Peace and Justice Post

Trend, March 31, 2011

Families of those Pakistani tribesmen who were killed and injured in March in U.S. drone strike Thursday refused to accept the government’s compensation and demanded halt to the American drone strikes in the region, Xinhua reported.

The government had announced 300,000 rupees (about 3,530 US dollars) each for those killed and 100,000 rupees for the injured.

Over 40 tribesmen were killed and many others injured in a drone strike on a jirga of council of tribal elders in Datta Khel area of North Waziristan on March 17. According to the local reports, the jirga was called to settle a dispute over the sale of mineral in the area when the deadly strike was launched.

The Pakistan army chief in rare reaction had strongly condemned the U.S. drone strike on the innocent tribesmen following the March 17th incident. In a harsh statement General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani said that “such aggression against people of Pakistan is unjustified and intolerable under any circumstances”.

Continues >>

By Lawrence Davidson, Media With Conscience, March 26, 2011

On 23 March 2011 the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the United Nations Rapporteur Richard Falk (Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University) told the world organization’s Human Rights Council that the “continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with the forcible eviction of long-residing Palestinians are creating an intolerable situation..” In fact, he continued, the present process “can only be described in its cumulative impact as ethnic cleansing.” Falk concluded by asking the UN Human Rights Council to request an investigation by the International Criminal Court into whether Israeli actions in the West Bank amount to “colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing inconsistent with international humanitarian law.”

This is not a particularly startling or rare point of view. There are many well versed Israelis, including several reporters for Haaretz (such as Amira Hass and Gideon Levy), who would probably agree with Falk’s position. There are millions of people around the world who are willing to actively boycott Israel due to, in part, its illegal settlement policies. And, the UN Human Rights Council itself has, in the past, repeatedly condemned Israeli settlement policies in the West Bank of Palestine.

Continues >>

Independent Inquiry Needed to Investigate Torture at Camp Honor; Fears of Abuse at Other Prisons Remain

(Baghdad) – Iraq’s announcement on March 14, 2011, that it will close the Camp Honor detention center after a parliamentary committee uncovered torture there is a positive move but only a first step, Human Rights Watch said today. A pressing need remains for an independent investigation into who was responsible for the abuse there, Human Rights Watch said.

Iraqi officials should establish an independent body with authority to impartially investigate the torture that occurred at Camp Honor and other sites run by the 56th Brigade, also known as the “Baghdad Brigade,” and the Counterterrorism Service – the elite security forces attached to the military office of the prime minister. The investigating body should recommend disciplinary steps or criminal prosecution of everyone of any rank implicated in the abuse, Human Rights Watch said.

Continues >>

In Balochistan, mutilated corpses bearing the signs of torture keep turning up, among them lawyers, students and farm workers. Why is no one investigating and what have they got to do with the bloody battle for Pakistan’s largest province?

Declan Walsh, The Guardian, March 29, 2011

Lala Bibi with her father and son Saeed Ahmed – and photographs of her murdered son Najibullah and his cousin, who was also abducted. Photograph: Declan Walsh for the Guardian

World Bulletin, March 30, 2011

Saudi authorities arrested a university professor a day after he called for the release of jailed relatives and other prisoners, a Saudi human rights group said on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter and a key U.S. ally, is an absolute monarchy that does not tolerate any form of public dissent.

“Dr. Mubbarak (bin Zuair) was supposed to break the good news to the demonstrators in front of the Ministry of Information who were protesting the extended illegal detention of their loved ones, that some of the detainees would be released,” the Human Rights First Society (HRFS) said in a statement.

“At 10.30 am on March 20, on his way to the Ministry of Information where the standoff was taking place, Dr Mubbarak was stopped and arrested by the secret police,” it added.

Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki could not confirm the arrest of bin Zuair, a professor at Alimmam Mohammad Bin Saud University in Riyadh.

On March 19 bin Zuair met with the assistant secretary for security affairs at the ministry to ask for the release of his relatives and other prisoners.

His father, Professor Said bin Zuair, an Islamist and outspoken critic of the Saudi royal family, has been imprisoned without trial for around five years, the group’s president Ibrahim al-Mugaiteeb told Reuters.

Continues >>

Durbin: ‘American Muslims are entitled to the same constitutional protections as other Americans’.

Middle East Online, March 30, 2011

‘Not just free exercise of religion but freedom of speech’

WASHINGTON – Muslims in the United States face ongoing discrimination and violence in actions that threaten basic freedoms in the nation, a US Senate hearing was told Tuesday.

The hearing was called to discuss protecting the civil rights of American Muslims, just weeks after another panel hotly debated the threat posed by homegrown Islamists.

Democratic Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin, who called the hearing, said a “backlash” which began after the attacks of September 11, 2001, continues against “innocent Muslims, Arabs, south Asians and Sikhs.”

“American Muslims are entitled to the same constitutional protections as other Americans,” Durbin said, adding that this is an issue of “not just free exercise of religion but freedom of speech.”

Thomas Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing: “We continue to see a steady stream of violence against Muslims… The good news is that with each wave of intolerance, our nation has responded by passing news laws.”

Continues >>

These disgusting photos of murdered Afghans reveal the aggression and racism underpinning the occupation of my country

• 
• • Malalai Joya, The Guardian, Wednesday 30 March 2011

The disgusting and heartbreaking photos published last week in the German media, and more recently in Rolling Stone magazine, are finally bringing the grisly truth about the war in Afghanistan to a wider public. All the PR about this war being about democracy and human rights melts into thin air with the pictures of US soldiers posing with the dead and mutilated bodies of innocent Afghan civilians.

I must report that Afghans do not believe this to be a story of a few rogue soldiers. We believe that the brutal actions of these “kill teams” reveal the aggression and racism which is part and parcel of the entire military occupation. While these photos are new, the murder of innocents is not. Such crimes have sparked many protests in Afghanistan and have sharply raised anti-American sentiment among ordinary Afghans.

I am not surprised that the mainstream media in the US has been reluctant to publish these images of the soldiers who made sport out of murdering Afghans. General Petraeus, now in charge of the American-led occupation, is said to place great importance on the “information war” for public opinion – and there is a concerted effort to keep the reality of Afghanistan out of sight in the US.

Continues >>

In taking on the Assad family mafia and paying with blood to do so, Syrians have rediscovered their struggle for freedom

Rana Kabbani, The Guardian, March 30, 2011

I was five when emergency law was imposed in my native Syria. I am now 53. During this intolerably long period, my country was turned step by chilling step by the ideologues and security service enforcers of the Ba’th party into the totalitarian state it is today. When Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, came to power through yet another violent army squabble leading to his coup of 1970, an alarming cult of the leader was systematically formed around him, modelled on Ceausescu. The Romanian dictator was Assad’s political ally, strategic adviser in matters of popular repression, and close personal and family friend.

This cult was no easy thing to achieve in rowdy, opinionated and sardonic Syria, with its valiant history of fighting the xenophobic Turkish nationalism that came with the last years of the Ottoman empire and led to the hanging of so many Arab patriots in Marjeh Square. The brutal French colonialism sought to divide and rule the country, bombing Damascus twice and burning down a residential quarter that was home to many resistance fighters, including my paternal grandfather, Tawfik Kabbani. To this day the area is called Hariqa, or “fire”, in memory of the thousands of civilians wounded or killed.

Continues >>