Archive for the ‘Human rights’ Category
October 20, 2009
Peace cannot be established in the Middle East when the suffering of the Palestinians continues and the Gaza Strip remains a wreck, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Monday.
Speaking at the Istanbul Forum organized by Stratim, Seta and the German Marshall Fund, Erdoğan said the Palestinian question is at the center of all problems in the Middle East. The prime minister recalled that Turkey vocalized its disapproval of the previous year’s bombing of the Gaza Strip, adding: “We criticized steps that were serving no purpose, but which increased suffering and sabotaged the peace process. We will continue to criticize it today, too. We will criticize anything similar taking place in other areas.”
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Tags:Gaza, Iran, Israel, Israeli war on Gaze, nuclear weapons, Palestinian question, Palestinians, PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey
Posted in Commentary, Gaza, Human rights, Palestine, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
October 19, 2009
By Amira Hass, Haaretz/Israel, Oct 18, 2009
Richard Goldstone visited the Gaza City neighborhood of Zaytoun in late June to tour the compound of the extended Samouni family, the subject of coverage here in recent weeks (“‘I fed him like a baby bird,'” September 17; “Death in the Samouni compound,” September 25). Twenty-nine members of the family, all of them civilians, were killed in the Israel Defense Force’s winter assault – 21 during the shelling of a house where IDF soldiers had gathered some 100 members of the family a day earlier.
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Tags:Amira Hass, Gaza City, Israel Defense Force's attack on Gaza, killings, Richard Goldstone, Salah Samouni and family
Posted in Commentary, crime, Human rights, Palestine, Uncategorized, war, war crimes, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »
October 17, 2009
By Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service News
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16 (IPS) – The 47-member Human Rights Council (HRC) approved a resolution Friday endorsing war crimes charges against Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, as spelled out in a report by a four-member international fact-finding mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone.
As expected, the United States threw a protective arm around Israel and voted against the resolution, along with some members of the European Union (EU): Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovakia, as well as Ukraine.
“The voting was predictable,” an Asian diplomat told IPS, pointing out that while Western nations voted against the resolution or abstained, most of the developing countries voted in favour.
The vote was 25 in favour, six against, 11 abstentions and five no-shows.
The Geneva-based Council not only endorsed the recommendations of the Goldstone report but also strongly condemned Israeli policies in the occupied territories, including those limiting Palestinian access to their properties and holy sites, particularly in occupied Jerusalem.
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Tags:Hamas, Israel, Obama administration, Phyllis Bennis, Richard Goldstone, Thalif Deen, UN Human Rights Council, United States' vote, war crimes
Posted in Commentary, crime, Gaza, Human rights, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, war, war crimes, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »
October 16, 2009
By Cesar Chelala, Information Clearing House, Oct 15, 2009
In what can be considered a sad paradox of history, an analysis of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) actions during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza shows that the IDF violated several of the Nuremberg Principles, as well as the principles of the Geneva Conventions.
The Nuremberg Principles are a set of guidelines established after World War II to try Nazi Party members. They were established to determine what constitutes a war crime. The Geneva Conventions consist of four treaties and three additional protocols that establish the standards in international law for humanitarian treatment of the victims of war.
According to Nuremberg Principle I, “Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment.” As detailed in the “Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict,” also known as the “Goldstone Report,” several crimes against unarmed civilians were committed by the IDF during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.
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Tags:Cesar Chelala, Gaza, Geneva Conventions, Goldstone report, Israel, Israel Defense Forces, Nuremberg Principles, Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, violation of Nuremberg Principles, war crimes, willful killings
Posted in Commentary, crime, Gaza, Human rights, Uncategorized, war, war crimes, War Criminals, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »
October 15, 2009
“Resuming a new phase of the peace process without proper preparation and adherence to specific terms of reference such as the roadmap, will only result in a repetition of the Annapolis process and its outcome, failure. The peace camps in Israel and Palestine had different expectations from this American administration.”
The findings and recommendations of the Goldstone report were shocking to Israelis. They were furious at the warrant for Ehud Barak’s arrest in London as a result of a court case brought by the families of the many victims of Israel’s Gaza offensive. But the decision to support the deferral of a vote on the report in the UN’s Human Rights Council has caused an earthquake in Palestinian politics.
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Tags:Gaza, Gaza invasion, Ghassan Khatib, Goldstone report, Israel, Palestine, Palestinians, United States, war crimes
Posted in Commentary, Gaza, Human rights, Uncategorized, USA, war, war crimes, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »
October 12, 2009
Outspoken anti-war and democracy campaigner Malalai Joya was suspended from the Afghan parliament in 2007 for speaking out against corruption and the domination of the country by warlords. US current affairs weradio show Democracy Now has called her “the bravest woman in Afghanistan”. Below is an abridged statement from Joya to Australian anti-war campaigners. The statement was read out at the national protests against the Afghanistan war on October 7. *****
I would like to thank you for your solidarity with the suffering and ill-fated Afghan people and for raising your voice against the wrong and devastating policies of your government in Afghanistan.
Eight years ago, the US and its allies occupied Afghanistan under the nice slogans of “democracy”, “women’s rights” and “freedom”, but today we are as far from these values as we were in 2001.
Days after the invasion, the brutal regime of the Taliban was toppled but another bunch of terrorist warlords of the Northern Alliance, who are no different from the Taliban, were supported by the West and imposed on our people.
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Tags:Afghan people, Afghan war, Afghanistan, civilians killed, cluster bombs, Malalai Joya, US and NATO troops, US/NATO bombardments, women's rights
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, Human rights, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war, warmongers | Leave a Comment »
October 12, 2009
About 3,000 Rohingya families are awaiting deportation in Saudi prisons, but like the rest of their people, they have nowhere to go
They have been described as some of the world’s most persecuted refugees, and among the most forgotten, too. During my imprisonment in Jeddah I saw and met hundreds of inmates from Burma.
Thousands of Burmese Muslims from Arakan – often called Rohingyas – were offered a safe haven in Saudi Arabia by the late King Faisal, but with the change in monarch the rules changed too. What was to have been a permanent abode of peace for these uprooted people has now turned into a chamber of horrors.
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Tags:Burmese Muslims, prisons, refugees in Bangladesh, refugees in Malaysia, refugees in Saudi Arabia, Rohingyas
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Muslims, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
October 12, 2009
John S. Hancock, Concord Monitor, Oct 12, 2009
The United Nations reports that the lives of the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, over half of whom are children, remain seriously threatened by severe shortages of essential supplies of food, drinkable water and medicine because of Israel’s devastating blockade. President Jimmy Carter who recently visited Gaza said that the Israelis are perpetrating a “terrible human rights crime” in Gaza.
Israel, despite the nearly total cessation of Qassam rocketfire, sadistically refuses to even ease its illegal and immoral blockade of Gaza. The Obama administration has, inexcusably, taken no action over the past eight months toward alleviating the plight of Gaza’s people. In fact, President Obama is effectively protecting suspected Israeli war criminals by preventing the United Nation’s Goldstone Report from being referred to the World Criminal Court.
The Goldstone Report and other investigations exposed extensive Israeli war crimes committed against a defenseless civilian population in Gaza during Israel’s invasion last December and January. Obama’s promise made before the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 23 that “the murder of innocent men, women and children will never be tolerated” apparently doesn’t apply when Palestinians are murdered by Israeli soldiers.
The American media’s abysmal coverage of what’s occurred in Gaza and on the West Bank under Israel’s unjust occupation is indicative of both anti-Arab racism and a complete lack of journalistic integrity. The Monitor’s own silence regarding these crucial issues and events of worldwide importance is mystifying. Whatever happened to its professed concern with “saving the children of war in Gaza?”
Tags:American media and Gaza, Goldstone report, Israeli blockade, Israeli war crimes, John S. Hancock, Obama administration and Gazans, Palestinians in Gaza, President Jimmy Carter, United Nations report
Posted in Commentary, Gaza, Human rights, Palestine, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war crimes, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »
October 12, 2009
Law Violates Basic Rights, Fails to Protect Victims of Sexual Violence
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Stoning and flogging constitute torture in any circumstances. Imposing these draconian punishments on private, consensual conduct means the government can dictate people’s intimate lives.
said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch
(New York) – A new criminal bylaw passed by the provincial parliament of Aceh imposes torture, violates basic rights to privacy, and fails to protect victims of sexual violence, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch urged the Indonesian government to review and reject all provisions relating to the death penalty, stoning, and flogging, and called on the Ministry of Home Affairs to overturn the law immediately.
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Tags:Aceh, Human Rights Watch, Indonesia, new Aceh law, stoning and flogging, torture, victims of sexual violence, violence
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
October 9, 2009
Times Online/UK, Oct 9, 2009
Ramita Navai in Washintsa, Peru
They emerged from the thick, green jungle clenching their spears: a long file of barefoot chiefs and elders, their faces painted with their tribal markings and crowns of red, blue and yellow parrot feathers.
They had been summoned by the chief of Washintsa village for a meeting to discuss an oil company’s efforts to buy the rights to their land. Most had travelled for hours, padding silently through the dark undergrowth.
They came from Achuar Indian communities scattered along the Pastaza River, one of the most remote parts of the Peruvian Amazon near the border with Ecuador.
These men are part of a growing resistance movement crystallising deep in the jungles of Peru. For the first time isolated indigenous groups are uniting to fight the Government’s plans to auction off 75 per cent of the Amazon — which accounts for nearly two thirds of the country’s territory — to oil, gas and mining companies.
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Tags:oil, Peru, Peru Indians, protests
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Peace and Justice Post 
Stop Palestinian suffering for Mideast peace, says Erdoğan
October 20, 2009Peace cannot be established in the Middle East when the suffering of the Palestinians continues and the Gaza Strip remains a wreck, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Monday.
Speaking at the Istanbul Forum organized by Stratim, Seta and the German Marshall Fund, Erdoğan said the Palestinian question is at the center of all problems in the Middle East. The prime minister recalled that Turkey vocalized its disapproval of the previous year’s bombing of the Gaza Strip, adding: “We criticized steps that were serving no purpose, but which increased suffering and sabotaged the peace process. We will continue to criticize it today, too. We will criticize anything similar taking place in other areas.”
Continues >>
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Tags:Gaza, Iran, Israel, Israeli war on Gaze, nuclear weapons, Palestinian question, Palestinians, PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey
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