Posts Tagged ‘Human rights’

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Pakistan: More than two million people living outside displacement camps face appalling conditions

July 3, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 2, 2009
12:19 PM		 CONTACT: Amnesty International
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7413 5566
After hours: +44 7778 472 126
Email: press@amnesty.org

LONDON – July 2 – Pakistan’s central and regional governments must urgently do more to assist the more than two million people who have fled escalating fighting in northwestern Pakistan but do not have access to aid distributed in official displacement camps, Amnesty International said today. In particular, the Pakistani government must ensure that ethnic Pashtuns fleeing the fighting do not face discrimination in receiving assistance.

“As the fighting expands to North and South Waziristan, a displacement crisis that the government had said would last only for weeks looks set to go on for months, with no relief in sight for the millions of displaced people,” said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Director. “To make matters worse, the vast majority of displaced people are living outside the registered camps where aid agencies are distributing shelter, food and water to those in need.”

Continued >>

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US Muslims Still Under Siege

April 10, 2009

By Andy Goodman | Truthdig, April 10, 2009

As President Barack Obama made his public appearance with Turkish President Abdullah Gul on Monday as part of his first trip to a Muslim country, U.S. federal agents were preparing to arrest Youssef Megahed in Tampa, Fla. Just three days earlier, on Friday, a jury in a U.S. federal district court had acquitted him of charges of illegally transporting explosives and possession of an explosive device.

Obama promised, when meeting with Gul, to “shape a set of strategies that can bridge the divide between the Muslim world and the West that can make us more prosperous and more secure.”

Megahed, acquitted by a jury of his peers, thought he was secure, back with his family. He was enrolled in his final course needed to earn a degree at the University of South Florida. Then the nightmare he had just escaped returned. His father told me: “Yesterday around noon, I took my son to buy something from Wal-Mart … when we received a call from our lawyer that we must meet him immediately. … When we got to the parking lot, we found ourselves surrounded by more than seven people. They dress in normal clothes without any badges, without any IDs, surrounded us and give me a paper.

“And they told me, ‘Sign this.’ ‘Sign this for what?’ I ask him. They told me, ‘We are going to take your son … to deport him.’ ”

Megahed is being held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for a deportation proceeding. The charges are the same ones on which he was completely acquitted. In August 2007, Megahed and a fellow USF student took a road trip to see the Carolinas. When pulled over for speeding, police found something in the trunk that they described as explosives. Megahed’s co-defendant, Ahmed Mohamed, said they were homemade fireworks.

Prosecutors pointed to an online video by Mohamed, said to show how to convert a toy into an explosives detonator. Facing 30 years behind bars, Mohamed took a plea agreement and is now serving 15 years. Megahed pleaded not guilty, and the federal jury in his trial agreed with his defense: He was an unwitting passenger and completely innocent of any wrongdoing.

That’s where ICE comes in. Despite being cleared of the charges in the federal criminal case, it turns out that people can still be arrested and deported based on the same charges. The U.S. Constitution protects people from “double jeopardy,” being charged twice with the same offense. But in the murky world of immigrant detention, it turns out that double jeopardy is perfectly legal.

Ahmed Bedier, the president of the Tampa Human Rights Council and co-host of “True Talk,” a global-affairs show on Tampa community radio station WMNF focusing on Muslims and Muslim Americans, criticizes the pervasive and persistent attacks on the U.S. Muslim community by the federal government, singling out the Joint Terrorism Task Forces, or JTTFs. The JTTFs, Bedier says, “include not only federal FBI agents, but also postal inspectors, IRS agents, deputized local police officers and sheriff’s deputies, any type of law enforcement,” and when one agency fails to take down an individual, another agency steps in. “It’s like an octopus,” he says.

When the not guilty verdict was read in court last Friday, Megahed’s father, Samir, walked over to the prosecutors. Bedier recalled: “It startled many people. He walked over to the prosecution, the people that have been after his son for a couple of years now, and shook their hands, extended his hand, and he shook hands with the prosecution team and the FBI themselves and then also shook hands with the judge. The judge shook hands with Youssef and wished him ‘good luck in your future’ … the case was over.”

Obama said in Turkey, “[W]e do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation; we consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”

Until Monday, Samir Megahed praised the justice system of the United States. He told me, “I feel happiness, and I’m very proud, because the system works.” At a press conference after his son’s ICE arrest, he said: “America is the country of freedom. I think there is no freedom here. For Muslims there is no freedom.”

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.

© 2009 Amy Goodman

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Human Rights Situation In Kashmir

March 27, 2009

Kashmir Watch, March 27

Human rights situation in Kashmir is as bleak as it has been during the last two decades. The gross violation of basic human rights are continuing unabated, says Ghulam Nabi Khayal, who presented  this paper at the National Seminar on Kashmir organised by Jamia Millia University, Delhi last week.

The track record of human rights situation in Jammu & Kashmir, particularly during the last two decades, does not merit any praise or appreciation. It is quite heart rending that the human rights charter adopted by the United Nations has been thrown to winds in this strife torn border state by all those who hold a gun in their hands.

The worst and most horrific period of gross violation of the human rights across Kashmir Valley has been during early nineties when only a few incidents of indiscriminate gunfire opened by the forces on unarmed civilians resulted in the killing of about three hundred people including old men, women and children. The excessive use of force was wantonly witnessed when the funeral procession of Mirwaiz Molvi Farooq, who had been gunned down on 21 May 1990 allegedly by the militants, was fired upon by the forces killing about 40 persons on spot. The forces did not spare even the coffin of the late Mirwaiz and several bullets were found having been pumped into his dead body.

This gory incident was so shocking that the former prime minister, Chander Shekhar said in the Parliament, “we must hang our heads in shame.” The required action followed quickly by shifting of Jagmohan, the most controversial Governor of the State, during whose tenure Kashmir was seen bathing only in blood.

According to a conservative survey conducted by a few local groups, there are as many as ten thousand widows spending their days of life in penury, misery and prolonged agony. Their husbands, whether militants or otherwise, are no more and this is not their fault that they have been left at the mercy of Allah.

Several so called organisations, NGOs, numbering about five thousand, claim to be the saviors of this miserable lot of the fair sex but they have failed to help out even a small number of them though these fake organisations have been receiving huge funds of money for this very purpose both from Delhi and Islamabad. This criminal negligence towards a suffering community has obviously given rise to social evils in the Valley where the hapless widows are naturally forced to be exploited in different immoral ways to earn their two square meals.

The irony of the fate is that the widows of slain militants are categorically denied permission to perform Hajj pilgrimage which they could do after managing the required money. Also, a valid  passport is not issued to them under instructions from the Central government. Their fault, depriving them of a very pious religious performance, is yet to be defined. Why should they be punished for a sin they never committed?

The present scenario across Kashmir is a little brighter for, the militants are not seen indulging in anti social and objectionable activities, also due to the fact that a majority of them has been physically eliminated by the forces during the last two decades of unprecedented armed uprising.

At the same time, and unfortunately, a number of surrendered militants, locally nicknamed as Ikhwanis or renegades, are still at large to harass people by way of arson, kidnappings for ransom, molestation of women and even brutal killing of common people. These heinous crimes mostly take place in far off villages in the Valley and are hushed up as not reported due to the social taboos of the Kashmiri Muslim society. These renegades function directly under the Rashtriya Rifles of the army and the official patronage is available to them so acrimoniously that they are neither hauled up nor are they brought to justice  for crimes they are committing unabated.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December1948, says among other things in its Article Number three that “every one has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” These basic guarantees offered to the human being by Almighty God and by the UNO are to a large extent, not available to a common man in Kashmir despite the horrifying fact that About 100,000 people in the State have already been done to untimely death in this turmoil.

As far as the conditions prevailing in various prisons, where Kashmiri suspects or hardcore militants re lodged, are concerned, they can be described as inhuman and nothing else. Even today, scores of detenues are languishing in jails all over the country, from Jammu up to Koimbatore, without being tried in a court of law for the crime they have allegedly committed. Some of these prisoners are there behind the bars for more than 15 years now and no legal procedure has been adopted to facilitate for them a fair trial in an impartial court of law.

My own newspaper Voice of Kashmir has been receiving letters full of pathos and miseries faced by these detained youths in different jails in the country wherein they narrate woefully hair raising tales of torture and inhuman treatment meted out to them by their interrogators. The UN human rights declaration clearly states, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Probably, this charter does not apply to the forces operating in Jammu & Kashmir state.

It is rather imperative to point out here that while talking about the activities of the militants and the security forces, one cannot apply a similar yardstick to them. Militants took up gun but were never answerable to any one.

On the contrary, the armed forces and the paramilitary troops are  supposed to be bound by unflinching discipline, moral, ethical and legal obligations.  Their reported violations of basic rights are not therefore acceptable under any circumstances.

There are also complaints pouring in regularly that Kashmiri youths who are out in the Indian states to earn their livelihood are subjected to victimisation by the police. They are physically manhandled all over. Even hotels in different cities are instructed to avoid providing accommodation to the Kashmiri visitors.It was on 13th of this month that three Kashmiris were taken into custody in Maharashtra for no obvious reasons.

Several state regimes have publicly admitted that on occasions, forces in Kashmir overstep their brief and that the guilty shall be punished. One has yet to ascertain beyond doubt whether any erring soldier was ever awarded deserving punishment.

The present situation across the State is comparatively conducive to rub off black scars of this menace from the face of Kashmir.

Firstly, all detunes jailed for their involvement in militancy or on suspicion, must be tried properly in a legal court to affirm or nullify their alleged crime. Only then, can their fate be decided in a democratic way.

As a member of one working group constituted by the Honourable Prime Minister in 2007, I had strongly advocated that those frustrated Kashmiri  boys who had crossed over to Pakistan administrated  Kashmir to receive training in use of arms, are now quite eager to return home, join their separated families and spend rest of their lives  peacefully.

Their comeback should be facilitated both by the Central and the State governments.  Constant police surveillance can be there to check their routine activities. Gradually, they will themselves turn to a normal life.

There should be a strict ban imposed on the forces for their resorting to reckless use of force while dealing with the peaceful protesters.  The declaration of zero tolerance assured by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh before the Kashmiri people should be adhered to in letter and spirit.

As was repeatedly demanded by the previous government headed by Mufti Mohammad Sayed, the Indian paramilitary forces, now largely  the Central Reserve Police Force, be withdrawn from the cities and towns to be replaced by the State police. This will undoubtedly reduce instances of human rights violations being committed all over the State. This popular demand has not met with any positive response. Needless to mention here that the imposition of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in force in the State since 1990 does not empower or authorise the State authorities to initiate any inquiry against the forces including the army, the BSF, the CRPF and other paramilitary troops.

The author can be reached at:  gulkhayal@yahoo.co.uk

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RIGHTS-US: New Name, Same Detainee Problem

March 17, 2009

By William Fisher | Inter Press Service

NEW YORK, Mar 16 (IPS) – Human rights activists and constitutional law experts were virtually unanimous in their condemnation of the positions taken on prisoner detention and treatment in federal court last week by President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice, which one group described as “a case of old wine in new bottles.”

While the Justice Department announced it would no longer use the term “enemy combatants” – one of the George W. Bush administration’s signature phrases – and distanced itself from Bush-era claims of unlimited presidential power, government lawyers urged the court to dismiss a lawsuit brought by four former Guantanamo detainees because “aliens held at Guantanamo do not have due process rights.”

The former detainees, who are British citizens or residents, are suing former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and several senior military officials for authorising and carrying out torture and depriving them of their religious rights while the Britons were in captivity. The case is known as Rasul v. Rumsfeld.

The government’s court brief called for a blanket ban on such lawsuits. Allowing them “for actions taken with respect to aliens during wartime,” it told the District of Columbia Circuit Court, “would enmesh the courts in military, national security, and foreign affairs matters that are the exclusive province of the political branches.”

Human rights advocates were quick to respond.

The Centre for Constitutional Rights, which has provided lawyers to defend many Guantanamo prisoners, said the Obama administration has “adopted almost the same standard the Bush administration used to detain people without charge.”

It called the government’s position “a case of old wine in new bottles,” adding, “It is still unlawful to hold people indefinitely without charge. The men who have been held for more than seven years by our government must be charged or released.”

Anthony Romero, head of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he found it “deeply troubling that the Justice Department continues to use an overly broad interpretation of the laws of war that would permit military detention of individuals who were picked up far from an actual battlefield or who didn’t engage in hostilities against the United States.”

“Once again,” he said, “the Obama administration has taken a half-step in the right direction. The Justice Department’s filing leaves the door open to modifying the government’s position; it is critical that the administration promptly narrow the category for individuals who can be held in military detention so that the U.S. truly comports with the laws of war and rejects the unlawful detention power of the past eight years.”

Brian J. Foley, a visiting associate professor at Boston University law school, told IPS, “The Obama administration should stop this prison programme, which is actually harmful to U.S. intelligence-gathering.”

“Imprisoning people on flimsy evidence means we are interrogating, sometimes harshly and sometimes with torture, people who are not terrorists. These people will tell interrogators anything to stop the pain. That means they give us false leads and send our investigators scurrying around like chickens with their heads cut off, chasing imaginary monsters.”

“This waste of time keeps our investigators from developing real leads. It’s a policy based on fear – ‘What if there is actually a real terrorist among the hundreds of innocents? We better not let anyone go!’ – that is counterproductive and shameful,” he said.

Jonathan Turley, an internationally recognised constitutional scholar and a professor at George Washington University law school, said, “The (Obama) administration is still arguing that it can hold these individuals without federal charges and it is still trying to quash lawsuits filed by their counsel.”

“The biggest danger,” he said, “is that it is an effort to make Obama look principled on international law before he blocks any criminal investigation of war crimes by his predecessor.”

Human Rights Watch took a similar view. Joanne Mariner, HRW’s terrorism and counterterrorism program director said, “The Obama administration’s take on detainees is essentially the Bush standard with a new name. The Obama administration’s newly issued position on Guantanamo detainees is a disappointment. Rather than rejecting the Bush administration’s ill-conceived notion of a ‘war on terror,’ the Obama administration’s position on detainees has merely tinkered with its form.”

“We urge the Obama administration to reconsider its views,” Mariner said. “The administration should be prosecuting terror suspects in the federal courts, not looking for ways to circumvent the criminal justice system.”

And Jonathan Hafetz of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who is currently defending several former Guantanamno detainees in a lawsuit against a subsidiary of the Boeing Company for its alleged involvement in their “extraordinary rendition,” told IPS:

“The new administration is interpreting the Authorisation for Use of Military Force (AUMF) largely as the Bush administration did: As giving the president broad powers to detain indefinitely individuals without charges or trial based on suspected terrorist activities.”

The Obama legal team “remains locked into the same misguided and illegal approach to fighting terrorism. The dropping of the ‘enemy combatant’ labels appears at this point more symbol than substance,” he said.

The AUMF resolution was passed by Congress on September 18, 2001, immediately following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It authorized President George W. Bush to use the U.S. Armed Forces to pursue those responsible.

But not all constitutional experts agreed with the statements of human rights groups. For example, Prof. Peter Shane of the University of Ohio law school took a somewhat more nuanced view.

He told IPS, “If the Obama administration is abandoning the position that the president has exclusive and virtually unlimited authority to guide foreign and military affairs unilaterally, that may signal a willingness to collaborate with Congress in the development of future initiatives, which, in turn, could well have a moderating impact on American adventurism abroad.”

The Rasul case has had a difficult history in U.S. courts. The U.S. Circuit Court, in a ruling in January of last year, decided that Guantanamo detainees have no constitutional rights because they are “aliens without property or presence in the U.S.” It dismissed the case.

But in December of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the case. The high court sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for further consideration.

The “further consideration” was triggered by a landmark Supreme Court decision nine months ago in a case known as “Boumediene,” which established that Guantanamo detainees do have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in federal court. It returned the Rasul case for a second look by the Circuit Court.

While President Obama has ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay to be closed by next January, government lawyers have taken positions in several current detainee court cases that do not propose fundamental change from that taken by the Bush administration. It has also invoked the so-called “state secrets” privilege to prevent cases from ever being heard in courts, on the grounds that public disclosure would jeopardise national security.

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Dozens of British MPs attend solidarity meeting on Gaza in House of Commons

March 16, 2009
The Palestinian Information Center
[ 14/03/2009 – 02:21 PM ]

LONDON, (PIC)– Dozens of British MPs including former lawmaker and minister Tony Benn attended a massive assembly in solidarity with Gaza held Thursday evening in the House of Commons at the invitation of friends of Palestine affiliated with the British labor party and the Palestine solidarity campaign.

This special meeting was also attended by representatives of British parties, political, social and religious organizations and student and labor unions. The most prominent speech that touched the hearts of the attendees was delivered by Sameh Habib, the editor-in-chief of the English-language Palestine Telegraph newspaper.

Habib moved some of the audience to tears when he described a number of real tragic scenes that occurred during the last Israeli war on the Gaza Strip and explained the size of suffering experienced by the distressed Gaza people after war.

For her part, British MP Sarah Thatcher said in her speech that the humanitarian conditions in Gaza are extremely difficult and the citizens there live in a heartbreaking situation after Israel destroyed entire civilian areas.

Thatcher urged the British government to urgently move to end the Gaza tragedy and also called on the UN and the Security Council to play more active role for the protection of human rights in the occupied Palestinian areas and for the enforcement of the international law.

Rabbi Jacob Zappa condemned the British government, the EU and the Security Council for their silence towards Israel’s actions and aggression on the Palestinian people and its genocidal war in Gaza.

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Holbrooke: Insensitive Choice for a Sensitive Region

January 31, 2009

by Stephen Zunes | Foreign Policy In Focus, January 31, 2009

Obama’s choice for special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, arguably the most critical area of U.S. foreign policy, is a man with perhaps the most sordid history of any of the largely disappointing set of foreign policy and national security appointments.

Richard Holbrooke got his start in the Foreign Service during the 1960s, in the notorious pacification programs in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam. This ambitious joint civilian-military effort not only included horrific human rights abuses but also proved to be a notorious failure in curbing the insurgency against the U.S.-backed regime in Saigon. This was an inauspicious start in the career of someone Obama hopes to help curb the insurgency against the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan.

In Asia

In the late 1970s, Holbrooke served as assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. In this position, he played a major role in formulating the Carter administration’s support for Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor and the bloody counterinsurgency campaign responsible for up to a quarter-million civilian deaths. Having successfully pushed for a dramatic increase in U.S. military aid to the Suharto dictatorship, he then engaged in a cover-up of the Indonesian atrocities. He testified before Congress in 1979 that the mass starvation wasn’t the fault of the scorched-earth campaign by Indonesian forces in the island nation’s richest agricultural areas, but simply a legacy of Portuguese colonial neglect. Later, in reference to his friend Paul Wolfowitz, then the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, Holbrooke described how “Paul and I have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep [East Timor] out of the presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests.”

In a particularly notorious episode while heading the State Department’s East Asia division, Holbrooke convinced Carter to release South Korean troops under U.S. command in order to suppress a pro-democracy uprising in the city of Kwangju. Holbrooke was among the Carter administration officials who reportedly gave the OK to General Chun Doo-hwan, who had recently seized control of the South Korean government in a military coup, to wipe out the pro-democracy rebels. Hundreds were killed.

He also convinced President Jimmy Carter to continue its military and economic support for the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines.

At the UN

Holbrooke, as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the late 1990s, criticized the UN for taking leadership in conflict resolution efforts involving U.S. allies, particularly in the area of human rights. For example, in October 2000 he insisted that a UN Security Council resolution criticizing the excessive use of force by Israeli occupation forces against Palestinian demonstrators revealed an unacceptable bias that put the UN “out of the running” in terms of any contributions to the peace process.

As special representative to Cyprus in 1997, Holbrooke unsuccessfully pushed the European Union to admit Turkey, despite its imprisonment of journalists, its ongoing use of the death penalty, its widespread killing of civilians in the course of its bloody counter-insurgency war in its Kurdish region, and other human rights abuses.

In the Former Yugoslavia

Holbrooke is perhaps best known for his leadership in putting together the 1995 Dayton Accords, which formally ended the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Though widely praised in some circles for his efforts, Holbrooke remains quite controversial for his role. For instance, the agreement allows Bosnian Serbs to hold on to virtually all of the land they had seized and ethnically cleansed in the course of that bloody conflict. Indeed, rather than accept the secular concept of national citizenship that has held sway in Europe for generations, Holbrooke helped impose sectarian divisions that have made the country – unlike most of its gradually liberalizing Balkan neighbors – unstable, fractious, and dominated by illiberal ultra-nationalists.

As with previous U.S. officials regarding their relations with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Panama’s Manuel Noriega, Holbrooke epitomizes the failed U.S. policy toward autocratic rulers that swings between the extremes of appeasement and war. For example, during the 1996 pro-democracy uprising in Serbia Holbrooke successfully argued that the Clinton administration should back Milosevic, in recognition of his role in the successful peace deal over Bosnia, and not risk the instability that might result from a victory by Serb democrats. Milosevic initially crushed the movement. In response to increased Serbian oppression in Kosovo just a couple years later, however, Holbrooke became a vociferous advocate of the 1999 U.S.-led bombing campaign, creating a nationalist reaction that set back the reconstituted pro-democracy movement once again. The pro-democracy movement finally succeeded in the nonviolent overthrow of the regime, following Milosevic’s attempt to steal the parliamentary elections in October 2000, but the young leaders of that movement remain bitterly angry at Holbrooke to this day.

Scott Ritter, the former chief UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspector who correctly assessed the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and predicted a disastrous outcome for the U.S. invasion, observes that “not only has he demonstrated a lack of comprehension when it comes to the complex reality of Afghanistan (not to mention Pakistan), Holbrooke has a history of choosing the military solution over the finesse of diplomacy.” Noting how the Dayton Accords were built on the assumption of a major and indefinite NATO military presence, which would obviously be far more problematic in Afghanistan and Pakistan than in Europe, Ritter adds: “This does not bode well for the Obama administration.”

Ironically, back in 2002-2003, when the United States had temporarily succeeded in marginalizing Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, Holbrooke was a strong supporter of redirecting American military and intelligence assets away from the region in order to invade and occupy Iraq. Obama and others presciently criticized this reallocation of resources at that time as likely to lead to the deterioration of the security situation in the country and the resurgence of these extremist groups.

It’s unclear, then, why Obama would choose someone like Holbrooke for such a sensitive post. Indeed, it’s unclear as to why – having been elected on part for his anti-war credentials – Obama’s foreign policy and national security appointments have consisted primarily of such unreconstructed hawks. Advocates of a more enlightened and rational foreign policy still have a long row to hoe.

© 2009 Foreign Policy in Focus

Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus. He is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003.)

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China sentences rights activist to two years in prison

December 19, 2008

RINF.COM, Dec 18, 2008

Beijing – A Beijing court sentenced a rights activist to two years in prison on Thursday after convicting her of ‘obstructing public business,’ her husband said.

Dong Jiqin said he was not allowed into the courtroom to present his defence of his wife, Ni Yulan, who planned to appeal against the sentence.

’They didn’t let me in,’ Dong told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

He said Xicheng district court officials only allowed the couple’s adult daughter into the courtroom but apparently did not consider any of the evidence prepared in Ni’s defence.

’They didn’t let our daughter defend her [Ni] or accept her evidence,’ Dong said.

If she loses her appeal, Ni will have to serve the remaining 16 months of her two-year sentence after spending eight months in detention before the trial, he said.

Ni, 48, was arrested on April 15 when she tried to stop some two dozen people from knocking down a wall enclosing part of the yard outside their home, which they had refused to vacate for developers despite years of pressure and threats.

The police claimed that Ni caused serious injury to a worker while she was trying to stop them from damaging her property.

’This was an excuse to arrest her,’ Dong, 56, said in an earlier interview. ‘They didn’t have any evidence.’

The police later accused Ni of kicking an officer while in custody, he said.

The authorities did not allow Dong to visit Ni during her detention, but a lawyer who made several visits reported that she was in poor health and complained of mistreatment during police interviews.

Ni was left disabled following alleged abuses during an earlier spell of police detention.

Dong said their daughter was not allowed to speak to Ni on Thursday but reported that she appeared in poor health.

’My daughter saw her and said she was extremely thin,’ he said.

Ni’s career as a lawyer was first interrupted in 2002 when police illegally detained her for 75 days for filming a forced relocation.

During that detention, Dong said, Ni was beaten and not given medical treatment.

She was left with permanent back and leg injuries and now walks with the aid of crutches, he said.

Ni then lost her right to practise law following a criminal conviction in late 2002 on the same charge of ‘obstructing public business.’

Ni told her lawyer that the police had confiscated her crutches and made her crawl to use the bathroom during her latest detention, Dong said earlier.

Xicheng district authorities razed the family home last month as part of a local government redevelopment plan, following several years of wrangling over legal issues and compensation.

Hundreds of thousands of people have moved over the past 20 years to allow the demolition of most of Beijing’s traditional one-storey housing, which has made way for vast new commercial and residential complexes.

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Activists Celebrate Iran’s Ban on Juvenile Executions

October 17, 2008

By Zainab Mineeia and Jim Lobe | Inter-Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct 16 – International human rights groups have welcomed the reports out of Tehran Thursday that Iranian courts may no longer order the death penalty against juvenile offenders.

Of the five countries that still permit the execution of juveniles, Iran has been responsible for the most executions in recent years.

“I’m delighted,” Jo Becker, director of the Children’s Rights Project of New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) told IPS. “If this directive is implemented, it will be a huge step forward and will move the world very close to a real ban on the execution of juvenile offenders.”

“[We] welcome the announcement and hope that it will pave the way to a complete abolition of the death penalty in Iran,” said a statement issued late Thursday by Amnesty International in London.

The group also called on Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, to ensure that the ban, which was reportedly issued by the office of Iran’s prosecutor general, is made into law and that the Islamic Republic’s Council of Guardians endorses it.

Both Amnesty and HRW, as well as a number of other international and Iranian rights groups, have made the abolition of the execution of juvenile offenders a major priority in their international lobbying efforts.

Earlier this week, they published a statement signed by more than 300 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from 82 countries around the world calling on the U.N. General Assembly to put pressure on the five hold-out countries, which include Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, and Yemen, as well as Iran, to ban the practice.

Together, the five countries had executed 32 individuals who were juveniles at the time they allegedly committed the capital offence of which they were accused between January 2005 and last month. Of the total, however, Iran executed by far the most — 26.

“We, as local , national, regional and international non-governmental organisations from every part of the world, call on each U.N. member state to fully implement the absolute ban on the juvenile death penalty, as required by customary law, the Convention on the Rights of the child, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and as highlighted by the (U.N.) Secretary-General’s recent study on violence against children,” said the petition, which was organised by the Children’s Rights International Network (CRIN).

Until 2005, when its Supreme Court declared the execution of juvenile offenders unconstitutional, the United States also executed juvenile offenders. From 1976 until the Court’s ruling, 22 individuals who were younger than 18 at the time they committed their crimes were executed in U.S. states, 13 of them in Texas.

According to an interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) Wednesday, the judicial deputy of the Prosecutor General said courts have been ordered to commute death sentences of juvenile offenders to prison terms.

“According to this directive, punishments for offenders under the age of 18 [in capital offence cases], will be reduced to life in prison in the first stage and in the second stage [of parole] will be reduced to 15 years,” the deputy, Hussein Zebhi, stated, according to a translation provided by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

“In addition, in cases of good behaviour and signs of rehabilitation, juvenile offenders may qualify for conditional release under Islamic compassions guidelines,” he told IRNA, the state news agency.

The Campaign’s coordinator, Hadi Ghaemi, explained that Iranian officials had previously made a distinction between execution for capital offences and executions for under the law of “qisas” (“an eye for an eye”), claiming qisas sentences cannot be reduced by judges.

But while Zebhi did not explicitly address that issue, he told IRNA that “offenders under the age of 18, no matter what their offence is, will not be subject to executions but will receive other punishments according to the law.” Ghaemi called on the Iranian Judiciary to publicly release the entire text of the directive and clearly state that there will be no exceptions for cases of qisas.

“This decision is long overdue given that Iran leads the world in executing juvenile offenders, and it is a significant step towards honouring international law,” Ghaemi said, noting that Iran has ratified the relevant treaties, including the Convention on the Rights of the child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which bans the death penalty for offenders under the age of 18.

“We are extremely for the families of nearly 130 juveniles on death row and hope that this directive will put an immediate end to any more executions of juvenile offenders,” he said.

Like Amnesty, however, Ghaemi stressed that the directive still fell short of a legally binding commitment and called for it to be approved into law by the parliament. “The next and urgently needed step is for the parliament to act on this issue and abolish the death penalty for children through legislation,” he said.

One of those apparently spared by the new directive may be Mohammed Feda’i, who allegedly killed another boy in a fight when he was 17. Earlier this summer, he was given a stay of execution to allow his family more time to reach an agreement over financial compensation with the victim’s family, according to Amnesty, which noted that Iran’s Supreme Court had upheld the sentence despite evidence that he had received inadequate representation at his trial.

The directive comes too late for Seeyed Reza Hejazi who was executed Aug. 19 for his role in a murder committed in 2003, when he was 15. Hejazi, who admitted that he stabbed an assailant while trying to break up a fight involving several others, insisted repeatedly that he did not intend to kill him.

Iran executed eight juvenile offenders last year and another six so far in 2008. According to a HRW report released last month, judges in Iran have had the power to impose the death penalty in capital cases if the defendant has attained “majority”, which is defined in Iranian law “as nine years for girls and 15 years for boys”.

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On 42 days, their lordships were glorious

October 15, 2008

The rejection of Labour’s proposal for detention without charge was a victory for human rights and common sense in parliament


Politics actually works. That’s the message from Liberty Central, in the aftermath of the long hard slog that was our Charge or Release campaign and the government’s sensible decision to drop 42-day pre-charge detention from its counter-terror bill. Our thanks go to Guardian readers and writers but also to those of almost every other daily newspaper in this country. The coalition of those willing to stand for the right of suspects to hear the charges against them before six weeks (or over 1,000 hours) of incarceration spanned democratic politics, civil society, trade union and religious groups, the literary community and human rights’ campaigners around the globe.

Ultimately however, this was a victory for human rights and common sense in the parliament chamber. From Diane Abbott and Frank Dobson on the left to David Davis and Dominic Grieve on the right, democratic politicians came together to say “enough is enough”. Let the misnamed, misguided “war on terror” that replaced law and ethics with permanent exceptionalism be over. Let a new anti-terror effort begin, based on the values that bind our society together and distinguish it from those where tyranny and terrorism are rife. Make no mistake: their lordships were glorious – the cross-bench independents in particular. The home secretary’s statement last night seemed to revive the discredited yah-boo of which party is really “serious” about public protection. Lord West knew better than to try such nonsense in the Upper House where any suggestion that the likes of Lady Manningham Buller or Lord Dear might be soft on terror would be met with the derision it deserves.

To those who feel ambivalent about “unelected peers” trumping the “will of the Commons”, let me offer two thoughts.

First, all democracies survive because of the healthy tension between election and independence. Think of a piece of machinery that requires both fixed and moving parts to function. In other constitutions the senior judiciary sitting in a supreme court have the final word on matters of fundamental rights and powers to strike down unconstitutional legislation. Not so here, where even the much maligned Human Rights Act preserves the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty so that the ultimate sanction of our highest courts is only a polite request that parliament thinks again.

Instead our arrangements bolster the independent limbs of the constitution by way of independent legislators in a reviewing chamber that can ultimately only delay abhorrent laws, not defeat them.

Which brings me to my second point and the fiction that the government was defeated by the Lords alone. Yes, the Lords defeated the measure – perfectly predictable if not on such grand scale. But what was to stop a government so dug in on this policy from going back to the Commons for some “ping pong”, with the eventual threat of the Parliament Act? After all, Mr Blair got his pernicious control orders through by such brinkmanship. The truth is that notwithstanding the nine-vote triumph last summer, the argument was lost in the Commons as well. A number of Labour MPs who loyally bailed out the government last time would not have done so again and made this clear.

The dramatic events of recent weeks have reminded the world that like lunch there is no such thing as an absolutely free market. Without a fair bit of law, ethics and regulation, the market will literally eat itself at devastating cost. Democracy is no different. It isn’t a game in which the executive takes all at the expense of free speech, fair trials and other core values which we abandon at our peril. In the oldest unbroken democracy on Earth, parliamentarians finally remembered this and so politics worked.

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The Bush Administration Is an Ongoing Criminal Conspiracy Under International Law and U.S. Domestic Law

September 4, 2008

by Prof. Francis A. Boyle
Global Research, September 2, 2008

Justice Robert H. Jackson Conference:

Planning for the Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals
Massachusetts Law School
September 13-14, 2008

Andover, Massachusetts

Since the impeachable installation of George W. Bush as President in January of 2001 by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Gang of Five, the peoples of the world have witnessed a government in the United States that has demonstrated little if any respect for fundamental considerations of international law, human rights, and the United States Constitution.

What the world has watched instead is a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the international and domestic legal orders by a group of men and women who are thoroughly Machiavellian and Straussian in their perception of international relations and in their conduct of both foreign policy and domestic affairs. Even more seriously, in many instances specific components of the Bush administration’s foreign policies constitute ongoing criminal activity under well-recognized principles of both international law and U.S. domestic law, and in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, as well as the Pentagon’s own U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 on The Law of Land Warfare (1956), all of which apply to President Bush himself as Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution.

Depending upon the substantive issues involved, those international crimes typically include but are not limited to the Nuremberg offenses of crimes against peace: For example, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and perhaps their longstanding threatened wars of aggression against Iran and now Pakistan.  Their criminal responsibility also concerns Nuremberg crimes against humanity and war crimes as well as grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and of the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare:  For example, torture at Guantanamo, Bhagram, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere; enforced disappearances, assassinations, murders, kidnappings, extraordinary renditions, “shock and awe,” depleted uranium, white phosphorous, cluster bombs, Fallujah, and the Gitmo kangaroo courts.

Furthermore, various members of the Bush administration have committed numerous inchoate crimes incidental to these substantive offences that under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as paragraph 500 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 are international crimes in their own right:  planning and preparation—which they are currently doing today against Iran and Pakistan—solicitation, incitement, conspiracy, complicity, attempt, aiding and abetting.

Finally, according to basic principles of international criminal law set forth in paragraph 501 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, all high level civilian officials and military officers in the U.S. government who either knew or should have known that soldiers or civilians under their control (such as the C.I.A. or private contractors), committed or were about to commit international crimes and failed to take the measures necessary to stop them, or to punish them, or both, are likewise personally responsible for the commission of international crimes.

At the very top of America’s criminal chain-of-command are President Bush and Vice-President Cheney;  former U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld; Rumsfeld’s Deputy Paul Wolfowitz; Secretary of State Rice; former Director of National Intelligence Negroponte; National Security Advisor Hadley; his Deputy Elliot Abrams; former U.S. Attorneys General Ashcroft and Gonzales, criminally responsible for the torture campaign launched by the Bush Jr. administration; and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staffs along with the appropriate Regional Commanders-in-Chief, especially for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).

These U.S. government officials and their immediate subordinates are responsible for the commission of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as specified by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as by U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10.  Today in international legal terms, the Bush Jr. administration itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law and U.S. domestic law because of its formulation and undertaking of serial wars of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany.

Of course the terrible irony of today’s situation is that six decades ago at Nuremberg the U.S. government participated in the prosecution, punishment and execution of Nazi government officials for committing some of the same types of heinous international crimes that the members of the Bush administration currently inflict upon people all over the world. To be sure, I personally oppose the imposition of capital punishment upon any human being for any reason no matter how monstrous their crimes, whether they be Bush Jr., Tony Blair, or Saddam Hussein.

As a consequence, American citizens possess the basic right under international law and United States domestic law, including the U.S. Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance designed to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by Bush administration officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism.  Today’s civil resisters are the sheriffs!  The Bush administration officials are the outlaws!

We American citizens must reaffirm our commitment to the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles by holding our government officials fully accountable under international law and U.S. domestic law for the commission of such grievous international and domestic crimes.  We must not permit any aspect of our foreign affairs and defense policies to be conducted by acknowledged “war criminals” according to the U.S. government’s own official definitions of that term as set forth in the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles, U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, the U.S. War Crimes Act, the Four Geneva Conventions and the Hague Regulations.  The American people must insist upon the impeachment, dismissal, resignation, indictment, conviction, and long-term incarceration of all U.S. government officials guilty of such heinous international and domestic crimes.  If not so restrained, the Bush administration could very well precipitate a Third World War.

In this regard, during the course of an October 17, 2007 press conference, President Bush Jr. terrorized the entire world with the threat of World War III if he could not work his illegal will upon Iran.  It is my opinion that the Bush administration is fully prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons against Muslim and Arab states and peoples in order to break the taboo of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  After the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001 the United States of America has vilified and demonized Muslims and Arabs almost to the same extent that America inflicted upon the Japanese and Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor.  As the Nazis had previously demonstrated with respect to the Jews, a government must first dehumanize and scapegoat a race of people before its citizens will tolerate if not approve their elimination: witness Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In post -9/11 America we are directly confronted with the prospect of a nuclear war of extermination conducted by our White Racist Judeo-Christian Power Elite against Peoples of Color in the Muslim and Arab worlds in order to steal their oil and gas.  The Crusades all over again.  But this time nuclear Armageddon stares all of humankind right in the face!

We American lawyers must be inspired by the stunning example set by those heroic Pakistani lawyers who led the successful struggle against the brutal Bush-supported Musharraf military dictatorship in Pakistan.  We American lawyers must now lead the fight against the Bush dictatorship and empire! This is our Nuremberg Moment!

Thank you.


Francis A. Boyle is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Francis A. Boyle

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