The International Court of Justice orders Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent further bloodshed in Gaza in line with Genocide Convention obligations. The Court also calls for the immediate release of all hostages. The order was read by the Judge Joan E Donoghue, President of the Court. Credit: UN

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 26 2024 (IPS)

The International Court of Justice today told Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent a genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Judge Joan E. Donoghue, the court’s president, read the order directing the State of Israel to abide by temporary measures to stop the humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinian population in Gaza from worsening.

Donoghue said that the facts and circumstances were sufficient to conclude that some of the “rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection (for the Palestinian people in Gaza) were plausible.”

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the main court of the United Nations, issued its ruling in the case South Africa submitted regarding the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip. You can read the full order here. 

“The court is not called upon for purposes of its decision on the request for the indication of provisional measures to establish the existence of breaches of obligations under the Genocide Convention, but to determine whether the circumstances require the indication of provisional measures for the protection of rights under that instrument,” she explained.

Quoting from UN General Assembly Resolution 96 of December 11, 1946, she said genocide shocks “the conscience of mankind.”

Before going through the list of provisional measures, she quoted high-profile members of the United Nations, including its Secretary General, António Guterres, who warned the Security Council on December 6, 2023, that health care in Gaza was collapsing.

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza, amid constant bombardment by the Israel Defense Forces and without shelter or the essentials to survive. I expect public order to break to completely break down soon, due to the desperate conditions rendering even limited humanitarian assistance impossible.”

He then went on to warn that the situation could get worse, “including epidemic diseases and increased pressure for mass displacement into neighboring countries. We are facing a severe risk of the collapse of the humanitarian system. The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe, with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole.”

Donoghue told the court that it considers the rights in question in the proceeding plausible.

“The court considers that the plausible rights in question in this proceeding, namely, the right of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts identified in Article 3 of the Genocide Convention and the right of South Africa to seek Israel’s compliance with the latter’s obligation under the convention, are of such a nature that prejudiced them and was “capable of causing irreparable harm.”

She pointed out that the provisional measures didn’t have to match those South Africa requested.

In terms of the order:

• Israel must, in accordance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article 2 of the Convention, which deals with the destruction of a group in whole or in part. This includes killing groups of members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. It was also prevented from imposing measures that were intended to prevent births within the group. Article 2
• The court further considered that Israel must ensure, with immediate effect, that its military forces do not commit any of the acts designed to destroy a group, and the State of Israel must take measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to the members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.
• The court ordered Israel to take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
• Israel must also take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Articles 2 and 3 of the Genocide Convention against members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.
• Israel must submit a report to the court on all measures taken to give effect to the order within one month of the order. “The report so provided shall then be communicated to South Africa.

“The court reaffirms the decision given in the present proceedings and in no way prejudges the question of the jurisdiction of the court to deal with the merits of the case or any questions related to the admissibility of the application or to the merits themselves.”

She added that the court was gravely concerned about the fate of the hostages abducted during the attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, and held since then by Hamas and other armed groups, and called for their immediate and unconditional release.

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The International Court of Justice in the Hague heard the South Africa versus Israel case earlier this month. Credit: ICJ

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 26 2024 (IPS)

The International Court of Justice will deliver it’s order for provisional measures submitted by South Africa in the case of South Africa versus Israel today.

South Africa argued that the scale of destruction resulting from the bombardment of Gaza and the deliberate restriction of food, water, medicines, and electricity demonstrated that the government of Israel and its military were intent on destroying Palestinians as a group, which was in violation of the UN Genocide Convention.

The case was argued on January 10 and 11, 2024, and today’s decision is only likely to deal with jurisdiction and the provisional measures that South Africa asked the court to impose.

The provisional measures include:

• that military operations are immediately ceased;
• that the State of Israel take reasonable measures within its power to prevent genocide, including desisting from actions that could bring about physical destruction;
• rescind orders of restrictions and prohibitions to prevent forced displacement and ensure access to humanitarian assistance, including access to adequate fuel, shelter, clothes, hygiene, sanitation and medical supplies;
• avoid public incitement;
• ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts and
• submit a report to the court on all measures taken to give effect to the order.

South Africa argued that the scale of destruction resulting from the bombardment of Gaza and the deliberate restriction of food, water, medicines, and electricity demonstrated that the government of Israel and its military were intent on destroying Palestinians as a group.

Israel disputed this, saying that the country had a right to defend itself in the face of the October 7 massacre in Israel. It was argued that South Africa brought a fundamentally flawed case. 

IPS will update the outcome later today.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Adama Dieng (centre), visited Yei River State in South Sudan while he was the United Nations Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide. He now calls for urgent action to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. Credit: UN Photo/Isaac Billy

By Alison Kentish
NEW YORK, Aug 18 2021 (IPS)

Despite a June 30 unilateral ceasefire declaration by Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed, United Nations agencies say a recent escalation in fighting has been ‘disastrous’ for children, amid reports of over 100 children being killed in an attack on displaced families.

It follows continuing reports of human rights abuses and warnings that over 400,000 face famine. Recently, a group of renowned peace leaders wrote to the President, urging him to take immediate action to end the crisis in the northern Tigray region.

The region has been embroiled in conflict since November 2020, when long-standing tensions between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) came to a head, with the Prime Minister launching a military operation he described at the time as a ‘law and order operation.’ He had accused the TPLF of targeting government military units and holding illegal elections.

“Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was praised as a great reformer when he assumed office in 2018. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for a peace deal that ended a two-decade war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. But today, he is presiding over a civil war that has escalated out of control, with reports of mass atrocities committed by Ethiopian forces, and no end in sight,” former president of East Timor-Leste and Nobel Peace Laureate José Ramos-Horta wrote in Newsweek.

The group of concerned peace leaders includes Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former Slovenian President Danilo Turk, Former President of Finland Tarja Halonen, former UN and Arab League Special Envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi, Former Member of the Nobel Peace Committee, Chair of Religions for Peace Emeritus Bishop of Oslo Dr Gunnar Stålsett and former UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Envoy for Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng.

They called on the leader to end this war – along with the suffering on the people of the region ‘which has already been too great.”

The following is an interview with Adama Dieng.

Inter Press Service (IPS): What are some of your biggest concerns regarding the situation in Tigray?

Adama Dieng (AD): What is happening in Tigray is a tragedy. It is a reminder that conflict is never a solution to any dispute! Dialogue is the way out of any such situation.
My biggest worry is the well-being and safety of the people of Tigray. Innocent lives have been lost unnecessarily. Women and children, and people with disabilities have been clamped into IDP makeshift camps with little or no access to vital humanitarian support.

Humanitarian access is a challenge that warring parties need to address. The United Nations and other partners should be granted unequivocal access to deliver much-needed humanitarian assistance to the population in need.

But also, the looming, indeed actual famine that is threatening the livelihood of the local population. All reports we get from the region indicate that famine is looming. How do we avert this?

This is a farming/planting season in the region. Yet, people are in camps, unable to go back to their homes ready for planting season. Without addressing the conflict, it is evident that there is a looming catastrophe because people cannot go back to their homes.

(IPS): The UN Secretary-General expressed shock at the murder of 3 humanitarian workers in Tigray, stating that this was ‘an appalling violation of International Humanitarian Law.’ With this development, along with the casualties over the past eight months, is it time for the international community to take a firmer stance?

(AD): As you may know, very well, the Secretary-General and the United Nations family have called for an unconditional ceasefire to allow free and unhindered access to humanitarians. These voices should be heeded by both parties.

Any death is tragic. Leave alone humanitarian workers who sacrifice their comfort and life to work in such dangerous and insecure areas. People who commit such heinous crimes should be held to account and face the full force of the law.

The warring parties should know very clearly that there are consequences for the ongoing and continued violations of international humanitarian law and human rights. I have no doubt that those responsible will be held to account for these violations. Unfortunately, accountability will come when people have suffered and continue to endure suffering. It is critical that the conflict stops.

I understand, some member states and regional organizations continue to put pressure on the government of Ethiopia to stop this war. By ensuring the full withdrawal of foreign forces and ensure safety and security of the people in Tigray.

The priority should be to stop the war and guarantee peace and safety for the people to resume their normal lives. As we speak, The United Nations in Ethiopia has reported a spiraling number of IDPs running to seek sanctuary in other areas of Ethiopia and indeed in Sudan. We need to return to normal to allow people to return to their homes. And people can’t return without a guarantee of peace and security.

(IPS): Many aid agencies have expressed concern over the plight of Eritrean refugees in the Region. What must be done now to do right by the thousands of refugees in urgent need of assistance?

(AD): Of course, I share this concern. However, Eritrean refugees are protected under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1969 OAU Convention. Ethiopia has an inherent obligation to ensure that these refugees on its territory are afforded protection as required under international law. I believe, Ethiopia as a signatory to these critical documents, understands this obligation and will ensure that Eritrean refugees are afforded requisite protection under national and international law.

(IPS): Do you support calls for independent investigators to probe allegations of human rights abuses?

(AD): Certainly. Ethiopia is a signatory to a wide range of international and regional human rights treaties. It is a headquarter of the African Union and other regional institutions. It has an obligation to ensure that those who commit crimes on its territory are investigated and punished in accordance with these international laws and standards, which are part of Ethiopian laws. I am therefore confident that the Ethiopian government is willing and will be fully supportive of independent investigations for alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law that may have been committed on its territory.

(IPS): Does the declaration of a ceasefire bring hope to this situation?

(DG): This ceasefire gives me hope. But again, as you know, declaring the ceasefire and respecting the ceasefire are two different things. My primary concern is whether, both parties will respect the ceasefire. The key aspect is that we need to support all efforts that end this war which, has tragically led to the loss of life, livelihood, and dignity of innocent people in the region. If warring parties feel that they may need external support to action this, I am sure the international community, through wide range of tools and mechanisms, would be happy and ready to support them to ensure that the ceasefire endures!

(IPS): As someone who has helped establish mechanisms like early warning systems to prevent genocide and atrocity crimes, what comes to mind when you assess this situation?

(AD): The situation in the Tigray reminds us that early warning can be successful only if it is linked to early action. If we are serious about prevention, we must be prepared to act earlier, when we see the first signs of concern. One can say that we are failing the populations in Tigray.

The primary responsibility to protect the Tigrean populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, as well as their incitement, lies first and foremost with the State of Ethiopia. Such responsibility to protect was reaffirmed by the United Nations Member States when adopting, in 2005, the World Summit Outcome Document. They committed to assisting each other to fulfill this responsibility and to act collectively when States “manifestly failed” to protect their populations from these crimes. This was the first such international commitment to protect populations from atrocity crimes. It is deplorable that many states use the principle of sovereignty to resist external assistance to their affected populations.

In case leaders are serious about preventing violent conflict, they must be open to seek assistance to protect their populations in the framework of the Summit Outcome Document. Failure or unwillingness to seek such assistance, may imply that the state is either implicitly or explicitly responsible for the violence. That is why I always caution leaders around the world that if they don’t take demonstrable action to prevent atrocities against their own citizens, then under the principle of command responsibility, they could be held accountable.

It is urgent also to remind African leaders that the African Union, under its Constitutive Act, has one of the most developed early warning mechanisms with a requisite legal framework for prevention. The Act under Article 2 obligates AU Member states to intervene in situations to prevent genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. This legal framework, if put into practice, goes way ahead of the United Nations to prevent armed conflicts. The serious crimes being committed in Tigray could have been prevented as there were credible assessments of imminent threats to populations.

It would mean that our governments, regional and international organizations build resilient and cohesive societies. And when we see signs of fragility, we should take early preventative actions. We should be open to mediation, dialogue, and technical assistance in areas that could trigger conflict, for example, in electoral processes or constitution-making.

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Remains of some of the over 800,000 victims of Rwanda’s genocide, which will soon be relocated to a new memorial site to preserve them. Jacqueline Murekatete, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and founder and President of the Genocide Survivors Foundation (GSF). highlighted the importance of centring these discussions on genocide around survivors. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 25 2021 (IPS)

Women and young girls are disproportionately affected by conflict and genocide, and that is why they should be a central part of conversations on the issue, according to Jacqueline Murekatete, a Rwandan survivor of genocide and founder and President of the Genocide Survivors Foundation (GSF).

“Survivors need to be invited to the table to share their testimonies,” Murekatete told IPS. “When people hear personal stories they’re more likely to want to get involved. It makes a huge difference to have their testimony.”

It’s also crucial for the narrative to distinguish between women survivors and survivors who are young girls in order to highlight the nuances of how young girls are affected when they are subject to sexual violence at a tender age, she said.

“I have friends who were raped at the age of nine. A nine-year-old child being raped and some of them being infected with HIV/AIDS means their whole life can be ruined. Raising awareness about the fact that it’s not just women, it’s also little girls, really elevates what genocide is. When you see children who are nine or ten, being gang-raped — it’s another level of violence, of evil that needs to be brought to light,” Murekatete said.

Jacqueline Murekatete. Courtesy: Genocide Survivors Foundation (GSF)

Murekatete spoke with IPS following a U.N. panel on “Women and Genocide” last week. The panel specifically highlighted the issue of how women were impacted during the Holocaust — where between 1941 and 1945 Nazis systematically murdered over 6 million Jewish men, women and children — and the Rwandan genocide of 1994 — where in just 100 day over 800,000 people, ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were murdered. It has since been recognised by the UN as the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Dr. Sarah Cushman, Director of the Holocaust Educational Foundation at Northwestern University, discussed the issue of gender and the Holocaust.

“Gender has been a part of Holocaust studies from the start,” she said. “Early explorations centred on the notions of a German crisis of masculinity – scholars saw this as a response to World War I.”

This supposed threat to their masculinity was “fertile soil for the emergence of a masculinist bellicose revival in the form of the Nazi party, and the person of Adolf Hitler,” she added.

“I don’t necessarily think they were trying to preserve ‘the gender hierarchy’ per se, but rather they sought to reestablish Germany as a masculine nation among other nations,” Cushman told IPS. “They viewed the ‘Jewish influence’ as creating a liberalistic, soft, effeminate and ineffective democracy. They aimed to put an end to that (among other things).”

Cushman was joined by Sarah E. Brown, Executive Director of the Centre for Holocaust, Human Rights and Genocide Education at Brookdale Community College, who spoke on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

The genocide left thousands of orphans like Murekatete, who lost her family at the age of nine. Murekatete currently runs GSF to make sure other survivors have a safe haven to process their trauma.

Excerpts of the full interview below.

The gates of World War II concentration camp, Auschwitz. Approximately 1.1 million people — of whom 960,000 were Jewish — were killed in the biggest extermination camp from World War II. Photo by Jean Carlo Emer on Unsplash

Inter Press Service (IPS): Can you share how you realised as a woman, there are different implications of a genocide for you?

Jacqueline Murekatete (JM): I was nine when the genocide happened. I was a young girl, not a woman. Growing up in the aftermath of the genocide, and now as I work with genocide survivors, I have spoken with so many girls and women who have suffered so much because of their gender. During a genocide, every member of the targeted group suffers but women and girls have a higher level of suffering in that most of them are always victims of sexual violence.

During the Rwandan genocide, rape wasn’t just a random act. The Hutu extremists actually got on the radio to encourage Hutu men to make sure they rape Tutsi women and Tutsi girls before they killed them.

IPS: Sarah Brown said at the talk Hutu men ‘deliberately impregnated’ Tutsi women to make sure there are ‘Hutu children’ and also knowingly passed on HIV/AIDS. Can you speak to that?

JM: There have been women who were infected by Hutu men knowingly, who told the women they were going to die a very, very slow death. Many of these women contracted HIV/AIDS during the genocide. Although it’s been more than 25 years, the consequences of the genocide are still a daily reality for them. Some say they can’t forget because they still take pills everyday for HIV/AIDS.

Many say, everyday they look at their child and she/he looks like their rapist. So for these women, everyday is a reminder of what they suffered and they are still living with the physical and mental consequences of the genocide.

The relationship between these moms and their children was and remains very complicated. Many gave up their children for adoption because everyday was a reminder of what happened to them. Meanwhile, in some cases, these children were the only relatives these women had because the women or the girls’ families had been killed.

IPS: Sarah Brown also said women were given more leadership roles following the genocide, and the Rwandan government removed a bunch of laws that made women second-class citizens. Are women’s rights in Rwanda better after the genocide?

JM: This partly happened out of necessity. In many villages, sometimes you’d find that there were so many men that had been killed that women would end up taking roles that they had never taken on before.

This led to a cultural shift in women doing more work and having more leadership roles — including in politics. As women came into positions of power, a lot of women’s rights got better. For example, women couldn’t own property in Rwanda, and that has changed; and domestic violence is addressed with more access to services.

IPS: Can you elaborate on why it’s crucial for survivors to be present — and highlighted — at talks about genocides?

JM: I always highlight the importance of including people who are the actual survivors in conversations, for them to come and share their stories. I always say, we cannot be here debating about people’s lives who are not at the table, it’s just wrong. There is progress being made, but there’s still a long way to go in making sure that the voices that need to be at the table are actually at the table.

Zainab Bangura, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe.

By Lindah Mogeni
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 17 2016 (IPS)

The governments of Rwanda and Iraq have agreed to work together to fight rape as a weapon of genocide, noting disturbing similarities between sexual violence in Iraq today to the Rwandan genocide twenty years ago.

Just as targeted rape was as much a tool of the Rwandan genocide as the machete, an estimated 3000 Iraqi Yazidis under ISIL’s captivity are currently facing acts of genocide and targeted sexual violence, including sexual slavery.

Given Rwanda’s experience with sexual violence during the Rwandan genocide, Iraq’s permanent mission to the UN has signed a joint communique, an official statement establishing a relationship, with Rwanda’s permanent mission to the UN.

The joint effort will be aimed at sharing action plans to rehabilitate women victims and reintegrate them into their communities.

Rwanda was the first country where rape was recognised as a weapon of genocide by an international court. This court case was the subject of a documentary, The Uncondemned, which recently premiered at the UN.

The documentary is centred around the case of Jean Paul Akayesu, the mayor of Taba in Rwanda between April 1993 and June 1994, who was brought before the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR).

Akayesu was found guilty of nine counts of genocide and crimes against humanity, including the landmark conviction of rape as an act of genocide, in 1998.

Prior to the film screening, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Bangura, described the importance of recognising rape as an act of genocide.

Bangura paid tribute to the Rwandan women who testified in the Akayesu trial as well as two Iraqi Yazidi women, one of whom is an ISIL rape survivor, present at the screening, and praised them for “giving other women the confidence to emerge from the shadows.”

A report to the UN human rights council has found that ISIL – also known as ISIS – has committed the crime of genocide against the Yazidis, an ethnically Kurdish religious group.

“The film demonstrates that only when survivors and civil society come together and join forces with investigators, prosecutors and policy makers, that justice can be delivered in its fullest sense,” said Bangura.

“The silver lining in these encounters is the exceptional courage and resilience of the rape victims to overcome their traumatic experience…they defied traditions and taboos by standing and speaking up, despite the fear of stigma and rejection or retribution from perpetrators,” said Jeanne D’arc Byaje, the Charge d’Affaires to the Permanent Mission of Rwanda to the UN.

Thousands of people were targeted with sexual violence during the Rwandan genocide, said the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng.

According to Byaje, in a span of 22 years since the genocide, Rwanda has “been able to reverse the deplorable situation by eliminating gender-based abuse and violence to increase the capacity of women and girls to protect themselves.”

Byaje called for “an international community that is a partner and not a bystander…and that is willing to work towards long-term efforts to promote unity and reconciliation.”

Iraq’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Mohamed Ali Ahakim, similarly appealed to the international community for help with the dire situation faced by Yazidi, as well as other minorities, women and children currently under ISIL”s captivity.

“Young women and children have been specifically targeted by ISIL and are being systematically sold in slave markets sometimes for a dollar or a pack of cigarettes…this is a tragedy that has not been experienced before in any of Iraq’s diverse communities,” said Ahakim.

However, Ahakim said that the problem is not confined to the current situation – “it would be easy to work with a coalition of 65 countries to defeat ISIL militarily.”

“The main problem is what we are going to do next once we liberate Iraq and free the young women and children…I don’t have the ability to comprehend the difficulties that will be faced trying to infuse normality into these communities,” said Ahakim

From the testimonies given at the UN, after the film screening, by the Rwandan witnesses at the Akayesu trial and the Yazidi rape survivor, it is evident that justice is the most crucial component of any next-step action plans for survivors.

“I decided to shame the act, I decided to put it out there, I wanted the truth to be known, but most importantly I wanted justice…what happened to us was horrible but we are still here…and that is because of justice” said one Rwandan witness, known as “Witness JJ”.

Yazidi rape survivor of ISIL, 18 year old Lea Le, who escaped her captors by tying scarves together and using them to climb out of a window along with some friends, said that “we should not hide what happened, it is very important for justice to be carried out…it is unfair that survivors have to wait so long for justice.”

Asked about the impact of the Akayesu case on other war crimes trials, Ambassador Pierre R. Prosper, the lead prosecutor during the Akayesu trial, admitted that there have been some subsequent prosecutions as result of the international precedent set by Akayesu’s case.

However, “we have lost the momentum, the political will to deal with the issue of not just rape but other genocide atrocities in general…we are waving the flag of saying this is wrong but we are not acting,” said Prosper.

Prosper called for governments to direct resources to relevant entities to pursue accountability and ensure justice.

“We need to re-energise ourselves,” said Prosper.

At least 18,802 people were killed in Iraq and another 36,245 were injured; this is the number of civilians killed in violence over the past two years and it is staggering.

The figures given are most likely an underestimate and are casualties incurred from January 1, 2014 through October 31, 2015, according to a report by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the United Nations Human Rights Agency (OHCHR). About half of the deaths reported took place in Baghdad alone.

Emirates News Agency carried a commentary from the Gulf Today looking at the new United Nations report on Iraq and the instability rocking the region.

“The reason is that the figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but ignores the fact that countless others have died from lack of access to basic food, water or medical care,” said ‘The Gulf Today’ this week.

“Around 3.2 million people have been internally displaced in the country since the beginning of 2014 when the dreaded Daesh group took over large parts of the country. As is known now, the Daesh terrorists engaged in numerous inhuman activities including killings in gruesome public spectacles, beheading, bulldozing, burning alive and throwing people off the top of buildings.

“Child soldiers who tried to flee were mercilessly murdered by the terrorists, while continuing to subject women and children to sexual violence, particularly in the form of sexual slavery.

“As per the UN report, an estimated 3,500 people, mainly women and children, are believed to be held as slaves in Iraq by Daesh militants who impose a harsh rule marked by gruesome public executions.

“Such horrors were what led to Iraqi refugees attempting to escape to Europe and other regions. Ramadi has been touted as the first major success for Iraq’s US-backed army since it collapsed in the face of Daesh’s advance across the country’s north and west in mid-2014,” said the paper.

“But, as per indications, clearing the city of militants and explosives could take weeks. The discovery of more civilians than expected trapped among the ruins, after what the survivors say was a deliberate effort by fighters to use them as shields, suggests future battles against Daesh could be more complicated.

It said, “Ramadi, where nearly half a million people once lived, sadly has witnessed widespread destruction. The heartless terrorists continue to kill, maim and displace Iraqi civilians in the thousands and create endless suffering. Many of the actions by Daesh militants surely amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

“The perpetrators of such deeds should be made accountable and pay for the extreme cruelty they committed,” concluded the newspaper.

“The violence suffered by civilians in Iraq remains staggering,” said the UN report. “The so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL) continues to commit systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law. These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide.”

The report compiled by UNAMI and OHCHR is based largely on testimony given by the victims. Some of these people were survivors and witnesses of human rights violations. Among those giving the accounts were internally displaced people.

“During the reporting period, ISIL killed and abducted scores of civilians, often in a targeted manner,” the report notes. “Victims include those perceived to be opposed to ISIL ideology and rule; persons affiliated with the government, such as former Iraqi security forces (ISF), police officers, former public officials and electoral workers; professionals, such as doctors and lawyers; journalists; and tribal and religious leaders.”

The report adds that “others have been abducted or killed on the pretext of aiding or providing information to Government security forces. Many have been subjected to adjudication by ISIL self-appointed courts which, in addition to ordering the murder of countless people, have imposed grim punishments such as stoning and amputations.”

“ISIL continued to subject women and children to sexual violence, particularly in the form of sexual slavery,” the report said.

The UN indicated that concerning reports have also been received of unlawful killings and abductions perpetrated by some elements associated with pro-Government forces.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein indicated that the civilian death toll may be actually much higher, and called for urgent action for those freely committing the violence to stop it.

“Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq,” he said. “The figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but countless others have died from the lack of access to basic food, water or medical care.”

“This report lays bare the enduring suffering of civilians in Iraq and starkly illustrates what Iraqi refugees are attempting to escape when they flee to Europe and other regions. This is the horror they face in their homelands,” Said the Human Rights Commissioner.

Mr. Zeid also made an appeal to the government to undertake legislative amendments to grant Iraqi courts jurisdiction over international crimes and to become party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

(End)

By Jan Oberg
LUND, Sweden, Aug 7 2015 (IPS)

It’s absolutely necessary to remember what happened 70 years ago in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see the movies from then, listen to the survivors, the hibakusa. But it isn’t enough for us to rid the world of these crimes-against-humanity weapons. And that we must.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are history and are also the essence of the age you and I live in – the nuclear age. If the hypothesis is that by showing these films, we create opinion against nuclear weapons, 70 years of ever more nuclearism should be enough to conclude that that hypothesis is plain wrong.

Jan Oberg

There is a need for a frontal attack on not only the weapons but on nuclearism – the thinking/ideology on which they are based and made to look ‘necessary’ for security and peace.

Nuclear weapons – only for terrorists

At its core, terrorism is about harming or killing innocent people and not only combatants. Any country that possesses nukes is aware that nukes can’t be used without killing millions of innocent people – infinitely more lethal than Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and so.

Since 9/11 [attack on the Twin Towers in New York], governments and media have conveniently promoted the idea that terrorism is only about small non-governmental groups and thus tried to make us forget that the nuclear ‘haves’ themselves practise state terrorism and hold humanity hostage to potential civilisational genocide (omnicide).

Dictatorship

No nuclear state has ever dared to hold a referendum and ask its citizens: “Do you or do you not accept to be defended by a nuclear arsenal?” Nuclear weapons with the omnicidal ‘kill all and everything’ characteristics is pure dictatorship, incompatible with both parliamentary and direct democracy. And freedom.

Citizens generally have more, or better, morals than governments and do not wish to see themselves, their neighbours or fellow human beings around the world burn up in a process that would make the Holocaust look like a cosy afternoon tea party. In short, nuclear weapons states either arrange referendums or must accept the label dictatorship.“Citizens generally have more, or better, morals than governments and do not wish to see themselves, their neighbours or fellow human beings around the world burn up in a process that would make the Holocaust look like a cosy afternoon tea party”

The idea that a few hundred politicians and military people in the world’s nuclear states have a self-appointed right to play God and decide whether ‘project humankind’ shall continue or not belongs to the realm of the civilisational perverse or the Theatre of the Absurd. Such people must run on the assumption, deep down, that they are Chosen People with a higher mission. Gandhi rightly called Western civilisation diluted fascism.

Unethical

Why? Because – simply – there can be no political or other goal that justifies the use of this doomsday weapon and the killing of millions of people, or making the earth uninhabitable.

Possession versus proliferation

The trick played on us all since 1945 is that there are some ‘responsible’ – predominantly Christian, Western – countries that can, should, or must have nuclear weapons and then there are some irresponsible governments/leaders elsewhere that must be prevented by all means from acquiring them. In other words, that proliferation rather than possession is the problem.

However, it is built into the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that those who don’t have nuclear weapons shall abstain from acquiring them as a quid pro quo for the nuclear-haves to disarm theirs completely.

That is, the whole world shall become a nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ).

Those who have nuclear weapons provoke others to get them too. Possession leads to proliferation.

The recent negotiations with Iran is a good example of this bizarre world view: the five nuclear terrorist states, sitting on enough nukes to blow up the world several times over and who have systematically violated international law in general and the NPT in particular, tell Iran – which abides by the NPT and doesn’t want nuclear weapons – that it must never obtain nuclear weapons.

Simultaneously, they turn a blind eye to nuclear terrorist state, Israel’s 50+ years’ old nuclear arsenals.

And it is all actively assisted by mainstream media which seem to lack the knowledge and/or intellectual capacity to challenge this whole set-up – including the racist belief structure that “we have a God-given right and are more responsible than everybody else – particularly non-Christians…”

But what about deterrence?

You’ve heard the philosophical nonsense repeatedly over 70 years: nuclear weapons are good to deter everyone from starting the ‘Third World War’. That nukes are here to never be used. That no one would start that war because he/she would know that there would be a mass murder on one’s own population in a second strike, retaliation. But think! Two small, simple counterarguments:

• You cannot deter anyone from doing something unless you are willing to implement your threat, your deterrent. If A knows that B wouldnever use his nukes, A would not be afraid of the retaliation. Thus, every nuclear weapons state is ready to use nukes under some defined circumstance; if not there is no deterrence whatsoever

• The United States has long ago done two things (as the only one on earth): decided on a doctrine in which the use of small nukes in aconventional role is fundamental, thus blurring the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons; and said that its missile defence (which it also wants in Europe) is about preventing a second strike back – shooting down retaliatory missiles – so it can start, fight and win a nuclear war without being harmed itself. Or so it can hope.

Hope

Let’s rid the world of this civilisational mistake. Nuclearism and nuclear deterrence are the world’s most dangerous ideologies comparable to slavery, absolute monarchy and cannibalism that we have decided – because we are humans and civilised and can think and feel – to put behind us.

There is no co-existence possible between nuclear weapons on the one hand and democracy, peace and civilisation on the other.

It’s time to regain hope by looking at all the – civilised – non-nuclear countries and follow their example. Thus, 99 percent of the southern hemisphere landmass is nuclear weapons-free with 60 percent of its 193 states, with 33 percent of the world’s population, included in this free zone.

The West, the United States in particular, which started the terrible Nuclear Age, should now follow the great majority of humanity, apologise for its nuclearism and move to zero.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

A visitor looking at a panel at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, England. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
LIVERPOOL, England, Jul 21 2015 (IPS)

An exhibition on modern-day slavery at the International Slavery Museum in this northern English town is just one example of a museum choosing to focus on human rights, and being “upfront” about it.

“Social justice just doesn’t happen by itself; it’s about activism and people willing to take risks,” says Dr David Fleming, director of National Museums Liverpool, which includes the city’s International Slavery Museum (ISM).

The institution looks at aspects of both historical and contemporary slavery, while being an “international hub for resources on human rights issues”.

It is a member of the Liverpool-based Social Justice Alliance for Museums (SJAM), formed in 2013 and now comprising more than 80 museums worldwide, and it coordinated the founding of the Federation of International Human Rights Museums (FIHRM) in 2010.

Dr David Fleming, director of National Museums Liverpool, which includes the city’s International Slavery Museum. Credit: National Museums Liverpool

The aim of FIHRM is to encourage museums which “engage with sensitive and controversial human rights themes” to work together and share “new thinking and initiatives in a supportive environment”. Both organisations reflect the way that museums are changing, said Fleming.

“Museums are not dispassionate agents,” he told IPS. “They have a role in safeguarding memory. We have to look at the role of museums and see how they can transform lives.”

The International Slavery Museum’s current exhibition, titled “Broken Lives” and running until April 2016, focuses on the victims of global modern-day slavery – half of whom are said to be in India, and most of whom are Dalits, or people formerly known as “untouchables”.

The display “provides a window into the experiences of Dalits and others who are being exploited and abused through modern slavery in India”, say the curators.

“Dalits still experience marginalisation and prejudice, live in extreme poverty and are vulnerable to human trafficking and bonded labour,” they add.

Presented in partnership with the Dalit Freedom Network, the exhibition uses photographs, film, personal testimony and other means to show “stories of hardship” that include sexual servitude and child bondage. It also profiles the activists working to mend “broken lives”.“Museums [in Liverpool, Nantes, Guadeloupe and Bordeaux ] hope that they can play a role in global citizenship, educating the public and encouraging visitors to leave with a different mind-set – about respect for human rights, social justice, diversity, equality, and sustainability”

The display occupies a temporary exposition space at the museum, which has a permanent section devoted to the atrocities of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the legacy of racism.

Along with the Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in the French city of Nantes and the recently opened Mémorial ACTe in Guadeloupe, the Liverpool museum is one of too few national institutions focused on raising awareness about slavery, observers say.

But it has provided a “vital source of inspiration” to permanent exhibitions on the slave trade in places such as Bordeaux, southwest France, according to the city’s mayor Alain Juppé. Here, the Musée d’Aquitaine hosts a comprehensive division called ‘Bordeaux, Trans-Atlantic Trading and Slavery’ – with detailed, unequivocal information.

These museums hope that they can play a role in global citizenship, educating the public and encouraging visitors to leave with a different mind-set – about respect for human rights, social justice, diversity, equality, and sustainability.

“We try to overtly encourage the public to get involved in the fight for human rights,” Fleming told IPS in an interview. “We’ve often said at the Slavery Museum that we want people to go away fired up with the desire to fight racism.

“You can’t dictate to people what they’re going to think or how they’re going to respond and react,” he continued. “But you can create an atmosphere, and the atmosphere at the Slavery Museum is clearly anti-racist. We hope people will leave thinking: I didn’t know all those terrible things had happened and I’m leaving converted.”

Despite Liverpool’s undeniable history as a major slaving port in the 18th century, not everyone will be affected in the same way, however. There have been swastikas painted on the walls of the museum in the past, as bigots reject the institution’s aims.

“Some people come full of knowledge and full of attitude already, and I don’t imagine that we affect these people. But we’re looking for people in the middle, who might not have thought about this,” Fleming said.

A poster sign for the ‘Broken Lives’ exhibition under way at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

He described a visit to the museum by a group of English schoolchildren who initially did not comprehend photographs depicting African youngsters whose hands had been cut off by colonialists.

When they were given explanations about the images, the schoolchildren “switched on to the idea that people can behave abominably, based on nothing but ethnicity,” he said.

Fleming visits social justice exhibitions around the world and gives information about the museum’s work, he said. As a keynote speaker, he recently delivered an address about the role of museums at a conference in Liverpool titled ‘Mobilising Memory: Creating African Atlantic Identities’.

The meeting – organised by the Collegium for African American Research (CAAR) and a new UK-based body called the Institute for Black Atlantic Research – took place at Liverpool Hope University at the end of June.

It began a few days after a white gunman killed nine people inside the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in the U.S. state of South Carolina.

The murders, among numerous incidents of brutality against African Americans over the past year, sparked a sense of urgency at the conference as well as heightened the discussion about activism – and especially the part that writers, artists and scholars play in preserving and “activating” memory in the struggle for social justice and human rights.

“Artists, and by extension museums, have what some people have called a ‘burden of representation’, and they have to deal with that,” said James Smalls, a professor of art history and museum studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

“Many times, artists automatically are expected to speak on behalf of their ethnic group or community, and some have chosen to embrace that while others try to be exempt,” he added.

Claire Garcia, a professor at Colorado College, said that for a number of academics “there is no necessary link between scholarship and activism” in what are considered scholarly fields.

Such thinkers make the point that scholarship should be “theoretical” and “universal,” and not political or focused on “the specific plights of one group,” she said. However, this standpoint – “when it is disconnected from the embattled humanity” of some ethnic groups – can create further problems.

The concept of museums standing for “social justice” is controversial as well because the issue is seen differently in various parts of the world. The line between “objectifying and educating” also gives cause for debate.

Fleming said that National Museums Liverpool, for example, would not have put on the contentious show “Exhibit B” – which featured live Black performers in a “human zoo” installation; the work was apparently aimed at condemning racism and slavery but instead drew protests in London, Paris and other cities in 2014.

“Personally I loathe all that stuff, so my vote would be ‘no’ to anything similar,” Fleming told IPS. “And that’s not because it’s controversial and difficult but because it’s degrading and humiliating. There are all sorts of issues with it, and I’ve thought about that quite a lot.”

He and other scholars say that they are deeply conscious of who is doing the “story-telling” of history, and this is an issue that also affects museums.

Several participants at the CAAR conference criticised certain displays at the International Slavery Museum, wondering about the intended audience, and who had selected the exhibits, for instance.

A section that showed famous individuals of African descent seemed superficial in its glossy presentation of people such as American talk-show host Oprah Winfrey and well-known athletes and entertainers.

Fleming said that museums often face disapproval for both going too far and not going “far enough”. But taking a disinterested stand does not seem to be the answer, because “the world is full of ‘faux-neutral’ museums”, he said.

The most relevant and interesting museums can be those that have a “moral compass”, but they need help as they can “do very little by themselves,” Fleming told IPS. The institutions that he directs often work with non-governmental organisations that bring their own expertise and point of view to the exhibitions, he explained.

Apart from slavery, individual museums around the world have focused on the Holocaust, on apartheid, on genocide in countries such as Cambodia, and on the atrocities committed during dictatorships in regions such as Latin America.

“Some countries don’t want museums to change,” said Fleming. “But in Liverpool, we’re not just there for tourism.”

Edited by Phil Harris

The writer can be followed on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale   

An Anglo-Nigerian writer has respectfully urged Pope Francis to look beyond Armenia for the first genocide of the 20th century.

In an essay in the British Guardian, David Olusoga wrote: “When the media analysts at the Vatican scrutinize the social media traffic of the past seven days, their eyes might well be drawn away from Turkey and the Armenian diaspora towards a cluster of tweets, comments and Facebook posts that emanate from Africa.

“There, another debate raged last week,” he said. “The pope’s description of the Armenian massacre as “the first genocide of the 20th century” was simply incorrect. That grim distinction belongs to the genocide that imperial Germany unleashed a decade earlier against the Herero and Nama, two ethnic groups who lived in the former colony of South West Africa, modern Namibia.”

Olusoga pointed out that the Namibian genocide, 1904-1909, “seemed to prefigure the later horrors of that troubled century.” The systematic extermination of around 80 percent of the Herero people and 50 percent of the Nama was the work both of German soldiers and colonial administrators; “banal, desk-bound killers.” The most reliable figures estimate 90,000 people were killed, he said.

In the case of the Herero, he recalled, “an official, written order – the extermination order – was issued by the German commander, explicitly condemning the entire people to annihilation. After military attempts to bring this about had been thwarted, the liquidation of the surviving Herero, along with the Nama people, was continued in concentration camps, a term that was used at the time for the archipelago of facilities the Germans built across Namibia.”

“Some of the victims of the Namibian genocide were transported to those camps in cattle trucks and the bodies of some of the victims were subjected to pseudoscientific racial examinations and dissections.”

Recollection of this horror comes as a conference on reparations winds up in New York. However, unlike in the U.S. which apologized for slavery by resolutions in the House and Senate a decade ago, “All of this is now well known and widely accepted in Africa and even in Germany,” says Olusoga.

“In 2004, the German government apologized to the Herero and admitted that what Germany had done to their ancestors constituted a genocide,” he said. “As the co-author of one of the more recent histories of the genocide, I am regularly invited to attend conferences and give lectures on the subject in Germany and the word is spreading. A decade ago, my co-author and I described what took place in Namibia between 1904 and 1909 as “Germany’s forgotten genocide”. That phrase is now past its sell-by date, everywhere, it seems, other than in the Vatican.”

Olusoga wondered if the pope’s statement was made in ignorance or if the Vatican was guilty of the sin of deliberate omission. “Catholicism is growing faster in Africa than anywhere else,” he observed – “200 million Africans are followers of the faith. But awareness of history is also increasing in Africa and crimes such as the Namibian genocide can no longer be ignored, whether by accident or design.”

David Olusoga is the co-author, with Casper Erichsen, of The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Sahar Baker (left), with Ahed Baker (right) and sister-in-law in front of their beach camp house, with photographs of the four cousins killed by Israeli gunboats in summer 2014 while playing football on the beach in Gaza. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

By Khaled Alashqar
GAZA CITY, Mar 3 2015 (IPS)

“I have lost all meaning in life after the death of my child, I will never forgive anyone who caused the tearing apart of his little body.  I appeal to all who can help and stand with us to achieve justice and punish those who killed my child.”

As the tears rolled down her cheeks and with a rattle in her voice, 47-year-old Sahar Baker recalled the last moments of her ten-year-old son Ismail, who was killed along with three of his cousins after being targeted by Israeli gunboats while they were playing football on the beach during the Israeli attacks on Gaza last summer."We will not forget how our children were killed in cold blood without any reason. We hope that the Israeli army commanders will be tried before international justice and that they will be punished for the killing of the children" – Ahed Baker

Sahar’s plea for justice may soon be one step nearer now that the Palestine Government is set to formally join the International Criminal Court (ICC), which deals with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding treaty, on Dec. 31, after the U.N. Security Council rejected a Palestinian attempt to set a deadline for Israel to end its occupation of territories it captured in 1967. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said the Palestinians will formally join the ICC on Apr. 1.

Mohammad Shtayyeh, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), is reported as having said that a first complaint will be filed against Israel at the ICC on Apr. 1 over the Israeli war against Gaza last year and Israeli settlement activity.

Palestinian membership of the ICC “provides an opportunity to raise the issues on Israel’s use of force based on occupation and crimes against the people and the land in Palestine, where we did not have the capacity before to sue Israel for its crimes against the Palestinians,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Al-Malki told the press during a visit to Brazil to attend the inauguration ceremony of President Dilma Rousseff at the beginning of January.

The Baker family, who live in a beach camp in Gaza, is now hoping that Palestinian membership of the ICC will open the door for the prosecution of Israeli leaders and army officers for their crimes.

Sahar’s cousin Ahed Baker, father of Zakaria (10) and grandfather of Ahed Atif (9), shares her pain and bitterness. He is still looking for a way to bring the Israeli army to trial for the murder of his son and grandson, another two of the four young cousins killed on the beach. He told IPS that he and his family would do everything possible to ensure that their case makes its way to the ICC.

Sahar Baker holds a photograph of her ten-year-old son Ismail, killed along with three of his cousins during the Israeli attacks on Gaza in summer 2014. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

“We will not forget how our children were killed in cold blood without any reason,” said Ahed. “We hope that the Israeli army commanders will be tried before international justice and that they will be punished for the killing of the children.”

Palestinian leaders have long waved the card of membership of the ICC as a form of pressure on the Israeli government in their attempt to secure a Palestinian state.

However, apart from its political and legal benefits, Palestinian membership of the international court has created some serious implications for the Palestinians.

Israel has already frozen the transfer to the Palestinian Authority of tax funds owed to it. These funds are generally allocated for the salaries of Palestinian public employees and government operating expenses in Gaza and the West Bank, and the freeze is hampering the functioning of the Palestinian Unity Government and undermine the already weak public sector in Palestine.

Israel has also indicated that further ‘punitive’ steps will be taken soon against the Palestinians as a result of joining the ICC. Membership of the ICC thus appears to be the start of a new lengthy battle for Palestinians.

Some Palestinian human rights centres, including the Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza City, are now working against the clock to compile documentation on the numerous cases of civilians who were killed during last summer’s Israeli war against Gaza, to be able to submit all the documents required for the ICC to investigate war crimes in Gaza and hold Israel accountable.

“Over the long years of occupation, there has been no equity for civilian victims and this, in my point of view, was a key reason that Israel waged three wars in less than five years. In fact, it has been due to the absence of justice and a sense that occupation is immune to accountability,” Issam Younis, Director of the Al Mezan Centre told IPS.

“Going to the ICC will bring justice to victims through international justice and ensure that there are no repeated offences of occupation without accountability,” he said.

According to Palestinian human rights advocates, membership of the ICC carries two overlapping purposes for Palestinian people and their leaders.

For the Palestinian people, of Gaza in particular, it not only opens an important door to achieving justice but also helps to criminalise the entire Israeli occupation establishment and its vicious atrocities against humanity.

For the Palestinian leadership, on the other hand, it seeks to strengthen the political, legal and diplomatic status of Palestine at the international level and pressure Israel to accept the creation of an independent Palestinian state in future negotiations.

What underpins the two goals is a historical desire for real justice and protection. Whether the ICC can deliver, only time will tell.

Edited by Phil Harris   

By Mairead Maguire
BELFAST, Oct 13 2014 (IPS)

How can we explain that in the 2lst century we are still training millions of men and women in our armed forces and sending them to war? 

There are more choices than war or peace, there are multi-optional choices and a civilian-based non-military diplomatic-political policy has more chance of succeeding in solving a violent conflict.

In war, the cost in civilian lives is incalculable, not to mention the many military personnel whose lives are destroyed.  Then there is the cost to the environment and the cost to human potential as our scientists waste their lives planning and researching even more horrific weapons which increasingly, in modern war, kill more civilians than combatants.

Mairead Maguire

For example, the United States and the United Kingdom committed genocide against the Iraqi people when, between 1990 and 2012, they killed 3.3 million people – including 750,000 children – through sanctions and wars.

We all also watched our television screens in horror in July and August this year as the Israeli military bombarded civilians in Gaza for 50 days.

But, why are we surprised at this cruelty of military when they are doing what they are trained to do – kill, at the behest of their politicians and some people?

It is shocking to listen to politicians and military boast of their military prowess when in lay persons’ terms what it means is killing of human beings.

Every day through our television and local culture, we are subjected to the glorification of militarism and bombarded with war propaganda by governments telling us we need nuclear weapons, arms manufacturers, and war to kill the killers who might kill us.

However, too many people do not have peace or the basics to help them achieve peace. “Every day through our television and local culture, we are subjected to the glorification of militarism and bombarded with war propaganda by governments telling us we need nuclear weapons, arms manufacturers, and war to kill the killers who might kill us”

They live their lives struggling with the roots of violence, some of which are poverty, war, militarism, occupation, racism and fascism. They have seen that they release uncontrollable forces of tribalism and nationalism. These are dangerous and murderous forms of identity which we need to transcend.

To do this, we need to acknowledge that our common humanity and human dignity are more important than our different traditions; to recognise that our lives and the lives of others are sacred and we can solve our problems without killing each other; to accept and celebrate diversity and otherness; to work to heal the ‘old’ divisions and misunderstandings; to give and accept forgiveness, and to choose listening, dialogue and diplomacy; to disarm and demilitarise as the pathway to peace.

In my own country, in Northern Ireland, when faced with a violent and prolonged ethnic/political conflict, the civil community organised to take a stand, rejected all violence and committed itself to working for peace, justice and reconciliation.

Through unconditional, all-inclusive dialogue, we reached peace and continue to work to build up trust and friendship and change in the post-conflict era. The civil community took a leading role in this journey from violence to peace.

I hope this will give an example to other countries such as Ukraine, where it is necessary for an end to the war, and a solution of the problem on the basis of the Charter of the United Nations and the Helsinki Accords.

We are also challenged to continue to build structures through which we can cooperate and which reflect our relations of interconnection and interdependence.  The vision of the founders of the European Union to link countries together economically in order to lessen the likelihood of war among nations is a worthy endeavour.

Unfortunately instead of putting more energy into providing help for E.U. citizens and others, we are witnessing the growing militarisation of Europe, its role as a driving force for armament and its dangerous path, under the leadership of the United States/NATO, towards a new ‘cold’ war and military aggression.

The European Union and many of its countries, which used to take initiatives in the United Nations for peaceful settlements of conflict, are now one of the most important war assets of the U.S./NATO front.  Many countries have also been drawn into complicity in breaking international law through U.S./U.K./NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so on.

It is for this reason that I believe NATO should be abolished and that steps be taken towards disarmament through non-violent action and civil resistance.

The means of resistance are very important. Our message that armed groups, militarism and war do not solve our problems but aggravate them challenges us to use new ways and that is why we need to teach the science of peace at every level of society.

The whole of civilisation is now facing a challenge with the growth of what President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961) warned the U.S. people against – the military/industrial complex – saying that it would destroy U.S. democracy.

We know now that a small group made up of the military/industrial/media/corporate/academic elite, whose agenda is profit, arms, war and valuable resources, now holds power worldwide and has a stronghold on elected governments.  We see this in the gun and Israeli lobbies, among others, which wield great power over U.S. politics.

We have witnessed this in ongoing wars, invasions, occupations and proxy wars, all allegedly in the name of “humanitarian intervention and democracy”. However, in reality, they are causing great suffering, especially to the poor, through their policies of arms, war, domination and control of other countries and their resources.

Unmaking this agenda of war and demanding the implementation of justice, human rights and international law is the work of the peace movement.

We can turn our current path of destruction around by spelling out a clear vision of what kind of a world we want to live in, demanding an end to the military-industrial complex, and insisting that our governments adopt policies of peace, just economics and cooperation with each other in this multi-polar world. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

State parties to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) are obligated under international law to assess their exports of conventional weapons to determine whether there is a danger that they will be used to fuel conflict. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Joel Jaeger
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 2014 (IPS)

With state support moving at an unprecedented pace, the Arms Trade Treaty will enter into force on Dec. 24, 2014, only 18 months after it was opened for signature.

Eight states – Argentina, the Bahamas, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Saint Lucia, Portugal, Senegal and Uruguay – ratified the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) at a special event at the United Nations this past Thursday, Sep. 25, pushing the number of states parties up to 53.

As per article 22 of the treaty, the ATT comes into force as a part of international law 90 days after the 50^th instrument of ratification is deposited.

“We are dealing with an instrument that introduces humanitarian considerations into an area that has traditionally been couched in the language of national defence and security, as well as secrecy." -- Paul Holtom, head of the peace, reconciliation and security team at Coventry University’s Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations
According to a statement by the Control Arms coalition, “The ATT is one of the fastest arms agreements to move toward entry into force.”

The speed at which the treaty received 50 ratifications “shows tremendous momentum for the ATT and a lot of significant political commitment and will,” said Paul Holtom, head of the peace, reconciliation and security team at Coventry University’s Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations.

“The challenge now is to translate the political will into action, both in terms of ensuring that States Parties are able to fulfil – and are fulfilling – their obligations under the Treaty,” Holtom told IPS in an email.

So what are the requirements under the ATT?

ATT states parties are obligated under international law to assess their exports of conventional weapons to determine whether there is a danger that they will be used to fuel conflict.

Article 6(3) of the treaty forbids states from authorising transfers if they have the knowledge that the arms would be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. Article 7 prohibits transfers if there is an overriding risk of the weapons being used to undermine peace and security or commit a serious violation of international humanitarian or human rights law.

In addition, states parties are required to take a number of measures to prevent diversion of weapons to the illicit market and produce annual reports of their imports and exports of conventional arms.

The treaty applies to eight categories of conventional arms, ranging from battle tanks to small arms and light weapons.

The successful entry into force of the ATT will be a big win for arms control campaigners and NGOs, who have been fighting for the regulation of the arms trade for more than a decade.

When Control Arms launched a global campaign in 2003, “Mali, Costa Rica and Cambodia were the only three governments who would publically say that they supported talk of the idea of an arms trade treaty,” Anna MacDonald, director of the Control Arms secretariat, told IPS.

NGO supporters of the treaty often brought up the fact that the global trade in bananas was more regulated than the trade in weapons.

The organisations in the Control Arms coalition supported the ATT process through “a mix of campaigning, advocacy, pressure on governments” and “proving technical expertise on what actually could be done, how a treaty could look, [and] what provisions needed to be in it,” MacDonald said.

All of the legwork has paid off, as the treaty will become operational far earlier than many expected.

Today’s 53^rd ratification is just the start. So far, 121 countries have signed the treaty, and 154 voted in favour of its adoption in April 2013 in the General Assembly.

“There’s no reason why we would not expect all of those who voted in favour to sign and ultimately to ratify the treaty,” said MacDonald.

Sceptics contend that the worst human rights abusers will not agree to the treaty. For example, Syria was one of three states that voted against the ATT’s adoption in the General Assembly.

However, MacDonald believes that once enough countries join the ATT, the holdouts will face an enormous amount of political pressure to comply as well.

With a sufficient number of states parties, the ATT will “establish a new global standard for arms transfers, which makes it politically very difficult for even countries that have not signed it to ignore its provisions,” she told IPS.

MacDonald cited the Ottawa Convention, which banned anti-personnel landmines, as an example.

Many of the world’s biggest landmine users and exporters have not joined the Ottawa convention, but the use of landmines has fallen anyway because of the political stigma that developed.

Much work remains to be done in the months before Dec. 24 and in the upcoming years as the ATT system evolves.

States will need to create or update transfer control systems and enforcement mechanisms for regulating exports, imports and brokering as well as minimising diversion, according to Holtom.

“There are a lot of issues to be discussed before the Conference of States Parties and it will take several years before we can really see an impact,” he told IPS. “But we need to now make sure that the ATT can be put into effect and States and other key stakeholders work together towards achieving its object and purpose.”

The first conference of states parties will take place in Mexico in 2015.

Participating countries must provide their first report on arms exports and imports by May 31, 2015 and a report on measures that they have taken to implement the treaty by late 2015, Holtom said.

No matter the challenges to come, the simple fact that arms trade control is on the agenda is quite historic.

“We are dealing with an instrument that introduces humanitarian considerations into an area that has traditionally been couched in the language of national defence and security, as well as secrecy,” said Holtom.

On Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon claimed, “Today we can look ahead with satisfaction to the date of this historic new Treaty’s entry into force.”

“Now we must work for its efficient implementation and seek its universalisation so that the regulation of armaments – as expressed in the Charter of the United Nations – can become a reality once and for all,” he said in a statement delivered by U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Angela Kane.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Deborah (in red), a 14-year-old Rwandan girl who lost her parents when she was young, at Gisimba Memorial Centre orphanage in Kigali. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

By Amy Fallon
KIGALI, Jul 11 2014 (IPS)

Every day, 14-year-old Deborah wakes up in an orphanage, goes to school, and comes home to an orphanage. It does not matter when or for how long she leaves the orphanage, she always knows she’ll be back.

“This is where I live, this is my home,” says the teen, sitting at a wooden desk with other children at the Gisimba Memorial Centre orphanage. She has been intensely colouring in a nativity scene of one famous family – Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus.

Deborah had both her parents for only three years, before her mother died. Her father passed away two years later. Both had AIDS. Her four sisters and brothers also live at Gisimba Memorial Centre, in the Nyamirambo quarter of the Rwandan capital.“Decades of research show that orphanages cannot provide the care children to develop to their full potential, leading to attachment disorders and developmental delays that can be physical, intellectual, communication, social and emotional” – communications consultant Annet Birungi

The original Gisimba orphanage was founded by Peter Gisimba and wife Dancilla, and began taking in children, orphaned through a variety of circumstances, in the 1980s. The couple died in the late 1980s. When the orphanage was renamed the Gisimba Memorial Centre in 1990, it was home to 50 children and had reached its capacity.

That was until the 1994 genocide when up to 700 people took shelter in Gisimba. “People were sleeping in the dormitories, outside, everywhere, as long as they were together,” coordinator Elie Munezero tells IPS.

Close to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed during those bloody 100 days.

Today there are about 125 young people living at the orphanage. “All generations,” explains 50-year-old Munezero. “Babies, infants, adolescents, young adults.” The youngest is two years old. The two eldest are 30. About 40 percent are aged under 16.

Deborah and the other siblings are just some of the estimated 2,171 children today languishing in 29 orphanages across the east African country, says Annet Birungi, a communications consultant for Rwanda’s National Commission for Children (NCC) and UNICEF.

Nine years in an orphanage, in Deborah’s case, does not shock Birungi. She points out the alarming results of the National Survey on Institutional Care, conducted in 2011-2012 by Rwanda’s Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion (MIGEPROF) and groundbreaking NGO Hopes and Homes for Children (HHC). It found thatabout 13.6 percent children living in institutions had been there for more than 15 years.

Staying in institutional care can scar children for a lifetime, with those aged between 0-3 years especially vulnerable.

“Decades of research show that orphanages cannot provide the care children to develop to their full potential, leading to attachment disorders and developmental delays that can be physical, intellectual, communication, social and emotional,” says Birungi, adding that “abuse, neglect, physical and sexual violence, isolation and marginalization are common in orphanages.”

Before colonial rule, there was a culture of treating “every child as your own”, notes Birungi. “Children were for the community and when a mother died, it was a responsibility of aunties and grandparents, family friends to take care of the orphan (s).”

The atrocities of 1994 are said to have left at least half a million children without parents. During and after the genocide,women informally took in children from the opposite ethnic group. Mothers were encouraged to be a “malayika mulinzi” (“guardian angel”). Systems of “kinship and foster care” operated, even if informally.

At the same, this was when most of the orphanages that exist today appeared but most of them lack exit plans for children who have grown up in them.

Meanwhile, the belief that children are better off in institutions than in families has also kept some children in care, says Birungi, and while there is no denying that some centres are able to provide shelter, food, clothing, health and education, they cannot offer the love of a family.

Today, there is no power and no water in Gisimba. Both have been cut off because the bills have remained unpaid, says Munezero. “Nothing is good,” he adds in despair.

A major issue with children being cared for in institutions is that some may still have living members of their family.  “You could be calling a child an orphan but he’s not,” Munezero admits.

The African Child Policy Forum (ACPF), an independent, not-for-profit, institution has reported that the majority of so-called “orphans” adopted from Africa by foreigners have at least one parent still alive.

International adoption was temporarily suspended by Rwanda in August 2010, to allow the country work on implementation of the 1993 Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, which calls on states to consider national solutions before international adoption.

Birungi says the government wants to revive the culture of “treating every child as your own”. NCC is currently working with HHC to reintegrate those living at Gisimba back into families.

An NCC-trained psycho-social team is in the final stages of the reintegration process and Gisimba will be transformed into a primary school to benefit children in the surrounding area, according to Birungi. On July 10, HHC announced that the first of five children had been moved out of Home of Hope, another Kigali institution.

HHC’s country director in Rwanda, Claudine Nyinawagaga, says a number of alternative care services are available for children in the country, including “kinship care”, when a young person is placed with extended family, neighbours or friends.

But national adoption is yet to be fully implemented and since HCC started the closure of the first Rwandan institution in 2011, only one child has fully undergone the domestic adoption process. NCC-drafted guidelines on domestic and international adoption are awaiting approval by Rwanda’s Cabinet.

“Several meetings with local authorities revealed that the general population and local authorities do not have enough information about adoption,” Nyinawagaga tells IPS. “This is likely to be addressed through the approval of the adoption guidelines, and the sensitisation of the community.”

So, for the time being, Deborah remains in an institution.

“I like singing and drumming,” she says, when asked what she likes doing in her spare time. “We have a small choir that I’m in.”

Despite her plight, she is ambitious and looking forward to her future: “to work in an industry, and make fruit juice and yoghurt.”

Rwandan fashion designer Colombe Ndutiye Ituze uses the services of the women who sew at the Centre César, a community centre in village of Avega in Kimironko, near Kigali, Rwanda's capital. The centre runs free training sessions and classes here include course in mechanics, traditional singing and dancing, and silk screening. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

By Amy Fallon
KIGALI, Jun 23 2014 (IPS)

Before Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, Salaam Uwamariya’s husband, a professor, was the family breadwinner, providing for her and their eight children. Uwamariya sold vegetables at a nearby market to supplement their income.

But like many in this Central African nation, her life changed in just the 100 days starting in April 1994 when close to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. Among the dead were her husband and her two eldest children.

But Uwamariya has been able to slowly rebuild her life by making clothes that are sold locally and overseas and which have also even been shown on African catwalks.“It’s exciting making clothes for people in Canada because we’re getting some income...The challenges are now to get a niche business, to get more orders, more clothes to sew.” -- Salaam Uwamariya

Today, thanks to Centre César, a community centre which in 2005 “adopted” her village of Avega in Kimironko, near Kigali, the country’s capital, Uwamariya has learned new skills and is able to support her family.

“I lost my family, a lot of materials, my house, everything,” she tells IPS in the local Kinyarwanda language.

She also lost her parents, aunts and uncles in the genocide.

“I was affected greatly… I can’t express it…”

Avega is made up of 150 houses and has a population of 750. With financial support from Canadian charity Ubuntu Edmonton, the centre runs training sessions for residents whose lives have been scarred by genocide. Classes here include courses in mechanics and silk screening. There is also a school sponsorship programme and daycare centre and a sewing shop where Uwamariya works. Over 85 people are said to pass through the doors of Centre César and benefit from their services every week.

“[Sewing] has improved my life a lot because I get some revenue from it. It improves my life and the lives of my children,”  says Uwamariya, who says she earns up to 3,000 Rwandan Francs (4.44 dollars) for making one dress, which she says takes no more than two days. All sewers are paid a fair trade wage, with the money going directly to the women.

Using industrial machines, members of the centre have been taught to sew by Edison Hategekimana, one of the centre’s two master tailors and the only man here. He taught Uwamariya over a year, but she says it “wasn’t challenging”.

On any given day up to 20 women, including Uwamariya, 58, are packed into a room working laboriously on dresses, jackets, pants, bags, aprons and pyjamas bags and jewellery in bold African prints.

Many of the items they tirelessly piece together are the creations of upcoming Rwandan fashion designer Colombe Ndutiye Ituze.

Strangely enough it was an international counterpart, Canadian Johanne St. Louis, who pointed out the local talent available to help Ituze.

The pair met at the Rwanda Fashion Festival 2010. St. Louis is the CEO of St. Louis Fashion and Dreamyz Loungewear. Ituze launched her INCO Icyusa label, one of Rwanda’s first fashion houses, in 2011.

“I really loved her clothes and I asked her where do you get things done and she told me they were made by these women [at Centre César],” Ituze tells IPS.

“I came here [to Centre César] in 2011. From 2012 all my production was done here. I’ve worked with the tailors in town, but here they are very talented. For large orders they’re the best people to come to.”

When Ituze discovered the centre, she said many of its members possessed basic sewing skills. St. Louis had trained some, and those she trained taught others.

“The first time I came here they were good, but not as good as they are now. They’re improving all the time,” says Ituze.

Today the clothes that Uwamariya and her colleagues stitch together are sold in Ituze’s store in Nziza, Kigali. St Louis sells pieces in her clothing store in her house in Cannington, about 110 km outside Toronto.

“It’s exciting making clothes for people in Canada because we’re getting some income,” says Uwamariya. “The challenges are now to get a niche business, to get more orders, more clothes to sew.”

“I want to partner with other people, with other fashion designers.”

This may happen sooner rather than later, with Ituze and St.Louis talking to more international stores about stocking their designs.

Together they opened DODA Fashion House last September. Doda means, “to sew” in Kinyarwanda.

They have a workshop in Kimironko, Kigali, which will eventually employ four fulltime staff and the plan to hire an additional 14 women to begin training and creating products.

In the next five years their workshop will hopefully offer training courses in commercial sewing, design, sewing machine mechanics and marketing. It’s a huge step for the industry in tiny Rwanda, which doesn’t have a fashion school.

Meanwhile, back at Centre César, its supervisor Alain Rushayidi tells IPS he will only be truly satisfied when the charity is able to transfer its ownership to the people of Avega.

“This centre has to become their centre. In 10 or 15 years this will belong to the members, all of them,” he says.

Rushayidi says a structure to help the centre become sustainable and financially independent is currently being implemented.

“I can’t explain the challenges before we started [the centre],” Rushayidi says.

“We used to have a food bank in the village. We have people infected with HIV.”

Ten years later, he says “of course things aren’t 100 percent better, but lives have improved.”

Turkish-Armenian activists hold photos of ancestors killed during the 1915 mass killing of 600,000 to 1.5 million ethnic Armenian during a vigil held on Apr. 24, 2014. Almost 100 years after the event, Turkey is slowly coming to terms with a part of its history that many have labeled a genocide. Credit: Joshua Kucera/EurasiaNet

By Joshua Kucera
ISTANBUL, Apr 29 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Turkish-Armenians are welcoming Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s offer of “condolences” for the mass killings of Armenian that began 99 years ago during the Ottoman era. But opinions are mixed as to whether Erdoğan’s words will lead the renewed action toward reconciliation.

Erdoğan’s comments on Apr. 23 stopped well short of acknowledging that the deaths of between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 constituted genocide, an admission that the Armenian government has sought since the country gained independence in 1991.“Turkish society is changing. They are putting pressure on the government about the Armenian genocide." -- Yildiz Onen

Erdoğan framed the tragedy, as Turkish officials have traditionally done, as occurring amid the chaos of World War I – a period when Ottoman citizens of every nationality were dying in large numbers.

Nevertheless, both the timing and the substance of Erdoğan’s comments took many in Turkey by surprise. Armenians mark Apr. 24 as Genocide Remembrance Day.

“It’s a turning point in history,” said Yildiz Onen, an Armenian activist in Istanbul who was one of the speakers at a small ceremony on Apr. 24 at the Heydarpasa train station in the city.

It was from that station that Ottoman authorities expelled more than 200 Armenian intellectuals from the city on Apr. 24, 1915, a step that Armenians now mark as the beginning of the genocide.

“It’s a big change,” said Garo Palian, a member of the central committee of the Peoples’ Democratic Party of Turkey. “They say that they are sorry about what happened, that was the most important thing in the statement.”

Not all the speakers at the Istanbul ceremony were impressed by Erdoğan’s words. Turkey needs to “move beyond empty condolences and to take steps toward the acknowledgment, recognition, and restitution of the Armenian genocide,” said Raffi Hovannisian, an Armenian politician and former presidential candidate.

The fact that Hovannisian could complain in public, at an event commemorating the 1915 tragedy, is in itself a sign of significant change in Turkey.

In 2005, novelist Orhan Pamuk was charged under the notorious Article 301 of the Turkish penal code with supposedly “insulting Turkishness” when he said in an interview with a Swiss magazine that “a million Armenians were murdered.”

A year later, another novelist, Elif Shafak, was charged under the same provision for addressing the genocide in her book, “The Bastard of Istanbul.” (Neither was convicted).

Turks have begun taking responsibility for what happened in 1915, and the government is following, Onen said. “Turkish society is changing. They are putting pressure on the government about the Armenian genocide,” Onen added.

Erdoğan’s government in recent years has cracked down on media and free speech, especially on individuals and news outlets critical of his government. Yet it has at the same time created more space for debate on what had been sensitive nationalist questions like the status of Armenians and Kurds.

For decades, Turkey’s government espoused a “national narrative that shaped an entire worldview around WWI … of threat and betrayal by outsiders and by inside traitors like the Armenians,” Jenny White, a visiting professor at Stockholm University’s Institute for Turkish Studies, said in an email interview with EurasiaNet.org.

“The AKP [Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party] abandoned this narrative in favour of a more expansive and global story of Turkey as heir to a world empire with vast, movable borders that embraced former enemies Greece and Armenia and, by extension, minorities in Turkey,” White continued.

Erdoğan’s new narrative, however, has been challenged in recent months by the prime minister’s crackdown on critical media and the revival of the “rhetoric of fear and betrayal by outsiders and disloyal insiders.”

Erdoğan’s statement about the events of 1915 marks a possible attempt to reset the narrative concerning a more globalized Turkey. “[It’s] a big and positive step,” White said.

The prime minister’s comments even gave backhanded praise to his government’s critics. “In Turkey, expressing different opinions and thoughts freely on the events of 1915 is the requirement of a pluralistic perspective, as well as of a culture of democracy and modernity,” the statement said.

“Some may perceive this climate of freedom in Turkey as an opportunity to express accusatory, offensive and even provocative assertions and allegations. Even so, if this will enable us to better understand historical issues with their legal aspects and to transform resentment to friendship again, it is natural to approach different discourses with empathy and tolerance and expect a similar attitude from all sides.”

The milestone in opening up discussion of Armenian issues, Onen said, was the 2007 murder of the Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink by a teenage Turkish nationalist. At Dink’s funeral, an estimated 200,000 people marched, chanting “We are all Armenians.”

“Things were opening but the big step, unfortunately, was the funeral,” Onen said.

But the trial of Dink’s killers was seen as a farce by both Armenians and by international monitors. Armenian activists in Turkey say that Erdoğan should back up his conciliatory words with action to call to account members of the security forces who are believed to be complicit in Dink’s murder.

“If he does that, we’ll see that the speech is sincere,” Palian said.

With a year to go before the centennial of 1915 killings, pressure is already building on Turkey to take positive PR steps. Yet, how much farther the Turkish government can go on the genocide issue remains unclear. Ankara’s situation is complicated by internal and external politics.

Turkey’s next general elections are scheduled for June 2015, meaning the 100th anniversary events will come in the middle of what could well be a contentious political campaign. Acknowledging the Armenian genocide could infuriate Turkish nationalists, a key voting bloc.

Internationally, too, the circumstances are not propitious for dramatic steps to reconcile with Armenians. Turkey abandoned a previous attempt at rapprochement with Armenia in 2010 by saying that it couldn’t restore relations until the conflict between Armenia and Turkish ally Azerbaijan was resolved.

Turkey has become dependent on Azerbaijani investment, and the crisis in Ukraine has increased the importance of natural gas transit from Azerbaijan to Europe, furthering strengthening Baku’s leverage in Ankara.

Ultimately, Erdoğan’s comments didn’t seem to win his government many points in Armenia. “The successor of Ottoman Turkey continues its policy of utter denial,” said Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan.

Hayk Demoian, the chairman of the Armenian Genocide Museum and Institute in Yerevan, said in a statement on the museum’s website that “I have to confess that this is an important step, but regretfully not in a direction of revealing the truth, facing the history and enabling reconciliation between Armenian and Turkish peoples.”

Editor’s note:  Joshua Kucera is a journalist based in Istanbul. He is the editor of EuraisaNet.org’s Bug Pit blog. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Claudine Umuhoza a survivor of Rwanda’s genocide believes that the country has a positive and united future. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabíola Ortiz
KIGALI, Apr 11 2014 (IPS)

Claudine Umuhoza’s son turned 19 this Apr. 1. And while he may be one of at least thousands of children who were conceived during the Rwandan genocide, he’s not officially classified as a survivor of it. But his mother is.

Two decades after the massacre — during which almost one million minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives — most Rwandans are still coping with the trauma of the violence. Most affected are the women who have children born of genocidal rape. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 250,000 women were raped in Rwanda during the genocide."The future of Rwanda will be better, people will be united. That doesn’t mean that people will have forgotten they are Tutsi or Hutu." -- Claudine Umuhoza, genocide survivor

Umuhoza, who lives in Gasabo district, near the Rwandan capital, Kigali, was only 23 when a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down over Rwanda’s capital Kigali on Apr. 6, 1994.

During the conflict that ensued she was raped by seven men — one of whom stabbed her in the stomach with a machete. She was left to die, lying on the floor.

Umuhoza survived only because a Hutu neighbour helped her escape to safety and gave her a fake Hutu identity card.

“The neighbour who saved my life is no longer in Rwanda, his family went to Mozambique. I’d like to say thank you for saving me. I would have died if it was not for him,” she remembered.

She lost four brothers and other family members in the massacre.

Now 43, Umuhoza is infected with HIV and has not yet told her son the origins of his birth.

“I have not being able to disclose to my son how he was born. My son doesn’t know. I got married in September 1994, after the genocide ended.

“I was pregnant when I married and after giving birth my husband realised the child born was not his. He didn’t accept this and as a result he left home,” she told IPS.

Umuhoza never remarried. Rape is a taboo subject in Rwanda’s society.

According to Jules Shell, the executive director and co-founder from Foundation Rwanda, even though this Central African nation has made great strides in rebuilding the country, women who were infected with HIV as a consequence of rape still face severe stigmatisation.

The U.S.-based NGO was established in 2008 and began supporting an initial cohort of 150 children born of rape with their schooling in 2009.

“A disproportionate number of the women who were raped were also infected by HIV,” Shell told IPS, explaining that the exact infection rate was not known but it is estimated that 25 percent of the country’s women are living with HIV.

According to the government, women comprise the majority, 51.8 percent of this country’s population of 11.5 million. However, antiretroviral treatment only became widely available here 10 years ago and is accessible through the national healthcare system.

“We will never know the true number of children born of rapes committed during the genocide.

“As many women are afraid, unable, or understandably unwilling, to acknowledge the circumstance of their children’s birth … we will never know the true number,” Shell said.

The consequences of the genocide still affect the youth who were born after it.

“Many of the young people are experiencing a phenomena common to the children of Holocaust survivors, known as the ‘intergenerational inheritance of trauma’.

“This has resulted from the inability of mothers to speak openly to their children about their experiences and own trauma, which in turn affects them,” explained Shell.

Like Umuhoza, many other women still have not publicly acknowledged that their children were born of rape, though their children are aware that they have fathers who are unknown to their mothers.

This also creates problems for these children when they try to register for national identity cards, which requires the identification of both names of father and mother.

But thanks to Foundation Rwanda, Umuhoza’s son is about to finish high school — something she did not have the opportunity to do. Umuhoza is one of  600 mothers currently supported by Foundation Rwanda, which also provides fees and school material for their children.

“I am very happy that my son is in secondary school. One thing that I pray to god for is to see my son in school … and I have a hope that he will be able to go to university.

“It is very important for me. I know it is expensive, but I didn’t even think that he would attend secondary school. So doors may open suddenly. I have hope,” she trusted.

Her dream is that her son becomes a lawyer to advocate for poor and marginalised people. However, he has dreams of his own and wants to become a doctor.

“He always sees me going for treatment and feeling a lot of pain and he dreams about being able to treat me,” she explained.

Because of her ill health and the severe stomach pains caused by the machete wound, Umuhoza is only able to perform light housework.

As a survivor she receives medical treatment from the Government Assistance Fund for Genocide Survivors (FARG) — to which the government allocates two percent of its national budget.

And on Apr. 15 she will undergo an operation to repair her wounds in the military hospital in Kigali.

Twenty years after the genocide, the country has not been able to forget its past, remarked Shell. She explained there is still stigma and discrimination against Tutsis, particularly in rural and isolated areas where they are very much a minority.

According to the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC) survey, at least 40 percent of Rwandans across the country say they still fear a new wave of genocide.

“Suspicion is still there. Trauma is still an issue. We still have recently-released prisoners who are now in society but not integrated yet,” Richard Kananga, director of the Peacebuilding and Conflict Management department at the NURC, told IPS.

The NURC was created in 1999 to deal with aspects of discrimination among local communities and lead reconciliation in Rwanda.

According to Kananga, reconciliation is a continuous process.

“We can’t tell how long it will take, it’s a long-term process. We have researchers to measure how people perceive this process of human security in the country. We cannot say that in 20 more years we’re going to reach 100 percent [of people who feel secure],” he said.

The children born after the genocide may represent a dark period of Rwanda’s history, but, according to Shell, they also represent the “light and the hope for a brighter future.”

Umuhoza believes it too.

“I have hopes that the future for Rwanda will be good. Comparing how the country was 20 years ago and how it is today. I wish for unity and reconciliation.

“The future of Rwanda will be better, people will be united. That doesn’t mean that people will have forgotten they are Tutsi or Hutu. Rwandans will still know who they are,” said the mother.

Rwanda’s Member of Parliament Veneranda Nyirahirwa says women in Rwanda have fought for political representation. In the Lower House of Parliament women occupy 64 percent or 51 out of 80 seats. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabíola Ortiz
KIGALI, Apr 7 2014 (IPS)

When Rwandan Member of Parliament Veneranda Nyirahirwa was just a girl, she wasn’t allowed to attend secondary school because of her ethnicity. 

It was only in the wake of the country’s state-driven genocide in 1994 — where almost one million minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives in 100 days — and after a new government took power that she was able to attend high school.

By then she was already in her twenties. "[Women have] become part of the reconciliation process, we reconcile and help to reconcile others. We are taking things forward.” -- Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources Agnes Kalibata

But she seized the opportunity to receive an education.

Nyirahirwa, 43, is now starting her second term as a deputy in the country’s lower house of Parliament. She belongs to the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the second-biggest of the country’s 11 political parties.

She hails from Ngoma district, Rukumberi Sector in Eastern Province, and remembers that growing up there were many barriers imposed on minority Tutsis attending school.

“We were segregated because of the regime, it was a part of the country … where people who lived there couldn’t go to school due to ethnic problems. It was very difficult to get a place in secondary school,” she explained.

It was the disappointment of her childhood that spurred her on to fight for a seat in Parliament. “I was frustrated watching the ones who were leading our country and I wanted to change things.”

Like many Rwandans, Nyirahirwa lost relatives and friends in the genocide and says, “Every Rwandan must be aware of the causes of genocide and do his or her best to fight against it. I am a Rwandan and I don’t want to leave my country.”

Remains of some of the over one million victims of Rwanda’s 100-day genocide. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

Things are certainly different now. Nyirahirwa says women here have fought for political representation.

“We are happy for this achievement and for being the majority. There was a time when women in Rwanda were not considered important for the development of the country and they did not have jobs,” she said.

In the September 2013 elections, the PSD won 30 percent of the vote, with Nyirahirwa being one of four women from the party to win seats in Parliament.

But Nyirahirwa’s success is not an anomaly here.

As Rwanda commemorates the 20th anniversary of the genocide this week with memorials across the country, this Central African nation has become a regional leader in promoting gender equity and women’s empowerment.

Women are leading the way in national reconstruction and are considered to be at the forefront of promoting peace and reconciliation. Women, in fact, are leading the nation.

• In the last parliamentary elections, Rwanda once again broke its own world record of being the country with the highest level of women’s participation in Parliament.
• According to the Rwandan government, average women’s representation worldwide in a lower house stands at 21 percent and 18 percent in a Senate or upper house.
• This sub-Saharan country has three times the world’s average of female representation in the lower house, with women occupying 64 percent, or 51 out of 80 seats. During the previous parliamentary term, from 2008 to 2013, women held 56 percent of seats in the lower house.
• Rwanda also has twice the world’s average of women’s representation in the Senate: some 40 percent, or 10 out of the 25 seats, are held by women.
• There are also 10 female ministers who head up key ministries including foreign affairs, natural resources and mining, agriculture, and health.

Gender empowerment became a reality after the war and genocide when the new government, currently led by incumbent President Paul Kagame of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front, took power. It was then, according to Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources Agnes Kalibata, that the government began addressing national unity and women’s political participation as part of the reconstruction process.

Rwanda’s constitution, adopted in 2003, states that both men and women should occupy at least 30 percent of all decision-making bodies.

Kalibata said that now women are able to compete with men on equal grounds.

“We created a policy environment to give them a fair chance. Rwanda is leading this since we’ve had the decision that we needed to secure a place for women in employment and in the public space. We also want to try to influence the private sector to appreciate that,” she told IPS.

In her opinion, women are at the centre of national reconciliation.

“Empowering the women is part of nation building. Women are the majority and the major part of the agriculture sector. We know how to teach our children, how to handle our communities and how to build society.”

Nowadays, women are able to influence what happens in Rwanda, she argued.

“By influencing how our husbands think, we influence how our children think. And now in politics we also influence how the general population thinks. We’ve become part of the reconciliation process, we reconcile and help to reconcile others. We are taking things forward.”

Kalibata, who has been in charge of the ministry of agriculture for six years, admitted that reconstruction is still a challenge, especially in the field of agriculture.

It is estimated that 70 percent of Rwanda’s 12 million people live in the countryside, with women comprising the majority — 65 percent.

“This nation has had the worse nightmare that any country can have. It is fulfilling to have an opportunity to put it back together through agriculture; there are still many people whose lives can improve because they use agriculture to reduce their poverty,” she said.

When asked about the possibility of a female president, Kalibata said she was confident it would happen after seeing other women on the continent hold the post.

Africa already has three women presidents: Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Malawi’s Joyce Banda and the new interim president of Central African Republic, Catherine Samba-Panza.

“Yes, a woman president would be great if she is competent enough. This is beginning to happen on this continent. If a woman becomes president it will be because she is extremely competent to manage this country and I would be very happy,” she concluded.

Meanwhile, Nyirahirwa will keep working to change the lives of the people living in Eastern Province. And she intends to stay in Parliament for over 10 years at least.

“There is a significant change: every Rwandan now has the right to education. Before it was difficult to get the right to go to school. Now, we have a chance to go to university and also complete an MBA,” she stressed.

“I want to ensure that every Rwandan is able to get any job anywhere.”

Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, is described as one of the safest and cleanest cities in Africa as the government tries attract further investment and tourism. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Mar 28 2014 (IPS)

It’s almost 20 years now since Sylidio Gashirabake, a Hutu, was a perpetrator in Rwanda’s genocide. It’s also almost 20 years since his neighbour, Augustin Kabogo, a Tutsi, lost his sister and family in the violence. But today, both men work side-by-side in their joint business venture in Kirehe district in southeastern Rwanda.

It is estimated that 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives in the massacre that began following the death of former President Juvenal Habyarimana, and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira, when their plane was shot down over Kigali on Apr. 6, 1994.“Rwanda has a clear business environment which is providing incentives and facilities that is making our job easy to cover other neighbouring countries." -- Atul Ajela, the general manager of mattress manufacturer Dodoma

Gashirabake was released from prison in 2006 after confessing two years earlier to his crimes and revealing to Kabogo — who managed to escape the killing by hiding in a neighbouring marshland — where the remains of his family where. Though Gashirabake has always denied having any part in the death of Kabogo’s family.

“I have deliberately [confessed] so to ease my conscience from this burden, which I am unable to continue bearing after several years,” Gashirabake told IPS.

Two years ago, Kabogo forgave Gashirabake and the neighbours have been business partners ever since.

They are part of a group of 30 people involved in a swine breeding project in Kirehe district that was founded by a Japanese volunteer in 2012 and aims to reconcile victims and perpetrators of Rwanda’s genocide.

And both Gashirabake and Kabogo are convinced that in order for them to be successful, it is imperative that reconciliation in Rwanda becomes a reality. Right now, they earn around 200 dollars per month on average from the business.

Kabogo is convinced that it is no longer important whether Gashirabake killed his family or not. What is important, he says, is that Gashirabake has apologised for the crimes he committed.

“I must agree that reconciliation through poverty reduction is slowly becoming a reality 20 years after [the genocide] in Rwanda,” Kabogo told IPS.

Across the 30 districts of this central African nation there are several projects, supported by both the government and NGOs, which focus on reducing poverty.

This includes the government-funded Girinka (“May you have a cow” ) project. Founded in 2006, Girinka distributes cows to vulnerable families in remote rural areas. The project states that as of 2013, about 350,000 people have benefitted from the programme.

Because almost 90 percent of the population relying on the agriculture sector for their survival, the government has adopted a number of reforms to ensure that poor households and genocide survivors are supported.

This includes the establishment of the Government Assistance Fund for Genocide Survivors which, since its creation in 1998, has had a total budget of 117 million dollars to provide education, healthcare packages and housing for vulnerable genocide survivors.

Since it took power after defeating the genocidaire regime in July 1994, the former rebel group and current ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) has embraced major reforms, including sound economic ones.

In a World Bank report entitled “Rwanda: Rebuilding an Equitable Society – Poverty Reduction After the Genocide” showed that approximately 70 percent of the country’s 11.5 million people lived below the poverty line in 1993. Four years later, this was reduced to 53 percent.

Latest figures published in the government’s third Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey 2011 show that between 2006 and 2011 a further one million people were lifted out of poverty.

And Rwanda has been lauded by its development partners, the World Bank, European Union, and the International Monetary Fund, for these economic achievements and successful reforms.

Commercial Street avenue in Kigali’s city centre, Rwanda. New buildings are sprouting across the capital city’s skyline 20 years after the genocide. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

However, there is an emerging consensus that challenges to the country’s economic growth and development remain.

Pascal Nshizirungu, a lecturer in socio-economic sciences at Kigali University, told IPS that national efforts to mobilise investment should also go hand-in-hand with closing the gap between rich and poor.

The government, through the second phase of its Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy, is investing in key development areas in order to have Rwanda reclassified as a middle income country by 2020, with a per capita income of 1,240 dollars. Currently the per capita income of Rwanda’s middle class is estimated to be 693 dollars.

The government has also been targeting foreign investment and creating incentives for investors, such as privatisation.

“Apart from political stability, the country has now an asset which other countries in the region don’t have such as infrastructure, which is attracting much more private investments,” Robert Mathu, executive director of the Rwanda’s Capital Market Authority, a government regulatory body for all stock market operations, told IPS.

“The country is looking to boost national growth and create a climate that encourages the involvement of the private sector,” Mathu said.

Rwanda’s economic growth was 4.6 percent in 2013.

“We believe that by having strong partners in the private sector, we will reduce poverty and agriculture…also it can contribute to the economic growth at the same time,” Rwandan Minister of Finance and Economic Planning Claver Gatete told IPS.

Atul Ajela, the general manager of Dodoma, a new mattress manufacturer that invested in Rwanda two years ago, believes that 20 years after the genocide, Rwanda is now a safe, and the best, place to start a business.

“Rwanda has a clear business environment which is providing incentives and facilities that is making our job easy to cover other neighbouring countries,” Ajela told IPS.

Remains of some of the over 800,000 victims of Rwanda’s genocide. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

Fellow executioners Anwar Congo (left) and Adi Zulkadry have their makeup done before reenacting a scene from the Indonesian genocide. Credit: Courtesy of Joshua Oppenheimer

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Mar 1 2014 (IPS)

Watching former gangsters and paramilitary leaders proudly reenact scenes from Indonesia’s military-led mass killings of 1965-66 in the Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Act of Killing”, it’s easy to forget the role of outside countries.

“It was like I had wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust only to find the Nazis were still in power,” director Joshua Oppenheimer told IPS in an exclusive interview."Everyone I interviewed was boastful about even the most horrible details of the killings, which they described with smiles on their faces." -- Joshua Oppenheimer

But while U.S. covert support for the deadly crackdown that killed at least half a million people is not the focus of his film, Oppenheimer hopes the powerful country will at least admit its role.

“There was lots of foreign support for the genocide and that is used as an excuse not to apologise,” he said during a recent visit to Washington.

“It’s my hope that the U.S. will also take responsibility for its part so the Indonesian government can come to terms with the past and we can move on to reconciliation and healing,” he added.

While the U.S. has not formally admitted to that part, declassified documents show the CIA directly assisted the Indonesian army in its quest to eliminate the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) — killing anyone accused of links in the process — after a failed coup attempt.

“The simplest way to put it is that in the month leading up to the events of Sep. 30, 1965 the U.S. sought through covert operations to provoke an armed clash between the Indonesian army and the communist movement in the hope that it would eliminate the PKI,” said Bradley Simpson, who heads a project at the National Security Archive that declassified key U.S. government documents concerning Indonesia and East Timor during the reign of General Suharto (1966-1998).

“Perhaps most important is the fact that the [Lyndon] Johnson administration sent clear signals that they enthusiastically supported an attempt to destroy the communists from the bottom up knowing full well that this would lead to mass violence,” he told IPS.

Anwar Congo, the founder of a right-wing paramilitary organisation that grew out of the Indonesian genocide’s death squads, proudly discusses the making of “The Act of Killing” on a local talk show. Credit: Credit: Courtesy of Joshua Oppenheimer

That violence may take centre-stage on Sunday, Mar. 2 when the winner for “Best Documentary Feature” is announced during the 86th annual Academy Awards.

But while Oppenheimer may have produced one of the most unique documentaries of all time, he had initially set out to film a different story in Indonesia.

While documenting a community of exploited plantation workers in 2001, Oppenheimer, then in his late twenties, witnessed how they were bullied by the “Pancasila Youth,” a gangster-led paramilitary organisation that used death squads and continues to repress the population to this day.

After victims of the genocide were intimidated into not talking to him by order of the military — the leaders of which proudly display their brute hold on the population and corruption on camera — some survivors urged Oppenheimer to interview the perpetrators instead.

“I was afraid at first, but after I got over that fear I realised that everyone I interviewed was boastful about even the most horrible details of the killings, which they described with smiles on their faces,” he said.

In the eight years that it took Oppenheimer to complete “The Act of Killing”, which was executive produced by internationally known directors Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, he only discovered his main character, Anwar Congo — the founder of a right-wing paramilitary organisation that grew out of the death squads — in the final year of filming.

Congo, who describes torturing and murdering suspected communists “like we were killing happily,” acts as though he is the director of the documentary as he collaborates with friends and colleagues to recreate scenes from his memory.

“I felt his pain was close to the surface, so I lingered on him,” said Oppenheimer.

But while Congo seems haunted by his past, especially by a recurring nightmare of a severed head with eyes he failed to close staring at him, he ultimately reverts to the excuse that he was just following orders.

Anwar Congo watches “The Act of Killing” with his grandchildren. Credit: Credit: Courtesy of Joshua Oppenheimer

“I don’t think Congo saw this as his redemption,” said Oppenheimer. “He doesn’t recognise in a cognizant way that what he did was wrong.”

After Congo watched the film “he was very moved and emotional and then he pulled himself together and said, ‘this film shows what it’s like to be me,’” Oppenheimer told IPS.

“His conscience was guiding the process and it sounds very complex but for him it was simply about showing me how he killed,” he said.

Adi Zulkadry, a fellow executioner who warns Congo that the material in the film could be used against them, seems to have a deeper understanding of the magnitude of his actions but also justifies them as a consequence of war.

Pressed to respond to the fact that what he did is described by the Geneva Conventions as “war crimes,” Zulkadry says he doesn’t “necessarily agree with those international laws”.

“War crimes are defined by the winners….Americans killed the Indians. Has anyone punished them for that? Punish them!” he proclaims.

But while Zulkadry denies the value of Indonesia coming to terms with its past by admitting that what happened was a genocide, Oppenheimer’s film may be aiding the process — it has been screened thousands of times in Indonesia, and is available for free online.

“The Act of Killing” was also recently shown at the U.S. Library of Congress.

Senator Tom Udall of the foreign relations committee, who introduced the film to a group of senators, told US News and World Report that, “The United States government should be totally transparent on what it did and what it knew at the time, and they should be disclosing what happened here.”

But it remains to be seen whether Washington will change a policy of denial.

“Fifty years is long enough for both the U.S. and Indonesia not to call it a genocide,” said Oppenheimer.

A ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in relation to a Turkish national has kicked up a new row on anti-racism legislation.

The court ruled in December that Switzerland violated the right to freedom of speech of the Turkish national Doğu Perinçek by convicting him for calling the idea of an Armenian genocide an “international lie”.

In 2007, a court in the Swiss Canton of Vaud had found Perinçek guilty of racial discrimination as defined by Section 261 of the Swiss Criminal Code, ruling that the Armenian genocide was a proven historical fact. Already in 2003, the Swiss National Council had acknowledged the Armenian genocide.Until today, diverging interpretations of what happened in Armenia during and after the First World War strain bilateral relations.

Perinçek subsequently appealed in Switzerland’s Federal Court, which dismissed his claims. After that, Perinçek took his case to the ECHR in Strasbourg.

In its ruling, the ECHR found that Perinçek’s conviction by the Swiss court was wrong, as it violated Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights on freedom of expression. The court argued that Perinçek had never questioned the massacres and deportations perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, but had denied their characterisation as “genocide”. He didn’t mean to incite hatred against the Armenian people, the ECHR pointed out.

In fact, Perinçek’s view corresponds with Turkey’s official stance that is widely shared by the Turkish public, all main political parties as well as the state-run Historical Society. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry called the ECHR decision “a victory for the rule of law.”

Schools and universities in Turkey teach that the killings of Armenians were neither deliberate, nor orchestrated by the Ottoman leadership in Istanbul. Further, Turkish historians doubt that up to 1.5 million Armenians had died, as many Western scholars claim.

However, Turkish estimates vary, starting around 10,000 Armenian casualties. Turkish historians argue that most of the death occurred due to illness and malnutrition.

Beyond Turkey’s eastern border, lobbying for worldwide genocide recognition is a fundamental part of Armenia’s foreign policy. Until today, diverging interpretations of what happened in Armenia during and after the First World War strain bilateral relations.

The ECHR highlighted that it wasn’t called upon to address either the veracity of the massacres and deportations perpetrated against the Armenian people or the appropriateness of legally characterising those acts as “genocide”. It doubted that there could be a consensus on the issue.

The Switzerland-Armenia Association (SAA) said it was “deeply disappointed and appalled by the ECHR verdict.”

Dominique de Buman, Swiss national councillor and co-president of the SAA told IPS: “The ECHR ruling isn’t just a setback for human dignity, but also contradicts a European Council Framework Decision that ordered member states to ensure that publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes were penalised.”

Such framework decisions do not pose a legal basis for the ECHR, however. De Buman also referred to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. “Don’t forget that the convention was adopted in reaction to the Holocaust as well as the Armenian genocide,” he told IPS.

The ECHR ruling has sparked a debate in Switzerland on whether or not the government should appeal the decision and if and how Swiss anti-racism legislation may be amended.

Councillor De Buman told IPS he was optimistic that an appeal could lead to a further examination of the case, as the ECHR ruling wasn’t unanimous: “Two of the seven judges had expressed a joint concurring opinion. They stated that there existed an international consensus regarding the characterisation of the massacres against the Armenian people.”

Judges András Sajó and Guido Raimondi would welcome a Swiss appeal to the Grand Chamber, as so far the court has never taken a view on the massacres and deportations of the Armenians. “It’s our symbolic and moral obligation to define and qualify these events,” they wrote. Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice hasn’t yet taken a decision in that regard.

The ECHR ruling plays into the hands of right-wing groups such as the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) who have repeatedly tried to knock down the country’s anti-racism legislation. Consequently, the party’s long-time leader Christoph Blocher demanded a change of the criminal code. Legally, the ECHR ruling doesn’t force Switzerland to amendments.

Silvia Bär, the SVP’s secretary general, told IPS that the party is preparing a parliamentary request to specify or even abolish Swiss anti-racism legislation. “We reject racism. However, the current application of the legislation is getting increasingly absurd and incorrectly limits the right to freedom of expression.”

According to Bär, the anti-racism legislation is being misused to discipline and sanction unwelcome opinions. In addition, the SVP demands that Switzerland resigns from the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and that it dissolves the Federal Commission against Racism (EKR).

Martine Brunschwig Graf, National Councillor for the Liberals and President of the EKR has doubts about these intentions. “The ECHR ruling is complex and doesn’t put the Swiss anti-racism paragraph in question,” she told IPS. From 1995 to 2012, Swiss courts have sentenced accused persons in 310 cases under that paragraph.

Brunschwig Graf calls the legislation an indispensable instrument: “The fight against racism requires prevention at all levels, but also repression if certain limits are surpassed.”

Among the other parties, the Swiss anti-racism legislation enjoys broad support. Hansjörg Fehr of the Social Democrats told the Swiss national radio that if the criminal code was to be changed, then “we need a passage that explicitly punishes the denial of the Armenian genocide.”

The debate is expected to ignite at the next parliamentary session in March.

Remains of some of the over 800,000 victims of Rwanda’s genocide, which will soon be relocated to a new memorial site to preserve them. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

By Adam Bemma
KIGALI , Nov 26 2013 (IPS)

“There is a saying that all Rwandans believe in. You can’t forgive if you forget, but when you remember, you know what harmed you and you can forgive and move forward,” Honore Gatera tells IPS as he walks through the grounds of the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda’s capital. 

The museum was established in 2004, 10 years after the horrific Rwanda genocide. It is estimated that 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives in the massacre that began after a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down over Kigali in 1994.

That year the international community failed Rwanda by failing to stop the genocide. It is almost 20 years later, and Rwandans believe international justice continues to fail them.

Angela Mbabaz, 27, is a Rwandan Tutsi. She spent her entire childhood in Uganda with her two brothers and younger sister. She now has a daughter the same age she was when her mother was killed inside a Catholic Church compound alongside family members outside of Kigali."It's been 20 years and things have changed. We no longer say Hutu or Tutsi. We're all Rwandans." -- Rwandan genocide survivor Angela Mbabaz

“I heard about my mom’s death when I was seven years old,” she tells IPS. “I wouldn’t want my daughter to know the masterminds of the genocide aren’t all in prison, so I still haven’t told her.”

Community courts in Rwanda, known as “gacaca” were formed in 2001 to provide justice for victims like Mbabaz who lost family members during the genocide. In the local language, Kinyarwanda, gacaca means to sit down and discuss an issue.

Last year, gacaca courts wrapped up. Human rights groups criticised the village-based process due to its falling short of international legal standards. According to government figures, 65 percent of the two million genocide suspects were found guilty in a speedy legal process in Rwanda.

But there is almost no opposition to gacaca within Rwanda, even from law experts. Sabine Uwase is legal advisor to AVEGA Agahozo, an association of genocide widows. She found gacaca to be highly effective in prosecuting perpetrators.

“I think the country needed justice quickly, as so many victims wanted to move on toward national reconciliation,” she tells IPS. “The international court is taking too long.”

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda or ICTR was established by the United Nations following the 1994 genocide. Based in Arusha, Tanzania, the ICTR will close in 2014, once the remaining appeals are finished. ICTR spokesperson, Rolland Amoussouga, believes criticism of the tribunal is unwarranted.

“Since it started in 2003, the ICTR has indicted 93 people. Eighty-three have been arrested. Seventy-five decisions have been reached with 12 acquitted and 63 sentenced to prison,” he tells IPS.

In international law, the ICTR has set many legal precedents including the first-ever judgement on the crime of genocide by an international court. A residual mechanism was put in place last year by the U.N. It will continue in Arusha following the completion of the ICTR mandate.

“It is a normal process, a normal feeling, for genocide survivors and victims to criticise ICTR one way or another. You can’t expect to have a perfect justice,” he says.

Ten indicted Rwandan genocide suspects remain at large. To Rwandans, this is not good enough. Naphtal Ahishakiye is the executive secretary of Ibuka, which means “remember” in Kinyarwanda. Ibuka is a national organisation representing genocide survivors and the most powerful civil society group in Rwanda.

“These perpetrators of the genocide need to be caught and brought to justice here in Rwanda, not taken to the ICTR or The Hague,” he says. “Gacaca was participative justice. Everybody in Rwanda came together to hear how the genocide was planned and executed.”

Mbabaz wants Rwanda to move on from the genocide, as she has. She believes the international community will apprehend the remaining perpetrators and let them face justice.

“It’s been 20 years and things have changed. We no longer say Hutu or Tutsi. We’re all Rwandans,” she says. “I want my daughter to understand what happened in the past, and be willing to forgive what happened to our family.”

The national day of remembrance is on Apr. 4. Next year’s event will mark 20 years since the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus took place. National reconciliation efforts have worked to erase tribal affiliations, officially replacing them with a modern, post-genocide Rwandan identity.

Gatera concludes his tour of the Kigali genocide memorial. He says he would like to put an end to this terrible chapter in the country’s history.

“It’s been so long. The ICTR is closing next year and there are still many open cases, there are still many other perpetrators running around the world,” he says. “Once these figures are caught, they must be brought to Rwanda, as we’ve shown the international community we can treat everyone fairly.”

Even if these fugitives are arrested and sent to Rwanda to face justice, there is no telling if they will, in fact, receive a fair trial by international standards. But according to Rwandans, they believe real justice can, and must, be demonstrated to the international community to show they do not need outside help any longer.

Remains of some of the over 800,000 victims of Rwanda’s genocide. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

By AJ Correspondents
DOHA, Nov 14 2013 (Al Jazeera)

A French appeals court has approved the extradition of two Rwandans wanted at home for their alleged role in the 1994 genocide that claimed about 800,000 lives.

The ruling on Claude Muhayimana, 52, a French citizen since 2010, and Innocent Musabyimana, 41, is not final and can still be challenged.

Although countries such as Canada and Norway have extradited genocide suspects, France has so far refused to do so, fearing they would be denied a fair trial.

But it has sent some to Tanzania to face trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

The two men’s case will now go up to a higher court for a final ruling after their lawyer, Philippe Meilhac, signalled his intention to appeal.

If the extradition is approved, France would still have to sign an extradition treaty with Rwanda for the pair to be sent back.

The head of the appeals court, Jean Bertholin, told the men their “lives will not be in danger if you return to your country and you will be guaranteed a fair trial”.

Ruling welcomed

Muhayimana is accused of taking part in the massacre of ethnic Tutsis in the western town of Kibuye and Musabyimana in the north-western province of Gisenyi, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The genocide, which pitted the majority Hutu against the minority Tutsi, began after a plane carrying Rwandan former president Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down as it approached the airport in Kigali, the capital. Both presidents were killed.

Muhayimana and Musabyimana have already appeared in front of appeals courts in Dijon and Rouen which ordered their extradition.

The rulings were quashed by the Court of Cassation – France’s highest appeals court, which rules only on points of law – which sent them on to the Paris appeals court.

French prosecutors said that while the two men could not be extradited on a number of the crimes attributed to them, they could be for those of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Alain Mukuralinda, a spokesman for Rwanda’s prosecutor general, said the office was “satisfied” with the ruling.

“If the appeals court judge decided to extradite, that means there is hope because it means [the judge] based his decision on concrete things,” he said.

“This means the investigation carried out in Rwanda was well done,” he said.

Genocide is punishable under a Jun. 19, 1994 law passed in Rwanda. The killings there began in April that year.

Before the genocide, France had been one of Rwanda’s main backers. But in the aftermath, relations between the two countries collapsed.

Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president who came to power as a Tutsi rebel leader after the genocide, accused France of training and arming Hutu militia that perpetrated the genocide – an accusation strenuously denied by Paris.

Diplomatic ties between France and Rwanda were severed in 2006 when a French judge said Kagame and others had orchestrated the assassination of Habyarimana to trigger the bloodshed – an accusation he denies and which the French courts have since dropped.

But both trade and diplomatic relations have recently strengthened.

Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Guatemala’s first female attorney general has managed to reduce impunity in a country where over 90 percent of murders go unsolved.

The question is whether the changes will vanish once Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz’s term ends in December 2014.

Never before had a former head of state been tried for genocide in his own country, anywhere in the world. But Paz y Paz managed to bring former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt to trial – above and beyond the fact that the final outcome is hanging by a thread.

The changes undertaken by Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz could collapse if they are not institutionalised. Credit: Danilo Valladares/IPS

Paz y Paz, 46, also carried out a purge in the public prosecutor’s office and achieved unprecedented results in sentences for homicide, rape, extortion and kidnapping.

And she did all this in the only country in the world where the United Nations, in conjunction with the government, set up an International Commission against Impunity (CICIG), in 2007.

Guatemala is considered one of the most violent countries in the world, with a murder rate of 46 per 100,000 population in 2009.

The first change introduced by Paz y Paz was the implementation of a performance evaluation system in the public prosecutor’s office.

The prosecutors who resolve the most cases are rewarded with opportunities for promotion, while those who bring in poor results must explain why they have failed to meet their targets and can face disciplinary processes if negligence is found, Paz y Paz told IPS.

Nearly 80 percent of the prosecutors who had spent two decades in the public prosecutor’s office and were between the ages of 65 and 75 decided to retire when the new system was put into effect.

That paved the way for younger prosecutors better qualified to handle forensic evidence to be promoted to section chiefs and district attorneys.

Another stride forward was the priority put on violence against women. Under the administration of Paz y Paz, a special unit that operates around the clock was opened in the public prosecutor’s office, making it possible for a judge to issue restraining orders and other precautionary measures against the aggressors in a timely fashion, without requiring the victim to go from the public prosecutor’s office to the courthouse.

In addition, a specific unit was established to investigate sex crimes, and more resources were assigned to the special prosecutor’s unit for crimes against women.

Furthermore, a new evaluation system uses surveys to ask victims who have filed a complaint how they were treated and whether they suffered discrimination.The public prosecutor’s office managed to dismantle drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping rackets, thanks to “more proactive investigations, targeting illegal markets or criminal structures.” – Claudia Paz y Paz

The surveys led to the dismissal of a prosecutor in the northern province of San Marcos for sexual harassment of a young woman who had gone to his office to report a rape.

The public prosecutor’s office has also managed to dismantle drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping rackets, thanks to “more proactive investigations, targeting illegal markets or criminal structures,” Paz y Paz said.

In June 2012, a court in Guatemala found 36 members of the Los Zetas – a notoriously violent Mexican drug cartel – guilty of kidnapping, murder and attacks on the security forces. They were sentenced to between two and 158 years in prison.

“The public prosecutor’s office, headed by Claudia Paz y Paz and supported by CICIG, has made important strides,” political scientist Juan Carlos Garzón, a visiting expert from the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told IPS. “A former president has been tried and the clandestine structures have begun to come to light.”

Portillo and Ríos Montt: controversial cases

Another high-profile case was the prosecution of former president Alfonso Portillo, extradited to the United States in May to face charges of conspiracy to launder money during his 2000-2004 term.

The Constitutional Court authorised Portillo’s extradition in 2011, but the fact that he is still facing charges in court in Guatemala has raised questions about whether his extradition was legal.

“Portillo’s extradition was carried out hastily, and was plagued with irregularities,” Lizandro Acuña, a researcher in the area of justice and security in the University of San Carlos Institute on National Problems, told IPS.

Meanwhile, the trial against Ríos Montt continues. The public prosecutor’s office presented evidence and expert and eyewitness testimony to demonstrate that genocide was committed against the Ixil Maya indigenous community during Ríos Montt’s presidency (1982-1983).

The charges include overseeing the armed forces’ murder of at least 1,771 Ixil indigenous people and the rape of 1,485 girls and women during his 17-month rule – the bloodiest period of the 1960-1996 civil war.

In May, Ríos Montt was sentenced to 80 years in prison. But the Constitutional Court overturned the conviction just 10 days later in response to one of the numerous challenges presented by the defence.

The Constitutional Court ordered a retrial, after ruling that the proceedings should be voided dating back to Apr. 19, when one of the judges suspended the trial over a dispute with another judge about who should hear it.

The trial further polarised public opinion, between those who defend the army’s actions and those who are demanding justice for the victims of the armed conflict, who numbered around 250,000 and were mainly highlands Maya Indians.

Ricardo Méndez Ruiz, president of the right-wing Foundation Against Terrorism, made up of retired members of the military and their family members, accuses Paz y Paz of “unleashing a witch hunt against soldiers.”

In 2011, Méndez Ruiz filed a lawsuit against 26 former members of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), which was active during the civil war – including two of the attorney general’s cousins: Margarita and Laura Hurtado Paz y Paz, who he accused of kidnapping him in 1982.

But Paz y Paz said that clarifying the human rights violations committed during the armed conflict “is not a biased action; it is about being responsible for the duties one assumes as attorney general.”

While the case against Ríos Montt is set to reopen in April 2014, survivors and witnesses who have to testify again report that they have been the targets of intimidation and threats.

The attorney general has not yet announced whether she will seek a new term.

She says she is immersed in the task of institutionalising the changes she has introduced in the public prosecutor’s office, and warns that if her successor is not willing to give continuity to the reforms, the progress made will be reversed.

Garzón said “she has made an enormous effort towards strengthening the institution itself. The question is whether it will be capable of weathering her absence when she’s gone.

“What do the political forces want? To destroy what the public prosecutor’s office has done or to continue along the path that has begun to be followed? It’s a political question, and the outlook is very uncertain,” he said.

Border guards in Bangladesh refuse entry to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in November 2012. Credit: Anurup Titu/IPS

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Oct 3 2013 (IPS)

An exiled leader of the Rohingyas, a persecuted Muslim minority in Myanmar, is raising the alarm from his London office about the fate of his community. He fears “ethnocide to remove all references to the Rohingyas” if the first census in 30 years goes ahead in the Southeast Asian nation.

Nurul Islam, president of the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO), tells IPS in an interview that he is targeting the United Nations and European governments in the campaign. “We want to put pressure on the Myanmar government to count the Rohingyas in the census, revealing the actual figures of their population.”

Similar concerns about this stateless ethnic group living along Myanmar’s western border have been expressed by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The 12-day census to be held by the end of March next year is expected to cost 58.5 million dollars, immigration and population minister Khin Yi confirmed during a mid-September media briefing in Naypidaw, the administrative capital. The Myanmar government has agreed to commit 15 million dollars, while U.N. assistance is expected to cover five million dollars.

Western governments are expected to fill in the rest, including 16 million dollars from Britain and 2.8 million dollars from Australia. There have been further pledges by Norway and Switzerland.

The concerns dogging the 2014 census arise from a slew of discriminatory policies targeting the Rohingyas for decades. Some, such as forced labour, are human rights violations faced by other minorities.

Others have been unique to the Rohingyas – many are denied proper healthcare and schooling, are prevented from moving out of their villages, and are even stopped from marrying because they are not given approval by local authorities. Local leaders say tens of thousands of Rohingya babies have not been registered.

They are not officially identified as one of the country’s 135 recognised ethnic groups. The last headcount in 1983 put the national population at 35.4 million, while the registered population during the previous census in 1973 was 28.9 million. These two censuses, held when the country was under the grip of an oppressive military regime, did not recognise the Rohingyas as part of the population.

Official statements and the local media often refer to the estimated 800,000 Rohingyas as “Bengalis.” By implication the community are considered “outsiders” from neighbouring Bangladesh.

“The term ‘Bengali’ has the connotation of being a foreigner,” says Chris Lewa, head of the Arakan Project, an independent research organisation chronicling the plight of the Rohingyas. “Institutionalising the term ‘Bengali’ is therefore far-reaching beyond simply a rejection of the term ‘Rohingya’ and it is a denial of their rights as Myanmar nationals.”

“The census will not affect the Rohingyas’ citizenship status,” Janet Jackson, head of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) Myanmar office, told IPS in an interview. “The controversy around this issue must not be allowed to hamper a complete count of the population, and the conduct of the census should not aggravate tensions around the issue.”

UNFPA has received assurances from the government to conduct the census “in line with international census standards, [where] every person will be counted, regardless of citizenship or ethnicity.” Jackson expects the population profile for a country that has an estimated 60 million people to embrace “inclusiveness”.

Such words jar with the reality on the ground since sectarian violence erupted last year between the ethnic Buddhist Arakanese in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar and the Rohingyas.

Attacks on the Rohingyas in June this year and October last year, which killed nearly 200 people and left 140,000 displaced, earned the Rohingyas some sympathy. HRW described them as victims of “ethnic cleansing” in a report released in April this year.

That grim assessment has worsened. The Toronto-based Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention describes Myanmar as “a textbook case” for a country on the brink of genocide. “The machinery of genocide – the complex systematic process designed to eliminate the Rohingyas – is already operating in Burma [as Myanmar was formerly known] and has carried ethnic cleansing and isolation to its current point.

“Mounting evidence supports allegations that genocide in Burma is currently going on, and may merely be a matter of scale,” revealed the report ‘High Risk of Genocide in Burma’ released by the group in early September. Among the “key indicators of genocidal intent” is the “forced registration of Rohingyas under a ‘foreign’ ethnic identity, thus attempting to provide documentary denial of the existence of the group.”

Rwandan genocide survivors exhuming the bodies of their relatives killed and buried in a mass grave during the 1994 100-day massacre. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS.

By Ephrem Rugiririza
ARUSHA, Tanzania , Aug 27 2013 (IPS)

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) based in Arusha, Tanzania, is due to conclude its business at the end of 2014 following several deferrals. A United Nations Security Council Resolution set up the tribunal in 1994.

Analysts have globally recognised the ICTR’s role in bringing perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandese genocide to justice. However, for a variety of reasons, they also believe that the tribunal has not entirely fulfilled its mandate.

With a year and a half left of its tenure, the ICTR has tried 75 people, sentenced 46 and acquitted 12. Of the 46 defendants who have been sentenced, 17 cases are still pending before the Appeals Chamber, although most of these appeals are at an advanced stage.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has been a regular observer of the ICTR’s proceedings which started in 1997. Carina Tertsakian, a researcher in the Africa division of HRW commended “the important role” played by ICTR in bringing those accused of being most responsible for the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda. According to her, the Rwandese justice system would not have been able to apprehend such senior leaders of the former regime.“Credible evidence of the crimes committed by RPF soldiers exists. This important part of ICTR’s mandate has not been executed.”

According to the United Nations, the genocide claimed at least 800,000 lives particularly amongst the Tutsis.

But Tertsakian admits that the ICTR has had some weak areas. “We believe one of the main weaknesses of the ICTR is that it has not opened a single case for war crimes committed by members of the former rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (the RPF is now in power in Kigali) even though this was well within its mandate,” she told IPS.

“Credible evidence of the crimes committed by RPF soldiers exists. This important part of ICTR’s mandate has not been executed.”

In Kigali, genocide survivors have united under a group called Ibuka, which means ‘remember’ in Kinyarwanda. They give credit to the tribunal for sending a strong message to the architects of the genocide, particularly those still in hiding, but also express some disappointment.

“The ICTR worries them, which is a cause for celebration.  But it is not much if you consider the vast means at the tribunal’s disposal,” said Naphtal Ahishakiye, Ibuka’s executive secretary. He is dismayed that nine of the accused are still at large, including billionaire Félicien Kabuga who is often referred to as the principal funder of the genocide.

According to ICTR spokesperson Roland Amoussouga, the tribunal has cost 1.6 billion dollars as of  Dec. 31, 2011.

Ibuka has also denounced certain judgements. “In a number of cases, the tribunal acquitted defendants or handed down sentences that were too lenient, even where reliable evidence was put before it,” said Ahishakiye, who also believes that the ICTR “has contributed practically nothing to Rwandese reconciliation.”

The same criticism was made by the Rwandese government on Jun. 21 this year after a UN debate on international criminal justice. “The ICTR, particularly the Appeals Chamber has, on several occasions in the last months, acquitted a number of members of that cabinet, some of whom had been heavily sentenced at the first instance,” protested Rwandese diplomat Olivier Nduhungirehe.

ICTR officials have to date refused to comment on these “purely political” criticisms.

Those opposing the new regime in Kigali also have their grievances with the ICTR. The United Democratic Forces (UDF), a party created in exile and which is struggling to get registered in Rwanda, claims that the main failure of the Arusha tribunal is to have not sought the perpetrators of the Apr. 6, 1994 strike on the plane carrying then president Juvenal Habyarimana.

“The lack of will to try those responsible for the attack which triggered the genocide is for us a massive failure. It is clear that there was political pressure from some quarters,” said Jean-Baptiste Mberabahizi, spokesperson for the party exiled in Belgium. He denounces this as “the justice of the victor over the vanquished.”

According to French academic and Great Lakes specialist André Guichaoua, “assessments of the qualitative and quantitative achievements of the ICTR may be mixed, but the tribunal has paved a way forward.” He believes that “the prosecutor’s office, judges and their personnel tried the principal architects of the genocide, created jurisprudence and set standards in matters of justice and truth.”

Guichaoua, who was the expert witness in several of the ICTR cases recognises that the tribunal “gave priority to the pursuit and trial of the architects of the genocide” of Tutsis.

But, he pointed out to IPS, the lack of legal proceedings for crimes allegedly committed in 1994 by members of the former rebel forces now in power in Kigali “has undermined the credibility (of ICTR), the scope of its rulings, the unveiling of truth and the comprehension of facts.”

Guichaoua believes that successive prosecutors of the tribunal, with the consent of the UN Security Council, have all succumbed to Kigali’s stonewalling. For this reason he believes the ICTR’s mission has not been fully accomplished.

The ICTR was scheduled to conclude its mandate at the end of 2008, but its officials requested an extension to the end of 2009. At the end of 2010, the Security Council passed a resolution requiring that that all matters be wound up by the end of 2014.

The slaves brought to the Caribbean lived in inhumane conditions. Above are examples of slave huts in Bonaire provided by Dutch colonialists. About five feet tall and six feet wide, two to three slaves slept in these after working in near by salt mines. Credit: V.C.Vulto/GNU license

By Peter Richards
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Jul 29 2013 (IPS)

As Caribbean countries prepare to observe Emancipation Day on Aug. 1, they are also caught up in an ongoing debate over reparations for slavery.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, who has stated publicly that he will “take no quarter on those issues”, told IPS, “We have in my view a very strong case to put to an appropriate tribunal.”

Last week, as he addressed an audience in Cuba marking the 60th anniversary of the attack on the Moncada Barracks that launched the 1953 Revolution, Gonsalves said the Caribbean is demanding reparations from Europe for native genocide and African slavery.

“The principal reason for underdevelopment in the Caribbean and Latin America is the legacy of native genocide and African slavery, and we do so with the spirit and with the examples, in this new period, of the combatants of Moncada,” he said.

At the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) summit here earlier this month, Gonsalves presented his fellow leaders with three position papers, including one by Professor Hilary Beckles, the pro-vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, who recently published the book “Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations owed the Caribbean for Slavery and Indigenous Genocide”.

Gonsalves is pushing for a common position on reparations and has welcomed the decision to establish a committee under the chairmanship of the Barbados Prime Minister Freundel Stuart to drive the issue.

The committee, which will oversee the work of a CARICOM Reparations Commission, will include Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Haiti, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Suriname, the chairs of national reparations committees, and a representative of the University of the West Indies.

Kafra Kambon, chair of the Emancipation Support Committee in Trinidad and Tobago, told IPS it is important for non-governmental organisations and the Caribbean population in general to support the initiatives of regional governments.

Kambon, whose grouping organises the annual Emancipation Day activities here, said that the support is necessary since he believes “European governments are going to try to corral them [Caribbean leaders] or even pressure them to abandon the idea.

”We have to give the strength to that call for reparations as a principle,” Kambon told IPS, calling the slave trade “massive crimes that go beyond the human imagination”.

“People have been damaged psychologically, we came out of slavery suffering extreme trauma,” he said.

“We were not behind Europe at the time of the contact and some people think of slavery as a rescue mission. It was not,” he said, adding that “slavery represents a generation of people that have been wiped out”.

In the Dutch country of Suriname, the National Reparations Committee said it would seek consensus and awareness for the correct version of history.

“We’re going to bring this dead information about reparations for slavery and about the genocide of our country’s first inhabitants to life,” said the committee’s chair, Armand Zunder, who has applauded the move by CARICOM.

“We thought we would be fighting this fight on our own, but we know now we have full support. We have made big strides,” said Zunder, an economist, who earlier this month filed the first ever petition to The Netherlands for reparations to the descendants of slaves in Suriname.

Zunder said that previously published research results that showed that the Netherlands earned some 125 billion euros from Suriname during slavery.

Meanwhile, the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE) has written a lengthy letter to Caribbean leaders warning that their “top down approach” will “end up not achieving the reparations aspirations of the masses of Afrikan descendants and indigenous citizens in the Caribbean.”

PARCOE co-vice chairs Esther Stanford-Xosei and Kofi Mawuli Klu wrote that the Caribbean should seek to avoid “the same errors that were made with the former Organisation of African Unity’s (OAU) Group of Eminent Persons (GEP) in failing to effectively consult on reparations strategies, be informed by and act in the best interests of the various Afrikan countries respective citizenries”.

They cited the work of the U.S. activist and law professor, Mari Matsuda, who argues that approaches to reparations incorporate a more grassroots, “bottom-up” approach.

“By ‘bottom’, Matsuda refers to the lived experience of those individuals and groups who are alleging the violation of rights rather than those who have traditionally defined the scope of legal redress such as judges, lawyers associations and other groups who are part of upholding the existing social, legal and economic status quo,” they wrote.

PARCOE is also urging Caribbean countries not to be taken in by the recent “historic victory for the Mau Mau survivors of British colonial era torture and abuses in detention committed between 1952 and 1963 during Britain’s suppression of the Mau Mau war of liberation”.

PARCOE said the “the financial compensation aspect of the settlement represents a paltry sum and is not commensurate with the torture and suffering of Mau Mau patriots considering that the British Government paid out £20 million, the modern equivalent of around £16.5 billion, to compensate some 3,000 slaveholding families for the loss of their ‘property’ when slavery was purportedly abolished in Britain’s colonies in 1833.”

Retired general Efraín Ríos Montt (left) will face a new trial, possibly in April 2014. Credit: Danilo Valladares/IPS

By Louisa Reynolds
GUATEMALA CITY, Jun 11 2013 (IPS)

Fear and mistrust reign in Santa María Nebaj. The people of this Maya Ixil indigenous town in the highlands of northwestern Guatemala are worried about intimidation attempts to keep them from testifying again in a retrial of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt.

Worry began to spread in the town when the witnesses learned they could be summoned to court again to tell their heart-wrenching stories in a new trial, after Guatemala’s Constitutional Court overturned a genocide conviction against Ríos Montt in response to one of the numerous challenges presented by the defence.

Ríos Montt had been sentenced to 80 years in prison on May 10 after he was found guilty of overseeing the armed forces’ murder of at least 1,771 Ixil indigenous people during his 1982-1983 rule – the bloodiest period of the 1960-1996 civil war.

The Constitutional Court ruled that the proceedings should be voided dating back to Apr. 19, when one of the judges suspended the trial over a dispute with another judge about who should hear it.

Under Guatemalan law, a retrial cannot be held in the same court. But because of the backlog of cases in the court where the new trial is to take place, it is not scheduled to start until April 2014.

The court had ruled that Ríos Montt “held absolute power (from March 1982 to August 1983) and as a result had full knowledge of the crimes committed and did not bring them to a halt even though he had the power to do so.”

In the same trial, his intelligence chief, José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, was acquitted on the grounds of insufficient evidence of involvement in the crimes against humanity in question.

The ruling against Ríos Montt was historic, not only for Guatemala but for many other countries in Latin America and other regions, because it was the first time a head of state has been tried for genocide by the courts in his own country.

Strange visitors

Just days after 98 Ixil survivors testified in the trial about gang rapes of girls and women, torture and mass killings, several people came to the town saying they belonged to a government agency for agricultural development and claiming they were carrying out a census.

But the visit by the purported government officials awakened suspicion, because they only went to the homes of those who testified in the trial, and they already had the witnesses’ personal details, such as their names and identity document numbers.

Local residents reported the incident to the local offices of the Centre for Legal Action on Human Rights (CALDH), one of the groups that brought the lawsuit against Ríos Montt.

CALDH found that no such agricultural development agency was registered, and filed a complaint with the prosecution service and the office of the human rights ombudsman, demanding safety guarantees for witnesses and survivors.

During the first trial, the victims were determined to fight for justice despite fears for their safety. “Since I started to fight I haven’t been afraid. I have confidence in what I am saying. We need a real sentence,” Ixil leader Antonio Caba told IPS on Apr. 12, just a few days after testifying in court about the massacres and torture he witnessed at the age of 11.

Helping survivors overcome their fears and become ready to speak in court about such painful, traumatic experiences was a lengthy process that took years of psychological support, CALDH spokesman José Rodríguez told IPS.

According to the 1999 report by the United Nations-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission (CEH), under Ríos Montt the army and paramilitary militias known as “civil self-defence patrols” committed 334 massacres and 19,000 murders and forced disappearances, and destroyed 600 villages. As a result of the violence, one million people fled their homes.

The 36-year civil war claimed some 250,000 lives, mainly rural indigenous villagers, the CEH reported.

The CEH was created to investigate human rights abuses and crimes against humanity after a peace agreement between the army and the insurgent Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) put an end to the war in 1996.

Something happened on the way to the forum

Throughout the trial, the defence presented a volley of challenges based on technicalities.

The last challenge had been rejected and the trial proceeded to sentencing. But on May 20, the Constitutional Court ruled that the trial should not have continued until the challenge had been addressed, and overturned the conviction of Ríos Montt.

“Since the start of the trial, the defence attorneys have tried to trip up the proceedings through challenges and injunctions, and they finally managed to do so,” Ramón Cadena, director of the Central America division of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), told IPS. “What has prevailed here is malicious litigation that finally ended in a ruling that leads to more impunity.”

The Constitutional Court has not yet clarified whether the change in venue means the trial must start from scratch.

According to Rodríguez, the interpretation by the CALDH lawyers is that it must start over, which means the 98 witnesses would have to testify again.

But due to the setbacks, the survivors have lost faith in the justice system, and over half of them have said they are not willing to give their testimony again, and especially not in the face of tension and attempts at intimidation in the Ixil communities.

“The victims have said they are not a toy, to be summoned to court over and over again. They put their trust in the justice system, and now they feel they have been let down, and they are afraid,” Rodríguez said.

Cadena said he had little hope that a new conviction against Ríos Montt would be achieved if a new trial was held.

“Although judges are showing greater independence, there are economic interests that are not going to allow the powerful to be tried,” he said.

Remains of some of the over 800,000 victims of Rwanda’s genocide, which will soon be relocated to a new memorial site to preserve them. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

By Edwin Musoni
KIGALI , Apr 7 2013 (IPS)

Bernard Kayumba, the mayor of Karongi district in western Rwanda, remembers just what it was like to be caught up in the genocide that claimed the lives of almost one million people in 100 days 19 years ago.

While there are no conclusive figures of the number of people killed, it is estimated that 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives in the massacre that began after a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down over Rwanda’s capital Kigali on Apr. 6, 1994.

Most of the dead were Tutsis, and most of those who perpetrated the violence were Hutus. But according to a report titled “Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda”, published by Human Rights Watch in 1999: “Many Tutsi who are alive survived because of the action of Hutu, whether a single act of courage from a stranger or the delivery of food and protection over many weeks by friends or family members.” Karongi, which was formerly known as Kibuye prefecture, was the site of two massacres in 1994 that resulted in the deaths of thousands of people over just a few days.

Many fled to the town for shelter in its churches and schools. But some 30,000 Tutsis fled to the hills of Bisesero, about 40 kilometres from the town, in the hope of escaping the violence.

Kayumba was one of them. But while there is no official death toll of the massacre there, it is believed that tens of thousands of people were killed in those hills. Kayumba survived.

He was 19 at the time, but he has not forgotten the massacres and their aftermath.

Rwandan genocide survivors exhuming the bodies of their relatives killed and buried in a mass grave during the 1994 100-day massacre. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

“I know what it means to miss school, I know what it means to be hungry myself. So when I am allocating support to the vulnerable in my district (as mayor), I am the most impartial,” he told IPS as the country starts its commemoration week of the genocide from Apr. 7 to 13.

Kayumba said he is mayor of Karongi today thanks to the assistance he received for his university fees from the government project, the Genocide Survivors Support and Assistance Fund, known by its French acronym, FARG.

The fund was set up by the government in 1998 to support the almost 300,000 genocide survivors and receives about six percent of Rwanda’s annual budget.

“I am thankful indeed, because FARG made me what I am today. The fund paid my university school fees. Without it, I don’t know what I would have become,” Kayumba said.

Since its establishment, FARG has spent a total of 127 million dollars, mostly in tuition fees for the 68,367 pupils in secondary schools and more than 13,000 students in higher learning institutions that it supports.

The Rwandan government only introduced free primary and secondary education here in 2010. And according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, about 60 percent of the country’s population lives below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day.

The fund also aids survivors with access to health care, while providing new homes and social assistance.

However, it has not been without its controversies. There have been reports of mismanagement of the fund.

In 2011, the local New Times newspaper reported that FARG was forced to drop some 19,000 beneficiaries – 30 percent of the total beneficiaries at the time – who were found not eligible.

It has also come under scrutiny for the quality of its housing projects.

In 2011 the Rwandan Auditor General said the homes were not worth the money spent by FARG on their construction. The audit had been carried out between 2006 and 2007 and the report had also stated: “A significant number of genocide survivors and other targeted needy people who had been earmarked to benefit from this funding still need help with shelter since some of them did not actually benefit.”

However, fund officials said that of the 300,000 genocide survivors, all but 500 families had been provided with new homes. They said that by December 2013, the remainder would have their homes. Fund officials also told IPS that of the 40,000 houses that have been built for survivors, 15,000 were built with money from FARG. The rest were built by government sponsors, which include NGOs, embassies and churches.

“Some houses were built in a hurry in 1995 by well-wishers since providing shelter was a big priority, so not as much attention was placed on the contractors’ (quality of work),” Theophile Ruberangeyo, the director general of FARG, told IPS.

“We also agree that we were cheated in 2003 when entrepreneurs just could not deliver good services while building our houses,” he said of the claims of badly constructed homes.

Jean Pierre Dusingizemungu, the president of IBUKA, an umbrella of genocide survivors’ associations and a high-profile lobby group, told IPS that many people were moving on with courage and determination. Ibuka means “remember” in the local Kinyarwanda language.

“Survivors have learnt that hatred and discrimination lead to death. So they have chosen the better way of building a united community for a brighter future of this nation,” he said.

But this is not the case for all. Some survivors still live with the trauma, anger and fear of what happened to them. Josée Munyagishari, 51, from Murambi in western Rwanda, was speared in the back of her neck in 1994 during the violence. The injury left her paralysed. She was also forced to have her right leg amputated – it had developed an infection after she was attacked with a machete.

“I got treatment, I got a house, my son is getting free education but all this cannot bring back my leg, neither can it make me stand on my legs,” Munyagishari told IPS. Her three-room house was constructed by FARG and her son benefits from the fund’s tuition scheme. But it is obvious that this has not been enough to heal the past.

“The people who did this to me were released from jail and since then I have had nightmares. I see them coming to kill me,” she said, pointing to a house about 100 metres away from her own home, where the accused apparently live.

Against the backdrop of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, a panel of United States government officials and experts called for stronger methods to prevent modern-day genocides and mass atrocities, particularly in the case of Syria.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the highest-ranking government official at the panel Tuesday, held in cooperation with the Council on Foreign Relations and CNN, addressed the mass killings of Syrian citizens by President Bashar al-Assad. She defended the administration’s decision not to directly intervene in Syria by force, but said that nevertheless, the administration is taking steps to address the situation there.

“We are increasing our efforts to assist the opposition,” she said about the Syrian rebels. “We know that the sooner it ends, the less violence there will be, and the less chance there is for extremism to take hold.”

In a poll of 1,000 U.S. citizens released Tuesday, conducted by the polling firm Penn Schoen Berland in conjunction with the panel, 78 percent of those surveyed support the U.S. taking military action to stop genocide or mass atrocities.

“Americans believe they have a moral responsibility to prevent or stop genocide around the world, even if it means putting boots on the ground,” Mark Penn, CEO of Burson-Marsteller, one of the firms that commissioned the poll, said. “But they view multilateral action as the most effective military strategy for prevention.”

The poll also suggested, however, that U.S. citizens are not satisfied with the U.N.’s handling of current genocides or mass atrocities. In the poll, 55 percent said that the international community was not effective at protecting civilians from genocide or mass atrocities.

The U.N. has so far not taken action in Syria, as two veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council, Russia and China, have blocked action. Other countries, including all the remaining permanent members of the council — the U.S., Britain and France — have called for intervention in Syria.

While public perception might seem hawkish, Clinton was adamant that less extreme measures needed to be taken. “Force must remain a last resort,” Clinton said. “In most cases, other tools will be more appropriate: through diplomacy, financial sanctions, humanitarian assistance (or) law enforcement measures.”

The Obama administration has made preventing genocide a foreign policy priority.

In April, Obama announced to formation of the Atrocity Prevention Board, a governmental department focused on genocides around the world, and has asked that the U.S. intelligence community account for the risk of mass atrocities and genocide in national intelligence estimates.

21st century genocide

While other experts agree that preventive measures are key, there is disagreement about what causes genocides and what policies get at the root of the problem most effectively, particularly with such a new and complex paradigm.

Looking at the possible causes of future genocides, Chris Kojm, chairman of the National Intelligence Council, said that the “nexus of food, water and resources” would be a prevailing problem in the future.

Kojm said that nearly half the world’s population will be living in areas of severe water stress by 2030. “That’s an enormous factor to stability,” he said, adding that the incessant competition for resources will increase the likelihood of mass killings.

“Unpredictability leads to the mass killings,” said Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale University.

He says that this unpredictability, brought on by global warming and other factors, will spur governmental panic over the scarcity of remaining resources.

However, Kojm issued a caveat. “We must remain open to the possibility that the past is not necessarily a predictor of where and when mass atrocities will occur, or the means by which they will,” he said.

Technology has played an increasing role in 21st century genocides, and the Obama administration has taken note. In April, Obama signed an executive order imposing financial and travel restrictions on companies that provided technological aid the Syrian and Iranian governments used to hunt down their citizens.

The groups targeted by the restrictions included Syriatel, a Syrian communications company, and Datak Telecom, an Iranian Internet service provider.

“Access to technology, as opposed to access to information, is becoming the human right,” Strieve Masiyiwa, founder of Econet Wireless, a large technology firm based in Zimbabwe, which has been the site of genocides under President Robert Mugabe.

“The big difference with the technology is that the people, the victims, are empowered to speak, not just people in power,” he added

This has lead to a society where the victims get a voice, but are increasingly dependent upon social media, according to some in the media.

“Without social media, there would be a black hole,” said Arwa Damon, a Beirut correspondent for CNN who has been covering the Syrian conflict. “If social media did not exist, you could be assured that the killings would surpass what it is now.”

But the effect of social media extends further that that, according to other foreign policy experts.

“Social media connects people to transparency,” said Sarah Sewall, founder of the Mass Atrocity Response Operations Project and a national security adviser to Obama.

“The question is: What do you do with the awareness to galvanise change?”