Peace and Justice Post

The Independent, Saturday, 2 February 2008

By Tony Paterson in Berlin

GETTY
German soldiers secure a hill outside Kabul, as part of the Nato peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan

A bitter diplomatic row between Germany and the United States deepened yesterday after Berlin flatly rejected demands from Washington that it deploy troops in war-torn southern Afghanistan and angrily dismissed the request as “impertinent” and a “fantastic cheek”.

Germany currently has some 3,200 soldiers stationed in comparatively tranquil northern Afghanistan and the capital Kabul as part of the current Nato peacekeeping mission. It has been urged to deploy troops in the south before but has consistently refused. Yesterday however, it became clear that Washington had stepped up pressure on Berlin to commit troops to the south.

The move followed increased Taliban attacks and threats from Canada that it would withdraw its Afghanistan contingent completely unless more Nato troops were sent south. Canada has lost 77 combat troops in the region.

Two US non-governmental studies released this week warned that Afghanistan could once again become a failed state and terrorist haven.

Details of what was described as an “unusually stern” letter written by Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, to Franz Josef Jung, his German counterpart, were leaked to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Keep reading . . .

dpa – International News Service in English, Jan 31, 2008 04:29 EST

Islamabad (dpa) – Chanting slogans against President Pervez Musharraf, thousands of Pakistani lawyers were holding rallies across the country on Thursday to protest the removal of ex-chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry by the embattled leader late last year.
“The lawyers’ community is observing complete boycott of the court proceedings and demonstrations are being held in every city and town of the country to express solidarity with the chief justice,” said Athar Minallah, a senior leader of Islamabad Bar Association.

“We are demanding the restoration of 60 unconstitutionally removed senior judges, an end to the dictatorship of Musharraf and the release of all detained justices and lawyers,” he said.

Chaudhry was sacked together with his dozens of colleagues on November 3 when Musharraf imposed state of emergency and suspended the constitution. The retired general argued the judiciary was hindering his fight against terrorism.

The opponents said the move aimed at mainly preventing the Supreme Court from ruling against Musharraf’s candidacy for the presidential vote for his second five-year term.

After dumping the high court, the president packed it with his hand-picked judges and took oath before resigning as military chief and lifting emergency.

But the senior judges and dozens of representatives of the lawyers remain under house arrest.

Continued . . .

By DAVID WILLIAMS and MATTHEW HICKLEY | Daily Mail, 1st February 2008

British troops killed a prisoner and mutilated the bodies of 20 Iraqi insurgents, it was claimed in court yesterday.

Other captives are also said to have been abused or tortured in the aftermath of a gun battle in southern Iraq in May 2004.

Details can be disclosed after the High Court lifted an order preventing reporting of the case yesterday.

On patrol: A British soldier in Iraq

The allegations are among the most serious against British soldiers who served in Iraq. Relatives of those killed and survivors are fighting for compensation and for an

The incident is already being investigated by the Military Police.

The abuses are said to have taken place following a three-hour gun battle when soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were ambushed by militiamen on the road from the hotspot town of Al Amara to Basra in May 2004.

The scene was close to Majar al-Kabir, where a year earlier an Iraqi mob overwhelmed and killed six British military policemen.

It is alleged that corpses were removed from the battlefield and showed signs of mutilation when they were left at a local hospital. It is also claimed that a prisoner died in custody and others were abused.

Lawyers say testimonies of five witnesses “combine to give a harrowing account of what took place”.

Keep reading . . .

Stephen Lendman | RINF Alternative News , January 31, 2008

Life in occupied Gaza was never easy, but conditions worsened markedly after Hamas’ surprise January 2006 electoral victory. Israel refused recognition along with the US and the West. All outside aid was cut off, an economic embargo and sanctions were imposed, and the legitimate government was isolated. Stepped up repression followed along with repeated IDF incursions, attacks and arrests. Gaza’s people have been imprisoned in their own land and traumatized for months. No one outside the Territories cares or offers enough aid. Things then got worse.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, in league with Israel and the US, declared a “state of emergency last June 14 and illegally dismissed Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and his national unity government. On June 15, he appointed former IMF and World Bank official Salam Fayyad prime minister even though his party got only 2% of the votes in the 2006 election. On June 17, Abbas swore in a new (illegitimate) 13 member “emergency” cabinet with plans for future elections, excluding Hamas.

Continued . . . 

· Human rights group says west ignores flawed polls
· Countries only act when it is politically convenient

Peter Walker
Friday February 1, 2008
The Guardian

The US, UK and other western nations are ignoring flawed or rigged elections in some countries for the sake of political convenience, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said today in its annual round-up of rights abuses around the world.

While publicly espousing the cause of democracy, Washington, London and others were happy to deal closely with “despots masquerading as democrats”, such as Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, the group said.

HRW singled out the UK government as a concern for its policy of deporting terrorism suspects to countries with repressive regimes if assurances are given the detainees will not be tortured or otherwise mistreated. This “handy device” had now been borrowed by the US to justify renditions, while Russia and other nations were also happily trying it out, the group said.

The report detailed abuses in more than 75 countries and territories, covering perennial rights pariahs such as North Korea, Burma and China as well as the US and EU. It criticised Israel for blockading Gaza in response to rocket attacks, describing this as “collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population in violation of international humanitarian law”.

Keep reading . . .

Axis of Logic/Poetry

***********************
I Believe in Miracles

By Nahida

You can break my bones
My free spirit is invincible
You can cause me the loss of sight
The light of my insight
You’ll never take away

In the shadows of darkness
Lies the corpse of your might
You can destroy my house
The windows of my hope,
You cannot break
The pillars of my faith
You can never shake

You can threaten me
With weapons of death
And mass destruction
Implanting fear in my heart
You cannot achieve
Nor can you cut off
My divine connection

With a missile
You can tear my body apart
My soul however
Is out of your reach
And is forever intact

You claimed victory in six days!
Victorious are those
With a dignified gaze
Facing tanks with tender flesh
And only with stones,
The F16 fighter blaze

You can never defeat my will to be
Because my power that you cannot explain
Grows from within the roots of my pain
You depend on the United States
For wealth and war supply
My infinite strength stems from

My creator, the One most high

REUTERS
Reuters North American News Service

Jan 30, 2008 13:29 EST

Targeting Protected Groups

Counterpunch, January 30, 2008

By LIAQUAT ALI KHAN

Sloganeers, propagandists and politicians often use the word “genocide” in ways that the law does not permit. But rarely is the crime of genocide invoked when Western militaries murder Muslim groups. This essay argues that the internationally recognized crime of genocide applies to the intentional killings that NATO troops commit on a weekly basis in the poor villages and mute mountains of Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban, a puritanical Islamic group. NATO combat troops bombard and kill people in Taliban enclaves and meeting places. They also murder defenseless Afghan civilians. The dehumanized label of “Taliban” is used to cloak the nameless victims of NATO operations. Some political opposition to this practice is building in NATO countries, such as Canada, where calls are heard to withdraw troops from Afghanistan or divert them to non-combat tasks.

Dehumanization

In almost all NATO nations, the Taliban have been completely dehumanized – a historically-tested signal that perpetrators of the crime of genocide carry unmitigated intentions to eradicate the dehumanized group. Politicians, the armed forces, the media, and even the general public associate in the West the Taliban with irrational fanatics, intolerant fundamentalists, brutal assassins, beheaders of women, bearded extremists, and terrorists. This luminescent negativity paves the way for aggression, military operations, and genocide. Promoting the predatory doctrine of collective self-defense, killing the Taliban is celebrated as a legal virtue. To leave the Taliban in control of Afghanistan, says NATO, is to leave a haven for terrorism.

Continued . . .

Survivors Describe Mass Killings Under Indonesian Dictator Suharto

ANTHONY DEUTSCH

AP News

Jan 27, 2008 17:02 EST

Hiding out in the dense, humid jungle, Markus Talam watched Indonesian soldiers herd manacled prisoners from trucks, line them up and mow them down with round after round of automatic weapons fire.

It was 1968, and the killings were part of a final offensive by forces under Gen. Suharto to wipe out the communist party and secure his position as leader of Indonesia, now the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

“They gunned them down and dumped their bodies in a mass grave dug by other prisoners. I remember the sound of the guns clearly: tat-tat, tat-tat, tat-tat … over and over again,” said Talam, 68, who was later jailed for 10 years after being named a leftist sympathizer.

Suharto, who died on Sunday at a Jakarta hospital, seized control of the military in 1965 and ruled the country for 32 years, suppressing dissent with force and supported by an American government at the height of the Cold War.

Estimates for the number killed during his bloody rise to power — from 1965 to 1968 — range from a government figure of 78,000 to 1 million cited by U.S. historians Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurr, who have published books on Indonesia’s history. It was the worst mass slaughter in Southeast Asia’s modern history after the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia.

Continued . . .

The Independent, Thursday, 31 January 2008

After six years in control, this government has proved itself to be as bad as the Taliban – in fact, it is little more than a photocopy of the Taliban. The situation in Afghanistan is getting progressively worse – and not just for women, but for all Afghans.

Our country is being run by a mafia, and while it is in power there is no hope for freedom for the people of Afghanistan. How can anyone, man or woman, enjoy basic freedoms when living under the shadow of warlords? The government was not democratically elected, and it is now trying to use the country’s Islamic law as a tool with which to limit women’s rights.

Continued . . .