By agency reporter, Ekklesia, November 19, 2009
The World Council of Churches (WCC) has asked the United Nations Secretary-General to make sure that recommendations of a key report about war crimes committed during the conflict between Israeli and Palestinian armed forces in Gaza at the beginning of 2009, are properly followed up.
Larry Johnson, Looking for Trouble blog, Nov 18, 2009
Iraq is planning to execute up to 126 women by the end of this year. At least 9 may be hanged within the next two weeks. Human rights groups say the only crime committed by many of these women was to serve in the government of Saddam Hussein. Others, according to human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, were convicted of common crimes based on confessions that were the result of torture.
By John Pilger, ZNet, Nov 18, 2009
John Pilger’s ZSpace Page
When General Suharto, the west’s man, seized power in Indonesia in the mid-1960s, he offered “a gleam of light in Asia”, rejoiced Time magazine. That he had killed up to a million “communists” was of no account in the acquisition of what Richard Nixon called “the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in South-east Asia”.
In November 1967, the booty was handed out at an extraordinary conference in a lakeside hotel in Geneva. The participants included the most powerful capitalists in the world, the likes of David Rockefeller, and senior executives of the major oil companies and banks, General Motors, British American Tobacco, Imperial Chemical Industries, American Express, Siemens, Goodyear, US Steel. The president of Time Incorporated, James Linen, opened the proceedings with this prophetic description of globalisation: “We are trying to create a new climate in which private enterprise and developing countries work together for the greater profit of the free world. The world of international enterprise is more than governments . . . It is a seamless web, which has been shaping the global environment at revolutionary speed.”
The recession has worsened the plight of Asian workers in UAE and elsewhere. Their rights are only slowly being addressed
Nesrine Malik, The Guardian/UK, Nov. 16, 2009
The exploitation of migrant workers in the Gulf states has been worrying human rights groups for some time but now the recession is making their predicament even worse.
Usually employed in a semi-formal manner with large companies, Asian workers in United Arab Emirates fall within a vacuum of employment law and social welfare and hence become the first casualties of a recession. Usually indebted to their agents or “sponsors”, ie those who have purchased visas on their behalf, and bereft of passports or identification documents confiscated by their employers, they now inhabit a “grey economy”.
| Al Jazeera, Nov. 15, 2009 | ||||
Journalists have been allowed to inspect refurbished facilities at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, the largest US military hub in the region and home to a controversial prison. Al Jazeera’s correspondent James Bays, who was among those who inspected the facilities on Sunday, said Bagram, unlike its Guantanamo counterpart, was clearly not going to be shut down soon. “The new prison wing cost some $60 million to build … and is meant to be part of a new era of openness and transparency,” Bays said. “But we were not shown the detainees. Human-rights lawyers say that, while the environment for the prisoners may be changing, their legal situation is not … not having been charged. Nor has any civilian lawyer ever been allowed inside.” Bays said the extended prison could hold up to 1,000 detainees, but was at present holding around 700 inmates, including 30 foreign prisoners. Lessons learnt General Mark Martins, who runs detention operations at the airbase, said the US military was improving its treatment of detainees and had learnt many lessons since occupying the country in 2001. “Detention, if not done properly, can actually harm the effort. We are a learning organisation … we believe transparency is certainly going to help the effort, and increase the credibility of the whole process,” Martins said. However, Clara Gutteridge, an investigator of secret prisons and renditions from the human rights organisation, Reprieve, said Bagram is seen as “Guantanamo’s lesser-known evil twin”.”All this talk about transparency, and the US government still won’t release a simple list of names of prisoners who are in Bagram,” she told Al Jazeera. “None of them have had access to a lawyer … and that just seems very unfair. “We at Reprieve see this as the next big fight after Guantanamo Bay. “But one thing that the US government is saying is that Afghan prisoners in Afghanistan have less rights than any other prisoner which just seems absurd.” Bagram Air Field is the largest US military hub in Afghanistan and is home to about 24,000 military personnel and civilian contractors. Base expansion Tens of millions of dollars continue to be spent on expanding and upgrading facilities – turning Bagram into a town spread over about 5,000 acres. The air field part of the complex is already handling 400 tonnes of cargo and 1,000 passengers daily, according to Air Force spokesman Captain David Faggard. It is continuing to grow to keep up with the requirements of an escalating war and troop increases.
Among new options being considered in Washington is regional commander General Stanley McChrystal’s request to bring an additional 40,000 troops to Afghanistan.But even with current troop levels – 65,000 US troops and about 40,000 from allied countries – Bagram already is bursting at the seams, our correspondent reported. Plans are under way to build a new, $22m passenger terminal and a cargo yard costing $9m. To increase cargo capacity, a parking ramp supporting the world’s largest aircraft is to be completed in early 2010. Bagram was previously a major Soviet base during Moscow’s 1979-89 occupation of Afghanistan, providing air support to Soviet and Afghan forces fighting the mujahidin. Bagram lies in Parwan, a relatively quiet province. The Taliban is not believed to have a significant presence in the province. But the base is susceptible to rocket and mortar attacks. In 2009, the Taliban launched more than a dozen attacks on the base, killing four and wounding at least 12, according to Colonel Mike Brady, a military spokesman. |
by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report, November 14, 2009
Blood on the floor and walls of a cell at Abu Ghraib. Defense Secretary Robert Gates invoked his new authority to block images like these from being released under the Freedom of Information Act. (Photo: Wikicommons)
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has blocked the release of photographs depicting US soldiers abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, using authority just granted to him by Congress to circumvent the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to keep the images under wraps on national security grounds.
In a brief filed with the US Supreme Court late Friday, Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson, and Solicitor General Elena Kagan, said Gates “personally exercised his certification authority” on Friday to withhold the photos and “determined that public disclosure of these photographs would endanger citizens of the United States, members of the United States Armed Forces, or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States.”
Lawyer alleges collusion between Britain and US over ill-treatment of prisoners, including sexual humiliation
The Ministry of Defence confirmed last night that it is investigating 33 cases of alleged abuse, including rape and torture of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers.
One claimant alleges that he was raped by two British soldiers, while others claim they were stripped naked, abused and photographed. Female soldiers are also alleged to have taken part in abuse.
A pre-action protocol letter was served on the Ministry of Defence last week by Phil Shiner, the lawyer representing the Iraqis, according to the Independent.
In the letter to the MoD, reported in the newspaper, Shiner said the allegations raised questions of collusion between Britain and the US over the ill-treatment of Iraqis. “Given the history of the UK’s involvement in the development of these techniques alongside the US, it is deeply concerning that there appears to be strong similarities between instances of the use of sexual humiliation,” said Shiner.
Responding to the allegations, Bill Rammell, the armed forces minister, said: “Over 120,000 British troops have served in Iraq and the vast majority have conducted themselves to the highest standards of behaviour, displaying integrity and selfless commitment. Only a tiny number of individuals have been shown to have fallen short of our high standards. Allegations of this nature are taken very seriously, however allegations must not be taken as fact and investigations must be allowed to take their course without judgments being made prematurely.”
The Guardian reported in September that the Royal Military police had launched a criminal investigation into allegations that British soldiers repeatedly raped and mutilated an 18-year-old Iraqi civilian who was working as a labourer at Camp Breadbasket in Basra, the scene of other abuse allegations.
The man who wishes to remain unnamed alleged that two soldiers raped him, subjecting him to a 15-minute ordeal, then slashed him with a knife. He was treated in hospital for cuts and the military police are understood to have secured the medical records. The victim said he was so traumatised he tried to kill himself.
Shiner also represents Baha Mousa, 26, an Iraqi who died after being taken into UK military custody. Mousa and nine other civilians were arrested at a hotel in Basra in September 2003. The father-of-two died the following day, having suffered 93 separate injuries, including fractured ribs and a broken nose.
Corporal Donald Payne became the first member of the British armed forces to be convicted of a war crime when he pleaded guilty at a court martial in September 2006 to inhumanely treating civilians. He was dismissed from the army and sentenced to one year in a civilian jail.
At the ongoing public inquiry into Mousa’s death, a former British soldier admitted for the first time that he saw Payne and Private Aaron Cooper kicking and hitting the Iraqi shortly before he died. Garry Reader told a hearing on Monday how he had tried to resuscitate Mousa.
Peace and Justice Post 
Does Ideology Matter?
November 18, 2009Yes it does!
By Badri Raina, ZNet, Nov. 17, 2009
Badri Raina’s ZSpace Page
“There has been a systematic failure in giving tribals a stake in the modern economic system—the alienation built over decades is taking a dangerous toll”. . .
“The systemic exploitation of our tribal communities. . .can no longer be tolerated.”
(Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, Hindustan Times, 14/11/09, p.10)
I
A government report just released on the situation of India’s tribals blames the government itself and companies like the Tatas and Essar for the disquiet in the tribal “hinterlands.” As you would expect, the latter have righteously washed their distinguished hands of the insinuation.
Brought out by the Ministry of Rural Development, the report (some tribute to aspects of Indian democracy) in a chapter titled “State-connived land alienation” speaks forthrightly of how land grabs in India’s mineral rich states—Orissa, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand—happen with “direct and indirect participation of revenue officials.” To those must be added the more notorious segments of the political class, now most strikingly represented by the erstwhile chief minister of Jharkhand, Madhu Koda, who, by all accounts, is alleged to have made a pile of some Rs.4000/-crores over a span of five or six years of ‘rule.’ That Mr. Koda is himself a tribal leader must suggest how enticing and promising the dominant paradigms of ‘development’ are.
That the debate around the issue has penetrated the solid bastions of capitalist theorists is rather hearteningly evidenced by the following sub-heading in the editorial of Hindustan Times of Nov.,16: “‘Tribal land grabs’ aren’t just an ‘NGO’ theory.”
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