondent and a leading expert on al-Qaeda, the statement said. Riyadh's police chief said the attack was carried out by "unknown elements" on Sunday afternoon. The BBC statement said the two men had travelled to Saudi Arabia last week following terrorist attacks in the city of Khobar and have been reporting from the country for BBC News since then. Cumbers had worked throughout the world filming major news stories It said that Gardner was being treated in hospital in Riyadh. BBC Director of News Richard Sambrook said that Gardner "suffered, I gather, a number of gunshot wounds". "Our thoughts are with the families of Simon and Frank tonight. We are in touch with them and offering them all the support that we can," Mr Sambrook said. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said the British ambassador in Saudi Arabia was at the hospital. The Saudi ambassador in Britain, Prince Turki al-Faisal, offered "the most sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families" of Cumbers and Gardner. We will not allow this incident or any other attack to deter us from our goal, the eradication of this wicked group whose aim is to destabilise our society Prince Turki al-Faisal Saudi ambassador to UK Send us your reaction "Frank Gardner is personally known to me and to many people in Saudi Arabia as a highly respected journalist," the Saudi ambassador added. "He has been vigorous in his pursuit of the truth behind the terrible evil of al-Qaeda which haunts us all and we wish him a speedy recover and safe return to his family in Britain." The attack comes a week after the hostage crisis in Khobar, in which 22 people were killed. The reports Gardner and Cumbers had already filed from Saudi Arabia spoke of a new climate of fear among expatriates there, the BBC's Paul Welsh reports. Sunday's tragedy highlights the reality of what the two men were trying to report - that al-Qaeda supporters are making Saudi Arabia increasingly dangerous for foreigners, our correspondent adds. Security fears The southern Riyadh neighbourhood where the gun attack took place, al-Suwaydi, has been the location for anti-terror raids in the past, news station al-Arabiya reported. Security sources said the gunmen had escaped and roadblocks had been set up in an effort to catch them, the Reuters news agency reported. The Foreign Office has advised against all but essential travel to Saudi, with officials believing terrorists are planning further attacks after the Khobar killings. Three of the gunmen responsible for the Khobar attack, thought to be linked with al-Qaeda, were able to escape the security cordon in Khobar. And there are thought to be a number of al-Qaeda linked cells operating in the country. Five suspected militants were killed within days of the Khobar attack and the Saudi government has vowed to stamp out terror, with the religious authorities calling on Muslims to inform on plotters. Commentators say Islamists may be targeting expatriates and the oil industry in order to weaken the ruling house's grip on power. The Khobar siege helped push world oil prices to record highs before producers pledged to hike output. It followed a string of other attacks in the kingdom, with two Britons among five Westerners shot dead in the port town of Yanbu on 1 May.

Guardian UK 6 June 2004 Militants give blow-by-blow account of Saudi massacre Leader tells how they killed, then ate, slept and prayed Jason Burke, chief reporter Sunday June 6, 2004 The Observer Islamic militants who killed 22 people in a shooting spree in Saudi Arabia a week ago have posted a 3,000-word account of the operation on the internet. The account gives astonishing details of the attack, describing how the killers hunted down their victims, then slept and prayed after decapitating Westerners. It also challenges the Saudi Arabian government's version of events, claiming that pictures of Saudi troops storming a building from the air were stage-managed. The attack, in the northern port city of Khobar, shook the Saudi regime and, by forcing up the price of oil, caused economic upset globally. The statement takes the form of an interview with Fawaz bin Mohammed al-Nashmi, the leader of the 'al-Quds [Jerusalem]' Brigade of the Arabian Peninsula, which carried out the attack. The first site targeted was the Khobar Petroleum Centre, which houses the offices of a number of international oil companies. The terrorists, wearing military-style clothing, arrived at the compound around 7am last Saturday. They shot their way in, killing at least one guard, then set about hunting down Westerners. Michael Hamilton, a 62-year-old British oil executive arriving for work, was one of the first to die. 'We saw the car of the British director and we liquidated him,' Nashmi says, before giving gory details of other executions. 'We were asking our brother Muslims, where are the Americans, and they showed us a building where companies have offices. We did find an American,' said Nashmi. 'I shot him in the head [which] exploded. Then we found a South African and we shot him too. In our search for unbelievers, we had to exchange fire with the security forces.' Throughout the account Nashmi claims assistance from other Muslims, but the survivors deny this. The militants then drove to another complex, where light security made getting in 'a walk in the park'. They combed offices, rounding up and interrogating people to establish their religion, even lecturing some on Islam. Nashmi describes how they murdered a group of Roman Catholic oil workers from the Philippines, 'for the sake of our brother Muslims [there]'. Several Filipino Muslim groups, some linked to al-Qaeda, have been fighting against the Christian-dominated government for decades. Such international concerns feature frequently in the account. Nashmi also describes 'finishing off' a group of Indian engineers. 'Thanks to God we cleaned our land from unbelievers,' he says. New Delhi is seen as having brutally repressed Muslims in Kashmir. Nashmi also claims that he killed an Italian, after forcing him to speak with al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arabic satellite TV channel, and demand the withdrawal of Rome's troops from Iraq. The militants then moved into the heavily fortified Oasis Resort, which comprises 200 villas, a hotel, restaurants and spas. There, Nashmi says, they 'went to the hotel, found a restaurant and had a good lunch and some rest'. Then, 'we went to the first floor and we found some unbelievers. We slaughtered them'. Nashmi denies taking hostages - Muslims were moved to the top floor of a building for their own safety, he says. He also denies killing a 10-year-old Egyptian boy, one of four Muslims who died, blaming the security forces. Witnesses say the boy died when the militants opened fire on a school bus. Nashmi also claims the dawn raid by Saudi special forces was a 'publicity stunt'. Pictures of the troops landing on the roof of a building where hostages were being held were broadcast around the world. But Nashmi says his group had left hours earlier. Saudi Arabia has been hit by a series of violent attacks recently. Last month another compound full of oil workers was raided and an American killed and dragged through the streets. It is clear the militants are focusing on the country's valuable and vulnerable oil infrastructure. The militants say the Khobar attack was orchestrated by Abdulaziz al-Muqrin, a well-known Saudi-born militant. In a separate statement, published alongside that of Nashmi, Muqrin praised the strike for raising the price of oil. '[The price of] oil reached $42 per barrel, the highest figure in history,' Muqrin says. 'This irks the malicious government that is committed to guaranteeing America's prosperity and the continuation of the oil flow.' Such claims echo Osama bin Laden's charges that the house of Saud, which has ruled Saudi Arabia for more than 70 years, allows the West to deprive the local population of the Arabian peninsula's resources. Some militant leaders are concerned that the accidental deaths of Muslims might turn locals against them. Mustafa Alani, a security expert at London's Royal United Services Institute, said this is already happening in Saudi Arabia. 'Most of the intelligence that has allowed the authorities to kill or capture 21 of the 26 most wanted militants in the kingdom has come from ordinary people,' he told The Observer . 'Once the radicals were heroes to local communities, but not any more.' Muqrin is the most wanted militant in Saudi Arabia. He is a veteran of the war in Bosnia and one of a hit squad that tried to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia in 1995. After two years in prison, he was extradited to Saudi Arabia. According to Mohsen al-Awajy, a moderate Islamist who has tried to mediate between militants and the Saudi regime, 'intolerable torture' at al-Ruweis prison in Jeddah turned Muqrin into 'an avenger [and] a killer'. 'He is shallow, very simple-minded. He has no political brain,' Awajy said. 'This man is like a wounded tiger. He has already decided to die but he wants to kill as many people as possible.' Amid unconfirmed reports of more violence in Jeddah yesterday, Saudi Arabia's top religious authority issued an edict urging citizens and residents to report suspected militants planning attacks. No one expects men like Nashmi to pay any attention. In his account he says the group was sure that the high security at the compounds would result in their deaths. 'We didn't want to survive the attack, but God decided that our time is not up yet,' he wrote. 'We promised God that we would be back for another battle until we die. Now the whole world knows that our goal is to clean our Muslim land.'

NYT 6 June 2004 ABC's of hatred By THOMAS FRIEDMAN - The New York Times - 06/06/04 Surely the most chilling aspect of the latest terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia against foreigners at the Khobar oil center, according to reports from the scene, was how the Saudi militants tried to kill or capture only the non-Muslims, and let Muslims and Arabs go. The Associated Press quoted a Lebanese woman, Orora Naoufal, who was taken hostage in her apartment, as saying that the gunmen released her when they learned of her nationality. They told her they were interested in harming only ‘‘infidels'' and Westerners. Now where would the terrorists have learned such intolerance and discrimination? Answer: in the Saudi public school system and religious curriculum. That is the only conclusion one can draw, not only from listening to what the terrorists said, but, more important, from listening to what some courageous Saudi liberals — and yes, there are many progressive Saudis who want their country to become more open and tolerant — are saying in their own press. The Saudi English-language daily, Arab News, recently published a series by the liberal Saudi writer Raid Qusti about the need to re-evaluate Saudi education. Qusti quotes the editor of Al Riyadh newspaper as saying the people carrying out this latest rash of attacks inside Saudi Arabia have the same ideology as the Saudi extremists who seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979. They had an ideology of accusing all others as being ‘‘infidels,'' thereby giving themselves a license to kill them. ‘‘If we as a nation decline to look at the root causes, as we have for the past two decades, it will only be a matter of time before another group of people with the same ideology springs up,'' noted Qusti. ‘‘Have we helped create these monsters? Our education system, which does not stress tolerance of other faiths — let alone tolerance of followers of other Islamic schools of thought — is one thing that needs to be re-evaluated from top to bottom. Saudi culture itself and the fact the majority of us do not accept other lifestyles and impose our own on other people is another. And the fact that from the fourth to the 12th grade we do not teach our children that there are other civilizations in the world and that we are part of the global community and only stress the Islamic empires over and over is also worth re-evaluating. And last but certainly not least, the religious climate in the country must change.'' (Middle East Media Research Institute translation.) Over the last year or so, Hamza Qablan al-Mozainy, an Arabic professor at King Saud University, published two articles in the Saudi daily Al Watan about ‘‘the culture of death in our schools'' and the role that Saudi teachers are playing in promoting discussions on how bodies are prepared for burial and how the kind of life a person has led — righteous or decadent — can be read from the condition of the person's dead body. This effort to use death to get young people to abstain from the attractions of life, he said, only ends up making some Saudi youth easy targets for extremists trying to recruit young people for ‘‘jihad'' operations. ‘‘Does the Education Ministry really know about the activityes taking place in its schools?'' al-Mozainy asked. As the saying goes, ‘‘Denial is not just a river in Egypt'' — and Saudi leaders have been in denial for too long. They need to wake up — and we need an energy policy that reduces our dependence on Saudi oil. I don't want the difference between a good day and bad day to be whether Saudi Arabia reforms its education system. A few years ago, Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed those of us who advocate energy conservation as dreamy do-gooders. Had he spent the last three years using his bully pulpit to push for conservation and alternative energies, rather than dismissing them, we'd be a lot less dependent today on foreign oil. Oh, that is so naive, says the oil crowd. Well, what would you call a Bush energy policy that keeps America dependent on a medieval monarchy with a king who has lost most of his faculties, where there is virtually no transparency about what's happening, where corruption is rampant, where we have asked all Americans to leave and where the education system is so narrow that its own people are now decrying it as a factory for extremism? Now that's what I'd call naive. I'd also call it reckless and dangerous.

BBC 8 June, 2004, American slain in Saudi capital Gunmen have shot dead an American man in the Saudi capital Riyadh - the second such attack this week. "We can confirm that an American has been killed in Riyadh," said a US embassy official quoted by the Associated Press news agency. The Arab TV news channel al-Arabiya said the shooting happened in al-Khalij district, in the east of the city. It came two days after gunmen attacked a BBC TV crew, killing a cameraman and seriously wounding a correspondent. Al-Arabiya's correspondent in Riyadh said the American was killed as he left a clinic. He worked for the US company Vinnell, a unit of Northrop Grumman Corp, a Vinnell spokesman told Reuters news agency. Vinnell is helping to train the Saudi National Guard - the monarchy's elite security force. Meanwhile, BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner remains critically ill in hospital after being shot by gunmen in the al-Suwaydi southern suburb of Riyadh on Sunday. Cameraman Simon Cumbers died at the scene. Saudi security forces are hunting the gunmen who struck as the BBC crew filmed the house of an al-Qaeda militant in al-Suwaydi, a known stronghold of militants. There has been a spate of increasingly brazen attacks on foreigners in Saudi Arabia, blamed on radical Islamists close to al-Qaeda. In late May gunmen opened fire on foreigners in the eastern city of Khobar, killing 22 people.

Timor Leste

AP 6 June 2004 Reagan responsible for massacres: Timor rights groups June 6, 2004 - 5:43PM Page Tools Email to a friend Printer format President Ronald Reagan's administration remains morally responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of East Timorese because it backed Indonesia's brutal occupation of their country, human rights groups asserted today. While tributes to Reagan - who died yesterday after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease - have flooded in from former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe and other US allies, in East Timor reactions to his passing have been tempered by his role in supporting Jakarta's occupation. "The world must not forget that under his leadership, America helped the Indonesian military commit genocide in East Timor," said Jose Luis Oliveira, who heads Yayasan HAK, the country's leading rights organisation. During Reagan's presidency, Washington maintained close ties with Indonesia's military dictator Suharto, whom the administration viewed as a bulwark against the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. In 1975, just hours after receiving the backing of then president Gerald Ford and secretary of state Henry Kissinger, Suharto ordered the invasion of the former Portuguese colony. Advertisement Advertisement The Timorese resisted and conducted a successful guerrilla war during which up to 200,000 people - a third of the population - died as a result of military operations, starvation and disease. The war lasted until 1998 when Suharto was ousted and the new government in Jakarta allowed a referendum which resulted in an overwhelming vote for independence the following year. In 2002, East Timor became the world's newest country. Despite pleas from human rights groups, Reagan - who visited Indonesia at the height of the bloodshed in 1986 - refused to ban the use of US-supplied arms in East Timor. "Reagan was a key supporter of the Indonesian military who gave them the equipment that was used to kill ... the people of East Timor," Oliveira said. The military relationship began to unravel after Bill Clinton assumed office. He initially restricted ties after Indonesian soldiers slaughtered hundreds of mourners in a cemetery in Dili, and cut them off in 1999 after the withdrawing army laid East Timor waste. Paul Wolfowitz, one of Reagan's main foreign policy advisers and his ambassador to Jakarta, was highly supportive of Suharto's hardline policies in East Timor. Wolfowitz, currently the Pentagon's deputy head and a key architect of the Iraq war, is now said to be spearheading efforts to re-establish military links with Jakarta. "With Reagan's passing, another witness to the crimes of America in East Timor has gone," said Mericio Akara, a researcher with the Dili-based rights group Lao Hamutuk. "The Indonesians killed tens of thousands in East Timor using American-made weapons," he said. "So the American government under Ronald Reagan should be considered morally responsible for their deaths."

Yemen

Yemen Times 14 June 2004 yementimes.com Monday June 14, 2004 - Issue: (746), Volume 13 , From 14 June 2004 to 16 June 2004 Yemen's most widely read English newspaper | yementimes.com - Another ugly mosque massacre -- Yemen Times Staff The recent attack in a mosque in A’ns district, Dhamar province resulted in great concern and worry throughout the country as it is the last in a series of deadly attacks in the last few years. In this latest incident, a gunman opened fire on worshippers in a mosque during Friday prayers, killing four people and injuring six. The shooter, identified as Abdel Fattah Saleh, was seen using an automatic rifle to fire randomly at the praying men in the mosque, causing chaos and outrage. According to Yemeni authorities, the attacker was then found dead in his house where he fled after refusing to turn himself in to authorities. Police had to storm the house of Saleh who is believed to have died along with his daughter in an exchange of gunfire. Investigations were under way, an official said. But he added that Saleh was not a wanted militant and that he has no record of violence or terrorist activities or plans. It is thought however, that financial or social disputes may have been the real factors that prompted the shooting. Neither the first, nor the last This incident comes after two people were killed and two were injured last month when a man detonated a hand grenade in a mosque in the southern province of Ibb. Another armed man in the same mosque was able to shoot and kill the attacker on the scene. The phenomenon has become widely noticable in various parts of the country, which is estimated to have some 60 million firearms - or three for each citizen - in the largely tribal and, in some remote areas, lawless country. Many complain that the security problems in Yemen may be largely attributed to the lack of law enforcement in many areas and due to the high number of firearms throughout the country. A new law to enforce an arm ban on all citizens would have been passed in the past if it were not for the strong opposition of tribal sheikhs and leaders who resisted the law fiercely. "

Europe

Bosnia

Reuters 1 June 2004 Bosnian Serbs pledge first war crimes arrests BANJA LUKA, Bosnia - The president of Bosnia's Serb Republic, under Western pressure over poor cooperation with the UN war crimes court, on Monday pledged to step up efforts to detain suspects. After meeting chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte of the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia -- who called the Serb Republic a "safe haven" for fugitives -- Dragan Cavic vowed first results within a month. "(We have) entered a serious phase of tracking and detaining war crimes suspects," he told a joint news conference with del Ponte, who was beginning a four-day visit to Bosnia. The Serb Republic has failed to apprehend a single person suspected of war crimes during the 1990s bloody breakup of Yugoslavia, including wartime leader Radovan Karadzic. Authorities have been under pressure this year to start capturing suspects and launched two unsuccessful police operations against Karadzic and another Serb fugitive. Bosnia is eager to shed the legacy of the 1992-5 war and integrate into Europe. It hopes to join Nato's Partnership for Peace programme for non-members next month, but Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has warned Bosnian Serb war crimes arrests must come first. A chorus of Western officials in Bosnia last week called for sanctions against the Serb Republic if it failed to make arrests. "I know there is distrust about whether our intentions are genuine but in less than a month we can convince the international community there is operational readiness in the Serb Republic for cooperation with the Hague Tribunal," Cavic said. Cavic is a senior member of the ruling Serb Democratic Party, founded by Karadzic before the Bosnian war. Del Ponte, who for years has accused Serb Republic leaders and institutions of sheltering fugitives, including Karadzic, said she hoped to see results "before the end of June". "Now I'm expecting results. Cooperation with the RS (Serb Republic) in the past year was so difficult, so difficult that we even identified the RS as a safe haven for fugitives," she said. Bosnian Serb wartime leader Karadzic and his military chief Ratko Mladic were both indicted for genocide for their role in the Bosnian conflict, for the 43-month siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of about 8000 Muslims. Karadzic is believed to be hiding in eastern Bosnia and Montenegro while Mladic has been reported in Serbia.

FENA 2 June 2004 www.fena.ba DEL PONTE VISITS POTOCARI MEMORIAL SREBRENICA, June 2 (FENA) - ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte said during the visit to the Potocari Memorial today that the main objective of her visit to pay her respects to people buried in Potocari. Talking to representatives of the “Srebrenica and Zepa Mothers” Association she called for patience because justice would come and those responsible arrested. “We in the Hague Tribunal know what happened in Srebrenica because we conducted a detailed investigation. We have so far achieved that in the trial of General Krsitc we proved that genocide against Bosniaks took place here. We are still look for collaborators in he genocide in Srebrenica and we hope that they will soon be arrested”, Del Ponte said. She added that great responsibility for the arrest of war criminals lies with RS and Serbia-Montenegro authorities. Del Ponte reminded that the ICTY has to complete all its trials by 2008, but that the Tribunal would not close its doors until Karadzic and Mladic are brought to justice. Asked if all war criminals would be arrested and it they would face trial before the ICTY, Del Ponte said that the task of the ICTY is to try only the most important indictees and that many cases would be transferred to the BiH Court, and that its would be monitored. Del Ponte requested the support of Srebrenica mother and said that their voice on what happened in Srebrenica should not be kept silent. “You are our motto”, Del Ponte said.

Reuters 4 June 2004 Bosnian Serbs reveal 31 new Srebrenica mass graves 04 Jun 2004 16:54:57 GMT By Maja Zuvela SARAJEVO, June 4 (Reuters) - The Bosnian Serb government, under international pressure to investigate war crimes, said on Friday it had found 31 new mass graves containing remains from the Srebrenica massacre of thousands of Muslims. It did not say how many victims were expected to be found at the sites, three of which could be so-called "primary" graves -- or places where the dead were buried originally as opposed to pits to which they were later moved for concealment. But Amor Masovic of the Bosnian Muslim-Croat federation commission for missing persons, told Reuters that according to some sources the graves could hold up to 2,500 bodies. A statement from the Bosnian Serb government said "information (from) the Bosnian Serb authorities and witnesses led to new details about the Srebrenica events and helped locate 31 mass graves unknown to the wider public so far". It said a commission investigating the 1995 Srebrenica atrocity, Europe's worst since World War Two, had visited the grave sites along with counterparts from the Muslim-Croat federation, postwar Bosnia's other autonomous half. The commission was set up last year to investigate the massacre in which Bosnian Serb forces overran the eastern town of Srebrenica killing up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys. Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic have both been twice indicted for genocide for their part in Srebrenica and for the siege of Sarajevo during Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Masovic also said that eight of the mass grave sites he visited were completely new to his commission, which would in the next two weeks start exhumation work on one of the sites to clarify the validity of the findings. "I hope this example will serve as a future model of our cooperation which has so far been based on passive monitoring and a scarce exchange of information," Masovic said. The Bosnian Serb authorities' previous failure to provide valid reports on Srebrenica led to the removal by top peace envoy Paddy Ashdown of two senior Bosnian Serb officials, including the army chief-of-staff. The Bosnian Serb commission is under instructions from Ashdown to produce a full report by June 11. Dozens of mass graves containing thousands of Srebrenica victims have been found so far based on the information of the U.N. war crimes tribunal or local witnesses. Most of the victims were exhumed from so-called "secondary graves", where bodies were transferred to hide the crime.

AP 12 June 2004 Bosnian Serbs admit massacre of Muslims By SAMIR KRILIC ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Bosnian Serb officials have admitted for the first time that their security forces carried out Europe's worst massacre since World War II, according to an investigative report. At the height of the 3 1/2-year Bosnian war, Serb troops overran a U.N.-declared safe zone in Srebrenica and slaughtered up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in what the U.N. war crimes tribunal has declared an act of genocide. The Srebrenica Commission, made up of Bosnian Serb judges and lawyers, was formed last year to investigate who was involved. A spokesman, quoting Friday from the commission's report, said they "established participation of (Bosnian Serb) military and police units" in the deaths. The Bosnian Serbs have long been blamed for the massacre. But until now, no Serb official has clearly acknowledged that Bosnian Serbs were the perpetrators. "In July 1995, several thousand Muslims were liquidated in a way that represents grave violations of international humanitarian law," Vedran Persic told The Associated Press. Persic is a spokesman for Paddy Ashdown, Bosnia's international administrator. U.N. and Muslim experts have found the remains of about 5,000 of the victims from mass graves across eastern Bosnia and find new remains every month. The fate of the others is still unknown. Nearly 1,200 Srebrenica victims have been identified through DNA analysis. The report said that the perpetrators "undertook measures to cover up the crime by moving the bodies" to other locations, Persic said. The 1992-1995 war - pitting Serbs opposed to Bosnia's independence from Yugoslavia against Muslims and Croats backing it - claimed about 250,000 lives and left around 20,000 missing and presumed dead. Former Bosnian Serb soldier Drazen Erdemovicin who confessed to playing a role in the Srebrenica massacre testified at former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes trial last year how his battalion alone killed up to 1,200 people. The victims had sought protection in the U.N. compound, but the vastly outnumbered and lightly armed Dutch U.N. peacekeepers were no match for the Serb forces. After Srebrenica fell, Serb forces rounded up an estimated 30,000 refugees who had sought safety at a U.N. base. As Dutch peacekeepers looked on, the women were deported to Muslim-held territory and the boys and men were taken on buses to execution sites and shot. "I was personally ordered to do it," said Erdemovic - who pleaded guilty to murder as part of a deal in 1996 and served a five-year sentence. "This could not have happened if it had not been allowed by the main staff" of the Bosnian Serb military command, he said. Prosecutors say the massacre was the result of Milosevic's alleged political aim of creating an ethnically pure Serbian state. Milosevic denies all wrongdoing. Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime leader, has been indicted by the war crimes tribunal for genocide in connection with the Srebrenica massacre, along with his wartime top general, Ratko Mladic. Both remain at large. For its part, the Dutch government, acknowledging its peacekeepers failed to protect the Muslim refugees, resigned in April 2002. The work of the Srebrenica Commission initially was obstructed by some of its members and authorities who refused to provide information. Only after Ashdown fired several Bosnian Serb officials and threatened others with dismissal was information made available. Under the 1995 peace accord that ended the war, Ashdown has the power to impose laws and to fire officials who fail to comply with the peace process. The same agreement also divided postwar Bosnia into two mini-states, a Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat federation. Persic said Ashdown welcomed the report, saying that "a dynamic of obstructionism on war crimes issues is being replaced by a dynamic of greater cooperation" on the part of Bosnia's Serbs.

Croatia

BBC 1 June 2004 Vukovar war crimes trial halted Vukovar was devastated by besieging Serb forces in 1991 One of Croatia's biggest war crimes trials was halted on its first day when one of 10 defendants due in court failed to show up. A total of 35 ex-paramilitaries were originally charged with brutal attacks on non-Serbs, but 10 have died and 15 are being tried in their absence. The alleged crimes took place near Vukovar in 1991 and 1992. The town was under siege for three months by Serb forces and experienced some of the worst fighting of the war. A separate trial of six Serbs over alleged atrocities in and around Vukovar began earlier this year in Belgrade. And three former Serb army officers are awaiting trial in The Hague for their role in an alleged massacre of at least 200 people. 'Reign of terror' Those on trial in Croatia itself, at Vukovar county court, are accused of conducting a reign of terror around the village of Miklusevci after it fell to Serb forces. They are charged with carrying out killings, torture and robbery of non-Serbs living in the village between October 1991 and May 1992. Eastern Croatia saw some of the most bitter fighting of the war as Croat forces fought for independence from the former Yugoslavia. Vukovar suffered severe damage at the hands of besieging Serb forces in the winter of 1991.

www.oneworld.net 5 May 2004 War Crimes Research Centre Opened in Vukovar Ivana Novakova The Croatian Prisoners of War Association opened the War Crimes Research Centre in the Vukovar borough Borovo Naselje. The Centre is the first institution of its kind in Croatia and will, according to the President of the Association, Danijel Rehak, collect evidence and documentation about the Serb-ran concentration camps, the victims and suffering to which the captive Croatian soldiers and civilians were subjected after the fall of Vukovar on November 18, 1991. Vukovar exodus The Vice-President of the Government Jadranka Kosor and the Speaker of the Sabor (Croatian Parliament) Vladimir Šeks opened the Centre at the ribbon cutting ceremony. Jadranka Kosor used the occasion to announce the support by the Government for the “Dr. Ivo Pilar” Social Sciences Institute’s initiative to open an office in Vukovar. According to the information of the Croatian Prisoners of War Association, about 8,000 Croatians and other non-Serbs passed through the Serb camps, 3,000 of whom died there. Exhumations in Vukovar Several years ago, the Association submitted criminal charges against several hundred persons that participated in the mistreatment and torture of prisoners in Serb concentration camps to the State Office of Prosecution. Since then, however, nothing has been done regarding those charges, said Rehak. Several persons that are currently tried in the Belgrade War Crimes Court for their role in the crime committed in Ovcara farm near Vukovar on November 20, 1991, also appear on the list provided by the Association. Rehak also announced that the Association will start criminal procedures in front of the Belgrade War Crimes Court, and will demand compensation for the prisoners from the Serbian Government. The Association already contacted a prominent legal office in Belgrade in that regard.

France

AFP 5 June 2004 Remembering D-Day CAEN, World leaders, veterans and tourists were preparing today to pay homage to the tens of thousands of Allied troops who took part in the D-Day landings 60 years ago, liberating France and speeding the defeat of Nazi Germany. On June 6, 1944, more than 135,000 Allied forces and 20,000 vehicles poured from boats onto the beaches of northwestern France to invade Nazi-occupied France in the biggest seaborne invasion of all time. Operation Overlord, as it was dubbed, had been years in the planning and was meticulous and imaginative in its scope and detail. It marked the long-awaited opening of a second front in Europe to relieve pressure on the hard-pressed Russians and build on Allied successes in North Africa and the Middle East fighting the forces of Adolf Hitler. After three airborne divisions parachuted overnight behind German lines, at daybreak an armada of 4,300 ships bombarded the coast and unleashed the landing-craft against the beaches dubbed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. Except at Omaha beach — where the Americans suffered heavy casualties felled by heavy German artillery — the landings were an unqualified success, leading to the fall of Normandy in July and then the Allied sweep through northern France into Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Tomorrow, a series of national and international services of remembrance will be held at cemeteries, memorials and battle sites along the 100km stretch of coast in northwestern France. Villages along the windswept coastline have been proudly preparing for the event, with French, British, Canadian and American flags fluttering from almost every house for the ceremonies set to mark the last major gathering of D-Day veterans. Some towns proudly erected the sign in English "Welcome to our Liberators", while flowers decorated the streets of Norman towns, many of which were largely destroyed in the onslaught. French President Jacques Chirac will be joined by some 20 heads of state or government including US President George W. Bush, under fire in many European countries for the US policy in Iraq. However the tone of the ceremonies will be one of reconciliation. "Thank you to those who liberated France and Europe," said French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin on a visit to the city of Poitiers yesterday. Bush, whose US-led invasion of Iraq last year created a deep rift with France, is also using the commemorations to rebuild transatlantic bridges. And for the first time D-Day commemorations will be attended by a German leader — a sign that after 60 years the wounds of Nazi conquest have definitively healed. But while many French residents in Normandy appear to welcome the presence of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, some British veterans have voiced opposition to his inclusion in the ceremonies. Yesterday, Schroeder expressed his shame at the unsanctioned massacre of over 600 civilians in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, when on June 10, 1944 German SS troops stormed the hamlet, killing 642 people, including 207 children.

Deutsche Welle, Germany 6 June 2004 www.dw-world.de/english In Pomp-Filled Ceremonies, Europe Remembers D-Day French President Jacques Chirac, right, and U.S. President George W. Bush at the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-mer George W. Bush, Jacques Chirac and other European leaders gather to commemorate D-Day. And Chancellor Gerhard Schröder becomes the first German leader to attend the ceremonies, marking the turning point of WWII. United States President George W. Bush and French President Jacques Chirac joined hundreds of veterans in Normandy on Sunday to remember the tens of thousands of Allied soldiers who perished during the D-Day landings 60 years ago, which marked the start of the American and British push towards Berlin. "France will never forget," Chirac told the crowd at the American military cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, "that 6th of June, 1944, the day hope was reborn. It will never forget the men who made the supreme sacrifice to liberate our soil, our native land, our continent, from the yoke of Nazi barbarity and its murderous folly." He added that America was an "everlasting friend," and that France would never forget its debt to the country, which helped bring Europe together in peace, freedom and democracy. U.S. President Bush also honored the Allied veterans in his speech and said that "America would do this again for its friends." Bush also recalled the fact that former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who died in California on Saturday, took part in D-Day memorial celebrations in 20 years ago in 1984. He eulogized Reagan as a leader in the fight for freedom. The French-American commemoration in Normandy is the first ceremony to take place in the D-Day 60th anniversary services. Countless veterans from both sides of the conflict -- the Allies on one side and Germany on the other -- gathered at the sun-soaked cemetery. Colleville is located at Omaha Beach, where more than 3,000 American soldiers fell on a single day of fighting on June 6. 1944. In Colleville alone, a total of 9,386 white crosses dot the lawn-covered cemetery, demarking the burial grounds of U.S. soldiers who died in battle here. A first for Schröder More than 24 world leaders are expected to join the main D-Day celebration Sunday afternoon at Arromanches, a city on the English Channel located roughly at the mid-point among the major code-named beaches where the day's biggest battles occurred. Among them will be German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, marking the first time a German, the former enemy, has taken part in a D-Day memorial ceremony. The chancellor plans to lay two wreathes at the military cemetery in the city of Ranville -- one for the Allies and one for the German soldiers who lost their lives. Soldiers from eight countries are buried at the cemetery, including 322 from Germany. At a Franco-German celebration later in the evening, Schröder and Chirac are both expected to give speeches. Schröder's historic visit represents the high point of two-generations of reconciliation between Germany and the Allies. Speaking to Germany's mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag newspaper, Schröder said: "The victory of the Allies was not a victory over Germany, but a victory for Germany." Schröder said his invitation from Chirac to attend the commemorative ceremonies suggested the "postwar era is undeniably over." Only 10 years ago, the Allies refused to invite Schröder's predecessor, Helmut Kohl, a political leader who helped bring about the end of the Cold War, to the 50th anniversary memorial services. The focus of the ceremony has changed, too. "I think the focus has to be on joint-remembrance -- including joint remembrance of the dead," he told German public broadcaster ARD on Friday. Venues stir controversy in Germany Nonetheless, Schröder's choice of venues drew criticism from some quarters in Germany. Peter Ramsauer, a member of German parliament with the conservative Christian Social Union party, said the fact that Schröder did not plan to visit the military cemetery at La Cambe, where 21,000 German soldiers are buried, was a "insult" to the mens' widows. La Cambe remains a sensitive issue in both Germany and France because it is also the site where 5,000 SS soldiers and high officers are buried. Many of them participated in one of the darkest chapters of the war in France: the unexplained decimation of hundreds of French men, women and children in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer sharply criticized the salvos from the opposition, describing them as "unspeakable attacks on the chancellor" that were intended to "invalidate the historic gesture of the French president and people" to invite the German leader. He added that Schröder would honor the German dead, but "not those who were guilty of the worst crimes," like those responsible for the grizzly Oradour-sur-Glane massacre. Prince Charles attends opening ceremonies The offical D-Day festivities began on Saturday, with 300 British soldiers parachuting near Ranville and Caen, where Brit paratroopers took part in a spectacular landing action on D-Day and subsequently seized a strategic bridge. Using both modern and historic warships, a number of British veterans on Saturday set sail from the city of Portsmouth toward Normandy. Meanwhile, in a pomp-filled ceremony in Paris, French Defense Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie and Foreign Ministry chief Michel Barnier awarded Frances highest medal, the Order of the French Legion of Honor, to 105 D-Day veterans. D-Day is remembered as one of the most important events in modern European history. It's known here as a milestone in the liberation of Europe during World War II from Nazi control. On the day, more than 155,000 Allied soldiers landed on five beaches in Frances, marking their entry into continental Europe. Eleven months later, Hitler and Nazi Germany capitulated.

UPI 9 June 2004 Memories of WW II Massacre in Tulles Tulle, France, Jun. 9 (UPI) -- The city of Tulle in south-central France Wednesday commemorated the 60th anniversary of a World War II massacre when 99 people were hanged by the Nazis. Four days after D-day, on June 9, 1944, the German 2nd SS Das Reich division, on its way to Normandy, rounded up citizens of the French town in retaliation against local resistance groups who had attacked German troops. Ninety-nine men were hung from balconies and lampposts, while others were deported to Germany, never to return. French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin offered messages of peace to the families of victims and residents reported Radio France International. "We want to keep alive the memory of these 99 men executed without reason one afternoon in June. We want to keep alive the memory of the 149 inhabitants of Tulle sent to Dachau, of which 101 disappeared," said François Holland, mayor of Tulle. On June 6, Holland, who is also the first secretary of the French Socialist Party, sent an "indirect invitation" to the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to attend the memorial in Tulle. Those who remember the massacre were divided on whether or not to make peace with the Germans. "I want to be able to reconcile," said Bengasi Mei, 93, who was deported. "But those who assisted in this massacre can not be pardoned."

NYT 11 June 2004 Wounds of a Nazi massacre start to heal in France Craig S. Smith NYT Friday, June 11, 2004 ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE, France Sixty years ago, just days after Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, a German convoy rolled into this sleepy town in south-central France, rounded up its residents and gunned them to the ground before setting the buildings and the piles of still writhing bodies on fire. Six hundred and forty-two people died. Six survived. It was the worst Nazi atrocity in France. The massacre became a symbol not only of German brutality toward France but of betrayal by collaborators, in particular those from Alsace, the long-contested region between the two countries. It was not until Thursday that representatives from the region, including the mayor of Strasbourg and 50 schoolchildren, finally attended a ceremony marking the massacre. The incident, and the experience of occupation in general, continues to shape France profoundly. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin presided over the ceremony on Thursday, declaring that Oradour "is the justification for the politics of memory, resolute and innovative, that we follow." Robert Hébras and Marcel Darthout, the only two remaining massacre survivors, stood in the shade of a tree on the edge of the square where the townspeople were assembled and recounted to Raffarin how the Germans had separated the men from the women and children. The women were taken to the church, where they were later raked with gunfire before the church was set on fire. Only one survived. The men were taken in groups to barns and garages and held at gunpoint. "Until the last moment, we didn't believe that they were going to shoot," Darthout told Raffarin. When the shooting began, he said, "it was hell." Hébras and Darthout were among the first to fall in the fusillade and were quickly buried beneath the bodies of their dying neighbors. Darthout felt the man on top of him die after a soldier clambering over the pile shot him in the head. He and Hébras escaped with three other men when the barn was set on fire. They have said that many men were alive when the fire engulfed them. Raffarin held both men by their forearms and thanked them "for keeping the memory alive." After the war, the state bought the ruins, rearranged some of the rusting artifacts - burnt-out sedans, sewing machines and bullet-riddled baby carriages - and turned the town into an eerie memorial, marked by stark signs reading "Silence" or "Remember," or telling how many people died at one place or another. The sharp edges of the horror have softened with time. A reporter who visited 25 years ago returned to see the same rusting meat hooks in the butcher shop, the same rusting bread pans in the bakery, the same rusting automobiles in the garages - but their link to the events seemed weaker. A sleek new visitors' center and a crisp asphalt expanse for tour buses have given the town the air of a national monument to a remote, unreachable past. Gone is the sense of discovering, almost by accident, the exposed bones of a town whose life was cut short one midafternoon. But if recollections fade, reconciliation still comes slowly. The Germans were carrying out reprisals for "terrorist" attacks after the Normandy invasion and the Allies' exhortation to the French Resistance to rise up. Among the soldiers who carried out the killing were 14 Alsatians who had been French citizens before the war. All but one were conscripts, although witnesses to the massacre said none showed any reluctance to carry out their chilling orders. The 14 were finally convicted for their roles at a trial in 1953, but the verdicts created such an uproar in Alsace that the French government, fearing a separatist backlash, granted them amnesty the next day. Oradour was outraged. The mayor sent back the Legion of Honor award the government had bestowed on the town and the remaining townspeople, and, ignoring the state-built memorial, used private funds to erect a monument to hold the bones and ashes of the victims. National officials were not invited again to the annual commemoration for nearly 20 years. Gradually, the town and state reconciled. But the rift with Alsace was much deeper. "Today, we have evidence that it's officially finished, that everyone is reconciled," said Gilles de Lacaussade, counselor for memory at France's Ministry of Defense. Reconciliation has been in the air. The German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, has been talking about Oradour. He told French television last week that the town had fallen victim to "the immoral and inhuman Waffen-SS," Hitler's elite shock troops. "I feel ashamed that it could have happened," he said.

AFP 11 June 2004 France Ratifies Rwanda Accord Agence France-Presse June 11,2004 PARIS, June 11 (AFP) - France has become the first European country to ratify an accord with the UN tribunal trying the main perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, under which those convicted by the court may serve their sentences in a third country. The accord was signed in March 2003 by the French government and ratified by parliament at the end of May, the Journal Officiel, the official published report of debates in parliament, said on June 8. Three African countries -- Benin, Mali and Swaziland -- have already ratified the accord, which has also been signed, but not enacted, by Italy and Sweden. Six people, including former Rwandan prime minister Jean Kambanda, who were sentenced to life in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), were transferred to a prison in Mali in 2001 to serve their sentences. Under ICTR rules, those convicted by the court may serve their sentences in Rwanda or a third country designated by the head of the court which has ratified the accord.

AFP 12 June 2004 WWII Jewish children's camp mural vandalized RIVESALTES, France, June 12 (AFP) - A mural painted by Jewish children at a World War II concentration camp near Perpignan, southern France, has been vandalized, the Independant newspaper reported Saturday. Police at Rivesaltes said no complaint had been filed after the so-called Fresco of Jewish Children was found to have been damaged, apparently with a chisel-like object, but that the incident was being investigated. A historian discovered the desecration Friday when he visited the site where 4,500 Jews and gypsies were held, later reporting it to the paper. It said the perpetrators had not left a message. In 1942, a Swiss nurse at the camp, Friedel Reiter, had asked the interned children there to paint a typical Swiss landscape on one of the walls of the infirmary. Local officials were to pay homage to the children during a ceremony Saturday afternoon.

Independent UK 15 June 2004 War-time painting by Jewish children desecrated By JOHN LICHFIELD PARIS - French politicians have reacted with outrage to the desecration of a frieze painted in 1942 by Jewish children waiting to be sent to Nazi concentration camps. The attack on the frieze, inside a hut in a former transit camp, is the latest of a series of anti-semitic acts in France, most of which have been carried out by young Arabs sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. On this occasion, the work of the vandals bears the hallmarks of the neo-Nazi ultra-right. Although neglected for many years, and once covered with whitewash, the frieze, depicting happy countryside scenes, animals and smiling people, was to become the focal point of a Holocaust museum at the Rivesaltes transit camp, near Perpignan, in south-west France. The attack was discovered by a historian who visited the camp on Saturday. A protective grill had been dismantled and the scenes painted along 5m of a wall inside a hut by 110 Jewish children in 1942 had been attacked with hammers and chisels. Most of the child artists died in Nazi death camps. "This was a premeditated act," said Thierry Lataste, the senior national government administrator in the Pyrenees Orientales department. The Interior Minister, Dominique de Villepin, called for intensive police efforts to find the culprits. He said that he had learned "with consternation and indignation" about an attack on a site which "bears witness to one of the most painful periods in our history". He promised that the state would pay for the frieze to be restored. The Jewish youth movement in France, Hachomer Hatzair, said the desecration of the frieze was an "act of intolerable cowardice" which reflected the "refusal of many French people to accept their country's complicity in the deportation of Jews during the Second World War". By coincidence, France's highest appeal court, the Cour de Cassation, rejected at the weekend a final attempt by the war criminal, Maurice Papon, 93, to appeal against his conviction for complicity in "crimes against humanity". Papon was found guilty in 1998 of organising the round-up of Jews in the Bordeaux area in 1942 to 1943 - the same period that the frieze was painted at Rivesaltes. The painting was only rediscovered in 1999. For several decades after the war, the Rivesaltes camp was allowed to fall into ruin. The frieze, on the wall of a former Swiss welfare centre at the camp, had been painted at the suggestion of a Swiss nurse, Friedel Reiter, to amuse the children during the long hours of waiting in the camp. Its neglect after the war reflects the long period in which France preferred to ignore the responsibility of the collaborationist Vichy regime for the arrest of French and foreign Jews in France.

Germany

International Herald Tribune, France 31 May 2004 www.iht.com John Vinocur: Just whose liberation was begun on June 6? John Vinocur IHT Monday, May 31, 2004 PARIS When Germany joins the Allies on the beaches of Normandy this week, it will mark not only a new phase in the country's reconciliation with the West, but also its growing political and historical desire to meld D-Day with the idea of German liberation from Hitler as the final act of World War II. The use of the word "liberation" is more than an incidental question of euphemisitic diction because it goes to present-day Germans' view of their own reality. As much as Germany's presence for the first time alongside the Allies in a D-Day commemoration on Sunday reflects the country's democratic rebirth, its gradual institutionalization of the word "liberation" may be less comfortable. Specifically, there is basic evidence that it is historically inaccurate. And there are good arguments that the idea of Germany's liberation, left without qualifications, caveats, and counter- arguments, fuzzes over both its defeat, and the distinction between victims and oppressors. Perhaps inadvertently, it creates in some eyes a measure of moral equivalency that blurs one of history's most devastating and important verdicts. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who has expressed his gratitude for being able to take part in the ceremonies, said in an interview with The New York Times that the occasion was "important" to him "so as to make clear the meaning of D-Day, namely the liberation from National Socialism, which was not only the liberation of Europe, but also the liberation of Germany, or the beginning of the liberation." More than details are at issue. If the idea of Germany's liberation, or its start, is superimposed on the period from June 6, 1944, to the Nazi capitulation, then it involves 11 months when German armies fought the Allies with what military historians have described as extraordinary fury, when American, British and Soviet forces suffered scores of thousands of casualties, when no trace of a broad German uprising against Hitler occurred, and when hundreds of thousands of Jews all over Europe continued to be sent to their deaths in Nazi extermination camps - a last convoy leaving Paris on Aug. 17, eight days before the city's occupiers were defeated. For people who are uncomfortable with the word, liberation's use in Germany is not low revisionism, but seemingly a desire to fit the country's gradual postwar democratization into an easy-to-swallow concept that began in Normandy. Clearly, this is not a movement consciously aimed at minimalizing Nazi crimes as the mark of ultimate bestiality. But it does involve an inroad into history, in which a modern generation seems to be finding comfort in a positive word - "liberation" - that effectively raises the status of the great mass of Germans in 1944 and '45 to that of the few German Social Democrats, resistance fighters and gays actually freed from concentration camps like Dachau near Munich. On a historical scale that includes genocide, talk of Germany's liberation mandates caution. Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt reached for it a few weeks ago. "Eisenhower would never have thought of it as a liberation," he said. Very clear and precise at 85, Schmidt sat in his office in Hamburg and recalled how he, as a 27-year-old anti-aircraft lieutenant back then, certainly did not feel liberated. Among Germans, it was those in jails and concentration camps who did. Nonetheless, he argued, "Today, though, I think it's legitimate to call it a liberation. Over time, that's the thing - it has worked out that way." In some respects, the word has become a catch-all in Germany. ZDF, one of the main German state television channels, currently running a five-part series on the war's bloody denouement, chose to call it "Die Befreiung," or "The Liberation." That led to one faint reminder in a newspaper review that "the liberation of the Germans was not the aim of the Allies' war effort." Quite fairly, the series doesn't run away from its title's contradictions. When it interviews an old Wehrmacht trooper and asks him how it was to be part of the occupation forces in Paris, he replies "fabulous," and when it asks for the recollection of a German-born Jew about fighting with the French resistance to liberate Paris, he answers that it's exactly what the German people didn't do against Hitler - participate in an uprising to free themselves. For Pierre Lellouche, a Gaullist member of the National Assembly, who has privately organized a series of public events and seminars in Paris, called Semaine de la Liberté, to celebrate D-Day's 60th anniversary, a problem cropped up here. As much as a French invitation to Schröder in the context of 2004 was normal, Lellouche said, a tacit legitimization of the idea of Germany's liberation was not. Lellouche considered it did not fit the facts. Unmistakably, it was not what the Americans and British had in mind coming ashore against German fire on D-Day. "The Allies did not consider the Luxembourgers" -Luxembourg was annexed by Hitler during the war - "a part of the Third Reich or even Germans in the sense that the Germans had been formally declared 'an enemy people,'" wrote George Bailey, an American intelligence officer at the time. "The Luxembourgers were officially regarded as 'liberated' along with the French, Belgians and the Dutch." Eventually, nonfraternization orders for the Allied occupation forces were rescinded and de-Nazification was turned over to the Germans themselves. Still, it took 10 years from the time of the Nazi surrender for the new Federal Republic of Germany to operate with full sovereignty. Until now Germany's notions of its liberation didn't have much of an international echo, although the issue has bounced around since the late 1970s. Schematically, before reunification, the left liked talking of liberation because it went with its sense of victimization and the moral high ground it sought, while elements of the right, through their own political prism, achieved the same victimized, nationalistic yield by referring to Germany's defeat. Seen in the abstract, the factions' tactics and strategic goals appeared identical: Germany's lumping itself in with the world's victims in order to rejoin the world's just. In Schröder's case, he was part of the hard-left group that fought the deployment of U.S. cruise and Pershing missiles in West Germany (to counter the already existing Soviet SS-20s) through the early 1980s. The movement's pet theorist, Peter Bender, pushed the idea that if West Germany rejected the missiles and found liberation from the necklock of the delegitimatized American "occupiers," then the Soviet Union would surely let democracy come to Russia's door. Germany's liberation? For Professor Michael Geyer of the University of Chicago, a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, the careful handling of the word in the German context was well advised. "It's an insinuation," he said. "Speaking of liberation insinuates a kind of ease with and a kind of equality among everyone in this very concrete and unequal historical moment. I'm for history. And history is about the right names." John Vinocur can be reached at pagetwo@iht.com

www.telegraph.co.uk A stranger in the east (Filed: 07/06/2004) Anna Funder's acclaimed investigation of the GDR's secret police was greeted with hostility when it was published in Germany this spring. The Australian author recalls her gruelling book tour Book publicists are not meant to scare you senseless. Just before I left Sydney in March for a two-week, 10-stop tour of Germany to launch my book Stasiland, the Hamburg publicist e-mailed me, warning, "Wear a flak jacket. The booksellers, especially in the former East Germany, are livid." Stasiland is about people who resisted the East German dictatorship, and others who worked for its secret police, the Stasi. It is a close-up look at the underbelly of the second German dictatorship of the 20th century - what life was like for four ordinary (but also extraordinary) people who came into the radar of "the most perfected surveillance state of all time". The Stasi was the massive internal army by which the Socialist Unity Party (SED) kept control of the German Democratic Republic. With a vast network of informers, it spied on and imprisoned anyone it chose. It broke into flats and stole people's underwear, bottling it as "smell samples" for identification purposes; it irradiated objects and people so as to be able to track them with Geiger counters, and it had plans, well into the 1980s, for the invasion of West Berlin. My book has been published in Australia, Britain, America and several other countries but, at first, no German publisher would touch it. The closest I got to an explanation was in a rejection from a large, former East German house: "This is the best book by a foreigner on this issue. But, unfortunately, in the current political climate, we cannot see our way to publishing it." I had no idea what this meant. But now a smallish, independent publisher had bought the rights and I was on my way to Germany to find out. Stasiland was launched at the Leipzig Book Fair in the massive former secret policemen's ballroom of the Runde Ecke building. From the stage, there was about an acre of parquetry between me and the back of the room. The people sitting on their chairs looked small and somehow at risk under the gigantic yellowing light-fittings suspended from the ceiling. That is, apart from the men wearing the usual ex-Stasi mufti of vinyl bomber jackets and Brylcreem who sat in a row, cross-armed and stony. This building is now a museum of the Stasi regime. Despite my nerves, I was pleased to be launching the book in the city where the 1989 revolution started, and in the building where the book was conceived. My publisher, Dr Groenewold, is a West German woman in her sixties. She was very nervous about her introductory speech, by which she intended to bridge a gap between East and West Germans by talking about what they have in common. It was called, simply Verrat or "Betrayal". She spoke about the betrayal by the Nazi Germans of their Jewish and other fellow citizens, and of the society founded on betrayal of others that followed in East Germany. And she spoke of the betrayal that happens after a regime is over, in that the German people have always tried to forget their victims, and are still doing so now. It was the Nuremberg Trials, and through them the outside world, that forced West Germans to remember the Nazi past. There is no such pressure on East Germans - will the terrible misdeeds of this latest German dictatorship make no mark on the national consciousness? When she finished, the room was silent. I then read from different parts of my book. Afterwards, the silence continued. Eventually a thin woman stood up at the back of the room. She cleared her throat, and shouted, "Who gave you the right to write about us?" Some East Germans insist that only those who lived through the regime can legitimately write about it; even West Germans should refrain from examining or judging the East. But I am neither West nor East German so, when addressed to me, the question expresses a desire somehow to keep the publicity about the shameful or horrific intricacies of the regime to a minimum. One East German journalist asked me at the end of a difficult interview, "But what will they think of us abroad now?" Yet most of all, to question someone's right to speak out or write about something is a legacy of totalitarianism: there is still a sense that only certain people should be allowed to write about and publish certain things. In reply, I pointed out that the book consists, largely, of the stories of people who lived in the GDR. I said that, where I come from, writers can write about almost anything they choose. Then I asked, "From what authority should I have sought permission?" Other questions came, which were repeated at my readings throughout the former East. Why hadn't I just written about "normal life" in the GDR? Why did I search out such extreme stories for my book? I would say that I didn't make up the Stasi and their extreme methods. I also didn't have to look very far at all to find stories of resistance and its terrible consequences. And I didn't find the world that the East German state created in any way "normal". In both East and West Germany, I was asked, in tones varying from the pugilistic to the genuinely curious, "What would you have done had you lived in the GDR?" I said I doubted I would have had the courage of those in the book, but that made them seem even braver to me. It was this question that made me realise, finally, one of the fundamental causes of denial. When they read my book, people in the East are not proud of the courage of their compatriots in it. Instead, they reproach themselves for having done nothing, or perhaps, in some cases, for having collaborated. They would rather not be reminded that other people were braver than they were. And, in order not to be so reminded, there is a huge force in collective consciousness to pretend that the Stasi regime was "not all that bad", or that it was "not everywhere, as people say now". (It was.) The opposite reaction came from those who had been against the regime. In Dresden, after a couple of men who looked as if they were ex-Stasi had left the room, a woman said, "Thank you for this book. I was in prison here, and no one will talk about this past. Which was my life. We need this." This happened again and again: someone would rise, expressing relief that their side of history was being represented. The West German publicist called these occasions "therapy sessions", as if it were not appropriate. But perhaps it is necessary. The pressure to forget, to take the sting out of history, can be felt in the West as well as the East. Westerners ask, "But who knows what you or I would have done had we lived there? We too might have collaborated, so we shouldn't judge those who did." This is moral abnegation disguised as some sort of relativistic tolerance. Whether I was in the East or the West, I was always asked the terrible question, "What is it about us Germans, do you think, that makes us do these things?" By "these things" it was clear that the questioner meant instigate, implement and obey the dictatorships of the Nazi period and then of the Socialist Unity Party in the GDR. I felt I was expected to list, as Germans themselves frequently do, the "German characteristics" of diligence, punctuality, attention to detail, desire to belong to groups of all kinds, and obedience to authority. The willingness of a people to let themselves be defined by an outside authority - in this circumstance, however unlikely, a writer on a podium, but usually a government - is a very dangerous thing. People who look for a cohesive identity to be given to them from above can be easily led. The current wave of Ostalgie, or nostalgia for the East, is a nostalgia for the certainties of the former East Germany. Young people wear parts of the East German army uniform, or the Freie Deutsche Jugend blouse (the equivalent organisation of the Hitler Youth). It is as if, 15 years after the fall of the Wall, people don't feel that they belong in this new, united Germany, and they want to remember a nation that was their own. When asked my views on this, I wondered aloud whether (had it not been illegal) people would have walked about 15 years after the end of the Second World War with the swastika on their clothes, or in Wehrmacht or SS uniforms? At this, there was an audible in-drawing of breath: it is taboo in Germany to compare anything, any regime or genocide, to the Nazi regime and the Holocaust. I would never seek to diminish those horrors. But the ways the Nazis maintained control of the population were extended and perfected under the East German regime, which adopted many of the organisational structures of its predecessor. When I was in Berlin researching Stasiland in the 1990s, I was warned that no ex-Stasi would speak to me. So I took a shortcut, advertising in the personal columns of the Potsdam paper Märkische Allgemeine. The phone rang hot, and I managed in my book to tell stories from inside "the Firm" - the very human tales of men of varying degrees of self-importance, self-justification and creepiness. I had no trouble at all finding stories, truly remarkable ones, of conscience and resistance among ordinary people. On my book tour of Germany, I had arranged to meet up with "Miriam Weber", the main character of my book. Miriam had tried to scale the Berlin Wall on New Year's Eve 1968 to escape her forthcoming trial for treason. She was 16 years old. Later in life, she had the macabre experience of watching the Stasi orchestrate the funeral of her young husband, Charlie, who had died in mysterious circumstances in their custody. The last time I saw her, in 2000, she was still in a state of waiting: waiting for him to be exhumed as part of the investigation into his death. And she was desperately hoping for news of how he died to be discovered by the "puzzle women", who sit in Nuremberg slowly piecing together files the Stasi hand-ripped in the last days of the regime. Miriam didn't come to the reading - she probably dislikes being in this building, I thought, or she wanted to avoid a possible encounter with former Stasi men. When I visited her the next day, she told me of the former Stasi men and informers now high up in the public media organisation where she works. Miriam said she recognises people in the unemployment office as former officials of the East German Ministry of the Interior, still using the same harsh tone towards the public. Just as after the Nazi time, she says, the high value placed on administrative efficiency, on "knowing how it's done", means the administrators of the old regime are firmly ensconced in the new. When I asked her why people don't want to remember East German resisters, Miriam drew a parallel. She said there is virtually no acknowledgment of those who helped the Jews during the Nazi regime, because to celebrate their courage would be to give the lie to the myth (the Lebenslüge) that no one knew what was happening to the Jews. The former Stasi men, with their educations and reliable work histories, have, for the most part, fared far better in the new Germany than the people they persecuted. Yet people like Miriam who resist the pressure to inform and betray, and who call injustices as they see them, are the bulwark against dictatorship. As Miriam said, "If the resisters are not properly remembered, the lesson of history looks to be: conformity and collaboration pay, in both the short and the long term." .

www.haaretz.com IL 17 June 2004 Increased German 'suffering' By Gilad Margalit Today, on the 51st anniversary of the revolt against the Communist regime in East Germany, the plenum of the Bundestag in Berlin will discuss a bill proposed by the CSU-CDU faction - the joint faction of the Christian Democratic and Christian Socialist ultra-conservative opposition (in coordination) - that seeks to unify the commemoration of victims of the two German dictatorships: the Nazi and the Communist regimes. Although at the start the bill states that the murder of millions of Jews by the Nazi regime is a unique crime, immediately afterward it says that both dictatorships were characterized by violent regimes that expressed themselves through systematic persecution and oppression of entire population groups. This bill is a milestone in the long battle being waged by conservative circles in Germany, whose aim is to formulate a national memory of the Nazi period that is freed from the accusatory point of view of the Jewish victim and of the victors in the war - those who ostensibly took over Germany's memory. Although this is not Holocaust denial, there is no doubt that equating the Holocaust with the persecutions carried out by the Communists in East Germany dwarfs its uniqueness and its horrors. This trend already became apparent in November 1993, during the term of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, when the Neue Wache war memorial in the center of Berlin was turned into the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany to commemorate "the victims of the dictatorship and the war." The site commemorates Germans who fell during the world wars, victims of Nazism - Jews and others - and victims of the Communist dictatorship. The proposed law carries this trend even further, by including in the commemoration two subjects that are not directly related to the victims of the German dictatorships, but to their history and to that of the war: the Germans who fled during the war and who afterward were expelled from their homes in Eastern and Central Europe as a result of the Potsdam Treaty, and the civilian victims of the Allied bombings of Germany. The bill proposes the establishment of a Center Against Expulsions and a memorial to victims of the Allied bombings. During the past two years, these two categories have become the center of a lively public discussion in Germany regarding German suffering during the war. The bill is signed by CDU member and president of the League of the Expelled, Erika Steinbach. The Center Against Expulsion that she wants to establish in Berlin will serve as an archive and documentation center, and as a monument against expelling people anywhere from their homes. Although she condemns the expulsion in a universal manner as an act in contradiction to international law and as a violation of human rights, the main subject of Steinbach's center is the great "crime" of expelling the Germans. She claims that the expulsion was planned even before the war, and therefore cannot be seen as a reaction to the crimes of Nazism but rather a crime that stands on its own. She says that 2.5 million of the approximately 15 million expelled Germans died of torture or slave labor, or as a result of rape. Although there is no basis for these statistics, they enable Steinbach to present the expulsion as genocide. The Web site of the foundation for the establishment of the Center Against Expulsion also includes six million Jews among those expelled in the 20th century, 5.86 million of whom died in this "expulsion." The intention is to equate the Holocaust with the expulsion of the Germans from East Germany, and to include the expulsion of the Germans at the end of war in the category of crimes against humanity. These trends are an expression of a new kind of flagrant revisionism, which doesn't deny the Holocaust but dwarfs it by implying that it can be equated with German suffering. It is trying to compare expulsion that was not intended to destroy the expellees, and on whose margins sporadic acts of murder took place, to a systematic and deliberate process of extermination. The issue of the victims of the Allied bombings on German cities describes another aspect of German suffering in the war, which has recently become a subject of public discourse there. Leftist Jorg Friedrich, who wrote a book and published an album about the bombings of the cities, sees no substantial moral difference between Churchill and Hitler, and calls the bombing of the cities "Germany's Holocaust." A prevalent claim says that Germany's enemies reacted to Hitler's crimes in a "orgy of revenge" against the innocent civilian population. The recent electoral failures of the ruling Social Democratic party in Thuringia and in the elections for the European Parliament, and the increasing tendency in Germany in recent years to see the Germans as victims - an attitude that is shared by the main CDU and CSU opposition parties - is likely an indication that it won't be long before the Holocaust is presented in German memory as no more than another chapter in the story of the crimes and the suffering of the 20th century, alongside other "crimes," such as the expulsion of the Germans and the bombing of their cities. The writer is a senior lecturer in history at Haifa University. See www.bund-der-vertriebenen.de AND www.bundestag.de/mdb15/bio/S/steiner0.html ALSO Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen (Center Against Forced Migration) www.z-g-v.de

The Namibian 24 June 2004 www.namibian.com.na Bundestag dodges the word genocide HENNING HINTZE ONE hundred years after the Herero war against German colonial rule in then "German Southwestafrica", the German Parliament [Bundestag] has passed a lengthy resolution without once mentioning the word "guilt". It also fails to mention the German concentration camps that were built at Swakopmund, Luderitz and other places in 1904. The resolution mainly confirms a previous resolution of 1989 in which the Bundestag stated that Germany had a "special responsibility" towards Namibia. In the new resolution, which was adopted last week in Berlin, the German parliament expressed "deep regret towards the oppressed African peoples". The resolution further says: "The Herero people continued to exist and could revive and strengthen its culture". The German parliament, with its Social Democratic (SPD) majority and their coalition partners, the Greens, also touched on Namibian land reform based on the principal of "willing-seller, willing-buyer" in its resolution. It expresses the view that land reform has the potential of offering more people a livelihood in agriculture. The conservatives (Christian Democratic Union) and the liberal party (Free Democratic Party) abstained. During the debate, Hans-Christian Stroebele, a left-wing MP of the Green Party referred to the war of 1904, saying:"The Germans did not only lead a war of extermination, they introduced the first concentration camps in German history." He said that he would have been in favour of a stronger resolution. An editorial in the national daily Tageszeitung sharply criticised the fact that the German parliament had consistently avoided the term genocide (voelkermord) and had also not offered an apology to Namibians. The editorial regards the resolution as shallow in the context of Chief Kuaima Riruako's demands for compensation by the Germans in a court of law in the United States - anything that could possibly have justified the Chief's demands for compensation was deliberately avoided in the resolution.

Reuters 25 June 2004 Campaigners urge German apology for Namibia massacre 25 Jun 2004 15:39:08 GMT By Sarah Goodwin BERLIN, June 25 (Reuters) - Human rights campaigners demonstrated in Berlin on Friday against the German government's refusal to apologise for the massacre of Herero tribesmen in its former colony Namibia a century ago. Around 100 people from Germany and several African nations protested at Germany's national memorial to war crime victims, demanding recognition and an apology on the 100th anniversary of the massacre, nearly four decades before the Holocaust. Some 65,000 Hereros and 10,000 members of the Nama tribe were annihilated by imperial German troops and settlers in what was called Deutsch-Suedwestafrika (German Southwest Africa). "The government should have the courage to call this mass-murder what it was -- genocide," said Ulrich Delius, a representative from the Association for Persecuted Peoples. "The German past did not begin in 1933 with the Nazi crimes," he added, saying Germany's deep soul-searching over the Nazi era stood in stark contrast to its attitude to the Herero slaughter. "Imperialist Germany committed terrible crimes long before then." Germany's parliament last week acknowledged the country's responsibility for the 1904 killings and pledged to continue providing aid for Namibia's development. But there was no mention of the word "genocide" and no official apology. Tahir Della, chairman of the Association of Black People in Germany, said he was outraged by the parliament's failure to apologise. Other protesters blamed the lack of recognition for the crime on deep-seated racism in German institutions. "As a German citizen, I can't believe my government doesn't have the decency to apologise for this crime. I am here to fight the denial of genocide," said protester Tessa Hofmann. They carried placards reading: "Where is the apology for the genocide in Namibia?" and "White-washed gaps in German history". Christopher Clark, a historian at Cambridge University, said the Herero massacre can be labelled genocide because of the death toll. But the term also implies an intention to destroy a culture, which wasn't the motive behind Germany's 1904 attack. "The massacre was really caused by the mismanagement of a war," Clark told Reuters. "European military tactics, such as laying siege to the enemy, just didn't work on nomadic tribes." When the Herero people rebelled against slave labour and the confiscation of their land by Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II's army brutally forced them into the arid desert to die from thirst and starvation. Germany lost the colony in World War One. Reacting to the demonstrations in Berlin on Friday, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry said: "The ministry expresses its deep regret and sadness on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Herero uprising." See Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV)  Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker - GfbV www.gfbv.de AND Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland. Die ISD-Bund e.V.www.isdonline.de

die tageszeitung 26.6.2004 www.taz.de Empörung über deutsche Leugnung des Genozids Namibias Herero kritisieren Bundestagsbeschluss zum 100. Jahrestag des deutschen Völkermords. Oberhäuptling Riruako warnt vor neuer Feindseligkeit. Namibias Außenministerium verweigert jede Stellungnahme WINDHOEK taz Auf heftige Ablehnung ist in Namibia die Bundestagsresolution vom 17. Juni zum Kolonialkrieg im damaligen Deutsch-Südwestafrika gestoßen, in der weder von Völkermord noch von Schuld gesprochen wird. Der Oberhäuptling der Herero, Kuaima Riruako, erklärte gestern gegenüber der taz, er könne sich nicht damit einverstanden erklären, dass der Vernichtungsbefehl General Lothar von Trothas und der Völkermord in der Bundestagsresolution übergangen würden. "Das schafft neue Feindseligkeit," warnte Riruako. Deutschland könne nicht ignorieren, dass "keine andere Kolonialmacht so etwas in Afrika getan hat". Man müsse durch Dialog zu einer Lösung kommen, die den Menschen etwas Greifbares biete, sagte der Häuptling. Namibias größte Oppositionspartei, der "Congress of Democrats" (CoD) beklagte die "zynische Art, in der die deutsche Regierung sich aus der historischen Verantwortung zu stehlen versucht". Als Rechtsnachfolger des Deutschen Reichs täte die Bundesrepublik gut daran, "die Schuld für den Völkermord an den Herero und Nama zwischen 1904 und 1907 voll anzuerkennen", erklärte Parteiführer Ben Ulenga. Die deutsche Regierung sollte mit allen namibischen Einrichtungen und Instanzen einschließlich politischer Parteien und Gemeinschaften zusammenarbeiten, "um Versöhnung und die Wiederherstellung der Würde unter Namibiern zu gewährleisten". Schockiert zeigte sich auch die "Demokratische Turnhallen-Allianz", Namibias zweitgrößte Oppositionspartei. Ihr Vorstandsmitglied Rudolph Kamburona meinte, wenn die deutschen Konzentrationslager im damaligen Deutsch-Südwestafrika heruntergespielt würden, lasse das vermuten, "dass wir es mit gedankenlosen Menschen zu tun haben". Aber die Herero würden sich, auch wenn das deutsche Parlament den Vernichtungsbefehl gegen die hererosprachige Bevölkerung herunterzuspielen versuche, nicht zum Schweigen bringen lassen. "Alle Hererogruppen werden sich weiterhin einsetzen und Wiedergutmachung fordern, um die Hererokultur wieder aufzubauen und neu zu beleben", sagte Kamburona. Er appellierte an "friedliebende Deutsche", auf ihre Regierung einzuwirken, die Frage der Wiedergutmachung "in reifer und ordentlicher Weise mit allen Hererogruppen" zu behandeln. Das namibische Außenministerium verweigerte dagegen trotz einer Anfrage der taz jeden Kommentar zur Bundestagserklärung. In Berlin forderten gestern die Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker und der Global Afrikan Congress mit einer Mahnwache vor der Neuen Wache, dass dort in der "Zentralen Gedenkstätte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland" auch des Völkermords an den 75.000 Herero und Nama gedacht werden sollte. Deutschland solle die Kolonialverbrechen nicht länger tabuisieren und mit einer Gedenktafel an die Opfer des Genozids erinnern. Die Organisationen forderten Außenminister Joschka Fischer auf, sich nach dem Scheitern ihrer Schadenersatzklagen bei den Herero offiziell zu entschuldigen." ROLF-HENNING HINTZE taz Nr. 7393 vom 26.6.2004, Seite 9, 104 Zeilen (TAZ-Bericht), ROLF-HENNING HINTZE

DPA 26 June 2004 Ex-Nazi officer's conviction quashed The German Supreme Court has overturned a war crimes conviction of a 95-year-old, former Nazi SS officer who ordered the deaths of Italian prisoners of war 60 years ago. Citing his age and frailty, the Bundesgerichtshof in Leipzig on Thursday threw out a lower court murder conviction against Friedrich Engel for his part in the firing squad deaths of 59 POWs in occupied Italy in 1944. The Leipzig court, the highest in Germany on non-constitutional issues, did not take issue with the question of his complicity in the POW deaths. However, it said there was some doubt as to whether his actions were done out of malice and thus constituted premeditated murder under German law. Engel, who has pleaded not guilty, was sentenced by a court in Hamburg in July 2002 to seven years imprisonment for ordering the deaths of 59 Italians in reprisal for the killings of at least five German sailors by resistance fighters. The former SS Obersturmbannfuehrer argued that he had "only followed orders" in ordering the killings of the prisoners at Turchino near Genoa in May 1944. The Engel case has strained relations between Italy and Germany. In 1999, a military tribunal in Italy sentenced Engel in absentia to life imprisonment for murdering 246 Italian hostages. Engel, who under German law cannot not be extradited against his will, has denied those war crimes charges as well.

Italy

Reuters 7 June 2004 Italy battles time to put ex-Nazis on trial Mon 7 June, 2004 04:08 By Clara Ferreira-Marques LA SPEZIA, Italy (Reuters) - Of the hundreds of offenders, few are still alive. Survivors' memories are fading. The crimes, committed by Nazi forces retreating northwards across Italy, date back to before most Italians were born. Marco De Paolis, the man leading Italy's top probe into Nazi war crimes obscured for years, faces a race against time. "In the first case we took to trial, earlier this year, four officers were accused. Only one was still alive, and he died on the second day of the trial," said De Paolis, sitting at a desk piled high with files and reams of typed paper. "The case was closed, of course. We cannot put the dead on trial." When De Paolis took the military prosecutor's job at the naval base of La Spezia 15 years ago, he hoped to enjoy some yachting in his free time. Instead, he has been overwhelmed by eyewitness accounts of murders to avenge partisan attacks, brutal shootings and attacks on villages placed along the so-called "Gothic Line" of defence that cut across Italy, from south of La Spezia to the Adriatic. Altogether, historians estimate that some 7,500 people died in such assaults. "People were crammed into barns or stables and machine gunned and then their bodies were set alight," he said. "In a small space, 50, 60 people were put together and machine gunned. Some were lucky enough to be covered by the bodies of others." "CABINET OF SHAME" The crimes, carried out in the last two years of World War Two, came to light a decade ago, when a filing cabinet packed with witness statements was found in Rome. According to recent historical studies, Allied forces had initially intended to stage an "Italian Nuremberg" -- a version of the trials which involved top Nazi officials in 1945-6. But the plans were shelved in 1947, and by the late 1940s only a dozen court martial proceedings were closed. The "cabinet of shame" was turned against a basement wall for almost five decades, presumably under political pressure from authorities who felt that opening up wartime wounds would have upset postwar Italy's delicate political balance. It was eventually found in the 1990s by magistrates investigating former SS captain Erich Priebke over the slaughter of 335 men and boys at the Ardeatine Caves south of Rome. The cases relating to aggravated homicide -- for which there is no statute of limitations under Italian law -- were reopened, investigated and will all eventually be brought to court. Around a third of the files ended up in La Spezia, where the military court's constituency includes the regions crossed by the "Gothic Line". It was on that line of defence, along the top of the Apennines, that the worst massacres were carried out, including on the village of Marzabotto, where some 800 people died, and Sant'Anna di Stazzema, where the SS killed 560 people. "Survivors who were children at the time tell us what happened, helping us to prove these events took place," said De Paolis in his office in La Spezia, a town of quiet sun-drenched piazzas south of Genoa. "It's one thing is if there is a battle between two divisions and some civilians are caught in the middle and die. It's another if a division goes into a village, sets fire to it and kills every man, woman and child." MORAL DEBT Six men are currently on trial for the massacre of Sant'Anna, a Tuscan village near Pisa. The case, one of the most notorious wartime massacres, is an example of the difficulties De Paolis faces -- none of the six ex-soldiers, all in their 80s and living in Germany, will travel to the trial. They are unlikely to be extradited or to serve a prison sentence. "Something will come of this, because people will reflect on the past. And public opinion can also reflect on these deeds," De Paolis said. "And I think there is a moral debt to those whose relatives died. A child who witnesses his mother's murder, in that cruel way, carries a heavy burden of pain through his life -- so it is fair to, at the very least, formally recognise this guilt, even if it is never translated into a jail sentence." At Sant'Anna, the SS combed houses and forced people onto the street, where they were shot. The survivors were children whose bodies were shielded by their parents, and men who fled to the woods fearing the division was recruiting forced labourers. De Paolis says it is not about settling scores. "I have never heard anyone talking about revenge," he said. "This is far too big for that."

Latvia

pravda.ru 9 June 2004 Soviet KGB officers on trial in Latvia The Chamber for Criminal Cases at the Supreme Court of Latvia has postponed the consideration of an appeal from Nikolai Larionov, a WWII veteran and a former Soviet KGB officer convicted last September on genocide charges. Larionov, an 83-year-old Latvian national, will have to undergo forensic medical and psychiatric examinations before the Supreme Court considers his appeal against a district court's guilty verdict, convicting him of drawing up and signing resolutions on the banishment of 504 individuals to labor camps located in outlying areas of the Soviet Union in March 1949. The court qualified these actions as "a crime against humanity and genocide," and sentenced the man to five years in a high-security prison. Larionov denies any wrongdoing. He says he acted on orders from the government of the Soviet republic of Latvia. Defense lawyer Alexander Ogurtsov has submitted copies of documents corroborating the former KGB officer's point. He also pointed to the unjustifiably broad reading of genocide in the Latvian penal law. As he sees it, banishment is classified here as genocide without any valid grounds. Larionov's case has no evidence to prove he committed what the rest of the world calls genocide, the lawyer argues. Larionov is Latvia's third citizen and its fourth permanent resident to have been convicted on charges of genocide against the Lettish. All of the convicts are former KGB officers. The Latvian Prosecutor General's Office is currently carrying out investigations into alleged crimes by several other Soviet security agents.

Lithuania

ESPN 6 June 2004 ESPN.com Atrocity alleged to follow basketball game Lithuanian prosecutors announced Thursday that they will not open an investigation into charges that Lithuanian basketball players participated in a 1941 massacre of Jews during the Nazi occupation of that country. In March, ESPN reported the allegations, which came to light when the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a human rights organization, made a formal request that Lithuania investigate the matter. It was charged that a Lithuanian basketball team played against a German team and as a reward for winning the players were allowed to kill imprisoned Jews. It was reported that twin brothers, Vytautus and Algirdas Norkus, who now live in Waterbury, Conn., might have taken part in the reported game that preceded the purported massacre. Both have denied any involvement. According to Thursday's announcement, the State Security Agency of Lithuania could not find any evidence in war documents and post-war files of the alleged massacre.

AP 7 Jun 2004 Waterbury brothers deny 1941 war crimes allegations WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) - In the annals of the Holocaust, a story that more than two dozen Lithuanian Jews were killed as a prize for winning a basketball game shocks even those who have made it their life's work to bring accused war criminals to justice. The account of the killings - part of mass executions by Lithuanians of Jews in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1941 - was detailed in a 2001 book, "The Unconquered," by Israeli writer Alex Faitelson. He cited eyewitness accounts dating to 1948. Twin brothers who now live in Waterbury were among those named as members of the Lithuanian team and received broad publicity in a recent ESPN documentary. The allegation was forwarded to Lithuanian prosecutors by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization. Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter for the Wiesenthal center's Jerusalem office, said a "suggestion was made that the brothers were there." It was enough to seek an investigation by Lithuanian authorities. "To the best of my knowledge there was never an incident when a sports team participated in the murder of Jews in the Holocaust," Zuroff said. "As a unit, this is unique." The brothers, 83-year-old Algirdas and Vytautas Norkus, vigorously deny the allegations. "It never happened," Algirdas Norkus said. "We were like heroes and suddenly it comes on television and everything, a film accused us of killing. It is terrible." Vytautas Norkus refused to discuss the matter, except to reject the allegation. "We deny all the nonsense," he said. "They're destroying us. It's not very pleasant, thank you." The state prosecutor's office in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius was skeptical of the accounts. Vidmantas Putelis, a spokesman for the office, told The Associated Press that Zuroff has given prosecutors information and authorities were checking it. "At this point, we see this information is based on rumors," Putelis said. "This can't be legal grounds for starting a case." A formal investigation has not been started and charges have not been filed. Faitelson stands by the eyewitness accounts. The Norkus brothers "collaborated with the German occupation forces. They cannot deny it," he said. Faitelson, who is a Lithuanian Holocaust survivor, described eyewitness accounts of mass killings at a one-time Russian fort in Kaunas, Lithuania, in July 1941 before and after the Lithuanian team defeated the German team. "In the darkness of the night we noticed that they had selected 30 out of the mass of people and led them toward the embankment," according to an eyewitness account cited by Faitelson in his book. "A little later and we heard the familiar muffled rifle shots. The masters of the Baltic states, the Lithuanian basketball champions, repeated their 'sportsmanlike' business and having drunk of innocent Jewish blood left the square singing." In his modest home in Waterbury, Algirdas Norkus, a retired engineer for a brass manufacturer, proudly points to a framed certificate on his living room wall that, translated from Lithuanian, celebrates the 75th anniversary of the "virtuoso" national basketball team in 1996, he said. The accusation that he and his brother are war criminals is "a torture," he said. Algirdas, who emigrated to the United States in 1949 and was drawn to Waterbury's large Lithuanian population, said he did not play on the basketball team. His brother, who was 2 inches taller than he was, played instead, he said. Two games - among top Lithuanian teams and against a German national team - were played in 1939 when Lithuania was still independent. "How could the Germans give permission to kill?" he asked. But a historian says a German OK would not have been needed. Killings of civilians were common in June and July 1941, shortly before Lithuania, which shifted back and forth between German and Soviet control, was overrun by Germany. "It was a kind of a free-for-all in the weeks between the retreat of the Soviets and the arrival of the Germans against Jews and communists," said Peter Black, senior historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Commission. He cited a combination of motives for ordinary Lithuanians to kill: "A hatred of communists, prejudice against Jews, German propaganda, right wing Lithuanian propaganda and a sense of helplessness under Russian occupation." "It led to this explosion of hatred encouraged by the Germans," he said. Zuroff said he will push for a full investigation of the brothers by Lithuanians and prosecution, if necessary. "The passage of time in no way diminishes their culpability," he said.

www.newstatesman.com UK 17 June 2004 A day out in a cattle truck Observations Robert Nurden Observations on theme parks. By Robert Nurden Every weekend, thousands of Lithuanians drive to a remote, swampy area of woodland in the south of the country, park in a narrow lane and walk towards a clump of fir trees. They see a lake, and then some buildings. Then, from behind high barbed-wire fences and wooden guard posts, they can hear singing - in Russian, not Lithuanian. And from giant loudspeakers comes the rallying cry of Soviet propaganda. A few yards further on, on a section of railway line, they will find a windowless cattle truck, with a locomotive attached. An accompanying notice explains that this was one of many wagons used to deport 360,000 Lithuanians to Siberia between 1941 and 1953, on a month-long journey. At the turnstiles, Russian guards brandish rifles. Welcome to Grutas Park, where 82 statues of communist leaders, in the Soviet realist style, are displayed at an open-air museum, along with memorabilia from the Gulag, a Communist Party library, art gallery, cinema and polling station. On the cattle truck, Lithuanians can experience deportation at first hand. This weird and much-criticised theme park is the project of Viliumas Malinauskas, a Lithuanian millionaire and former wrestler, who made his money exporting mushrooms to the west. "My purpose is not to make money," says Malinauskas, sporting a large KGB tie and standing in front of one of 13 statues of Lenin. "It is educational and it is for fun. But we must not forget those terrible times. It is better for people to see these statues than to have them crumbling away in warehouses." Hundreds of schools make trips to Grutas Park, and up to 40 groups of Swedish and Norwegian history students, who plan to establish a scientific research centre looking at the influence of socialism on the Baltic states, visit every year. Malinauskas, meanwhile, wants it to become the genocide centre for the Baltic, with input from Estonia and Latvia. Striding around in front of one of only two statues to Stalin in the park - Nikita Khrushchev had most of them destroyed in the 1960s - an actor dressed as the communist dictator makes long, tedious speeches while brandishing his pipe. Across a stretch of water, Lenin is fishing. Groups of young Soviet Pioneers march around the complex, carrying banners and singing paeans to the dignity of work. On the lintel above the open-air theatre is a quote from Lenin: "Art belongs to the people." On stage is Juozas Zavaliauskas, one of Lithuania's best-known comedians, who manages to get some laughs from his picnicking audience with gibes about Rolandas Paksas, the country's deposed president, who was impeached in April for giving citizenship to the Russian businessman Yuri Borisov in return for a financial leg-up. This strange Disneyland death camp ends on a genuinely poignant note. The final statue stands alone, commemorating the 10,000 local men who joined the Soviet army. Only 600 survived. www.grutoparkas.lt

Netherlands

AP 9 June 2004 World war crimes court faces tough choices ahead of its first investigation 09:17 AM EDT Jun 09 THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - From jungle warlords and cult leaders to bankers and presidents, prosecutors are lining up their targets for the first cases by the new permanent war crimes court. But nearly two years after the court's creation, it has yet to launch a full investigation, and already it is running into a dilemma that goes to the core of its independence: When does political support for the court erode impartiality? Nearly 800 complaints of war crimes and crimes against humanity have flooded into the International Criminal Court, which has temporarily set up in a former telecommunications building. They present a grim litany of mass murder, systematic rape, child abductions and persecution. But most complaints are disqualified by the court's rigid jurisdiction limits. Unless the UN Security Council intervenes, only people from countries that have signed the court's founding treaty - 94 so far - can be prosecuted. That means citizens of the United States, Russia, China, Israel, Iraq and all other Arab countries except Jordan are beyond reach. Thus, the court has no jurisdiction to try either ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein or U.S. soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners. In the 94 signatory countries, the court's prosecutors can initiate investigations if they see war crimes going unpunished, or a government may ask the court to prosecute its own citizens. Uganda has made such a request. In January, President Yoweri Museveni asked the court to prosecute leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army, a ruthless rebel group known for kidnapping children to use as fighters or sex slaves. It is led by Joseph Kony, a cult figure who shrouds himself in the Bible and magic powers. Museveni's appeal was seen as a coup by Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, bolstering the tribunal's legitimacy. But human rights groups say Museveni, who seized power in 1986, also should be investigated for alleged abuses by Ugandan troops. They criticized Moreno-Ocampo for appearing with Museveni to announce the impending investigation of the rebels, noting Moreno-Ocampo made no reference to excesses by the Uganda military. A failure to investigate both sides of the conflict could risk appearing biased. Yet, an investigation of Uganda's military might risk Museveni's government ending its co-operation on any cases, although Museveni reportedly has promised to co-operate should he be investigated. Michail Wladimiroff, a Dutch lawyer who defended the first suspect at the special Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, said the International Criminal Court must guard against wading into politics. "They can't escape negotiating with governments, but he (Moreno-Ocampo) wasn't as tactful as he could have been. He has to avoid appearing brotherly" with potential suspects, Wladimiroff said in an interview. In April, Congo offered another boost to the court by becoming the second country to hand over jurisdiction of a case. It involves crimes committed in Congo's war-wracked Ituri province, and Moreno-Ocampo said the investigation would look at financiers of the tribal warfare and businessmen who stoke tribal animosities to exploit illicit trade in gold or diamonds. Moreno-Ocampo, an Argentine, earned his reputation prosecuting members of his homeland's former military regime, which was blamed for thousands of killings during a "dirty war" against leftist activists 25 years ago. He is assembling a team of experienced prosecutors from around the world. Christine Chung, a veteran of the Manhattan district attorney's office, will handle the Uganda case. Deputy Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz, a Belgian, will head the Congo investigation. About 30 prosecutors have been recruited, many lured from the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. They are among nearly 200 full-time employees from 35 countries who are sifting through complaints and preparing investigations. But the court's first trial could be years away. By comparison, the Yugoslav tribunal issued its first indictment within a year of its creation in 1993 and has conducted a string of trials, including the current proceeding against former president Slobodan Milosevic. But legal experts say the comparison isn't fair because the new court faces greater challenges, particularly the fierce opposition of the U.S. government. "The Yugoslavia tribunal was established by the UN Security Council and had superior authority to try crimes in Yugoslavia. It could impose its will upon the Yugoslav states," said Wladimiroff, who now represents former president Charles Taylor of Liberia. "The ICC can only work with the co-operation of the country. It would be unreasonable to expect the ICC to have a case in no time." - On the Net: International Criminal Court: icc-cpi.int

AFP 9 June 2004 Hague “giving Milosevic publicity” BELGRADE -- Croatian Foreign Minister Miomir Zuzul criticised the UN war crimes court today for allowing Slobodan Milosevic to make public political statements ahead of this weekend’s Serbian presidential elections. "We are looking with a certain level of nervousness at these elections," Zuzul told reporters in Madrid. "War criminals, obvious war criminals, are running in free elections," he said, noting that Tomislav Nikolic, 52, a member of the hardline Serbian Radical Party (SRS) led by jailed war crime suspect Vojislav Seselj "is now running for president of Serbia." The latest opinion polls published in Belgrade put Nikolic in the lead among 15 candidates. Milosevic is on trial for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed during the wars of secession against Croatia and Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. Zuzul said that by allowing its proceedings to be broadcast, the court was giving Milosevic free air time. "He is using the tribunal to deliver his political views," Zuzul said. "Those shows from The Hague are directly transmitted to Serbia... now we are surprised that Serbians voted for the party of Slobodan Milosevic." Serbia has been without an elected president since December 2002, when Milan Milutinovic, an ally of Milosevic, stepped down from the largely ceremonial post and turned himself in to the UN tribunal. Three attempts to elect his replacement were invalidated by insufficient turnout, prompting a change in the electoral laws to remove a 50-percent turnout minimum. Nikolic won most votes in the most recent unsuccessful election and is expected to win again in the new attempt, probably in a second-round run-off. "Can you imagine how democracy in Germany would look if those who were prosecuted at Nuremberg participated at the first democratic elections in Germany?... This is exactly what is happening in Serbia," Zuzul said.

AP 12 June 2004 Anne Frank's Friend Recalls Prewar Holland By ARTHUR MAX The Associated Press AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The story of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager whose diary became the voice of Holocaust victims, is also to some extent the story of Eva Schloss, her childhood friend. Like Anne, Eva went into hiding when the Nazis began rounding up Dutch Jews to send to concentration camps. After two years, she too was captured and sent to Auschwitz, the most notorious of death camps. But unlike Anne, Eva survived and last month celebrated her 75th birthday. Anne would have turned 75 Saturday. Theaters, Holocaust museums, churches and Jewish clubs around the world are commemorating the day with readings from "The Diary of Anne Frank" or performances of the play based on the journal. The Cleveland Opera is performing music inspired by the story. At the Anne Frank House, the canal house where the Frank family spent 25 months confined to a back annex, an exhibition of photographs taken by Anne's father, Otto Frank, before the war went on display Friday. They show a happy middle-class European family. Anne and her sister Margot play on the beach, don party dresses for birthdays, hug a teddy bear. "What they show is that the Franks were a family like everyone else," said Eva in an interview on Friday. "They had a happy life. They did all the things children do." Eva recalls playing with Anne after school. "I was more wild, a tomboy. She was more sophisticated. She was interested in clothes, in her appearance. She was careful with her hair. She was interested in boys," she said. None of the images displayed any hint of the disaster to come. "Holland was a safe place," said Eva, whose family fled to the Netherlands from Vienna, Austria, in the 1930s during the rise of Adolf Hitler's Nazi party. The Franks also fled from Germany when Anne was a girl of four, considering it a safe haven from the anti-Semitism raging at home. Dutch security proved an illusion. More than 100,000 Jews - 70 percent of the community - were deported to concentration camps after Germany occupied the Netherlands in May 1940. Most died in gas chambers, and were among the 6 million Jewish victims of Nazi genocide. Hundreds of families went into hiding. Many were never discovered, an amazing accomplishment, especially for those, like the Franks, confined to tight quarters in Amsterdam. "Do you know how hard it is for an 11-year-old to sit quietly all day?" Eva was caught moving to a new safe house with the help of the Dutch resistance. She and her mother had already changed hiding places several times, concealed by sympathetic Dutch families. Both Anne and Eva were betrayed by Dutch collaborators. No one knows who turned in the Franks. Eva knows her betrayer: a nurse who had infiltrated the resistance. The nurse, whose name Eva has blotted from her mind, was brought to trial after the war and acquitted on the basis of testimony from Jews she had helped - to build confidence with the resistance, Eva said. Anne began writing her diary on June 12, 1942, in a small album meant for autographs, one of her 13th birthday presents. Less than a month later, the family moved into the secret annex at the rear of Otto Frank's warehouse, reached by a staircase blocked from view by a movable bookcase. Her last entry was Aug. 1, 1944, three days before she was arrested. Anne died in March 1945 of typhus in Bergen-Belsen, the camp to which she was transferred from Auschwitz. A few weeks later, British troops liberated the camp. Eva Schloss, freed from Auschwitz by Russian troops, made her way back to the Netherlands through Russia, Turkey and Europe. Everywhere, she said, people welcomed the survivors like war heroes - until they got home. The Dutch, still suffering from the hardship of occupation, a harsh winter and Nazi plundering, ignored the returning refugees. "No one wanted to know about the camps," she said. "I was silent for years, first because I wasn't allowed to speak. Then I repressed it. I was angry with the world." Historians agree that many Dutch cooperated with the Nazi occupation. Widespread resistance is largely a myth - in part fostered by Anne Frank's diary in which she praises the four "helpers" who supplied the family with food and assistance. Anne and Eva are linked by one more thread of fate. After the war, Otto Frank, whose wife Edith had died in Auschwitz, married his old acquaintance Elfriede Geiringer, Eva's mother. Eva became Anne's stepsister posthumously.

AP 13 June 2004 Photo Exhibit Marks Birthday Of Anne Frank Candid Family Snapshots Depict Happy Prewar Life By Arthur Max AMSTERDAM -- The grainy black-and-white photos offer an intimate look at a prewar middle-class European family. The girls celebrate birthdays, play in sandboxes and on the beach, hug a teddy bear. Had she survived a Nazi concentration camp, the smaller girl in the photos, Anne Frank, might have turned 75 on Saturday. The exhibition of nearly 70 photographs, many of them never previously published or displayed to the public, is the focus of 75th birthday events at Anne Frank House, the former canal house where Anne's family hid for 25 months. It is where the teenager wrote the diary that became the human voice of the Holocaust before the family was betrayed and captured in August 1944. Theaters, Holocaust museums, churches and Jewish clubs around the world commemorated the birthday Saturday with readings from "The Diary of Anne Frank" or performances of the play based on the journal. The Cleveland Opera was scheduled to perform music inspired by the story. Her birthday coincided with the 60th anniversary of D-Day, providing a reminder of those for whom the allied victory came too late. The 15-year-old Anne died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, a few weeks before British troops arrived at the gate. More than 100,000 Dutch Jews -- 70 percent of the community -- were deported to concentration camps after Germany occupied the Netherlands in May 1940. Most died in gas chambers, and were among the 6 million Jewish victims of Nazi genocide. "It's amazing when you think how much interest the diary created. That little girl -- and she was only a little girl when she went into hiding -- would be so shocked if she would have known," said Carol Ann Lee, a biographer of Anne and her father, Otto Frank. Most of the photographs, first displayed in New York in May, were made by Otto Frank, a talented amateur photographer who snapped hundreds of candid shots of his daughters Anne and Margot in the days before photography was a widely practiced hobby. "What they show is that the Franks were a family like everyone else," said Eva Schloss, Anne's childhood friend. "They had a happy life. They did all the things children do," she said in an interview. Schloss recalls often playing with Anne after school. "I was more wild, a tomboy. She was more sophisticated. She was interested in clothes, in her appearance. She was careful with her hair. She was interested in boys," she said. Schloss and her mother also spent two years in hiding, moving from house to house, careful to keep their presence secret from the neighbors of people who helped them. They were betrayed by a Nazi sympathizer, a nurse who had infiltrated the Dutch resistance movement. They were sent to Auschwitz, where they survived nine tortuous months. After the war, Schloss became Anne's posthumous stepsister when her widowed mother, Elfriede Geiringer, married Otto Frank, whose wife Edith died in Auschwitz. Otto gave the young girl his Leica camera and sent her to London to learn photography. Anne began writing her diary on June 12, 1942, in a small album meant for autographs, one of her 13th birthday presents. Less than a month later, the family moved into a secret annex of Otto Frank's warehouse to escape the Nazis. Her last entry was Aug. 1, 1944, three days before she was arrested. Miep Gies, one of four people who provided food and help to the Franks while they were in hiding, collected the notebooks and scattered papers that comprised the diary. Years later, she turned them over to Otto Frank, the only survivor among the eight people who hid in the annex. Frank published the Dutch version of the diary in 1947. It has since been translated into 55 languages, sold more than 25 million copies and is required reading in many U.S. schools. "She was an ordinary girl with an extraordinary talent," said her biographer, Lee.

Reuters 16 June 2004 UN Court Says Milosevic Must Answer Genocide Case By Paul Gallagher THE HAGUE (Reuters) - U.N. war crimes judges rejected on Wednesday a motion to drop genocide charges against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, saying there was enough evidence to pursue them. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia released a ruling obtained earlier by Reuters that said there was a genocide case for Milosevic to answer, dismissing lawyers' arguments that evidence was lacking. Proving genocide is seen as the key test of the case brought by prosecutors against Milosevic, on trial in The Hague for the past two years, and will also determine the way the Balkan wars of the 1990s will go down in history. Milosevic does not recognize the court and is conducting his own defense but lawyers appointed to help ensure he gets a fair trial, the "Friends of the Court," filed for his acquittal of genocide in March, after the prosecution rested its case. "The effect of the trial chamber's determinations is that it has found sufficient evidence to support each count challenged in the three indictments," the tribunal said in a statement. Milosevic is charged with crimes committed by Serb forces over whom he is said to have had final control in Croatia and Bosnia, and by his own army and police in Kosovo. He faces charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, breaches of the Geneva Conventions and violations of the laws or customs of war. The genocide charges relate to the 1992-1995 Bosnia war in which thousands of Bosnian Muslims were killed, most notoriously in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys. Milosevic said he had nothing to do with the killings. DESTRUCTION OF BOSNIAN MUSLIMS In their motion, the Friends of the Court said: "There is no evidence that the accused possessed the requisite 'special intent' required to commit the crime of genocide...(or) knowingly aided or abetted one or more persons to commit genocide." But the court said: "The trial chamber...holds that there is sufficient evidence that...the accused aided and abetted or was complicit in the commission of the crime of genocide. "He had knowledge of the joint criminal enterprise...being aware that its aim and intention was the destruction of a part of the Bosnian Muslims as a group." South Korean judge O-Gon Kwon gave a dissenting opinion on the decision but was outvoted by the two other judges on the bench, Patrick Robinson of Jamaica and Iain Bonomy of Britain. Bonomy recently replaced Richard May, who stood down for health reasons. Chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte has conceded it is difficult to prove genocide but said the material her team has brought to the court was sufficient to prove beyond reasonable doubt the "genocidal intent of the accused." On Thursday, a so-called pre-defense conference will take place at the court as Milosevic prepares to open his defense on July 5. He wants to call British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former U.S. President Bill Clinton as witnesses. Milosevic was ousted from power in a popular uprising in 2000 and Belgrade handed him over to the court the next year. The trial, Europe's biggest war crimes proceedings since Adolf Hitler's henchmen were tried at Nuremberg after World War II, was adjourned in February when prosecutors wound up their case after calling some 290 witnesses.

Poland

WP 2 June 2004 In Warsaw, a 'Good War' Wasn't By Anne Applebaum Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A25 The veterans have left town. The flags have been packed away for the Fourth of July. The memory of the Second World War, our Second World War, has been honored -- so now perhaps it's worth taking a moment to honor someone else's. An opportunity to do so will present itself this Sunday, when CNN broadcasts an unusual documentary called "Warsaw Rising." The timing of the broadcast is deliberate: the week after the dedication of the National World War II Memorial, the 60th anniversary of D-Day and -- soon -- the 60th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising itself, which began on Aug. 1. As CNN puts it, here's a chance to listen while "the survivors of this little-known tragedy of the war finally tell their story." Of course, the Warsaw uprising isn't as little known as all that: Survivors in Poland have been telling their stories for quite some time. But it is true that the story is little known in this country, and there are reasons for that: It wasn't a story our political leaders wanted to dwell on at the time, and it hasn't been one anyone in this wanted to talk much about since. Among other things, if we really absorbed its lessons, it would be difficult for Americans to feel quite so sentimental about World War II, and quite so nostalgic about the unshakable moral purpose for which it was supposedly fought. For the story of the Warsaw uprising really is the story of the destruction of Poland's "greatest generation." The uprising began when the leaders of Warsaw's underground army launched a rebellion against the Nazis who had brutally occupied their city for nearly five years. Hearing the Soviet Red Army guns to the East, knowing of D-Day and the American entry into the European war, they assumed the fighting would last just a few days, until the Allies joined and the city was freed. "We believed so much in the West," one of the survivors wistfully told CNN. But their assumption was incorrect. Stalin not only refused to send Red Army troops to help what he described as a "band of criminals," he also refused to allow British and American planes to refuel in the Soviet Union, making airlifts impossible. Neither the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, nor the American president, Franklin Roosevelt, thought it important enough to pressure the Soviet dictator. With the exception of one airlift, the planes never came. The Poles were left to fight alone. In the battle, which lasted 63 days, more than 200,000 people died, among them most of the country's intellectual and leadership. The scale of the catastrophe, the psychological, physical and economic damage, is almost unimaginable. Original underground army footage, obtained by CNN reporter David Ensor, shows vast stretches of central Warsaw reduced to rubble, people living in ruins, teenagers building barricades out of the remains of homes. As Norman Davies, the historian of the rising, points out, more civilians died every day for those 63 days than died on Sept. 11. Others escaped through the sewer system, walking 20 hours through raw human waste. When the Red army did finally "liberate" Warsaw the following winter, there was almost nothing left. Soviet secret police officers rounded up and arrested the remaining underground leaders, on the grounds that anyone brave enough to fight Germans would probably fight against the Soviet Union too. Again, Roosevelt and Churchill did not object: They had already consigned Poland to the Soviet "sphere of influence" during their conference with Stalin at Yalta, and had washed their hands of the country's fate. For those tempted by the post-Vietnam nostalgia for the "good war" -- a nostalgia which seems to increase as things go badly in Iraq -- it's an unsettling story. But there are many such stories. No less terrible are the tales of the Allied troops who forced White Russians and Cossacks into trucks and returned them to the Soviet Union -- at Stalin's request -- where most were killed. Or the accounts of the mass arrests that accompanied the Soviet "liberation" of Central Europe, while we in the West officially looked away. One of the reasons the survivors in CNN's film speak such beautiful English is that they were all exiles, forced to live abroad after the war. In fact, for millions of people, World War II had no happy ending. It had no ending at all. The liberation of one half of the European continent coincided with a new occupation for the other half. The camps of Stalin, our ally, expanded just as the camps of Hitler, our enemy, were destroyed. Not that you would know it, listening to Americans reminisce about D-Day, or the children welcoming GIs in the streets, or the joyous return home. Perhaps there is no such thing as an entirely "good war" after all.

Russia

AFP 7 Jun 2004 Last Chechen refugee tent camp closes in neighboring Ingushetia MOSCOW, June 7 (AFP) - The last tent camp housing Chechen refugees has closed in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, a regional official told AFP Monday. "The Satsita camp is closed," Magomet Markhiev, Ingushetia's deputy prime miniter, said in a telephone interview. "There are no more tents there." Most of the refugees from the camp, which once housed thousands of people who fled Chechnya when war between Russian troops and rebels broke out in October 1999, have returned home, Markhiev said. According to the Danish Refugee Council, 549 people or 126 families were registered in Satsita as of June 2. The tent camps in Ingushetia were an embarrassment to Russia, which insists that the war that it launched in the breakaway Caucasus republic four and a half years ago is over and that refugees can safely return home. But many refugees have refused to budge because a guerrilla war between separatists and pro-Moscow forces continues to claim lives on nearly a daily basis and random kidnappings are common. Nevertheless thousands have been returned to Chechnya since the beginning of this year with promises of compensation for their bombed-out homes. As of February 13, 5,678 refugees in the three largest tent camps had registered for assistance with the Danish Refugee Council, which is the UN refugee agency's (UNHCR) implementing partner in the region. In all, 54,000 Chechens still live in Ingushetia in temporary housing and private accommodation, according to the UNHCR.

AP 24 May 2004 Wave of Abductions Hits Russian Republic By YURI BAGROV VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia (AP) - The masked men, bold and beefy, drive up in cars without license plates. In full view of witnesses, they seize their prey, shove him in the car and speed off. Weeks pass, then months - the victim isn't heard from again. That has happened more than 40 times this year alone in the Russian republic of Ingushetia, say human rights groups that are demanding answers to the rising wave of abductions. Officials say almost nothing in response. Ingushetia, smaller than Rhode Island with a population of about 300,000, is a tiny fragment of the restive Caucasus region. Its president, Murat Zyazikov, has promoted it as a place of prosperity and stability, in contrast to its neighbor, Chechnya. But the kidnappings have become a grim echo of the fear that grips Chechnya, where the forces fighting separatist rebels allegedly abduct civilians with impunity. Tens of thousands of Chechens have fled to Ingushetia, hoping to escape such abuses. Now ``the same thing that's been happening in Chechnya is happening in Ingushetia: abductions and killings,'' said Usam Baysayev of the Memorial human rights group's office in Nazran, Ingushetia's main city. Although the Chechen war has occasionally spilled into Ingushetia and Russian officials believe that rebels take shelter there, the wave of kidnappings has no obvious connection with the war. The victims are Ingush, not Chechen, and there is no obvious pattern as to who is seized. Young and old, rich and poor, politically connected and intensely private people - all have gone missing. Experts say they suspect the victims' probable destination is Chechnya - specifically Khankala, the base of Moscow's Federal Security Service or FSB, the main successor agency of the KGB. Zyazikov, the Ingush president, is a former high official in the FSB. ``Formerly, bandits and slave traders could easily cross the borders of Chechnya and take captives from all over Russia,'' military columnist Vyacheslav Izmailov wrote recently in the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. ``Now it's officers of law enforcement agencies, and it seems they are digging pits at Khankala not just for Chechens but also for the inhabitants of other regions of Russia.'' Keeping prisoners in pits is a widespread practice in the Caucasus, employed by bandits, rebels and even Russian soldiers. One Ingush victim was Timur Yandiyev, a systems administrator for the Internet provider in Nazran. ``We found out from traffic police that the car went to Chechnya,'' said his brother Marat. He said the car was stopped at a checkpoint ``but they flashed FSB passes, and our traffic police don't have the right to inspect their cars.'' For two months, the family tried in vain to get any answers from the Interior Ministry, the prosecutor's office and the FSB. Regional law enforcement agencies and the Russian Prosecutor General's office refused to comment on the abductions to The Associated Press other than to say an investigation into one abduction was under way. About 1,500 desperate relatives rallied in protest in Nazran at the end of March. The deputy interior minister of Ingushetia, Zyaudin Kotiyev, surrounded by riot troops, persuaded the people to disperse. The police took a few of the organizers with them, including Timur Yandiyev's father. Three hours later, he returned home, shaken. ``He told me that he was threatened. They hinted that if we show up at a protest again, I could disappear just like my brother did,'' Marat Yandiyev said. At the beginning of March, 29-year-old Rashid Ozdoyev was kidnapped. He had worked in the republic prosecutor's office, overseeing the legality of FSB actions. Five days before he was grabbed he had been in Moscow, filing a 14-page complaint against the Ingush FSB with the Russian general prosecutor's office. His father, Boris Ozdoyev, a well-connected retired judge, conducted his own investigation, showing pictures to people who work at detention centers. He found out that his son's car had been blocked by several FSB cars, and that he was taken first to Vladikavkaz, in neighboring North Ossetia, and eventually to Khankala. Ozdoyev failed to get a meeting or any answers from the local FSB head, Sergei Koryakov. But he said he got plenty of anonymous phone calls warning him to stop the search. ``I'm on the knife's edge, I know that. Still, I want to find justice or I won't be able to stand alongside my son before the Almighty,'' Ozdoyev said. His cousin, Musa Ozdoyev, a member of the Ingush parliament and a former adviser to Zyazikov, wrote an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin alleging corruption, embezzlement and vote-rigging under Zyazikov. ``The fact that the special services are engaged in the abductions is beyond doubt,'' Musa Ozdoyev said to the AP. ``Statistically, the number of abductions in Ingushetia is nearly as high as in Chechnya,'' said Alexander Petrov of Human Rights Watch. ``Ingushetia has become no less dangerous than Chechnya in this regard.''

RFE/RL 24 May 2004 www.rferl.org Analysis: An Executioner Confesses By Liz Fuller The independent Ingush website ingushetiya.ru posted a statement on 22 May addressed to Russian Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov from a Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who recently ended a tour of duty in Ingushetia. The signatory, Igor N. Onishchenko, admitted to having worked since early 2003 as a member of a death squad in Ingushetia, during which time he worked with five other officers, abducting and murdering people suspected of either openly criticizing Ingushetia's President Murat Zyazikov or of links to the Chechen resistance. The quota they were required to fill was a minimum of five detentions per week. Onishchenko said that on orders from the head of the FSB department in Ingushetia, General Sergei Koryakov, "I personally...crippled more than 50 people and buried about 35." (Koryakov was commandeered to Ingushetia by Russian President Vladimir Putin and FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev, Onishchenko wrote, referring to hearsay.) Specifically, Onishchenko claimed to have personally tortured and killed an unnamed local prosecutor who had allegedly collected materials incriminating Koryakov, and whom Koryakov "had been hunting down for a long time." The website construed that statement as a reference to 29-year-old Rashid Ozdoev, a senior assistant to the Ingushetian prosecutor who was responsible for liaison with the local FSB. Ozdoev was himself abducted on 11 March and taken to the infamous detention center at the Russian military base at Khankala in Chechnya. His family has appealed both to President Zyazikov and to Russian President Putin for help in locating him, but without success. In an article published on 15 April in "Novaya gazeta," journalist Anna Politkovskaya wrote that at the time of his disappearance, Ozdoev had just completed an investigation of the recent wave of disappearances of residents of Ingushetia, and had collected materials implicating both local law enforcement officials and Koryakov. He had sent those materials to Prosecutor-General Ustinov. Politkovskaya also quoted Ozdoev as having told his father that he was aware of the risk he was taking in doing so, but adding, "If the agency I supervise is implicated in abductions and murders, then I am the sole person in Ingushetia who has the legal right to demand" that appropriate measures be taken to stop those killings. On 26 April, Zyazikov finally agreed to meet with Ozdoev's father Boris and with Politkovskaya, according to "Novaya gazeta" on 6 May. During that meeting, Zyazikov claimed that there have been only seven abductions in recent months, rather than the 33 that Rashid Ozdoev documented. He then claimed to have been misinformed by the local prosecutor's office and laid the blame for the failure to locate and release people who have been abducted on the Ingushetian Interior Ministry. Interior Minister Kukushkin, a Russian who was appointed to that post following Zyazikov's election as Ingushetian president in April 2002, reportedly left Ingushetia in early April. Zyazikov reportedly plans to name his devoted supporter Yakub Kartoev to replace him, according to ingushetiya.ru on 4 May. While ingushetiya.ru does not vouch for the authenticity of the facsimile of Onishchenko's letter that it reproduces, it does claim to have established that Onishchenko did work in Ingushetia and that the letter bearing his signature was indeed received by the Prosecutor-General's Office (it bears the relevant stamp dated 12 April) and forwarded to the subdivision of the Prosecutor-General's Office within the Southern Federal District (which stamped it on 16 April). That said, it should be borne in mind that the website is reportedly financed by Zyazikov's Moscow-based political rivals, Mikhail and Khamzat Gutseriev

Kavkaz Center, Turkey - May 24, 2004 http://kavkazcenter.com F.S.B. officer confesses to mass murders «I personally maimed over 50 people and buried about 35» Sensational document: Rashid Ozdoyev (Deputy Prosecutor of Republic of Ingushetia) and other kidnapped victims killed. FSB officer repents. Inguhetia.ru edition received a sensational document: statement for the Office of Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation by officer of Federal Security Service (FSB) Department of Stavropol Territory (Southern Russia) I. Onishchenko, who was assigned to work at the FSB Department in Ingushetia and was working there for some time. Onishchenko claims that he was carrying out special assignments from Chief of FSB Department in Ingushetia Koryakov, which involved kidnapping and removing people. This officer was also involved in kidnapping of First Deputy Prosecutor of Ingushetia Rashid Ozdoyev, who was on Koryakov's way and had him quite worried. It was established that Onishchenko really worked in Ingushetia, and that his statement was actually received by Russia's Office of Prosecutor General and was later forwarded to the Office of Prosecutor General of Southern Federal Circuit. Below is the text and a full copy of the document: To: Prosecutor General of Russia From: Igor. N. Onishenko This is a statement made by acting agent of FSB of Russian Federation in Stavropol Territory, who has worked at the FSB in Ingushetia on special assignment. Today the term of my assignment was over and I returned home. I am stricken by conscience. I have been an officer of FSB for almost 12 years. But I wasn't thinking that I would ever have to suffer as much as I am now, when working with FSB Chief of Ingushetia Koryakov. FSB Chief of Ingushetia Koryakov is a dangerous person in our system. Even though they say he was sent there by Parushev (Russian FSB Chief) and Putin personally. This rotten scumbag is killing people just because they are Chechens or Ingushetians. You see, in his life somebody who happened to belong to that nation offended him and this is why he hates them. Koryakov was making me and my colleagues, -- and there was a total of 5 of us working for him, -- systematically beat anyone whom we detained posing agents from Regional Operative Headquarters (of the Russian military). Then the same plan was used. Special uniform, masks, other badges, camouflage, cars (as a rule cars would belong to the detainees) – we would only have the plate numbers, special passes and other things replaced, which you know better than I do. We acted like we were living Magas city limits, but we would just drive in circles and return to our building again to finish the people off. All of the work was done at night. During the day we were sleeping. Koryakov was supposed to report to Moscow that the job was being done, and he had to justify his rank as a general, which he was promoted to just recently. For that purpose there was a plan: at least 5 people a week. In the beginning of 2003, when I was just assigned to Ingushetia, we were really arresting those who were involved. But after September, when Koryakov got mad because of some prosecutor, as he used to say, we started grabbing anybody without distinction only because of the facial features. Koryakov used to say: what difference does it make, they all are 'nits' anyway. Sergei and I personally have maimed over 50 people. I buried about 35. By the way, I was the one who organized attacks and who was shooting at the FSB building, on the general's order; Vadim and Sergei were helping me. When I came home, I was decorated for faultless service, -- for the last operation on apprehending the local prosecutor, because he had compromising materials against Koryakov. General had been haunting him for quite a while. I got rid of the prosecutor's badge and his personal weapon, and I broke all of his extremities. That same night Koryakov ordered others to get rid of him. My favorite holiday, Easter is coming up soon. I am guilty. I can't make an official statement about it, since I signed the non-disclosure document. Besides, I need this job since there is no other, and I will have nothing to feed my family with. You understand that if I come and tell you in person, Koryakov will kill me and bury me, which is just what we did to people. But I am writing to you because I fear God. I repent. This is pure truth, which people will know sooner or later know anyway. I don't know whether I will be able to wash my sins off before God by writing this letter. Ingushetia.ru Translated from Russian by Kavkaz-Center

Moscow Times June 2, 2004. Page 3. www.themoscowtimes.com Zyazikov: No Wave of Kidnappings By Anatoly Medetsky Staff Writer AP Ingush President Murat Zyazikov Ingush President Murat Zyazikov on Tuesday denied reports of an increasing number of abductions in his republic that have been blamed on local security forces. "It's not a massive number," he said of the abductions at a Moscow news conference, adding that law enforcement agencies were investigating who was behind the kidnappings that have been reported to the authorities. Human rights groups have reported a wave of kidnappings in Ingushetia since last year. In the abductions, masked and camouflaged men have typically shoved people into cars without license plates and spirited them away, allegedly to the Khankala military base in neighboring war-torn Chechnya, the groups say. The practice spread from Chechnya, where federal troops use it to hunt down rebels, rights groups including Amnesty International and Memorial have said. This year, there have been more than 40 abductions, the groups said last month. Zyazikov said that only seven people had been kidnapped in Ingushetia since he became president in 2002. He denied that his administration was behind the abductions. "We're categorically against any raids and operations that violate the law," he said. Zyazikov said he was unaware of a letter that a Federal Security Service officer, Igor Onishchenko, allegedly sent to the Prosecutor General's Office in April, confessing to killing, kidnapping and beating people in Ingushetia. The newspaper Novaya Gazeta published the letter, and a scan of it showing the prosecutor's office's stamp for incoming mail, in its May 27 issue, saying it could prove the letter was authentic. Onishchenko said in the letter that he and a fellow officer killed 35 men and maimed another 50 on the orders of the head of the local FSB branch. Zyazikov dismissed statements that his security service background -- he is a retired FSB general -- could have prompted him to authorize abuse and subsequently try to mount a coverup. "I know what repression means from my family's experience. I was born in exile," he said. "I think we'll never return to that." One of the most prominent abductions was that of regional prosecutor Rashid Ozdoyev, who had complained about the local FSB to the Prosecutor General's Office before he was grabbed in March. Zyazikov said he had ordered an investigation of the case. "Investigations of such notorious abductions usually don't yield any results," said Shakhman Akbulatov of Memorial from the organization's office in Nazran, the Ingush capital.

WP 6 June 2004 Young Men Vanishing in Russian Region Prosecutor Probing Role of Secret Police Is Among the Missing in Ingushetia By Peter Baker Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, June 6, 2004; Page A20 NAZRAN, Russia -- The young men started disappearing a few months ago, one by one, often with no trace. Prosecutor Rashid Ozdoyev suspected a dark conspiracy: Maybe the abductions were the work not of ordinary criminal gangs but of Russia's top law enforcement agency. Then Ozdoyev himself disappeared. Shortly after he got off an airplane from Moscow, where he had delivered a report criticizing alleged abuses by the agency, the Federal Security Service, Ozdoyev climbed into his car, drove off and has not been seen since. The case has sent a chill through the southern region of Ingushetia, already anxious because of the recent wave of kidnappings and violence. The search for the missing prosecutor has turned up nothing; the investigation has gone nowhere. No one at the security service has been interviewed. And some of Ozdoyev's nervous fellow prosecutors said they assume the security service snatched their whistle-blowing colleague to shut him up, yet they feel powerless to do anything about it. "It looks like the special services took him," Mikhail Akhiliyev, a friend and fellow prosecutor, said in a hushed conversation in a corridor of the prosecutor's office building, where that is not the official theory. "Everybody says we don't know anything. It's like a wall. There's no Rashid." A spokesman for the agency, known by its Russian initials FSB, disputed allegations that it was behind the disappearance. But that has not quieted suspicions, drawing new attention to the evolving role in Russian society of this domestic successor of the KGB. The agency has been amassing new powers in the four years since its former director, Vladimir Putin, became president of Russia. In places like Ingushetia, right next door to the war-ravaged region of Chechnya, the FSB increasingly operates with impunity, largely unchallenged by the local government, which is headed by a former KGB officer and Putin ally. At least 40 men have disappeared in the last six months, mostly members of the Ingush and Chechen ethnic groups, according to human rights activists who said they suspect involvement by the security service. "We have a Bermuda Triangle here," said a stout bodyguard for another Ingush prosecutor, a handgun tucked into his belt. In reality, he confided, far more than 40 people have disappeared. He asked not to be identified: "We watch what we say. The less we say, the safer it is." The only person who seems to be aggressively looking for Rashid Ozdoyev is his father, Boris, who is convinced that his 27-year-old son fell victim to the FSB and that no one else wants to prod too hard out of fear that they would be next. "It's absolutely outrageous," said Boris Ozdoyev. "The power of the FSB is enormous." "How do they differ from terrorists?" he asked, complaining that FSB agents operate outside the law. "The only difference is they have a state krysha," a Russian term for "roof" that has come to mean mafia-style protection. Boris Ozdoyev, 60, is no anti-establishment radical. A judge for two decades in Soviet times and later a member of Ingushetia's regional parliament, Ozdoyev and his family have devoted their lives to maintaining order in their oil-rich mountainous region. A second son is an officer of the FSB. When Rashid disappeared in March, he had 10 years of government service and had risen to be the chief prosecutor's deputy. Working in a modest office at the end of the hall on the third floor of the prosecutor's headquarters, he had filed three reports sharply critical of the FSB in the previous six months, according to his father, who said he urged him not to do so for his own safety. One of the reports -- a two-page memo sent to Col. Sergei Koryakov, local head of the FSB, late last year and reviewed by a reporter -- accused the agency of dropping the ball on investigating three explosions in Ingushetia in 2002. The FSB is sometimes accused of staging terrorist acts for political reasons, then covering up its involvement. The most recent report, according to Boris Ozdoyev, was a 14-page paper outlining FSB abuses. His son delivered it to Moscow, then flew back to Ingushetia on March 11. He brought with him a DVD of "The Last Emperor" and planned to drive to the home of his friend, Mikhail Akhiliyev, to watch it. He never made it. "We drove around, asking around. Nothing," said Akhiliyev. "No car. No him." Boris Ozdoyev said his investigation into Rashid's disappearance points the finger directly at Koryakov. Ozdoyev said his other son found Rashid's missing car, a green Lada, covered by a tarp at an FSB garage, but it was later moved. Ozdoyev said he then picked up rumors that the kidnappers were FSB officers. So, following the customs of local Ingush society, Ozdoyev and other male elders from his family convened a council meeting with one of the FSB officers and his relatives. At the meeting, Ozdoyev said, the FSB officer admitted involvement and said the operation was ordered by Koryakov. "They staged an accident and stopped [Rashid's] car," Ozdoyev said. Then the abductors grabbed Rashid, stuffed him into another vehicle and drove him away while others removed the green Lada from the scene, Ozdoyev recalled the FSB officer telling the group. "He didn't know why. He was personally ordered by Col. Koryakov." Musa Ozdoyev, 65, a retired economist and Boris's cousin, confirmed in an interview that he was at the council meeting and heard the FSB officer admit his involvement. "He was sitting in the [other] car. He said, 'I was playing the role of driver.' The others took care of the rest," Musa said. Koryakov rebuffed requests for an interview in person or by telephone for nearly two weeks, saying he was too busy, but an FSB spokesman disputed that the colonel had ordered Ozdoyev's abduction. "If he ever did this he would be removed from his post immediately," said the spokesman, Alexei Baigushkin. He dismissed the allegations as propaganda by terrorists hunted by the FSB. "You should understand there are moments when terrorists use not only bombs but information channels." The Ozdoyev case comes when human rights groups and local residents worry that the war in Chechnya, which pits local separatists against Russian troops and their Chechen allies, is increasingly spilling over into Ingushetia. More than a dozen people have been injured or killed, some summarily executed, in recent months, according to information compiled by relatives. In early March, armed men stopped a car near the village of Altievo, pulled out the passengers and shot one of them dead as he crawled on the ground, then opened fire on another car that happened on the scene, killing a 24-year-old woman. The human rights group Memorial said it found evidence that the gunmen were FSB officers. Then in early April a suicide bomber tried to kill the president of Ingushetia, Murat Zyazikov, by slamming an explosives-packed car into his motorcade, but Zyazikov was saved by his armored Mercedes. The abductions seemed to mirror a pattern in Chechnya, where authorities have been regularly accused of seizing men in the middle of the night. Bashir Mutsolgov, 29, was grabbed in December by armed men in camouflage and masks who jumped out of a car not far from his Ingushetia home, according to his brother, Magomed. Bashir has not been seen since, and his brother said contacts in the FSB told him their agency was responsible. "There are too many cases like this for it to be people in the wrong place," said Magomed, 30. Mukhammed Yandiyev's son, Timur, 24, was taken away in Ingushetia in March by six masked men in camouflage. "If the ones who captured him know about some sort of crime, they should just tell me," said Yandiyev, 63. But after so much time, he said he fears his son may no longer be alive. "I'm beginning to doubt. Either they're being tortured somewhere in a basement or they're not with us anymore." Authorities play down the problem, characterizing it as isolated. Zyazikov, the former KGB officer who is now president of Ingushetia, said in an interview that he knew of only seven reports of men disappearing. But he acknowledged that federal forces had sought to conduct zachistki, or cleansing operations, as they do in Chechnya, and said he had stopped that. "We don't accept this. . . . We don't want to be in a war," he said in his office beneath a portrait of his grandfather, who once ruled the province as well. "We need stability, peace and mutual understanding." Zyazikov, whose government has rebuilt schools, bridges and houses and sent sometimes reluctant Chechen refugees home, declined to comment on accusations against the FSB but said every disappearance is being investigated. So far, the official investigation of Rashid Ozdoyev's disappearance has wound up in a dead end. The chief investigator, Nurdi Doklayev, said he could not rule out FSB involvement but could not interview Koryakov or other officers because the agency had disavowed any knowledge about the disappearance in writing. "I have an official answer from them that they don't have any information," Doklayev said. "How can I go to them when I don't have any evidence?" Doklayev said he doubted Ozdoyev's reports would have inspired the FSB to kidnap him because they were not that important. "If we disappeared for writing reports there wouldn't be any of us here," he said. But he said that Ozdoyev's family, with a son in the FSB, should be able to solve the crime itself. That's what Boris Ozdoyev is trying to do. With a wide array of contacts built up during a lifetime as a judge and legislator, he has found people who sell him information. He has been told his son had been held in Chechnya but was moved to another location last week. "I'm looking for my son in all possible ways," he said. "I'm letting people know what's happening here to avoid creating a second Chechnya."

AP 16 June 2004 'We Are Waging a Racial Holy War' By Maria Danilova The Associated Press Semyon Tokmakov stretches out his hand and points to a thick scar he got from assaulting a black U.S. Marine six years ago. The attack cost him 1 1/2 years in jail, but Tokmakov says he has no regrets. "We are waging a racial holy war," said Tokmakov, 28, an informal leader among Moscow's skinheads, whose violence appears to be rising. Over the last several years, Russia has become a strikingly hostile place for all those with African, Asian or so-called Caucasian features -- the dark skin and dark hair typical for the peoples of the mountainous Caucasus region. The U.S. Marine was badly beaten in 1998 in a Moscow market, one of several foreigners targeted in recent years. The last few months have seen an especially shocking series of brutal racial attacks, such as the stabbing to death of a Guinea-Bissau student in Voronezh, the killing of an Afghan asylum seeker in Moscow, and the slaying of a 9-year-old Tajik girl in St. Petersburg. Ethnic minorities in Moscow complain that beatings and insults are almost a daily occurrence. "Racially motivated crimes are growing in number and brutality by the year," said Alexander Brod, head of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights. According to a two-year study conducted by Brod's bureau and a few other groups, there are about 50,000 skinheads in Russia, with Moscow and St. Petersburg home to about 1,500 each. It said 20 to 30 people have died in such attacks annually in the past few years, and the number of such crimes is growing by 30 percent per year. "When you kill cockroaches, you don't feel sorry for them, do you?" Tokmakov said, when asked whether he felt sorry for the slain Tajik girl. The growing extremist sentiments are rooted in Russia's economic problems, including high unemployment in many regions, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, which sent hundreds of thousands of migrants from poorer former Soviet republics to Russia seeking jobs. "Why have they all come here?" Tokmakov said. "They bring nothing but drugs and AIDS. Every day they harass and steal our women." Political parties and politicians openly played the nationalist card in the December parliamentary vote, calling for the ouster of migrant workers and promoting Russia for Russians. Two such political groups, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Rodina bloc, enjoyed victory in the election. Tokmakov said he and his associates had been on the ballot of Rodina but their names were later crossed out. Party officials have denied that. "When there are such economic and other hardships, there are usually two ways of dealing with it -- the first is that of contemplating, the second is looking for an enemy and blaming him for your problems. Unfortunately Russia has chosen the second path," Brod said. Rafael Arkelov, a 47-year-old Armenian singer who has spent all his life living in Moscow and for whom Russian is his first language, has experienced it all. He was in a grocery store buying a chocolate bar and a bottle of champagne to visit his friends for a New Year's celebration when a man asked him for some change. After Arkelov refused to give him money, he saw the man approach two youths with shaved heads whom he identified as skinheads standing nearby and whispered something. Several minutes later, after Arkelov walked out of the store, he was jumped from behind. "They punched me in my eyes, my face, and all of a sudden I couldn't see anymore. Then I collapsed to the ground and they started beating me with their feet," Arkelov recalled. "If it weren't for a woman across the street who screamed 'What are you doing?', if it weren't for this scream of hers, I think they would have beaten me to death." Brod's study predicted that the number of skinheads could grow to 80,000 to 100,000 within the next two years if authorities don't take measures to combat xenophobia. Interior Ministry officials have said they were closely watching 10,000 suspected members of extremist groups, but all too often racially motivated attacks are dismissed as hooliganism. "Racism isn't unique to Russia, I know it exists in Europe and America," Arkelov said. "But unlike Russia, in those countries it is prosecuted and the state pursues specific policies to combat it."

Serbia and Montenegro

REUTERS Reuters 25 May 2004 Serbia charges 11 more for 1991 Vukovar massacre BELGRADE – Serbia's special war crimes prosecutor, aided by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Tuesday charged 11 more people for the notorious 1991 massacre at Vukovar in Croatia, his spokesman said. Their case is expected to be linked to that of six Serbs charged with the same crime, committed as the town fell to Serb forces at the start of the 1991-1995 Croatian war of independence. Their trial started in March. "Thanks to a thorough investigation and cooperation with The Hague war crimes tribunal, which gave us access to certain documents, the prosecutor was able to charge 11 more people," said spokesman Bruno Vekaric. He said all 11 were in custody. Their indictments were also the result of the testimony of witnesses interrogated in Croatia in what was the first fruit of cooperation between the two countries on the war crimes issue, he added. There were no further details of the new indictments. The first six accused are charged with killing at least 192 prisoners of war who were rounded up from a hospital where they sought shelter, taken to pits and shot seven or eight at a time. Cooperation with the Hague tribunal is one of the main conditions for Serbia to join the European Union and NATO and to gain access to international aid. Serbia has been under strong criticism by the U.N. prosecutor for failing to cooperate with the tribunal on its investigation of war crimes committed in the 1990s. Its special court was set up last year to show the country's determination to dispense justice for war crimes of the past decade, and the Vukovar case is a litmus test. Earlier this month, Serbian judges discussed cooperation during a trip to The Hague, where ex-Yugoslav army officers dubbed "The Vukovar Three," are awaiting trial for the atrocity.

AP 31 May 2004 Mladic “no longer in Serbia” | 20:54 May 31 | AP BELGRADE -- Monday -- Faced with international pressure to arrest war crimes suspects, Serbia's top officials today reiterated their claim that former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic is no longer hiding in the country. Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said that the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague "must have a certain amount of trust" in the Serbian authorities, which say Mladic is no longer here. The US and the European Union have demanded that Serbia-Montenegro arrest and extradite Mladic to The Hague before it begins approaching membership in NATO and other international organisations. In April, the US Congress suspended its financial aid to Serbia, specifically mentioning the failure to arrest Mladic, who was indicted by the UN court for genocide for his role in the killing of about 7,000 men and boys in the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995. The Hague prosecutors maintain that Mladic has been hiding in Serbia since 1995. Mladic and Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic - believed to be hiding in Bosnia - are the two top fugitives sought by The Hague tribunal. Mladic was frequently seen in public in Serbia during the 1990s reign of Slobodan Milosevic. But he disappeared from public view when the former Yugoslav president was toppled by pro-democracy forces in 2000. Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus told reporters today that a search for Mladic in Serbia has been futile and that he believes that he is no longer here. "The international demands for Mladic's arrest are becoming Serbia's biggest hurdle toward European integration," Labus said. Dragan Marsicanin, the presidential candidate of Kostunica's governing coalition, criticised the Hague tribunal and the West for their pressure over Mladic. "How can we prove that he is not here?" he asked. "Anyway, why don't they arrest Radovan Karadzic?" added Marsicanin, referring to the NATO-led troops stationed in neighbouring Bosnia who have been looking for the Bosnian Serb leader since 1995. "It's not that simple."

Serbia - Kosovo

BBC 6 June, 2004, 11:16 GMT 12:16 UK E-mail this to a friend Printable version Serb teenager shot dead in Kosovo There are fears Kosovo could again spiral into anarchy A Serb teenager has been killed in a drive-by shooting in the village of Gracanica in Kosovo, triggering fears of new ethnic clashes in the province. Police arrested two armed suspects, both ethnic Albanians, soon after the attack in the nearby town of Pristina. Sixteen-year-old Dimitrije Popovic was shot dead at an outdoor fast food stall in the early hours of Saturday. A similar shooting, blamed on ethnic Albanians, led to a wave of violence in March that left 19 people dead. Police moved fast to stop a fresh spiral into anarchy, setting up checkpoints in the area and sealing off all roads to Gracanica. Patrols have also been stepped up, with local police being backed up by Nato-led peacekeepers, who have been in the province under a UN mandate since 1999. Kosovo's leading Albanian politicians have also condemned the killing and called for restraint. "I call on all citizens to remain calm," said Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi, adding that the killers will be brought to book. The BBC's Matt Prodger in Belgrade says the killing comes at a time of high tension in Kosovo, with many fearing that further outbreaks of violence in the province are imminent. Lingering hostility The rioting in March followed a similar shooting of a Serb youth that was blamed on ethnic Albanians. The Kosovan press carried an interview with a 13-year old boy who said he survived the incident on 16 March, in which the children were chased into the River Ibar by two local Serbs with a dog. But an international investigator found there was no evidence for the story and blamed "reckless and sensationalist" media reporting for sparking the violence. Street riots followed, leading many Serb families to flee the province as Albanian mobs attacked their homes. Kosovo's UN administrator, Harri Holkeri, announced he was stepping down not long afterwards; a successor has yet to be appointed. Kosovo's Serb and Albanian communities have been locked in an uneasy stand-off since a Nato bombing campaign drove Serbian security forces out of the province and drew it under UN control. The Belgrade government, then under Slobodan Milosevic, was accused of war crimes against Kosovo's Albanian Muslims, who had been agitating for independence from Serbia. Lingering hostility between the two communities have hampered international efforts to repair ethnic relations and reach a final settlement on the province's status.

Reuters 5 June 2004 Serb boy killed as tensions rise in Kosovo Sat 5 June, 2004 17:39 By Shaban Buza GRACANICA, Serbia and Montenegro (Reuters) - A Serb teenager has been shot dead in Kosovo and police have quickly arrested two Albanians suspected of trying to ignite another round of ethnic violence in the United Nations-run province. U.N. police spokesman Malcolm Ashby said 16-year-old Dimitrije Popovic died when gunmen fired from a car into a group of young Serbs at a hamburger kiosk at 2 a.m. on Saturday. Police in Pristina later stopped a suspect car and seized two Albanians with guns. The killing, in the Serb enclave of Gracanica, was the first since mid-March when 19 people died and villages were torched in what NATO said was an "orchestrated" bid to provoke the worst violence in Kosovo's five years under United Nations rule. "The criminals must be brought to justice and as soon as possible the motives for this criminal act must be found," Kosovo Albanian Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi said. "I call on all citizens of Kosovo to remain calm." Kosovo Albanian President Ibrahim Rugova said "such acts are directed against civil peace in Kosovo, against our country's future and independence." Albanian leaders were faulted in March for failing to quickly condemn the violence. Hampered by an Albanian code of silence or outright intimidation, U.N. police have also been criticised in the past for failing to make quick arrests. UNSAFE ENCLAVES It was not clear how the suspected gunmen managed to drive in and out of Gracanica. The NATO-led peacekeeping mission KFOR re-established checkpoints on the outskirts of the town after the March riots, saying their removal was a mistake. KFOR spokesman Colonel Jim Moran said some checkpoints "may have been relaxed". By afternoon, Gracanica was calm and under control but the roads in and out were sealed off until Monday. Oliver Ivanovic, a Serb member of Kosovo's parliament, blamed the U.N. and NATO for not stopping militants. "There is no living together here... We must seal off all roads through Serb districts," he said. The head of Serbia's Kosovo Coordination Centre, Nebojsa Covic, said the murder was "a message to the EU foreign policy chief (Javier) Solana who is arriving in Pristina on Monday, (and) a farewell message to...Harri Holkeri". Holkeri, Kosovo's fourth U.N. governor since 1999, quit two weeks ago under pressure. He returned to Kosovo on Saturday ahead of a final meeting with Solana, as international efforts to resolve Kosovo's demand for independence by 2005 intensify. Speaking on arrival Pristina airport, Holkeri said he did not want to see a repeat of the March violence and believed most decent Kosovo people did not want that either. It was a similar shooting in another Serb enclave, quickly followed by the drowning of three Albanian boys in a river, that ignited mob violence in March. Albanian media were condemned for blaming Serbs for the drowning and fomenting 'revenge' attacks. Serbs were targeted for revenge after Kosovo came under U.N. control in 1999 following NATO's 11-week bombing war to halt Serb repression of the independence-seeking ethnic Albanians. Belgrade has complained bitterly that those Serbs who chose to stay as 200,000 fled north are not adequately protected but its plan to create autonomous Serb enclaves is rejected by the Western powers that ordered intervention as a form of partition.

B92.net Suspect arrested in Kosovo murder | 15:41 June 06 | B92 GRACANICA -- Sunday – UN police in Kosovo have announced the arrest of two people on suspicion of involvement in the drive-by shooting of 17-year-old Dimitrij Popovic in Gracanica. Albanians Albert Krasnici (18) and Labinot Gasi (20), both of Pristina, were arrested on Saturday, but no further information is available. The International Press Centre in Kosovska Mitrovica reports that police have seized a white Audi 80 together with two weapons. The body of the young Serb victim, who was gunned down in the street overnight on Friday, was to be buried in Gracanica today. Gracanica is reported to be calm, with the main road to Gnjilane blocked and a strong presence of international peacekeepers and police.

www.itar-tass.com 6 June 2004 Russia insists on collecting arms in Kosovo, disbanding mobs 06.06.2004, 13.42 MOSCOW, June 6 (Itar-Tass) - Russia deems it necessary to take tough measures against masterminds of mass rioting and looting in Kosovo, said on Sunday Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko in connection with the killing on Saturday of a 17-year-old Serbian youth, Dimitrie Popovic, in Gracanice. According to the diplomat, “the event is another crime, spearheaded against the Serbian community in Kosovo”. “Resolutely denouncing acts of violence against Serbian population, we demand that the UN Mission and KFOR should take urgent and efficient actions to put things in order,” Yakovenko stressed. “The list of necessary moves is known. These are collection of weapons from population, disbanding organizations of gunmen and tough measures against masterminds and participants in looting of Serbian areas.” ”We witnessed quite recently mass violence which resulted in an ethnic purge of the Serbian population in the province,” the spokesman noted. “Russia resolutely denounced acts of terrorism and demanded that international missions and temporary bodies of Kosovo self-government take urgent measures to normalize the situation and to eradicate reasons for Albanian extremism. However, our called passed unheeded.” In Yakovenko’s opinion, “it is very important now to prevent this case from turning into a new spiral of ethnic tensions in the province”. “Responsibility for this will also rest with the leaders of the Albanian community in Kosovo,” he underlined. “The March events and the new tragic incident show how deep-rooted is ethnic intolerance in society, and many years will be needed to eradicate this intolerance,” the diplomat claimed. “We are convinced that consistent and full implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1244 is the only way to establishing confidence in the province.” It is senseless to speak of any approach to high democratic standards, the more so, to fix periods of assessing their implementation as far as reasons for ethnic hatred persist in Kosovo and innocent people die of hands of armed extremists,” Yakovenko stated.

BBC 7 June, 2004 Solana condemns Kosovo shooting Solana says the reconstruction process has been slow European Union foreign affairs chief Javier Solana has condemned the murder of a Serb teenager in Kosovo, amid fears of fresh ethnic tensions. Two ethnic Albanians have been arrested in connection with the shooting. Speaking as he visited areas destroyed by ethnic violence in March, Mr Solana also criticised Kosovo Albanian leaders for delays to rebuilding of Serb homes. He warned that the EU would intervene if the authorities did not finish the reconstruction work by September. Building The teenager killed early on Saturday was 16-year-old Dimitrije Popovic, who was shot dead at an outdoor fast food stall in the town of Gracanica, 15km (8 miles) south of Pristina. Police set up checkpoints in a bid to stop a fresh spiral into anarchy. They also stepped up patrols, backed up by Nato-led peacekeepers, who have been in the province under a UN mandate since 1999. A society where kids of 16 years are killed is not a healthy society Javier Solana Around 800 homes were destroyed and 19 people killed during clashes between Serbs and ethnic Albanians earlier this year. Mr Solana received a hostile reception when he visited Kosovo after the ethnic violence in March which left 19 dead. On Monday, he returned to the ethnically mixed town of Kosovo Polje where schools and homes were burned down. He said the government-led efforts for reconstruction in the Serb-populated areas had been too slow. "Some effort has been done. But the speed at which the process of reconstruction is going is too slow," he said. Call for calm Referring to the teenager's death, he added: "A society where kids of 16 years are killed is not a healthy society. "That society does not belong to Europe. I don't know where it belongs." Hundreds of Serb families were forced to leave their homes in March Mr Solana is expected to meet ethnic Albanian Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi to discuss the aftermath of the March violence. The BBC's Matt Prodger, in Belgrade, says the killing comes at a time of high tension in Kosovo, with many fearing that further outbreaks of violence in the province are imminent. Kosovo's leading Albanian politicians condemned the killing and pleaded for restraint. "I call on all citizens to remain calm," said Mr Rexhepi, adding that the killers would be brought to justice. It is not yet known why the teenager was killed. Lingering hostility Clashes between Serb and ethnic Albanians communities broke out in March, forcing many Serb families to flee the province as Albanian mobs attacked their homes. Kosovo's UN administrator, Harri Holkeri, announced he was stepping down not long afterwards; a successor has yet to be appointed. Kosovo's Serb and Albanian communities have been locked in an uneasy stand-off since a Nato bombing campaign drove Serbian security forces out of the province and drew it under UN control. The Belgrade government, then under Slobodan Milosevic, was accused of war crimes against Kosovo's Albanian Muslims, who had been agitating for independence from Serbia. Lingering hostility between the two communities have hampered international efforts to repair ethnic relations and reach a final settlement on the province's status.

Turkey

BBC 9 June, 2004n Turkey to free Kurdish activists Zana's sentence had been confirmed in a retrial earlier this year A Turkish court has ordered the release of four prominent Kurdish activists, including award-winning ex-MP Leyla Zana, pending an appeal. The state prosecutor called earlier this week for their jail sentences - imposed in 1994 on charges of links to illegal rebel groups - to be quashed. Their trials had been widely condemned by human rights groups. Correspondents say the move will please the European Union, which considers the activists prisoners of conscience. The four had their sentences confirmed in an earlier retrial this year, but European institutions warned that their continued imprisonment would affect Turkey's efforts to join the EU. The European Commission is to issue a report in October on whether Turkey is ready to start EU entry talks. 'Rule of law' Ms Zana's appeal will begin on 8 July. Her lawyer told the BBC that her release was a victory after a 10-year struggle. "It's obvious that Turkey operates under the rule of law," he said. Leyla Zana rose to prominence in Turkey in 1991, when she spoke in Kurdish during her oath of allegiance to parliament. Within three years, she was in jail - along with fellow MPs Orhan Dogan, Hatip Dicle and Selim Sadak - for collaborating with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). She became known as a high-profile dissident when she was awarded the European Parliament's Sakharov Peace Prize in 1995 - a year after her conviction. The BBC's Jonny Dymond in Istanbul says Ms Zana has become a symbol both of peaceful protest and of flaws in the Turkish judicial system.

United Kingdom

icdumfries.icnetwork.co.uk 29 May 2004 Dalai Lama calls for love Brotherly love and compassion today could prevent atrocities and genocide happening in the future, one of the world's most influential leaders told a Scottish audience. The Dalai Lama was addressing a crowd of 9,000 who had turned out to hear him share his wisdom at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow. "We must act now if we want to prevent these atrocities happening in the future," he told the crowd referring to events of terrorism and genocide. .