Peace and Justice Post

Authorities Should Halt Use of Excessive Force on Protesters

The Syrian government has shown no qualms about shooting dead its own citizens for speaking out. Syrians have shown incredible courage in daring to protest publicly against one of the most repressive governments in the region, and they shouldn’t have to pay with their lives.

(Cairo) – Syria should cease use of live fire and other excessive force against protesters, as it did on March 18 and 20, 2011, in the southern town of Daraa, leaving at least five people dead, Human Rights Watch said today.

Sunday, March 20 marked the third day of protests in Daraa, where government forces yet again fired on protesters and used teargas to break up a public gathering, killing one person and injuring dozens of others, according to media reports. Today’s fatality brings the total number of protesters killed in Daraa to at least five.

“The Syrian government has shown no qualms about shooting dead its own citizens for speaking out,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Syrians have shown incredible courage in daring to protest publicly against one of the most repressive governments in the region, and they shouldn’t have to pay with their lives.”

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By Gary G. Kohls, Consortium News, March 22, 2011

Editor’s Note: At a time when many on the American Christian Right espouse the supposed “originalist” thinking of the Founders, it’s ironic that many show little interest in the “originalist” thinking of Jesus as recounted in the gospels.

Rather than embrace the pacifist message of “the Prince of Peace,” many of these Christians have a quick-draw reaction to launching wars, a corruption of their religion that Gary G. Kohls traces back to Rome’s embrace of Christianity:

There is no question that the Christian church of the first three centuries regarded itself as a nonviolent community. It makes perfect sense. Jesus clearly taught and modeled the nonviolent love of friend and enemy, and his earliest followers tried to do so.

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And by and large they succeeded, despite terrible persecutions from Rome, under whose brutal domination being a Christian was a capital crime for most of the first three centuries.

The first Christians tried to be faithful to Jesus’s commandments to “put away the sword,” ”do not repay evil for evil,” “do unto others that which you would have them do unto you,” “do good to those who persecute you,” “pray for those who despitefully use you,” “love your neighbor as yourself,” “turn the other cheek,” “love your enemies” and “love as I have loved you.”

Jesus’s earliest followers regarded the human body as the holy temple of God here on earth, and, knowing that violence to a holy place was considered an act of desecration (and therefore forbidden), they refused to kill or maim other children of God, and therefore they also refused, out of conscience, to become killing soldiers for Rome.

Martyrdom, in the first three centuries, was regarded as the ultimate act of social responsibility. And the church flourished!

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By Matthias Gebauer and Hasnain Kazim, Spiegel Online, Mar. 21, 2011

 

Photo Gallery: 3 Photos

The images are repulsive. A group of rogue US Army soldiers in Afghanistan killed innocent civilians and then posed with their bodies. On Monday, SPIEGEL published some of the photos — and the US military responded promptly with an apology. Still, NATO fears that reactions in Afghanistan could be violent.

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The United States and NATO are concerned that reactions could be intense to the publication of images documenting killings committed by US soldiers in Afghanistan. The images appeared in the most recent edition of SPIEGEL, which hit the newsstands on Monday.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already telephoned with her Afghan counterpart to discuss the situation. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon has likewise made contact with officials in Kabul. The case threatens to strain already fragile US-Afghan relations at a time when the two countries are negotiating over the establishment of permanent US military bases in Afghanistan.

In a statement released by Colonel Thomas Collins, the US Army, which is currently preparing a court martial to try a total of 12 suspects in connection with the killings, apologized for the suffering the photos have caused. The actions depicted in the photos, the statement read, are “repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States.”

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By Chris Hedges,truthdig.com, March 21, 2011

AP / Cpl. Daniel J. Redding

An ambulance loaded with injured troops. The less fortunate—those who die—end up in the care of fellow servicemen and -women who have to carry out gruesome work while struggling to hold on to their own sanity.

Jess Goodell enlisted in the Marines immediately after she graduated from high school in 2001. She volunteered three years later to serve in the Marine Corps’ first officially declared Mortuary Affairs unit, at Camp Al Taqaddum in Iraq. Her job, for eight months, was to collect and catalog the bodies and personal effects of dead Marines. She put the remains of young Marines in body bags and placed the bags in metal boxes. Before being shipped to Dover Air Force Base, the boxes were stored, often for days, in a refrigerated unit known as a “reefer.” The work she did was called “processing.”

“We went through everything,” she said when I reached her by phone in Buffalo, N.Y., where she is about to become a student in a Ph.D. program in counseling at the University of Buffalo. “We would get everything that the body had on it when the Marine died. Everyone had a copy of The Rules of Engagement in their left breast pocket. You found notes that people had written to each other. You found lists. Lists were common, the things they wanted to do when they got home or food they wanted to eat. The most difficult was pictures. Everyone had a picture of their wife or their kids or their family. And then you had the younger kids who might be 18 years old and they had prom pictures or pictures next to what I imagine were their first cars. Everyone had a spoon in their flak jacket. There were pens and trash and wrappers and MRE food. All of it would get sent back [to the Marines’ homes].

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Claim Is Highest Toll Yet for Civil War

Speaking to al-Jazeera on Sunday, Libyan rebel spokesman Abdel Hafiz Ghoga reported that upward of 8,000 Libyans had been killed in the civil war between the burgeoning protest-rebel movement and the Gadhafi regime.

The claim is the highest toll yet reported for the conflict, but is entirely possible given that doctors estimated 2,000 killed in Benghazi alone during the initial violence. It is unclear, however, how reliable the current information the rebels have on the western tolls is, as those cities were lost in fighting over the past weeks.

The deaths from the internal fighting appear to have ground to a virtual halt since Saturday, when Western nations attacked Libya. In the day and a half since then, reports from the ground suggest that at least 64 people have been killed in the campaign, as large numbers of missiles have been fired into Libyan territory.

It is unclear at this point what percentage of the casualties in either toll represents civilians and how many are combatants. With the campaign transitioning into air strikes, the toll, particularly among civilians, seems bound to grow going forward.

Video

Any accusation that the US manufactured and launched these revolutions is unjust speech toward these peoples, especially that we are talking about regimes which are allied with the USA, serve the American project and pose no threat to Israel.

Speech March 19, 2011 -Information Clearing House,

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) – Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah delivers a televised speech on revolutions and unrest in multiple Arab countries:

-Our gathering today is to voice our support for our Arab people and their revolutions and sacrifices, especially in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya and Yemen.

-The value of this solidarity is moral, political, and ethical, and its effects are also moral. The origin of what is going on – which could decide the fate of an uprising here, a confrontation there, or a resistance there – the origin is the steadfastness of peoples, linked to their faith and high spirituality.

-You remember that during the July [2006] war, every word and statement in any state and anywhere in the world had its impact on the resistance, the people and the displaced.

-The same is the case with the Arab revolts. We tell them that we support them, that we stand by your side and we are ready to help you toward your interest and ours, with your and our capabilities.

-We have to stress that these revolutions are the will of the people themselves. Any accusation that the US manufactured and launched these revolutions is unjust speech toward these peoples, especially that we are talking about regimes which are allied with the USA, serve the American project and pose no threat to Israel.

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U.S. academic Richard Falk spoke to UN Human Rights Council as it prepared resolution condemning settlement building in East Jerusalem and West Bank.

Haaretz, March 21, 2011

Source: Reuters

Israel’s expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem and eviction of Palestinians from their homes there is a form of ethnic cleansing, a United Nations investigator said on Monday.

United States academic Richard Falk was speaking to the UN Human Rights Council as it prepared to pass resolutions condemning settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The “continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with the forcible eviction of long-residing Palestinians are creating an intolerable situation” in the part of the city previously controlled by Jordan, he said.

This situation “can only be described in its cumulative impact as a form of ethnic cleansing,” Falk declared.

Israel declines to deal with Falk or even allow him into the country, accusing him of being biased.

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With 42 killed in Sanaa, regimes show they will keep power at any cost

By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, March 20, 2011

afp/getty images 

More protests hit both Yemen (above) and Bahrain yesterday

Abrutal counter-revolution is sweeping through the Arabian Peninsula as Bahrain and Yemen both declare war on reform movements and ferociously try to suppress them with armed force.

In Yemen police and snipers on rooftops opened fire on Friday on a mass demonstration outside the main university, killing at least 42 people. The government has since declared martial law and set up checkpoints throughout the capital, Sanaa.

In Bahrain repression began a few days earlier, when King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa called for military support from other Gulf monarchs and 1,000 troops from Saudi Arabia crossed into the island kingdom. “This was the green light for our army to kill people,” says Ali Salman, the leader of al-Wefaq, the main opposition party.

As decisively as in Yemen the Bahraini al-Khalifa royal family has rejected reform and showed that it intends to hold power by armed force. Serried ranks of riot police advancing behind a cloud of tear gas and backed by armoured vehicles and helicopters cleared protesters from Pearl Square, which has been the gathering point for protesters. The 300ft-high monument commemorating the pearl fishers of the Gulf, a rallying point for protesters, has been torn down by the army. “It was a bad memory,” said the Bahraini Foreign Minister, Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa.

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