Residents of La Hacienda, in the central department of La Paz in El Salvador, are holding pictures of the four American nuns murdered in 1980 by members of the National Guard, as they attend the commemorations held to mark 35 years of the crime, in December 2015, at the site where it was perpetrated. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Jul 23 2016 (IPS)

The ruling of the highest court to repeal the amnesty law places El Salvador in the dilemma of deciding whether the country should prosecute those who committed serious violations to human rights during the civil war.

It also evidences that, more than two decades after the end of the conflict in 1992, reconciliation is proving elusive in this Central American country with 6.3 million inhabitants.

At the heart of the matter is the pressing need to bring justice to the victims of war crimes while, on the other hand, it implies a huge as well as difficult task, since it will entail opening cases that are more than two decades old, involving evidence that has been tampered or lost, if at all available, and witnesses who have already died.“We do not want them to be jailed for a long period of time, we want perpetrators to tell us why they killed them, given that they knew they were civilians...And we want them to apologize, we want someone to be held accountable for these deaths”-- Engracia Echeverría.

Those who oppose opening such cases highlight the precarious condition of the judiciary, which has important inadequacies and is cluttered with a plethora of unsentenced cases.

“I believe Salvadorans as a whole, the population and the political forces are not in favour of this (initiating prosecution), they have turned the page”, pointed out left-wing analyst Salvador Samayoa, one of the signatory parties of the Peace Agreements that put an end to 12 years of civil war.

The 12 years of conflict left a toll of 70,000 casualties and more than 8,000 people missing.

Samayoa added that right now El Salvador has too many problems and should not waste its energy on problems pertaining to the past.

For human rights organizations, finding the truth, serving justice and providing redress prevail over the present circumstances and needs.

“Human rights violators can no longer hide behind the amnesty law, so they should be investigated once and for all”, said Miguel Montenegro, director of the El Salvador Commission of Human Rights, a non-governmental organization, told IPS.

The Supreme Court of Justice, in what is deemed to be a historical ruling, on 13 July ruled that the General Amnesty Act for the Consolidation of, passed in 1993, is unconstitutional, thus opening the door to prosecuting those accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the conflict.

In its ruling, the Court considered that Articles 2 and 144 of said amnesty law are unconstitutional on the grounds that they violate the rights of the victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity to resort to justice and seek redress.

It further ruled that said crimes are not subject to the statute of limitations and can be tried regardless of the date on which they were perpetrated.

“We have been waiting for this for many years; without this ruling no justice could have been done”, told IPS activist Engracia Echeverría, from the Madeleine Lagadec Center for the Promotion of Defence of Human Rights.

This organization is named after the French nun who was raped and murdered by government troops in April 1989, when they attacked a hospital belonging to the guerrilla group Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).

The activist stressed that, even though it is true that a lot of information relevant to the cases has been lost, some data can still be obtained by the investigators in the District Attorney’s General Office in charge of criminal prosecution, in case some people wish to instigate an investigation.

The law has been strongly criticized by human rights organizations within and outside the country, since its enactment in March 1993.

Its critics have claimed that it promoted impunity by protecting Army and guerrilla members who committed human rights crimes during the conflict.

However, its advocates have been both retired and active Army members, as well as right-wing politicians and businessmen in the country, since it precisely prevented justice being served to these officers –who are seen as responsible for frustrating the victory of the FMLN.

“All the crimes committed were motivated by an attack by the guerrilla”, claimed retired general Humberto Corado, former Defence Minister between 1993 and 1995.

The now repealed act was passed only five days after the Truth Commission, mandated by the United Nations to investigate human rights abuses during the civil war, had published its report with 32 specific cases, 20 of which were perpetrated by the Army and 12 by insurgents.

Among those cases were the murders of archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero in March 1980; four American nuns in December of the same year, and hundreds of peasants who were shot in several massacres, like those which took place in El Mozote in December 1981 and in Sumpul in May 1980.

Also, six Jesuit priests and a woman and her daughter were murdered in November 1989, a case already being investigated by a Spanish court.

The Truth Commission has also pointed to some FMLN commanders, holding them accountable for the death of several mayors who were targeted for being considered part of the government’s counter-insurgent strategy.

Some of those insurgents are now government officials, as is the case with director of Civil Protection Jorge Meléndez.

Before taking office in 2009, the FMLN, now turned into a political party, strongly criticized the amnesty law and advocated in favour of its repeal, on the grounds that it promoted impunity.

But, after winning the presidential elections that year with Mauricio Funes, it changed its stance and no longer favoured the repeal of the law. Since 2014, the country has been governed by former FMLN commander Salvador Sánchez Cerén.

In fact, the governing party has deemed the repeal as “reckless”, with the President stating on July 15 that Court magistrates “were not considering the effects it could have on the already fragile coexistence” and urging to take the ruling “with responsibility and maturity while taking into account the best interests of the country”.

After the law was ruled unconstitutional, the media were saturated with opinions and analyses on the subject, most of them pointing out the risk of the country being destabilized and on the verge of chaos due to the countless number of lawsuits that could pile up in the courts dealing with war cases.

“To those people who fiercely claim that magistrates have turned the country into a hell we must respond that hell is what the victims and their families have gone –and continue to go- through”, reads the release written on July 15 by the officials of the José Simeón Cañas Central American University, where the murdered Jesuits lived and worked in 1989.

Furthermore, the release states that most of the victims demand to be listened to, in order to find out the truth and be able to put a face on those they need to forgive.

In fact, at the heart of the debate lies the idea of restorative justice as a mechanism to find out the truth and heal the victims’ wounds, without necessarily implying taking perpetrators to jail.

“We do not want them to be jailed for a long period of time, we want perpetrators to tell us why they killed them, given that they knew they were civilians”, stressed Echeverría.

“And we want them to apologize, we want someone to be held accountable for these deaths”, she added.

In the case of Montenegro, himself a victim of illegal arrest and tortures in 1986, he said that it is necessary to investigate those who committed war crimes in order to find out the truth but, even more importantly, as a way for the country to find the most suitable mechanisms to forgive and provide redress”.

However, general Corado said that restorative justice was “hypocritical, its only aim being to seek revenge”.

Protesters in Moscow demand that authorities investigate an attack on prominent Russian journalist Oleg Kashin on Nov. 6, 2010. Credit: Yuri Timofeyev/cc by 2.0

By Kitty Stapp
UNITED NATIONS, May 29 2015 (IPS)

When war breaks out, most non-combatants run the other way. But a handful of courageous reporters see it as their duty to tell the world what’s happening on the ground. And many pay a high price.

Since 1992, 1,129 journalists have been killed on the job, 38 percent of them in war zones, according to figures compiled by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). And increasingly, they are being deliberately targeted."As excellent as it may be, there is no certainty that a new resolution will in and of itself be enough to resolve the problem." -- Christophe Deloire of Reporters Without Borders

In an explicit recognition of the key role of the media in peace and security, the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday unanimously adopted a resolution condemning all violations and abuses committed against journalists and deploring impunity for such acts.

“Recent killings of journalists have been given extensive and welcome attention around the world, including the brutal murders of Western media representatives in Syria,” said U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson.

“Yet we must not forget that around 95 per cent of the killings of journalists in armed conflict concern locally-based journalists, receiving less media coverage,” he added.

Syria remains the deadliest place for journalists, with at least 80 killed there since the conflict erupted in 2011. The second and third places in journalist deaths were shared by Iraq and Ukraine.

According to CPJ, about one quarter of the journalists killed last year were members of the international press, double the proportion the group has documented in recent years.

Eliasson urged member states to implement the U.N. Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, endorsed by the U.N. Chief Executives Board on Apr. 12, 2012.

Its measures include the establishment of a coordinated inter-agency mechanism to handle issues related to the safety of journalists, as well as assisting countries to develop legislation and mechanisms favourable to freedom of expression and information, and supporting their efforts to implement existing international rules and principles.

But this call may fall on deaf ears in some quarters. In March, a military spokesperson for the Saudi-led coalition conducting air strikes in Yemen openly stated that media organisations associated with the Houthi rebels and former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh are legitimate targets.

On Mar. 18, Abdul Kareem al-Khaiwani a Yemeni journalist from Sana’a, was shot and killed by assailants on motorbikes after representing a Houthi group in a conference on Yemen’s future, while on Mar. 26 Shi’ite Houthi militiamen overran the Sana’a headquarters of three satellite television channels: Al-Jazeera, Al-Yaman-Shabab (Yemen-Youth), and Yemen Digital Media.

On Apr. 20, journalist and TV presenter Mohammed Shamsan and three other staff members of Sana’a-based television station Yemen Today were killed in an airstrike that appears to have deliberately targeted the broadcaster’s office.

Christophe Deloire, director-general of Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, said Wednesday that, “It’s historic that the Security Council should make a link between the right to freedom of expression and the need to protect journalists, even though it may seem obvious.”

But Deloire noted that hundreds of journalists have been killed since the last resolution was adopted in 2006 – 25 this year alone – and “as excellent as it may be, there is no certainty that a new resolution will in and of itself be enough to resolve the problem.”

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power singled out Colombia, once considered the most dangerous country for journalists in South America, as taking positive action by establishing a 160-million-dollar annual fund to protect 19 groups, including journalists.

Earlier this week, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos met with representatives of CPJ in Bogota and the Colombian press freedom group Foundation for a Free Press (FLIP) and pledged to prioritise combating impunity in attacks against the press.

While the security situation in Colombia has improved in recent years, impunity is entrenched and threats and violence against journalists continue, according to CPJ research.

“I envision a normal country where journalists won’t need bulletproof cars and bodyguards and will not need any protection,” said Santos, himself a former journalist and one-time president of the freedom of expression commission for the Inter-American Press Association.

“But for now we need to make sure that the programme is properly funded and effective,” he added.

Launched in 2011, the journalist protection programme provides protection for around 7,500 at-risk people, including human rights activists, politicians, and journalists, at a total cost of 600,000 dollars per day.

But the delegation recommended that it also focus on preventing attacks from occurring in the first place.

Colombia ranked eighth on CPJ’s 2014 Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where journalists are slain and their killers go free.

Iraq ranked number one, followed by Somalia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Syria, Afghanistan and Mexico.

At the Security Council meeting, Deloire from Reporters Without Borders called for the creation of a Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the protection of journalists in order to increase the prominence of the issue within the U.N system.

He stressed that a staggering 90 percent of crimes against journalists go unpunished.

“Such a high impunity rate encourages those who want to silence journalists by drowning them in their own blood,” Deloire said.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

For the fourth year running, San Pedro Sula has been one of the most dangerous places on the planet outside of a war zone. Credit: daviditzi/Flickr

By Lisa Haugaard, Sarah Kinosian, and William Hartung
WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb 22 2015 (IPS)

Honduras is one of the most violent nations in the world. The situation in the country’s second largest city, San Pedro Sula, demonstrates the depth of the problem.

For the fourth year running, San Pedro Sula has been one of the most dangerous places on the planet outside of a war zone. Its murder rate in 2014 was an astonishing 171 per 100,000. The city, which is caught in the crossfire between vicious criminal gangs, has been the largest source of the 18,000 Honduran children who have fled to the United States in recent years.

The vast majority of killings in Honduras are carried out with impunity. For example, 97 percent of the murders in San Pedro Sula go unsolved.

Corruption within and abuses by the civilian police undermine its effectiveness. A controversial new internal security force, the Military Police of Public Order (Policia Militar del Orden Publico, or PMOP), does not carry out investigations needed to deter crime and is facing a series of allegations of abuses in the short time it has been deployed. There are currently 3,000 PMOP soldiers deployed throughout the country, but this number is expected to grow to 5,000 this year. The national police feel that the government is starving them for funds and trying to replace them with PMOP."The vast majority of killings in Honduras are carried out with impunity."

The rise of PMOP is part of a larger trend toward the militarization of government and civil society. The military is now in charge of most aspects of public security in Honduras. But the signs of militarization are everywhere. Each Saturday, for example, 25,000 kids receive military training as part of the “Guardians of the Homeland” program, which the government says is designed to keep youths age 5-23 from joining the street gangs that control entire sections of the country’s most violent cities.

But putting more guns on the street is unlikely to sustainably stem the tide of violence in Honduras. What would make a difference is an end to the climate of impunity that allows murderers to kill people with no fear of consequences.

“This country needs to strengthen its capacity and will to carry out criminal investigations. This is the key to everything,” said an expert on violence in Honduras who spent years working in justice agencies there, and who spoke on condition of anonymity for reasons of personal safety.

The Three-Fold Challenge

The Honduran government faces three key challenges: It must reform a corrupt and abusive police force, strengthen criminal investigations, and ensure an impartial and independent judiciary.

Police reform appears to be stalled. There was some hope after the surge of civilian pressure for reform that followed the 2011 killing of the son of the rector for the Autonomous National University of Honduras and a friend. The Commission for the Reform of Public Security produced a series of proposals to improve the safety of the Honduran citizenry, including recommendations for improving police training, disciplinary procedures, and the structure of pubic security institutions.

Unfortunately, the Honduran Congress dissolved the commission in January 2014, during the lame duck period before President Juan Orlando Hernandez took office. Few of its recommendations have been carried out.

“They could have purged and trained the police during this time. But instead they put 5,000 military police on the street who don’t know what a chain of custody is,” lamented the expert on violence.

The Honduran government claims that over 2,000 police officers have been purged since May 2012, but there is little public information that would allow for an independent assessment of the reasons for the dismissals. And even when police are removed, they are not prosecuted; some are even allowed to return to the force. This is no way to instill accountability.

Meanwhile, the independence of the Honduran justice system is under attack. Since November 2013, the Judiciary Council has dismissed 29 judges and suspended 28 without an appropriate process, according to a member of the Association of Judges for Democracy. “This means that judges feel intimidated. They feel if they rule against well-connected people, against politicians, they can be dismissed.”

In an attempt to improve investigations and prosecutions, special units have been created to investigate specific types of crimes. For example, the Special Victims Task Force was created in 2011 to tackle crimes against vulnerable groups such as journalists, human rights advocates, and the LGBT community. This approach has been funded by the United States. It has promise, but the results are unclear so far. So is the question of whether the success of these specialized efforts can lead to broader improvements in the judicial system.

Protecting the Protectors

Providing security for justice operators is a particularly daunting problem. From 2010 to December 2014, 86 legal professionals were killed, according to information received by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Although the state provides some protection, the funding allocated for this purpose is inadequate. “In a country with the highest levels of violence and impunity in the region,” noted the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “the State necessarily has a special obligation to protect, so that its justice sector operators can carry out their work to fight impunity without becoming victims in the very cases they are investigating.”

To try and target the problems driving the endemic violence in Honduras, the government, joined by the governments of Guatemala and El Salvador, has released its Alliance for Prosperity plan, which is designed to increase investment in infrastructure and encourage foreign investment. The Obama administration has announced that it will ask Congress for $1 billion to help fund the initiative, but details about the security strategy are scarce.

It remains to be seen exactly how this money will be spent. Looking at San Pedro Sula, it is clear that a dramatic change in political will would be needed for any initiative of this kind to be successful. International donors should not support a militarized security strategy, which would intensify abuses and fail to provide sustainable citizen security.

Funding for well-designed, community-based violence prevention programs could be helpful, but only if there is a government willing to reform the police, push for justice, and invest in the education, jobs, violence prevention, health, child protection, and community development programs needed to protect its poorest citizens.

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. This article originally appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus.

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

Excerpt:

The funeral procession for Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana in Gaza. Shana was killed by an Israeli Defence Force tank in April 2008 because, eyewitnesses said, he had begun to film the tanks that were firing. The resulting investigation by the Israelis led to no disciplinary action. Credit: Mohammed Omer/IPS

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 4 2014 (IPS)

A new report published by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) shows that nine out of 10 cases of journalist killings go unpunished.

The report found that between 2004 and 2013, 370 journalists were murdered “in direct retaliation for their work” and that in 90 percent of these cases there was total impunity – “no arrests, no prosecutions, no convictions.”“Syria is a graveyard of journalism and journalists who go there." -- Nadia Bilbassy-Charters

CPJ also found that although “in some cases, the assassin or an accomplice has been convicted, in only a handful is the mastermind of the crime brought to justice.”

The report’s author, Elisabeth Witchel, told IPS, “Impunity has really grown to be one of the greatest threats to journalist safety. When journalists are killed, and no one is prosecuted, it opens the doors for new attacks to take place.

“It’s not just one story, it’s not just one journalist that is killed, the whole media community feels intimidated.

“Journalists feel insecure if one of their own is killed and there’s no official justice. It builds a climate of intimidation and can lead to underreporting of very important issues.”

Witchel said that the issues that journalists who have been killed with impunity cover are crucial to their communities and include crime, corruption, human rights, conflict and politics.

The report was published to coincide with the first International day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists on Nov. 2.

Investigative journalist Eric Mwamba from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) told IPS how the fear of being arrested, tortured and the risk of losing his life has affected his work as a journalist.

“To my knowledge, no perpetrator of violence against journalists in Africa has been held accountable,” Mwamba said.

Mwamba added that defamation laws and the ambiguous notion of contempt were also used by the Congolese justice system to try to muzzle journalists.

This was particularly relevant when working on financial stories, he said. Due to strong links between public and private interests in the DRC, state actors are also often shareholders in companies being investigated, Mwamba said.

“During my term as president of the Forum for African Investigative Reporters, I studied some cases. I remember the case of Didace Namujimbo, a journalist for Radio Okapi who was murdered in the east of the DRC. Judicial investigations, unfortunately, did not provide a favourable outcome.”

“I hope that with the fall of the regime of President Blaise Compaore in Burkina Faso this week, the new authorities would help to know the truth about the assassination of Norbert Zongo, another journalist killed in 1998 in this country,” Mwamba said.

Mwamba was forced to leave the DRC because of his investigative journalism, and has since lived and worked in several other countries and regions, including in West Africa and in Australia.

He told IPS, “I don’t think there is anything worse in life than when someone is forced to leave his country for fear of losing his life.”

At a discussion held at the United Nations on Monday, panelists discussed the role of the United Nations, national governments, the judiciary and the public in ending impunity in crimes against journalists.

Al-Arabiya News Channel foreign correspondent Nadia Bilbassy-Charters, who recently reported on human rights violations near Syria’s border, spoke about the huge risks faced by journalists working in the Middle East.  Two-thirds of the journalists killed in recent years were working in the Middle East, she said,

“Syria is a graveyard of journalism and journalists who go there,” she said.

Bilbassy-Charters added that most of the journalists who are killed are local freelancers who have no one to protect them.

“They take an enormous risk just to tell the world what’s happening. And even with that risk, I don’t know if the world is responding, especially in Syria. It’s a moral failure of the 21^st century what is happening in Syria,” she said.

Journalist safety and the post-2015 development agenda

Deputy Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO) Getachew Engida told the panel that UNESCO and media advocacy organisations from across the world are advocating for media freedom to be incorporated into the United Nations Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda.

“For now, freedom of expression, the safety of journalists and ending impunity are not included as such in the proposed agenda to follow post-2015,” he said.

He said that UNESCO is advocating to “ensure recognition of the importance of freedom of expression for sustainable development and to enhance the safety of those who make this possible.

“Every journalist killed is a day without news, a day when freedom of expression is undermined, when basic human rights are violated, when the rule of law and democracy are weakened. The climate of fear created by impunity throws a shadow over the sustainable development of entire societies,” Engida said.

Joel Simon, CPJ’s director, told the panel, “When it comes to actual violence committed against journalists, when it comes to levels of impunity, the trends are moving in the wrong direction. In fact, these last two years have been the most deadly and the most dangerous that CPJ has ever documented. Record numbers of journalists killed, record numbers of journalists imprisoned.

“I have a concern that governments, the U.N. system, the public could mistake awareness, which is good, for progress.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Manoj Mitta speaks at MIT. Credit: Beena Sarwar

By Beena Sarwar
BOSTON, Oct 25 2014 (IPS)

As senior Indian journalist Manoj Mitta was testifying before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. Congress last month about mass violence and impunity in India, President Barack Obama escorted India’s newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Martin Luther King Memorial.

“They were just three miles away,” Mitta told IPS, commenting on the irony of this coincidence, remembering that the United States had banned Modi’s entry on the mass violence on his watch in 2002 leading to the killing of about 1,000 Muslims in Gujarat state.“We can no longer pass off the shielding of mass murderers as the ‘internal affairs’ of any country. " -- Manoj Mitta

“Why should the U.S. Congress hold a hearing on human rights violations in India?” asked one Boston-based Indian expatriate on hearing about this. “By that token, we can have hearings in India about racial killings in the USA.”

“Why not indeed?” responds Mitta, a senior editor with The Times of India in New Delh, speaking to IPS in Boston when he was here for a talk at MIT, one of several book talks at universities around the country.

Focusing on legal and public policy issues, transparency and judicial accountability, both his books dissect judicial inquiries into the deadliest instances of communal violence in India: “When a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 carnage and its Aftermath”, co-authored with the eminent lawyer H. S. Phoolka (2007), and “The Fiction of Fact-Finding: Modi and Godhra” (2014).

The Lantos Commission event titled “Thirty Years of Impunity“, in collaboration with the Sikh Coalition, commemorated the 1984 carnage of Sikhs in the aftermath of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards. Over 2,500 Sikhs were massacred in Delhi alone in just three days.

There is also a class-based element to such mass-violence, notes Boston-based writer and poet Sarbpreet Singh, whose long poem “Kultar’s Mime” about the 1984 carnage is currently being performed in the U.S., Canada and India. “Most people who suffered and died were very poor.”

After Boston, New York, Ottawa and Toronto, the compelling show will be performed in India — Delhi (Oct. 30-Nov. 1), Chandigarh (Nov. 2), and Amritsar (Nov. 4), before heading to the U.S. west coast: Los Angeles (Nov. 20-23) and San Francisco Bay Area (Dec. 6-7).

A scene from Kultar’s Mime. Credit: Sikh Research Institute – sikhri.org

“The ongoing struggles for justice in India gain strength from expressions of solidarity from abroad,” said Mitta. “We can no longer pass off the shielding of mass murderers as the ‘internal affairs’ of any country. As Martin Luther King famously put it, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’.”

Mitta quotes an old Sanskrit saying, “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (the world is one family) – which Modi also invoked in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly.

But Modi was speaking “in terms of commerce and business,” says Mitta. “With the world being increasingly globalised on the economic front, more than globalisation of the economy, we need a universalisation of human rights standards and practices.”

Mitta, who also addressed the British Parliament commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 1984 carnage five years ago, says he would like countries to talk about each other’s human rights violations.

“Those violations affect not just the country they take place in. There are also spin-off effects that impact other countries,” he says. “Like, an unstable Pakistan is bad for India, and violations in India are bad for America.”

“Human rights should remain on the agenda,” adds Mitta, who has written extensively on the undermining of the rule of law in India – patterns that are visible in other South Asian nations too.

“Could such a mass crime, in which rampaging mobs fatally attacked hundreds of people, have ever occurred in Washington DC?” he asks. “And could the perpetrators of mass murder have got away with it? Could the security forces in the USA have colluded with the mobs as blatantly as they did in Delhi.”

“Could your president have dared to justify the mass crimes, as Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi did, by declaring that when a big tree had fallen, the earth was bound to shake?” he asked in his presentation to the Lantos Commission.

Such questions would seem equally inconceivable about other leading capital cities too. Whatever the provocation, could there ever have been such massacres, at any rate post-World War II, in London, Paris, Berlin or Tokyo?”

Looking beyond liberal democracies, the scale of the bloodshed in Delhi 1984 is “perhaps comparable to what happened in Beijing five years later, during the Tiananmen Square massacre” – committed by security forces operating in a single-party political system.

In fact, the death toll of Delhi 1984 was similar to that of 9/11 – the big difference being that “9/11 was the result of sudden and unforeseen terror attacks, not mob violence that deliberately remained unchecked for three days. By any standards of the civilised world, Delhi 1984 is one of a kind, a monstrosity without a parallel.”

And yet, it took 23 years for the first book on this subject to be published – Mitta and Phoolka’s, in 2007. It was made possible by a new inquiry commission established in 2000 seeking to undo the damage caused by the earlier one that had held all its findings in secrecy and not given due hearing to survivors.

The new commission, headed by former Supreme Court judge G.T. Nanavati, conducted its proceedings in public and released many old records related to the 1984 carnage.

“India’s appalling lack of documentation culture, especially on human rights issues is clearly a deficiency that is another reason for the impunity,” believes Mitta.

In the case of 1984, there have been about 30 convictions for murder in 30 years. The Gujarat carnage of 2002 has seen some 200 convictions, due to the Supreme Court’s intervention. The SC transferred some high-profile cases out of Gujarat and appointed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into some of the worst cases from 2002.

However, the SIT “balked at asking questions” or challenging Modi on any of his evasive or contradictory replies while examining him. Because of this “fact-fudging rather than fact-finding,” says Mitta, Modi ended up not facing trial, as recommended by the Supreme Court appointed amicus curiae.

It was only after the SIT exonerated him that Modi became the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. “The Supreme Court has yet to pronounce on Modi’s innocence or guilt.”

The Indian prime minister has called for a 10-year moratorium on caste and communal violence, urging Indians to stay focused on the challenges of economic development.

But Modi has taken no action or even condemn those who have since violated this moratorium by stepping up their hate speech. His “strategic silence” and “denial mode, pretending that there’s no escalation of religious tensions under his rule, effectively adds another layer of impunity,” says Mitta.

The bottom line, he adds: If it is allowed to continue, impunity for hate speech and violence in India will eventually impact U.S. corporations seeking to do business with India. Impunity affects all, whether it is for corporate corruption or human rights abuses.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Mothers of the disappeared march in central Mexico City in May 2012. Credit: Daniela Pastrana/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Feb 8 2014 (IPS)

Tita Radilla is waiting, somewhat sceptically, for Mexican military personnel accused of carrying out forced disappearances to be brought before civilian courts. It is a demand that has spanned the past five decades.

Her father, Rosendo Radilla, was abducted by soldiers in August 1974 in the southern state of Guerrero, and Tita has searched tirelessly for him ever since, through the press, national courts and international bodies."Justice is too slow. There are no criminal prosecutions, no arrests and no trials." -- Tita Radilla

She took her complaint to the San José-based Inter-American Court on Human Rights, which in November 2009 ruled that the Mexican state was responsible for violating the rights to personal liberty, to humane treatment, and to life of Rosendo Radilla, a community leader in the municipality of Atoyac, 400 kilometres southeast of the capital city.

“It has been our struggle. It matters because of the huge efforts involved. We think being able to try the military in civilian courts is an achievement. It is a recognition of our efforts,” Tita Radilla told IPS.

On Tuesday, Feb. 4, the Mexican senate withdrew Mexico’s reservation to the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons that allowed military authorities to investigate and punish the crime of enforced disappearance.

Conservative President Enrique Peña Nieto, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), requested that the senate abolish the reservation in October, as part of Mexico’s commitments to comply with the Inter-American Court ruling.

While other countries like Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala and Uruguay have made progress with holding trials of cases of forced disappearances, these crimes have remained completely unpunished in Mexico.

Forced disappearances have multiplied in recent years as paramilitary militias, drug cartels and human traffickers  have become involved in the crime. According to some estimates, there may be 30,000 victims or more.

“In our countries, the laws are not enforced. Justice is too slow. There are no criminal prosecutions, no arrests and no trials,” complained Radilla, who is the vice president of the Mexican Association of Relatives of the Disappeared (AFADEM).

Other activists share her scepticism.

“There won’t be any changes. We have heard many promises that have only served to make a lot of people busy, without any of our loved ones appearing or any trials happening,” said Martha Camacho, president of the Union of Mothers with Disappeared Children of Sinaloa (UMHDS), a state in western Mexico.

The disappearances must be “regarded as crimes against humanity that have no statute of limitation,” she said.

In August 1977, when Camacho and her husband, José Manuel Alapizco, were both 21, they were taken from their home in the northwestern city of Culiacán by agents of the Federal Security Directorate and municipal and traffic police.

The couple were active in the September 23 Communist League, and Camacho was pregnant. They were both tortured. Alapizco was executed and his body was never found.

After 47 days in captivity, her parents paid a ransom and Camacho and her newborn son were freed.

UMHDS was created in 1978 and documented 47 forced disappearances occurring in Sinaloa between 1975 and 1983.

Guadalupe Pérez, a member of Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Oblivion and Silence (HIJOS Mexico), is also a sceptic.

“It is surprising that it has taken nearly 12 years to put this situation to rights, and that it took the result of the Radilla case to see that much of what Mexico promotes on the international stage is not entirely enforced domestically,” said Pérez.

His father, Tomás Pérez, disappeared May 1, 1990, allegedly at the hands of paramilitaries, in the municipality of Pantepec in the southern state of Puebla.

The victim, 39 years old at the time, was active in the Central Campesina Independiente (Independent Peasant Union) fighting land seizures from the local rural population.

HIJOS documented 561 disappearances between 1969 and 2010.

The National Human Rights Commission examined 532 cases from the 1960s and 1970s, during the “dirty war” between state armed forces and leftwing guerrillas, activists and social leaders.

Non-governmental organisations say disappearances during this period number over a thousand.

The ruling PRI party is in the awkward situation of having to investigate PRI governments that were in power when the disappearances began in the late 1960s, and prosecute those responsible.

A Special Prosecutor’s Office working from 2000 to 2006 documented 12 massacres, 120 extrajudicial executions, 800 disappearances and 2,000 cases of torture of detainees, especially in the 1960s and 1970s.

“The main thing is for the state to carry out a thorough and effective investigation to find Rosendo,” said Radilla.

In spite of the Inter-American Court ruling, since May 2013 there has been no official attempt to find his remains.

In Guerrero, AFADEM opened criminal lawsuits in 126 cases. Since April 2012 this state has had a special commission to investigate violations of human rights during the dirty war, which has documented dozens of crimes.

One barrier to its work is that the national Attorney General’s Office has denied it access to testimonies and files collected by various state bodies.

There has been “a great pretence over 44 years, because forced disappearances continue to happen. Those who are in power bear the political responsibility, because they continue to avoid investigating or saying where” the disappeared are, Pérez complained.

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.

In 2007, Angeline Mwarusena, who lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was repeatedly raped by soldiers from Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Becky Bergdahl
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2012 (IPS)

At a high-level event at the United Nations in New York on Tuesday, U.N. Women, the United Nations body for female empowerment and gender equality, called for stronger action from world leaders to prevent and punish sexual violence in conflict.

“The fact remains that women’s bodies remain a battleground, and impunity remains the norm rather than the exception,” said Michelle Bachelet, a former president of Chile and the current executive director of U.N. Women. “The experience of women during and after conflict continues to be one of violence and insecurity.”

According to Bachelet, an individual’s access to justice after a conflict is highly dependent upon that person’s gender. Compared to male victims, female victims of war crimes are less likely to see their cases taken to court and are less likely to receive reparations.

Bachelet suggested three strategies that could help begin to tackle the problem.

The first, expanding women’s participation in post-conflict recovery, “provides an opportunity for women to ensure that peace agreements, new laws and new constitutions do not reinforce the pre-existing status quo and that they advance equality and justice”, Bachelet said.

Underscoring her point is the fact that according to U.N. Women, in recent peace negotiations, women have represented less than eight percent of participants. Less than three percent of signatories to peace agreements have been women, and no woman has ever been appointed chief or lead mediator in U.N.-sponsored peace talks.

Bachelet also said that women’s organisations must be supported by the world’s governments in order to take on and address gender inequalities that “make women more vulnerable to sexual and gender-based crimes during and after conflicts”.

Finally, Bachelet said, the international community, national governments, civil society and individual actors must cooperate to secure accountability for conflict-related, gender-based crimes.

As part of an effort to tackle the issue of and reduce gender-based crimes in times of conflict, U.N. Women and the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations together have initiated “the first ever scenario-based training for military peacekeepers” to prevent sexual violence, Bachelet announced at the meeting.

“We are currently testing this training in major troop contributing countries,” Bachelet said. “Earlier this month, a first training took place in The Hague on investigating cases of sexual and gender-based violence as international crimes.”

Zainab Bangura, recently appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General on sexual violence in conflict, added at the meeting that “for too long, conflict-related sexual violence has been largely cost-free for those who rape women, children and men, whereas the costs have been borne by the victims”.

“Even as we ensure that survivors receive the care and services they require, we must insist that sexual violence in conflict is not inevitable, but that the consequences for the perpetrators are,” Bangura stated.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague elaborated on what victims endure in bearing the costs of the crime, emphasising that the silence surrounding sexual assault often is even harder to break when it comes to crimes committed against men and children.

“We must break the silence if we are to achieve sustainable peace and prosperity,” Hague said. “The UK stands ready to put its full weight this agenda, as a catalyst for others to take action.”

Renowned American peace activist and feminist Jody Williams, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work on banning antipersonnel landmines, agreed with Hague.

“Survivors of sexual violence are brutalised twice – first by the perpetrators of the crimes against them, and the second time by governments that fail to apply the rule of law and ensure justice for survivors,” Williams concluded.

The side event to the 67th U.N. General Assembly was arranged by U.N. Women in cooperation with the UK Foreign Secretary, the Office of the Special-Representative of the Secretary-General on sexual violence in conflict, and the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict.

By Danilo Valladares
GUATEMALA CITY, Sep 25 2012 (IPS)

Since Claudia Paz y Paz Bailey became attorney general in Guatemala in 2010, a string of crimes involving military personnel who fought leftwing guerrillas, drug traffickers and organised crime have been cleared up.

The mild manner of this 46-year-old doctor in criminal law and human rights contrasts with her determination in carrying out her difficult task, to the extent that in August the U.S. magazine Forbes named her as one of “the most powerful women changing the world in politics and public policy.”

In March, Newsweek, another U.S. magazine, named her, among 12 Latin Americans, one of the 150 most fearless women in the world, and in 2011 she was given the International Crisis Group’s Stephen J. Solarz Award for her work “promoting peaceful, just and open societies in some of the world’s most conflict-affected regions.”

The murder of Argentine singer-songwriter Facundo Cabral is one of the high-profile crimes cleared up under Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz Bailey. Credit: Danilo Valladares/IPS

In this interview with IPS, Paz y Paz Bailey described how she has started restructuring the public prosecutor’s office, leading to the handing down of a large number of sentences. In this impoverished Central American country of 15 million people, 98 percent of all crimes go unpunished, according to the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG).

Q: Nearly two years after taking office, what do you think has been your greatest success?

A: Building a team to work together, in the attorney general’s office as well as in the different branches of the public prosecutor’s office. That team has allowed things to happen that were previously thought to be impossible, such as clearing up homicides, and pursuing drug traffickers, corruption and so on.

Q: What results do you value the most?

A: Emblematic cases have been solved on the basis of scientific evidence, for instance: the murder of Argentine singer-songwriter Facundo Cabral, the murders of mayoral candidates in San José Pinula, a municipality close to the capital city, and the fraud case involving the mayor of Antigua Guatemala.

Also, over 60 people belonging to Los Zetas (a violent Mexican drug trafficking group) have been sentenced, and extraditable drug traffickers have been arrested, among them many members of the Lorenzana family, as well as Horst Overdick and Juan Ortiz Chamalé.

The justice system had not produced these results in Guatemala before, but now this is happening, and it has also contributed to a 20 percent decline in violent deaths.

In 2009, the year with the highest murder rate, there were over 6,000 violent deaths, equivalent to 46 per 100,000 population, while in 2011 there were 39 per 100,000 population.

The murder rate fell by seven percentage points in that period and has continued to decline.

Q: How have you built your working team?

A: With two basic tools. One is knowledge from the outside of how the public prosecutor’s office works in different instances, such as investigations and diagnoses. And the other is a system of performance evaluation which allows us to assess each person’s work.

Q: Newsweek and Forbes magazines have recognised your work for its fearlessness and achievements. What does this mean to you?

A: The awards are very important because they support not only my action, but our joint action as an institution. One person alone could not do everything that has been done in these two years.

In reality, it is recognition of the work of a team of people. In fact, those who carry out searches or investigations and prosecute cases are a group of prosecutors, men and women.

And that international recognition is echoed in the voices of many Guatemalan citizens who are saying that the work of the public prosecutor’s office has improved. Even people filing charges tell me: I didn’t dare to bring an accusation before, but now I do.

Q: You have successfully prosecuted several military personnel for abuses committed during the 1960-1996 civil war. What outcome do you expect in the case of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983), who is accused of genocide?

A: There are two cases in which genocide charges have been brought, one in Área Ixil, Quiché (a massacre of 371 indigenous people in the west of the country) and another in Dos Erres, Petén (a massacre of 201 people in the north), both of them perpetrated in 1982.

Ríos Montt is being prosecuted for both these cases. The defence lawyers have basically hindered the progress of the trials, rather than present arguments intended to show the innocence of the accused.

This strategy has blocked the Dos Erres case for nearly 10 years. A motion is made and if that doesn’t work, a constitutional appeal is lodged, and so forth.

The inter-American system of human rights has handed down rulings strongly condemning these practices, and there are also judges, both men and women, who refuse to play that game. I hope that now, in the 21st century, we can fulfil the constitutional promise of prompt and effective justice.

Both cases are extremely solid. We expect, of course, a conviction and sentencing.

Q: What would conviction of Ríos Montt mean for the Guatemalan justice system?

A: If there is a verdict of conviction in these cases, as in other instances of particularly violent crimes against life, gender violence or particularly costly crimes like corruption, it sends a signal to society that these things cannot be done, and if they are, there will be consequences in the context of the rule of law, in other words a conviction.

The rule of law is the same for all. It does not matter who the victim is or who the perpetrator, a crime must be punished. Perhaps the only consideration is the gravity of the crime, in making its investigation and punishment a priority.

And in this case, as in others, when we are talking about someone who was head of state, the message of equality before the law is strengthened.

Q: What is your assessment of CICIG’s work?

A: In terms of its work with the public prosecutor’s office, the most important aspect has been the transfer of capabilities in joint cases as well as the strengthening of the crime analysis unit, the financial analysis unit, the department of security and the office of witness protection.

As for the country, it has done away with the sense that the judicial branch was not up to solving certain types of case. CICIG has demonstrated that extremely complex cases can be cleared up with scientific evidence and within the context of the rule of law.

Q: How far will you be able to progress with the fight against impunity during your term of office?

A: The best and most important legacy we can leave is a strategic working method that on the one hand reduces impunity because crimes are cleared up and criminals are punished, while on the other it prevents further crimes being committed.

Excerpt:

Panahi Gholamhousein (22), an Afghan refugee who spends his days in a room that is barely five square metres with his wife Zarmina (18) and their 19-month-old daughter Zahra, has hardly left his place in downtown Athens since he was beaten up and robbed nearly a month ago.

Extremist sympathisers in the Greek police force breed impunity. Credit: George Laoutaris/CC-BY-ND-2.0

The four attackers “unleashed their dogs on me”, he told IPS. The incident shook him badly, confining him to an apartment shared with many other irregular migrants living in squalid conditions.

The young family – who lost legal status some months ago after withdrawing their asylum application to Greek authorities in exchange for a return ticket to Afghanistan – embody the predicament faced by many migrants caught in a rising wave of xenophobia.

The last three years have seen racist attacks dominating the streets of Athens, spreading fast throughout the country.

Some experts blame the situation on the social stress caused by an extended period of economic austerity – unemployment rates are fast approaching 30 percent and approximately 25 percent of the Greek population now lives below the poverty line.

Last Saturday at 2 a.m. a group of three unidentified assailants used an incendiary explosive device in an attempt to burn Pakistani immigrants alive in their home while they slept.

Navit Navaz was awakened by an explosion from a flaming bottle of gasoline that landed on the edge of the bed. Navaz was subsequently brought to Thriasio Hospital and admitted to the intensive care unit with severe burns on his back and hands.

Two months ago Human Rights Watch released a report describing how gangs of Greeks carry out attacks against migrants with almost total impunity. Authorities are reportedly ignoring complaints, or discouraging victims from filing them at all.

On Jul. 23, the rape and attempted murder of a 15-year-old girl in the island of Paros by a Pakistani migrant worker, Ahmed Vakas, fueled a wave of attacks against foreigners during which Iraq Aladin, an Iraqi immigrant, was beaten and stabbed to death by five hooded youngsters on Aug. 12.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), along with 20 organisations that comprise the Racist Violence Recording Network, blamed the deterioration of social relations on the “the inability or reluctance of the law enforcement authorities to carry out arrests”.

Extremists on the rise

Many of the attacks are allegedly linked to the neo-fascist party Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) that entered parliament last June with 6.9 percent of the vote and is now climbing even higher in the polls.

So far the organisation has not accepted responsibility for instigating the attacks but continues to endorse racist initiatives. Thus far, only two violent attacks have been linked directly to the party, one against four fishermen at Perama and one in central Athens that involved a Golden Dawn candidate.

According to migrant communities more than 400 attacks took place last year alone, but very few people have been arrested and none of the perpetrators has faced justice.

Opposition MPs and activists claim that Golden Dawn supporters inside the security apparatus breed a culture of impunity.

The problematic relationship between the organisation and elements within the Greek police force provoked close attention two weeks ago when Golden Dawn supporters, along with two of the party’s official deputies, Giorgos Germenis and Panayiotis Iliopoulos, checked legal documents and attacked immigrants’ stalls at a church fair in Rafina, a small town northeast of Athens.

As legitimate members of parliament these deputies have immunity and cannot be arrested by the police.

Furthermore, the local police director failed to report the incident to her central command for two hours and claimed that the deployed forces were not “strong enough to intervene” despite her own description of the incident as verbal abuse.

Victims of the attack have denounced police for turning a blind eye to their vulnerability and the police director of Rafina has been suspended from service.

However, a pattern of impunity for such officials suggests that she might soon resume her post, with the possibility of a promotion.

Golden Dawn has promoted the events in a bid to present itself as a force that guarantees the interest and protection of Greek citizens.

Nikolaos Dendias, minister of public order and citizen protection and commander of all Greek security forces, has stripped Golden Dawn deputies of their police protection following these incidents and allegations.

In a symbolic move the organisation responded by suing the minister and since then it has continued to challenge of state authority – despite allegations from activists that members of the police force and extremists are working hand in glove.

Effective control over the security apparatus by the political leadership is an issue of acute concern according to Anastassia Tsoukala, a criminologist at Paris University XI and former advisor to the ex-minister of citizen protection.

In a recent article that appeared on the local ‘TVXS’ online news site, Tsoukala argued that there is ample proof of mutually beneficial relationships between low ranking policemen and extremists.

“According to information in our hands from the last national elections, a very big percentage of the police personnel share the same ideology as the perpetrators of racist attacks,” Tsoukala wrote.

The percentage of Golden Dawn voters that work for the security apparatus was estimated to be between 17.2 and 23.04 percent in 11 electoral sectors during both national elections last summer.

This relationship is a “danger to the pubic order” according to Tsoukala.

Antonis Liakopoulos, vice president of the Association of Attika Police Officers, responded to these challenges with the assertion that the abuse of authority is a common phenomenon among police forces around the world, “but one should not generalise over these cases”.

The real problem, according to Liakopoulos, is the large numbers of Greek officers who have suffered major wage cuts, and security structures that operate on budgets that are inadequate to support their basic needs.

“This is what makes the police ineffective and unable to offer safety,” he told IPS.

“In a society going through such an acute crisis, wherever police and state institutions fail to exercise effective control, other groups see an opportunity to promote their own agenda,” he added.

Still, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, in a speech to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council last week, highlighted Greek police ineffectiveness in addressing and preventing “violent xenophobic attacks against migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in recent months”.

Dendias’ repeated promises to establish a special force to address racist violence are still pending. Prosecutor Ioannis Tentes has instructed police stations around the country to stop and, if necessary, apprehend members of the parliament if they become involved in unlawful actions.

(END)

Rights groups denounced the decision not to pursue prosecutions of CIA officers who may have been responsible for the deaths of two prisoners in their custody. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Sep 1 2012 (IPS)

U.S. human rights groups have roundly condemned Thursday’s announcement by Attorney General Eric Holder that the Justice Department will not pursue prosecutions of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers who may have been responsible for the deaths of two prisoners in their custody.

The announcement appeared to mark the end of all efforts by the U.S. government to hold CIA interrogators accountable for torture and mistreating prisoners detained during the so-called “Global War on Terror” launched shortly after the Al Qaeda attacks on Sep. 11, 2001.

For rights activists and for supporters of President Barack Obama, it was the latest in a series of disappointing decisions, including the failure to close the detention facility at the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba. They had hoped Obama would not only end the excesses of President George W. Bush’s prosecution of the war, but also conduct a full investigation of those excesses, if not prosecute those responsible.

“This is truly a disastrous development,” said Laura Pitter, counter-terrorism advisor at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “To now have no accountability whatsoever for any of the CIA abuses for which there are now mountains of evidence is just appalling.”

“It completely undermines the U.S.’s ability to have any credibility on any of these issues in other countries, even as it calls for other countries to account for abuses and prosecute cases of torture and mistreatment,” she told IPS.

“Continuing impunity threatens to undermine the universally recognised prohibition on torture and other abusive treatment and sends the dangerous signal to government officials that there will be no consequences for their use of torture and other cruelty,” noted Jameel Jaffar, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“Today’s decision not to file charges against individuals who tortured prisoners to death is yet another entry in what is already a shameful record.”

In his announcement, Holder suggested that crimes were indeed committed in the two cases that were being investigated by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham but that convictions were unlikely.

“Based on the fully developed factual record concerning the two deaths, the department has declined prosecution because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said.

The two deaths took place at a secret CIA detention facility known as the Salt Pit in Afghanistan in 2002 and at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison the following year. The victims have been identified as Gul Rahman, a suspected Taliban militant, and Manadel Al-Jamadi, an alleged Iraqi insurgent.

The two were the last reviewed by Durham, who had originally been tasked by Bush’s attorney general, Michael Mukasey, in 2008 with conducting a criminal investigation into CIA interrogators’ use of “waterboarding” against detainees and the apparently intentional destruction of interrogation videotapes that recorded those sessions.

In August 2009, Holder expanded Durham’s mandate to include 101 cases of alleged mistreatment by CIA interrogators of detainees held abroad to determine whether any of them may be liable to prosecution.

At the time, he also stressed that he would not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the controversial legal guidance given by the Bush administration regarding possible “enhanced interrogation” techniques that could be used against detainees.

Such techniques, which include waterboarding, the use of stress positions and extreme heat and cold, are widely considered torture by human rights groups and international legal experts. As such, they violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture (CAT), as well as the Geneva Conventions and a 1996 U.S. federal law against torture.

Holder’s position was consistent with Obama’s statement, which human rights groups also strongly criticised, shortly after taking office in 2009 that he did not want CIA officials to “suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering” to escape prosecution and that he preferred “to look forward as opposed to…backwards”.

In his first days in office, Obama ordered all secret CIA detention facilities closed and banned the enhanced techniques authorised by his predecessor.

In late 2010, Durham announced that he would not pursue criminal charges related to the destruction of the CIA videotapes. Seven months later, he recommended that, of the 101 cases of alleged CIA abuse referred to him, only two warranted full criminal investigations in which CIA officers had allegedly exceeded the Bush administration’s guidelines for permissible interrogation techniques.

Now that Holder and Durham have concluded that prosecutions of the individuals involved are unlikely to result in convictions, it appears certain that no CIA officer will be prosecuted in a U.S. jurisdiction. Prosecutions of Bush officials responsible for authorising the “enhanced interrogation” techniques have also been ruled out.

In 2006, a private contractor for the CIA was successfully prosecuted and sentenced to six years in prison for beating an Afghan detainee to death three years before.

Some commentators suggested that these decisions, including the dropping of the two remaining cases, have been motivated primarily by political considerations. Indeed, HRW director Kenneth Roth wrote in an op-ed last year that “dredging up the crimes of the previous administration was seen as too distracting and too antagonistic an enterprise when Republican votes were needed”.

In a statement Thursday, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee praised Holder’s decision. Republicans protested Holder’s referral of the 101 cases to Durham in 2009.

But rights activists expressed great frustration. Holder’s announcement “is disappointing because it’s well documented that in the aftermath of 9/11, torture and abuse were widespread and systematic,” said Melina Milazzo of Human Rights First (HRF), which has been one of the most aggressive groups in investigating and publicising torture and abuse by U.S. intelligence and military personnel.

“It’s shocking that the department’s review of hundreds of instances of torture and abuse will fail to hold even one person accountable.”

Similarly, the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR) noted that Holder’s announcement “belies U.S. claims that it can be trusted to hold accountable Americans who have perpetrated torture and other human rights abuses”.

It said the decision “underscores the need for independent investigations elsewhere, such as the investigation in Spain, to continue”. Victims and rights groups including CCR filed criminal complaints against former Bush officials in Spanish courts in 2009, launching two separate investigations by judges there.

“It does not matter if we ever find out who killed Saleem; whoever it was has destroyed my family,” says Anita Shahzad, Saleem Shahzad’s 36-year-old widow and mother of three. “It won’t bring him back,” she tells IPS.

Saleem Sahzad’s body was found two days after his abduction on May 31, last year near Mandi Bahauddin, 130 kilometres southeast of the federal capital Islamabad. The body bore marks of torture.

Shahzad, who was Pakistan’s bureau chief for Asia Times Online, a Hong Kong-based news site, had told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that he had been getting threats from intelligence agencies.

His book ‘Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban’ was released just weeks before his murder. It contained insight into Al-Qaeda and Taliban factions – he had, at different times, been their hostage and their guest.

His wife cannot bring herself to read the book.

One dispatch by Saleem Shahzad was on an incident at Mehran naval base in Karachi on May 22, 2011. The base was under siege by militants for over 15 hours. Six military officials and five militants were killed in the fighting. Three aircraft were destroyed with rocket-propelled grenades. Last month three naval officers were court-martialled for the security lapse.

Shahzad had written an investigative piece pointing to infiltration by the Al-Qaeda into the armed forces. He said they had helped coordinate the attack.

“Pakistan must take urgent steps to bring (Shahzad’s) killers to justice and properly investigate claims of intimidation against journalists, including by intelligence services,” Amnesty International said in a statement released on the journalist’s death anniversary.

“Shahzad’s killing last year highlighted the perils faced by journalists in Pakistan,” says Polly Truscott, South Asia director at Amnesty International.

With at least three journalists killed in the last six months, Pakistan remains one of the most dangerous countries for the press. In 2011, the International Federation of Journalists recorded at least eight deaths, all in the line of work.

The independent New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has recorded the deaths of 42 journalists in Pakistan since 1992 in the line of duty. Of these 24 were assassinated. In most cases, killers go scot-free. Only the killers of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl have been convicted.

Mazhar Abbas, former secretary-general of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, tells IPS, “Three, including a former Sindh minister, were caught for the murder of cameramen Munir Sangi of the private Sindhi TV channel in 2006. But being influential they were released on bail after a few weeks.

“Five people were arrested for the murder of Wali Khan Babar in 2011 and are facing trial. Police, however, recently claimed that the mastermind was killed in an encounter. In a majority of cases killers were not arrested even if identified.” Wali Khan was a journalist working for Geo, a private television channel, who was killed by gunmen in Karachi.

The media in Pakistan are caught between a rock and a hard place. They can get caught in the crosshairs of either the spy agencies or the militants who consider their cause above reproach. They see any negative reporting as a call for severe reaction.

A judicial commission set up to investigate Shahzad’s murder spent six months interviewing 41 witnesses and going through 33,000 of Shahzad’s emails. It concluded in its 146-page report that “various belligerents in the war on terror which included the Pakistani state and non-state actors such as the Taliban” were responsible for his death.

But by failing to name the killers, the commission showed that Pakistan’s spy agencies remain outside the ambit of the criminal justice system.

“It was a courageous effort on the part of the commission to point fingers at the killers, which is a major step forward, but they stopped short of questioning the two intelligence agencies – the Military Intelligence and the Inter Services Intelligence – very important parts of the investigation,” says Hamza Ameer, brother-in-law of Shahzad, also a journalist.

“There was a sophisticated, well-organised attempt by Shahzad’s killers to cover their tracks – all the more reason why Pakistan’s intelligence services, and especially the ISI, must be thoroughly investigated,” says Truscott.

Following the government inquiry report, Human Rights Watch said the commission was “fearful of confronting the ISI over Shahzad’s death.”

In the face of the dismal performance of Shahzad’s inquiry commission, Asma Jehangir, a prominent human rights activist who recently accused “high level security authorities” of planning to assassinate her, has refused to seek an inquiry commission.

She says Pakistan is not the only country where leaders are killed, but it is the only country where the assassins are never caught.

Ameer believes it was Shahzad’s writing that took his life.

The commission’s report also said the motive seemed to be the “writings of Saleem” but said it was unclear “who had that motive and actually acted upon it.”

The National Human Rights Commission Bill was passed by the National Assembly on May 4 this year, and was signed into an act by President Asif Ali Zardari – on Shahzad’s death anniversary. But the proposed law states clearly that the “functions of the commission do not include inquiring into the act or practice of intelligence agencies.”

“Pakistan’s military and its intelligence agencies have a long and well-documented history of serious and systematic abuses,” says Asia director of HRW Brad Adams. “A primary reason to create a national human rights commission should be to address longstanding impunity for the army and intelligence services.”

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