Argentine Torture Survivor Patricia Isasa

From Democracy Now: Argentine Torture Survivor Patricia Isasa Tells of Her Struggle to Bring Her Torturers to Justice



A full transcript of Isasa's 2006 appearance on Democracy Now is available here.  Here's an excerpt, focusing on Isasa's narration of a television documentary on her case:

AMY GOODMAN: One of those who disappeared but lived to tell her story is Patricia Isasa. She was only 16 in 1976, when she was kidnapped by police and soldiers, tortured and held prisoner without trial for two-and-a-half years. One of Patricia’s torturers was Domingo Marcelini. He’s a graduate of the School of the Americas.

A documentary about Patricia’s ordeal and her subsequent investigation to bring her torturers to justice premiered on Argentine television last May. It’s called El Cerco, and it features interviews with some of her torturers, who are now in prison awaiting trial. In the film, Patricia Isasa revisits the sites where she was held, and she describes her torture. This is an excerpt.

PATRICIA ISASA: I arrived here for the first time when I was 16 years old, July 30th at noon. They forced me through this hallway. This place was empty. First, they slammed me against the wall. They dragged me across the floor. They beat me. Then they tied my feet to my hands, which were already handcuffed. I was kept like this for one week. Two men appeared, and one of them told me that I had to talk. He said that the other guy was crazy and that I should talk for my own good. This crazy guy was Eduardo Ramos.

EDUARDO RAMOS: I entered the police force in 1973. While I was working for the police as an analyst, the government was overthrown. My job was to monitor terrorist groups in universities. Some people call it "going undercover."

PATRICIA ISASA: After two days, they took the hood off me. They gave me water, a lemon, and they took me to the bathroom. Then Ramos and the other guy came back playing good cop and bad cop. I was told that Ramos was going to kill me and that I’d better talk.

EDUARDO RAMOS: I was not a typical policeman. I was more of a secret agent than a regular cop.

PATRICIA ISASA: I was thrown here. Ramos gave me a warning. He was insinuating that I would be raped. He said, "Tell me if anyone touches you, because we are the only ones that can touch you." I was 16 years old. I couldn’t believe it. Ramos was telling me, "You are my property. If I want, I can rape you."

Ramos was a spy at this law school. He turned in a lot of students here while pretending he was a law student.

My next step was to reconstruct my captivity at Police Station #4, where I learned what it was like to be tortured. This was a camp for torture and extermination run by Mario Jose Facino in 1976. Over here. This is it. It’s this place and this here. It’s both of these. These are the places where they tortured us. We’re looking at them from the outside, but I’m convinced, I’m telling you.

No, I can’t talk. Look, this is it. This is the place. They were over here. On this floor and at this window. This is where I spent the worst days of my life, simple as that. This was stuck, but I managed to open it. And through here, you could see, as you can now, the school. I could manage to see the school. These cracks—if you excuse me—this was stuck. You couldn’t open it. But to be able to see the school, I could suspect what street I was on and where I was being held. After talking with other detainees, we figured out that we were being held at Police Station #4.

I never thought that I would be standing in front of the bench that I was locked to. It’s incredible. 20, 25 years have passed. The bench that I was locked to when I was 16 is still here, same as ever. No one came to look at this place. There’s a case in Spain, a case in Argentina, and a case in Santa Fe fifteen blocks away from here, and no one was capable of coming over to look at this. I have to be the one to show it to you.

This is where I had to force myself not to use the bathroom. I was sent to an absolutely filthy room to pee. This was the only place where you could drink a little bit of water, and it’s all still here. Everything is still here, because no one has been held accountable.

And there, you could clearly see the cells. They were three feet by four feet. You couldn’t even lay down inside the cell. This was the central area where they tortured us. In 1976, the man responsible for the torture was Facino.

MARIO FACINO: I was not involved in any repressive group or anything like that. I was the supervisor of Police Station #4 in Santa Fe. I had an important job. My job was to detain people, who at that time were called subversives. Subversive delinquents.

PATRICIA ISASA: They put a hood on my head and tied my wrists to a rickety old bed. First, I remember feeling something cold on my stomach, and then I felt it. I felt the first electric shock. You feel this burning pain. It’s a horrible thing. They also humiliated me. They were laughing at me. They ejaculated onto me. They were enjoying themselves.

MARIO FACINO: She says they tortured her there. She says that they would lift off her hood and rape her. I doubt all of it.

PATRICIA ISASA: I recognize this place. This is it. I won’t ever forget it. I mean, this was the floor, I’m totally sure. And I was here three days. The worst three days of my life.

MARIO FACINO: A minor detained for subversive activities. No, no. It’s a lie. The woman, Patricia Isasa, says that the police detained her and she knows who detained her and where. Why she says it was at Police Station #4, I don’t know. I honestly don’t. But I can’t recall whether we detained her or not. But if we look at her records, it has to be recorded, where she was detained, when she was detained, and who detained her.

VICTOR BRUSA: I started working at the federal court as a student. When the government was overthrown, I was an employee of the court. I was 27, 28 years old. As a secretary for the judge, I would take statements in the office of the police station. The head of the police station had us take statements. Nothing more!

PATRICIA ISASA: They would hit you. They would torture you. They would hound you. Then they would pick you up and open this door for you. You would go through this door. And whom would you find on the other side? Brusa. This man was on the other side of the door. He would be writing, and he would take out a sheet of paper. You would be all beaten up, bleeding, naked. He’d throw you some clothes, and then he’d say, "Here, sign this." Brusa!

The Victor Brusa referred to above went on from working in the torture chambers of the Argentine Dirty War  to serving as a federal judge.  In 2009, Brusa was convicted of crimes against humanity for his role in the campaign of abduction, torture of killing.  His conviction came largely on the brave testimony of Silvia Suppo, who, like Patricia Isasa, was just a teenager when Argentine police abducted her, tortured and raped her, and held her for years without charges.  (Read here.)  In March, 2010, Silvia Suppo was brutally murdered in her crafts shop located in Rafaela, an area where violent crimes are extremely rare.  A subsequent official inquiry ruled that the motive for Suppo's murder was robbery, although the facts that Suppo was stabbed 12 times, that her wounds were deep and intended to kill her, and that there is no evidence that any property was taken, have called the soundness of this ruling into question.  Since Suppo's murder, defendants connected to Dirty War atrocities have threatened other witnesses that they would meet Suppo's fate.  Some of these threats have even occurred in the very courtrooms where these cases are being heard.  (Read here.)

Marie Trigona's report on this for CIP Americas is available here.

Madonna booed in Bucharest for defending Roma rights

Performing before an audience of 60,000 Romanian fans this week, Madonna spoke out in favor of equal rights for all people, making a point of naming Roma and gays as suffering from discrimination that must stop. The crowd made a point of booing her opposition to bigotry.

There are between 500,000 and 2,000,000 Roma in Romania, where they have suffered from severe oppression for hundreds of years.

Madonna's statement, which was relatively mild and noncontroversial, received widespread jeers and boos. She said:

"It has been brought to my attention ... that there is a lot of discrimination against Romanies and Gypsies in general in Eastern Europe. It made me feel very sad. We don't believe in discrimination ... we believe in freedom and equal rights for everyone."

read it here: Kansas City Star: Madonna booed in Bucharest for defending Gypsies

Conservatives who take torture lightly

Yes, you read that correctly. Conservative websites are now marketing T-shirts which read "I'd rather be waterboarding". Here, for example. And here.

According to this blog post, Drudge is marketing this stuff.

BREAKING! Waterboarding is torture. The only people who find it amusing are sadists.




I admit that I got this story secondhand. I find reading Drudge to be sheer enhanced interrogation technique.

Mugabe's NYC supporters

The New York City Council has been the site of some outrageous misbehavior over the years, including the 2003 fatal shooting of a councilman by a frustrated political opponent. (You can read about that here and here and here). Among the most outrageous official acts of the City Council was a special ceremony it held at City Hall in honor of Zimbabwe's murderous dictator Robert Mugabe. The person responsible for that outrage was Councilman Charles Barron. (Read here and here.)

In the years since 2002, Barron's admiration for Mugabe has apparently not been dimmed by Zimbabweans' suffering, as evidenced here:

Barron's undying love for Mugabe is shared by his longtime chief aide Viola Plummer. By way of background, you may remember her as the person formally expelled by the Council for threatening a Councilman with assassination at a press conference at City Hall. That made for entertaining political theater, but in light of the actual assassination of a Councilman at City Hall a few years earlier, the Council found her threat to be beyond the pale of acceptable discourse and kicked her out. She subsequently entered the Council chamber in defiance of this ruling and was physically removed from the chamber. (Read here and here.)

Plummer subsequently filed a federal lawsuit against the City over her expulsion, the status of which I do not know. But I do know a few things about Plummer which you may find interesting.

Plummer is one of the leaders of a political organization called the December 12 Movement, a major part of whose mission is to support Robert Mugabe. They organize on behalf of the Mugabe regime, conducting meetings and rallies in New York City, such as the one in July 2008 at Harlem's Abysinian Baptist Church described very effectively in this article from the Zimbabwe Times: "Close shave with Mugabe’s Harlem allies" by Jane Taruvinga. Read that article and take a look at this video of the meeting taken by a Zimbabwe Times staffer:

Here are some excerpts from Jane Taruvinga's article:

“Mugabe is right, U.S. hands-off Zimbabwe” was the headline that caught my eye when a friend gave me a flyer which she picked from the Abyssinian Church in Harlem, New York. On the flyer was the name of an organization, the December 12th Movement. A telephone number was listed and I called it. When a woman answered the phone I asked her to clarify what the flyer meant.

“We are having an event on Thursday July 3rd at 6.30pm” she advised, somewhat impatiently. “Come there and you will find out what we mean.” The line went dead.

Prior to this incident, I had watched and listened with horror to the news coverage of Zimbabwe over the last three months. Most of my news sources have been family, relatives and friends in Zimbabwe as well as online newspapers run by Zimbabweans, because only state run newspapers are allowed in today’s Zimbabwe. They informed me that most schools in the countryside outside the cities were deserted as the teachers had fled. Teachers were being targeted for brutal victimisation by President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party.

Some of them had acted as polling agents in the March 29 elections, which Mugabe lost. I read the heartbreaking story of a headmaster who, fearing for his life had fled the school, but had returned after being assured of his safety. A week after his return, he was kidnapped by Zanu-PF militiamen. After two days, his worried wife found his Identity card, tie, shoes, and pair of trousers on the veranda of their home.
She went to the police and was told to go to the local mortuary. His body was there. I have seen pictures of people with their faces smashed in, their backs raw and bones sticking out. I read about people whose homes had been burned; people who had been murdered in cold blood.

Though these events were taking place far away back in Zimbabwe, the stories were real to me because the names of the victims were familiar. These are names that, no matter where they are in the world, if Zimbabweans hear such names they immediately recognise them.
But in the comfort of my life here in New York, I thought I could switch on and off the horrific drama that was unfolding in Zimbabwe when it suited me. Then a week ago I received a phone call that my elderly parents in their seventies had been beaten up by the notorious Zanu-PF youths, led by members of the army. Mugabe’s war had come too close to home. I was distraught with worry.

I spent sleepless nights calling my sisters back at home, trying to persuade them to go to our rural village. They were reluctant to go, because in the rural areas far from the prying eyes of the world, Zanu-PF’s militiamen were unleashing an orgy of violence and intimidation. The rural peasants were reliving the Chimurenga War of the 1970s. People were being rounded up and made to sing war songs. The opposition supporters (MDC) were paraded and forced to take turns beating each other up.

In our village, they went around beating up everyone, including a Mugabe supporter, my father. My father’s philosophy is simple. If people don’t vote for Mugabe, there will be war again. In past elections I threatened to withdraw the money that I sent home. Then I threatened not to speak to him if he went ahead and voted for Mugabe. But, when he became seriously ill and needed surgery, I forked out the US$500.00 required.

I have at my disposal in New York many news sources out of Zimbabwe. I remember telling my sisters on the phone that I had seen Tsvangirai’s new red campaign bus. I also told them of incidents that had happened outside Harare, which they did not know about. My family’s knowledge of what’s happening in Zimbabwe has been limited to what is passed on to them by word of mouth. Sometimes they will find out what happened weeks after an incident took place - like the beating of our sister-in-law’s cousin and his wife (both teachers) and their son.

When my sisters visited our sister-in-law they found out that she had just arrived from visiting the trio in hospital. They are still in hospital today, more than a month after the vicious assault.

It was against this background that I was driven by curiosity to find out who these supporters of Mugabe in New York were. I asked a friend who has a video camera to come along with me. My idea was not only to find out the identity of these supporters but also to capture them on video.

When we arrived at the Abyssinian Church the event was already in progress. The room was packed . . . I turned to the man seated next to me and asked him how he had found out about the meeting. He . . . pulled out a letter from WBAI. “I am a member,” he said with a grin.

I took the form from him. It was from WBAI, requesting members to send contributions. I handed it back to him.

“Don’t you listen to WBAI?” he asked me. “That’s where I got the information about this event, they announced it.”

Sure enough, I noticed something that had not occurred to me before. Most of the audience comprised WBAI listeners. I did an internship at the station a few years ago. WBAI . . . relies on contributions from listeners. These members have a lot of control over the program and if they don’t like what they hear, they call up to complain. When I went on air to read international news, which included reports about the bloody land invasions in Zimbabwe, the listeners called the station soon after I came off air. They called me names. . . .

(P)residing over . . . Thursday’s meeting was one Viola Plummer. She rallied against Human Rights Watch (and) Amnesty International, accusing them of supporting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe. The MDC, she told her audience, was a front of the white people.

When a young black reporter asked her why Mugabe had banned all the NGOs, she replied that they were distributing food as well as the opposition pamphlets. What about Save the Children (UNCEF), the reporter asked. “They are all the same,” Plummer said, “including CARE.

As her audience cheered her on, she vowed to fight to the death. Trade unions in Zimbabwe were the most racist, she declared. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, of which Morgan Tsvangirai was secretary general, has an almost exclusively black membership. Plummer claimed that the international organizations in Zimbabwe were funded by the Bush administration and the British government.

To the people of Zimbabwe, Viola is a foreign dignitary. Over the last several years, she and her entourage have been the guests of Robert Mugabe’s government. In his book, Against the Grain, Geoffrey Nyarota [read here] says as Zanu-PF’s circle of friends in the international community diminished, the December 12 Movement of Harlem in New York shot to prominence in Harare.

“The head of the movement acquired an avant-garde name, Comrade Coltrane Chimurenga, to reinforce his revolutionary credentials,” Nyarota says. “Comrade Chimurenga and one Sister Viola Plummer undertook an annual pilgrimage from Harlem to Harare, their visits timed to coincide with Zimbabwe’s independence celebrations on April 18.

“The delegation from Harlem was flown across the Atlantic and accommodated in the five-star Sheraton Hotel at taxpayers’ expense. After being feted, entertained and flown to exotic tourist attractions like the Victoria Falls, they were paraded at the Independence Day festivities.

“They inevitably granted so-called exclusive interviews to the Herald, the Sunday Mail and the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation’s radio and television channels in which they extolled the virtues of the ruling party and the allegedly profound wisdom of its leaders. They told Zimbabwe’s long-suffering taxpayers what a good job their President was doing for the nation and urged them to support Zanu-PF unflinchingly.

“Soon after the land invasions in 2000, Comrade Chimurenga was quoted by the government media as having unreservedly endorsed the ‘Third Chimurenga’, or Third Revolution, whose centrepiece was the violent occupation of white-owned farms. In New York, Mugabe relied on the December 12 Movement to organise an occasional demonstration, even at short notice - rent-a-crowd events, as Bill Saidi aptly summed up their timely interventions - in support of Zimbabwe’s President and government.”

An editorial in the June 12, 2007, issue of the New York Daily News has this to say of Plummer. “Who is Viola Plummer? Let’s go to the record. In 1985, she stood trial with seven co-defendants on charges of plotting to crash out of prison two members of the gang that pulled off the 1981 Brink’s armored car robbery in which a guard and two cops were killed in Rockland County. “Acquitted of the most serious charges, other members of the group, including Plummer’s son Robert Taylor, were convicted of possessing weapons such as dynamite and machine guns. In the transcript of an undercover recording introduced at the trial, a leader of the bunch, Coltrane Chimurenga, instructed Taylor in the ways of armed robbery.”

As she angrily rallied against white injustice here and abroad last Thursday, her audience cheered and clapped their hands. She characterised what was happening in Zimbabwe as white retaliation for the land invasions. Some in the audience were wearing Zanu-PF T-shirts with the campaign message: “100% empowerment, VOTE for Mugabe.”

But the people of Zimbabwe, including her contacts in Zanu-PF do not seem to know who Viola Plummer really is? Viola Plummer is a former aide to councilman Charles Barron, who is also known as a former member of the Black Panther Movement. She was fired by New York City Council Speaker Christina Queen after she threatened to assassinate a New York City councilor over a legislative dispute. The (threatened) councillor had refused to support her measure to have a street renamed after a black activist called Sonny Carson.

Prior to this incident, Viola Plummer went on trial after being accused of trying to stage the jail break-in to free two fellow activists who had been jailed for their involvement in the1981 Rockland County robbery. Plummer ended up only being convicted of falsely identifying herself to the police.

Plummer was in Zimbabwe during the independence celebrations this year and prior to the June 27 presidential runoff. At the meeting, she said she had attended the inauguration of Mugabe in Harare on Sunday, June 29.

You may know Comrade Coltrane Chimurenga by one of his aliases, listed on the caption of this federal lawsuit: "randolph Simms", "rashidpendergrass", "lionel Jean-baptiste", "john Thomas", or "macio Mcadams".

Prior to Zimbabwe's March 2008 election, the Mugabe regime had banned most foreign observers, as reported here and here. They did, however extend an invitation to a delegation from the December 12 Movement. Readers will be reassured to learn that, according to this article in Zimbabwe's official government-sanctioned newspaper, the Herald Reporter:

THE December 12 Movement, one of the foreign observer missions that witnessed the June 27 presidential run-off election, has endorsed the poll as an expression of the will of the people of Zimbabwe.

The African-American organisation, based in New York in the United States, however, said the existence of sanctions and the disproportionate and biased reporting of what was taking place in Zimbabwe by a few media outlets with global outreach had skewed the playing field against Zanu-PF. Members of the mission yesterday said their findings so far indicated that the poll outcome was not only a free expression of the will of Zimbabweans, but that it set an example for the rest of Africa and the Africans in the Diaspora.

If you want a sense of what the December 12 Movement think of Mugabe's Zimbabwe and want it from the horse's mouth, read this transcript from WBAI Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now. The subject was the March 30, 2008 election in Zimbabwe. The speaker was Omowale Clay of the December 12th Movement "International Secretariat". Clay was part of the delegation invited by Mugabe to observe the election, which occured on the day preceeding his report.

Omowale Clay: I have something very important to report to the Pacifica community in general and to African people, in particular. Yesterday the people of Zimbabwe resoundingly said they will never be a colony again. Unofficial results have confirmed that Zanu PF has won a major victory, and by all counts will in fact capture over 2/3 of the electoral vote, which will give them the ability to restructure their constitution, to institutionalize the [inaudible] which was always the view of them fighting for the total emancipation of their people politically and economically. So I wanted to make sure to bring back the people, to also let them know, Amy, that democracy in Zimbabwe is not anything new. For the past 25 years as we celebrate the 25th silver jubilee, democracy was brought to Zimbabwe through national liberation armed struggle and it was never given to the Zimbawean people. But since 1980 when the first elections took place, there have been six major parliamentary elections that have taken place, and there have been three presidential elections that have taken place. So no one can teach Zimbabwe democracy. Zimbabwe is teaching it to the African and pan-African world, as well as to the neo-colonizers who are trying to re-colonize Zimbabwe.

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In case you wondered where Viola Plummer landed after leaving the City Council, well ...she fell up. In December 2008, Viola Plummer was chosen to be chief of staff for newly elected New York State Assembly Representative Inez Barron, who just happens to be the wife of Councilman Charles Barron. Here's a local blog post about that appointment:

VIOLA PLUMMER JOINS ASSEMBLYWOMAN INEZ BARRON'S STAFF

Assembly member Inez Barron has selected Viola Plummer to join her staff. Ms. Barron made the announcement during her judicial swearing-in ceremony at the House of the Lord Church. Ms. Plummer, who served as Chief of Staff with Council member Charles Barron, will work in Assembly member Inez Barron's 40th AD district office. Ms. Barron has also selected Mel Faulkner to staff the district office. Mr. Faulkner has worked in Council member Barron's district office.

The announcement was made during the first of 2 consecutive ceremonies celebrating Ms. Barron's new position. Judge Sylvia Ash gave Assembly member Barron the Oath of Office at both events - first at the House of the Lord Church, then later that evening at St. Paul's Community Baptist Church. Rev. Herbert Daughtry gave a historical perspective of community activism and electoral politics. Councilman Charles Barron spoke of his love and support for his wife.

Elected officials in attendance at the events were Judge Geraldine Picket, Assembly members Annette Robinson, Karim Camara, and Michael Gianaris, State Senators Eric Adams and Bill Perkins, Council members Letitia James, Bill DiBlasio, and Eric Gioia. Others who came to witness Ms. Barron's oath were family members and a variety of community leaders: Dr. James McIntosh, Faye Moore (Local 371 Public Sector Social Service Workers), David Galarza (CSEA Local 1000), Ms. Ollie McClean, Dr. Ron Daniels and his wife Mary France, Sam Anderson, Kevin Powell, Stan Kinard and his wife Tulani (candidate for the 41st Council seat), Bob Law, Dr. Lenora Fulani, and Brenda Walker.

Special acknowledgements were made to those who assisted in getting Ms. Barron elected: Paul Washington (Inez Barron's Campaign Manager) and his wife Peggy, Andre Mitchell, founder of Man Up, Inc. and Hip Hop SUV (Stand Up and Vote), December 12 Movement, Operation Power, the United African Movement, and the Coalition of the Outsiders.

Noted at both events was the history made: a siting council member and assembly member husband- wife team covering the same geographic area at the same time.

You may recognize Dr. Lenora Fulani as the public face of the sometimes far-left, sometimes far-right political cult called the New Alliance Party. (Read about them here.) Fulani, who has over the years run for several positions without success, may be considering another run for office, this time for New York mayor, according to this blog post.)

To bring this post full circle, Paul Washington, Inez Barron's campaign manager, was Charles Barron's chief of staff. He's also the guy who introduced Mugabe at New York City Hall when he recieved the official honors of the City Council in 2002 (read here). According to this blog post:

(The City Council honoring Mugabe) was the inspiration of Councilman Charles Barron, and his Chief of Staff, Mr. Paul Washington, whom Barron calls his "Comrade in Struggle and Co-Council Member," brought it to fruition.

And now, according to the Daily Gotham (read here):

Charles Barron is intent on running his former chief-of-staff (Paul Washington) to replace him after he is term-limited from his seat in the council.

So it appears likely that Robert Mugabe will continue to have a voice both in the New York State Assembly and in the New York City Council (as well as on WBAI radio) even as the most of the world condemns him.

December 12 Movement Rally, NYC

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UPDATE 4/14/2009:

from the New York Daily News:

Plummer Case Redux

(By Elizabeth Benjamin on April 7, 2009)

The case brought against the city and Council Speaker Christine Quinn by Councilman Charles Barron's ex-chief of staff, Viola Plummer, in the wake of the 2007 Sonny Carson street re-naming flap is one step away from being dismissed.

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a ruling today that overturned a lower court decision denying immunity to Quinn on Plummer's claim that the speaker's decision to fire her violated her First Amendment rights and ordered the case remanded for dismissal.

The decision note the city's burden in making its case was lower due to Plummer's status as a high-ranking public employee and the fact that her use of the word "assassination" in connection with Councilman Leroy Comrie sparked a reasonable concern for his safety in Quinn, given the 2003 muder of Councilman James Davis.

"The First Amendment does not require employers to sit idly by when an employee engenders such concerns. In view of these two incidents of “disruption,” taken together, and because we conclude that there is no genuine issue as to whether Quinn’s actions were taken in retaliation for Plummer’s speech...For these reasons, we hold that Plummer’s First Amendment rights were not violated and enter summary judgment for Quinn and the City of New York."

According to an attorney in the city's Law Department, unless Plummer decides to appeal, the case will end here.

I reached Plummer at her new job as director of operations in Assemblywoman Inez Barron's office. She hadn't yet heard of the ruling, and thus couldn't comment on what her plans might be.

NOTE: The decision is by three judges: Circuit Judges Rosemary Pooler and Debra Ann Livingston and District Judge Jed Rakoff.

China revokes visa of gold medalist, Darfur activist Cheek

from Yahoo! Sports (By Chris Chase):

Olympic gold medalist and outspoken Darfur activist Joey Cheek has had his visa revoked by the Chinese embassy, hours before the speedskating champion was set to fly to China. And he wasn't even planning on wearing a mask when he got there.

Chinese officials don't need a reason to revoke anyone's visa but, in their eyes, they had plenty of reasons to snatch Cheek's. He is the founder of Team Darfur, a group of 70 athletes whose goal it is to raise global awareness of the human-rights violations taking part in the Darfur region of Sudan. China's military, economic and diplomatic ties to Sudan have been well-publicized in the lead-up to the Games.

Said Cheek of his ban in a prepared statement:

"I am saddened not to be able to attend the Games. The Olympic Games represent something powerful: that people can come together from around the world and do things that no one thought were possible. However, the denial of my visa is a part of a systemic effort by the Chinese government to coerce and threaten athletes who are speaking out on behalf of the innocent people of Darfur.

Cheek was going to China to support the athletes on Team Darfur -- including soccer player Abby Wambach -- and to promote the cause, one that he has championed for years. After winning gold in the Torino Games, Cheek announced he was donating his $25,000 USOC bonus to Darfur and implored his sponsors to do the same. It seems that Joey Cheek is truly one of the good guys.

And now he's out of China before he even got there. With the Games getting closer (just two days away now), the world seemed ready to forget about all the Chinese issues in order to focus on the Games themselves. Unfortunately, China's actions make that impossible. In a time when we should be wondering who will light the Olympic cauldron, whether Michael Phelps can break an all-time record and how Liu Xiang will react to the pressure of 1.3 billion of his countrymen hanging on his every step, we're instead left to discuss the Chinese government's reluctance to allow any dissension in their country, despite repeated promises that they'd clean up their act when the Olympics came to town.

and this from the New York Sun: Chinese Christian Activist Claims He Was Beaten, Threatened:

A Chinese Christian activist claims he was beaten, threatened and detained by police on Sunday as he tried to get to a church service President Bush attended while in Beijing for the Olympics, according to a watchdog group, Human Rights in China.

Hua Huiqi, 46, wrote a letter to the group claiming that "religious affairs police" sought him out him prior to the service. "They asked me why I was going to Kuanjie Protestant Church to worship and threatened me, saying, 'You are not allowed to go to Kuanjie Protestant Church because President Bush is going there today. If you... go again, we will break your legs. We brought you here to wait for orders from our superiors. We shall see how they want to deal with you,'" Mr. Hua wrote.

Mr. Hua said he escaped when some guards fell asleep and is now in hiding.

Tracking the Atrocities: UN Torture Investigator Slams Western Complacency

By Manfred Ertel and Marion Kraske

from der SPIEGEL ONLINE:


Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture, has traveled the world investigating abuse and cruelty. As he prepares to deliver his final report, he voices his dismay at the complacency with which torture is regarded -- even in the West.

Fifty-seven-year-old Manfred Nowak sits in a Vienna coffee house, sipping a cup of mint tea, and talks about the worst atrocities in the world -- inhuman dungeons and torture chambers, forgotten prisoners and abuses.

For example in the Nigerian city of Lagos, where the United Nations special rapporteur on torture and his team carried out a surprise inspection of a police station that had given itself the rather lofty title of a detention center. "I've never seen anything like it," Nowak says. "Between 100 and 120 severely tortured people crowded closely together. Three women among them, and children too -- the oldest aged 14. Men with untreated gunshot wounds and limbs that were literally rotting -- a common torture method in Nigeria."

No one was expecting him when he showed up at the police headquarters in Amman on the last day of his visit to Jordan. He ordered a secret cell to be opened. Behind the door lay a prisoner "in a terrible condition." He had been suspended above the ground by his wrists, which had been tied behind his back -- a classic torture method dating back to the Middle Ages. "He could no longer stand, walk or anything," Nowak says. "In these types of cases, emotional distance is impossible. You're fully involved."

You just have to try to forget such experiences as far as that is possible, he continues, making sure none of it affects to you too much -- even if that is "sometimes just not possible." And you have to try to constantly motivate yourself with the "small successes," he adds.

But the Viennese professor for constitutional law and human rights will not have too many positive experiences to recount when he presents his final report to the UN General Assembly in New York this week. His mandate expires in about five months, and the time has come to take stock.

Taking Stock

Of course there have been success stories, some at least. In Togo, for example, he was able to obtain the release of 15 forgotten remand prisoners who had been locked in their cells and had no one looking after them. "We have many new friends in Togo now," Nowak says. And then there is Abkhazia, the breakaway Georgian province, where he tracked down a concealed prisoner. It took wardens using heavy duty tools five minutes to break open the completely rusted cell door.

But his overall survey is far from confident -- in fact he calls it "frightening." Torture is still "considered a peccadillo," he says, adding that this is now the case "even in developed countries." To him, the worst thing is that the West, which constantly emphasizes its ideals and values, has lost the moral upper hand.

Nowak has personally visited a dozen countries, from Mongolia to Paraguay. He has inspected many dungeons and jails and spoken to hundreds of prisoners. So he is all the more annoyed when he is denied access to prisons. To this day, he has not been allowed to visit the US military base in Guantanamo, for example -- at least not in order to conduct private, unsupervised interviews with detainees. The US government would not give him permission. But an essential prerequisite for Nowak's investigative missions is the right to decide himself what he wants to see or who he wants to speak to -- including without any prior appointment.

Ever since former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorized the use of so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques in Abu Ghraib, "the United States has lost its moral leadership and authority," Nowak believes. "Today, when the Bush administration criticizes other countries for their human rights abuses, no one takes them seriously anymore."

But Europe has not succeeded in taking the place of the United States as the "driving force when it comes to human rights," the lawyer says. On the contrary, he believes the European Union is "seriously tarnished." European governments' cooperation with the CIA in the war on terror and their denial of secret detainee renditions and prison camps has weakened the EU, according to Nowak.

Europe's 'Seriously Tarnished' Reputation

Nowak's has also only had bad experiences in Russia. The UN official has received hundreds of calls for help from within the country since taking office three years ago. He has written dozens of urgent appeals to Moscow and decried human rights abuses there.

Then, in April of last year, he wanted to see the situation for himself in Moscow, the Caucasus and -- most importantly -- Chechnya. Everything had been arranged and was "ready to go." The flights had already been booked. Then Moscow suddenly remembered its own legal regulations, according to which no one is allegedly allowed to speak privately to prisoners. "Not acceptable," was Nowak's answer. The man from Vienna, whose manner is otherwise so charming, can be tough when he wants to be.

That makes it all the more astonishing that China, of all countries, allowed the UN rapporteur into the country. His predecessors had tried in vain for 10 years to be granted permission for such a visit.

What he saw in the prisons and prison camps of Beijing in 2005 still makes him frown angrily: "What is inhuman about the system is the psychological pressure," he says. He talks about the state's continuing "strong desire to re-educate people." Prisoners are not simply locked away; rather, "confessions" are forced out of them. In order to achieve this, civil rights activists, members of the Falun Gong movement, ordinary criminals and others are forced to sit still in their cells for hours at a time and memorize the penal code. In a prison in the north of the country, Nowak even met an African prisoner who was forced to endure this punishment -- even though he did not speak any Chinese.

But he has also concluded that China's ruling elite has long ceased being a "monolithic bloc." Nowak has identified reformist forces close to the Foreign Ministry, while the hardliners are attempting to preserve the communists' claim to power, especially within the intelligence service and security apparatus, according to Nowak.

Nowak believes these hardliners are especially to blame for a new "wave of repression," which is targeting more civil rights activists and dissidents in the run up to the Olympic Games being held in China next year.

But Nowak remains optimistic. "I am still hopeful that things will improve," he says, stroking his moustache. "Major events such as the Games can always shake things up."

The Hypocrisy and Naked Bigotry of Michael Scheuer

You will remember Michael Scheuer, the man who developed the "extraordinary rendition" program for the CIA and went on to become a critic of Israel, supporter of Ron Paul and world-renowned authority on hubris. This piece from Commentary reveals what may be the source of Michael Scheuer's anti-Israel bias (not really a shock). It also reveals a bit about both his hypocrisy about and his recklessness with classified information, which really is a shock, especially considering the following quote from an interview he did with Die Zeit in December 2005 (German here, English here):

Die Zeit: Did you not have doubts concerning the use of torture in these countries? [i.e. the countries prisoners were sent to by the CIA]

Michael Scheuer: No, my job was to protect American citizens by arresting members of Al-Qaida. The executive power of our government has to decide whether it considers this hypocritical or not. 90% of this operation was successful and only 10% could be considered as disastrous.

Die Zeit: Which part was the disaster?

Michael Scheuer: The fact that everything was made public. From now on the Europeans will diminish their assistance because they fear reading about it in the Washington Post. And then there is this troublemaker in the Senate, Senator John McCain, who virtually confessed, wrongly of course, that the CIA uses torture. And that is how the program will be destroyed.

In other words, Scheuer condemns Senator McCain for destroying the program by inadvertently embarrassing our allies. Set aside for the moment that Scheuer is dissembling by ignoring the fact that Senator McCain, like the rest of the sentient world, was forced to deal with several publicly revealed instances where the extraordinary rendition program sent innocent people to countries where they were tortured. Scheuer, perhaps motivated by vanity, is now deliberately embarrassing allies who deny knowledge about still secret aspects of the program.

While Schoenfeld may overstate the criminality of Scheuer's disclosure of classified material in that Scheuer only speaks in general terms about what "must have happened" with respect to the CIA renditions program in Denmark* (see footnote) as opposed to disclosing specific classified information, he understates Scheuer's hypocrisy and his destructiveness. Scheuer appears to want to damage U.S. interests, even as he continues to defend his program.

By the way, Schoenfeld prematurely confirms Michael Mukassey as Attorney General in this piece. I really don't know whether he'll be confirmed and I have doubts that, if he is, he'll pick the sort of political fight Schoenfeld would like to see. Frankly, after recent experiences, the next Attorney General would be wise to depoliticize that office as much as possible, especially with respect to issues relating to intelligence and national security. More germane to this question, as Scheuer is undoubtedly aware, the U.S. is not anxious to publicize Scheuer or give him a forum to do more damage.

For the record, let me say that the extraordinary rendition program should be fully investigated for legal and ethical violations. Since first hearing about it, I was struck both by its necessity and with its blatant illegality -- a very uncomfortable combination. I also thought that the word "extraordinary" was a euphemism for something that was soon to be, if not already, ordinary. "Extralegal deportation" would have been a more accurate term. If it was necessary, than it should have been rare and precise and I don't believe that it was rare or precise enough. While I assume that I disagree with Schoenfeld on that, his piece is a very interesting peak into mind of Michael Scheuer, a very vain man whose mask is starting to slip.

from Commentary: "Michael Scheuer Watch":

by Gabriel Schoenfeld

An entry here entitled Michael Scheuer: Innocent Until Proven Guilty seems to have rattled the former CIA official’s cage. He has posted three separate comments in reply.

Herewith some comments about his comments.

In his 2004 book, Imperial Hubris, Scheuer made a point of stressing how vital it was for CIA analysts like himself always to “check the checkables”—a phrase he used incessantly in that volume. In writing about Imperial Hubris in COMMENTARY, I noted then that he himself had a very hard time with the checkables, not least in the realm of spelling. L. Paul Bremer III was rendered in the book as Paul Bremmer, General Curtis LeMay as General Lemay, the foreign-policy analysts Edward Luttwak and Adam Garfinkle as Lutwack and Garfinckle, etc.

In his comments posted here on Connecting the Dots, Scheuer still has trouble with the same class of checkables. And, along with misspellings, he does some far more noteworthy things.

Thus, in one of his three replies, Scheuer suggests that I am disloyal to the United States: “only a small part of Mr. Scheonfeld [sic]…may be American.” He suggests that, along with me, Norman Podhoretz, Max Boot, James Woolsley [sic], someone simply identified as “Pipes” (Richard or Daniel?), and someone simply identified as “Horowitz,” have pushed the United States into wasting American “treasure” and getting our “soldier-children killed in fighting other peoples’ wars, especially other peoples’ religious wars.”

Presumably, in referring to “religious wars,” Scheuer has in mind, as so often in the past, Israel’s conflicts with its neighbors. But my post had nothing to do with Israel. Nor were the names Podhoretz, Boot, Woolsey, Pipes, or Horowitz mentioned in it. The imputation that these individuals, including a former director of the CIA, are disloyal to the United States is naked bigotry (although I cannot of course defend “Horowitz” from Scheuer’s accusation, since I do not know who he is).

I was writing not about religious wars but about Scheuer’s disclosure of information to the Danish newspaper Politiken concerning the extraordinary rendition to Egypt in 1995 of a terrorist plotter by the name of Abu Talal. Scheuer does comment on that episode, but in a way completely irrelevant to my charges. He says:

The CIA’s rendition program—which I helped author, and then managed for almost four years—continues to be the U.S. government’s single most successful, perhaps only sucessful [sic] counterterrorism program, and Americans are very much safer with the likes of Abu Talal off the street.

But the issue is not whether extraordinary renditions were successful, or whether Americans are safer because of them. I will stipulate for the sake of argument that he is right about both those things.

I was raising a different issue, concerning the U.S. laws governing leaks, and I raised five questions about whether the Politiken story indicates that these laws may have been broken:

1. Is the story accurate?

2. Assuming it is accurate, was the information about the rendition of Abu Talal classified?

3. Assuming it was classified, and that Scheuer . . . was the primary source, did he have the CIA’s permission to talk about it?

4. Assuming he was the primary source and he did not have CIA permission, and that the two preceding questions are answered in the affirmative, was a crime committed here?

5. If the elements of a crime are in place, will be there an investigation? And is anyone at the CIA or the Department of Justice or in Congress paying attention?

It is notable that in his three responses, Scheuer does not address or answer even one of these five questions.

The CIA does things in secret for a number of very good reasons. One of them is to accomplish U.S. security objectives without creating political firestorms in friendly countries. But a firestorm has now been ignited in Denmark as a result of Scheuer’s leak.

All the opposition parties in the Danish parliament are demanding an investigation into whether the authorities cooperated with the CIA in the extradition. Amnesty International has joined the choir: “It should be clarified whether Denmark indirectly participated in the CIA’s prisoner program and therefore in the violation of human rights,” says Lars Norman Jorgensen, who heads the organization’s Danish branch.

Meanwhile, even as the Danish foreign minister, Per Stig Moller, is denying that he was ever informed that “any unlawful acts” had taken place on Danish territory, Michael Scheuer has been pouring more fuel on the fire. He has told Politiken that the Danish intelligence agency, the DSIS, must have known about the rendition program; he says, “I can’t imagine any situation where we would not have told Denmark this.”

In short, not only does Scheuer appear to be the source of a damaging leak, he appears to be intent on maximizing the damage.

Here are some more dots that I’m still trying to connect:

CIA officers have been indicted in Italy for taking part in extraordinary renditions there. Will Denmark now initiate a similar legal process?

How does Scheuer’s activity differ from the deliberate leaking of classified information by the renegade CIA agent Philip Agee, whose passport was revoked in 1979 and is now a fugitive living in Cuba?

What is the Justice Department doing about the disclosure? I predict that the incoming Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, will prove far more energetic in investigating and prosecuting leaks than was the feckless Alberto Gonzalez. I hope I’m right.

What does Scheuer have to say about any of this? I predict that, at this point, he will answer with either a telling silence or with even more telling and more irrelevant evasions.

*Note: Similarly, Scheuer spoke in 2005 about what the German government "must have known" with respect to the rendition from Morocco to Syria of German/Syrian citizen Mohammed Haydar Zammer, a member of the Hamburg cell which planned 9/11.

Turkey blames Jews for Armenian genocide bill

by Yigal Schleifer

from the JTA news service:

Turkey is blaming Jews for a U.S. congressional committee's passage of a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide. But U.S. Jewish leaders say Ankara should look in the mirror.

ISTANBUL (JTA) -- When a U.S. congressional committee approved a resolution recognizing the World War I-era massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide, Turkey’s reaction was swift and harsh: Blame the Jews.

In an interview with the liberal Islamic Zaman newspaper on the eve of the resolution’s approval Oct. 10 by the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said he told American Jewish leaders that a genocide bill would strengthen the public perception in Turkey that “Armenian and Jewish lobbies unite forces against Turks.”

Babacan added, “We have told them that we cannot explain it to the public in Turkey if a road accident happens. We have told them that we cannot keep the Jewish people out of this.”

The Turkish public seems to have absorbed that message.

An online survey by Zaman’s English-language edition asking why Turks believed the bill succeeded showed at one point that 22 percent of respondents had chosen “Jews’ having legitimized the genocide claims” -- second only to “Turkey’s negligence.”

U.S. Jewish community leaders reject that argument and privately say Ankara has only itself to blame for its failure to muster the support necessary to derail passage of the Armenian genocide resolution, which in Turkey is seen as anti-Turkish.

Lingering resentment remains in Washington over the Turkish Parliament’s failure to approve a March 2003 motion to allow U.S. troops to use Turkish soil as a staging ground for an invasion of Iraq.

And an official visit to Ankara in early 2006 by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal angered many of Israel’s supporters on Capitol Hill, who have been among Turkey’s most vocal proponents as part of a strategy of developing strong ties between Turkey and Israel.

“The Hamas thing was really serious,” said an official from a large Jewish organization who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue. “There is less sympathy for Turkey because of what some see as an anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Jewish policy that is there.”

“I think there’s a sense on the Hill that Turkey is less of an ally. There is a sense that it’s a different Turkey,” the official said.

Soner Cagaptay, coordinator of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, echoes that thinking.

“The lingering effects of 2003 resonate,” Cagaptay said. “Some people are still angry with Turkey.”

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said the Jews should not be blamed for the Armenia genocide bill, particularly not by Turkish officialdom.

“We regret that some officials there are trying to lay the onus of what’s happened on the Jewish community,” Hoenlein told JTA. “They shouldn’t allow some people to manipulate this initiative in Congress to the detriment of this relationship, which is beneficial for both sides.”

Hoenlein, who met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during last month’s U.N. General Assembly, said, “There is the same commitment on the part of the organized community to support Turkey.”

Observers in Turkey say the public perception of the Jews’ outsized role in the resolution’s passage is based on an element of fact mixed with a greater amount of fiction.

In August, the Jewish-run Anti-Defamation League, facing pressure from grass-roots activists, reversed its long-held policy of not recognizing the Armenian genocide when ADL National Director Abraham Foxman declared that what happened to the Armenians was “indeed tantamount to genocide.”

But Foxman maintained the ADL’s position opposing a congressional resolution on the matter. Such a resolution would strain U.S.-Turkey ties and jeopardize ties between Israel and Turkey, Israel’s main Middle Eastern ally.

Nevertheless, in Turkey the ADL’s reversal was seen as a major blow to the country’s diplomatic and public-relations campaign against Armenian efforts to get a genocide resolution passed in Washington.

“Obviously the ADL’s switch was not good news,” said Suat Kiniklioglu, a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party and spokesman for the Turkish Parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

Mustafa Akyol, an Istanbul-based political commentator who frequently writes about religious issues, says the strong reaction to the ADL’s policy switch and the perception that it somehow legitimized the Armenians’ claims are based on an “inflated sense” of American Jewish power among the Turkish public.

“There is a belief that [the resolution] couldn’t have happened without Jewish support,” Akyol said.

The House bill passed the committee by a 27-21 vote, with seven of the committee's eight Jewish members voting in favor of Resolution 106. The full House of Representatives has yet to vote on the resolution.

Yet despite the vote, U.S. Jewish groups said they lobbied against the bill -- just as they have done in the past.

“Behind-the-scenes support [from U.S. Jewish groups] has been quite powerful” in persuading congressmen to oppose the bill, said the Washington Institute’s Cagaptay. It may yet help prevent the bill from being brought to a vote in the full House.

Turkish Jewish community leaders declined to be interviewed for this story, but Turkey’s Jewish leaders published a full-page advertisement in the Washington Times on the day of the vote voicing their opposition to the House bill.

“We believe this issue should be decided first and foremost on the basis of evidence adduced by historians, not on the basis of judgments by parliamentarians or Congressmen, who naturally (and understandably) may be influenced by concerns other than historical facts,” the statement said. “There have been insinuations that our security and well-being in Turkey is linked to the fate of Resolution 106. We are deeply perturbed by any such allegations.”

Historically, Jews both in Turkey and the United States have been strong opponents of a congressional resolution on Armenian genocide. Jews consider their support for Turkey’s positions on the genocide bill and other issues on Capitol Hill key to maintaining strong ties between Turkey and Israel.

“There is a trilateral relationship, which is Turkey, Israel and the American Jews,” Cagaptay said. “The relationship is about good ties between Turkey and Israel, and good ties between Turkey and the American Jewish community, which makes up for the fact that Turkey has not had, historically, a strong presence on the Hill.”

This time, however, it seems Jewish opposition to the bill was not enough to overcome support for it by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a longtime supporter of Armenian-American issues. Pelosi has vowed to bring the bill to a full House vote.

Mia Farrow Takes On China -- and Jimmy Carter

from Washington Wire - WSJ.com :

Actress Mia Farrow is stepping up her campaign to stop the killing in Darfur, taking on China. She even had tough words for former President Jimmy Carter who is trying a new diplomatic channel to promote peace.

Farrow, who has traveled a number of times to the war-torn region of Sudan, wrote an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal calling on China (“Khartoum’s largest and closest business partner”) to turn around its relationship with Sudan. “What better time for China to step up and change its image?” she wrote. “In the face of mounting criticism of its support of brutal repression and cultural destruction in Burma and Tibet, Darfur represents an opportunity for Beijing to create a positive impression — and desperately needed favorable PR in anticipation of the 2008 Olympic games.”

Still, she said, “The undeniable fact remains that China continues to underwrite genocide and the immeasurable suffering of millions of human beings in the Darfur region of Sudan.”

As for President Carter, Farrow is clearly disappointed with his trip to Darfur with Desmond Tutu and several other prominent figures as part of the newly formed “Elders” group of senior diplomats that advocates peace in the world’s troublespots. On her Web site, Farrow headlines a posting: “WAKE UP JIMMY! YOU’RE OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER.” She took issue with Carter’s characterization of a meeting with Sudanese President Omar al Bashir as “constructive” and Carter’s comment in a BBC report that al Bashir’s promise of $300 million — mostly a loan from China — was a clear indication of (al Bashir’s) commitment.”

Today, wire services reported that government forces and militias burned down the Darfur village where 10 African Union soldiers were killed last week.

Sudan refuses to turn over Colonel and gov't minister accused of mass rape

from Independent Online Edition: Rape in Darfur persuaded charity to act

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor, 13 August 2007

When observers from Amnesty International visited Darfur in 2004, they were appalled by the number of rape victims they encountered.

The women and girls fall victim to rape as they collect firewood outside the refugee camps. Many have been gang-raped in front of their families as the conquering Janjaweed militia burnt down their homes.

Hundreds of rape cases, including against girls as young as seven or nine, were documented by human rights workers at the height of the ethnic cleansing in Darfur in 2004.

To allow the victims of mass rape to give birth is arguably tantamount to complicity in genocide. Because the most horrible conclusion of rape as a weapon of war is that it can change the ethnic makeup of a country. In the case of Darfur, it could mean the steady Arabisation of the next generation.

In 2005, about 100 countries took a landmark decision agreeing that rape should be acrime against humanity, which could be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The court's statutes include "rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilisation, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity" as a crime against humanity, when used as part of a "widespread or systematic attack" against the civilian population. Today, the former Sudanese former interior minister, Ahmad Harun, and Ali Kushayb, have been accused by the court of acting together to commit war crimes, including mass rape, against Darfur's civilians.

According to ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Ali Kushayb - known as "colonel of colonels" in west Darfur - victimised the local population "through mass rape and other sexual offences". Mr Harun was quoted as saying: "Since the children of the Fur had become rebels, all the Fur and what they had, had become booty" of the Janjaweed.

Last May, the court issued arrest warrants for the pair. However, although Mr Kushayb is reportedly in custody in Sudan, the Sudanese authorities have refused to hand over the men for trial. The loophole for Sudan, which the government has exploited by saying that its own judicial process is under way, is that the ICC can only come into play when a state is unwilling or unable to prosecute the crimes in national courts.

The systematic use of rape has been documented in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia. But it was most reported in Rwanda, where according to the World Bank and Unifem,as many as 500,000 women were raped during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis.

The ICC is also hearing cases against the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and the Central African Republic.

The UN blinks on Darfur

from a Christian Science Monitor editorial at csmonitor.com:

Despite the UN action to save it, Darfur still needs a peace to keep before it can use peacekeepers.

from the August 3, 2007 edition

Rather than plan for an invasion of Darfur to end a genocide, the UN Security Council decided Tuesday to send in 20,000 peacekeepers – not peacemakers. And the Blue Helmets will operate only without usurping Sudanese authority. Why the compromises? Two reasons: China and Iraq.

First, China. With its veto power within the Council, Beijing has delayed tough UN action on Darfur for years. It treasures Sudan's oil for its booming economy more than saving hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Darfur. But with global activists launching a save-Darfur campaign against China's hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics, it recently sent diplomats to its erstwhile allies in Sudan for a little arm-twisting.

That, and some limited sanctions on Khartoum by the UN, led to limited concessions for a much-constrained UN force to enter Darfur. The result is a complicated peacekeeping mission – the largest ever for the global body – that will take months, perhaps a year, to see if it can bring long-lasting peace to Darfur's survivors – just long enough for Beijing to finish up the Games next summer.

China, in essence, won a decent interval so it can use the Olympics to mark its ascendancy as a world power.

Second reason, Iraq: Before the US invasion in 2003, many officials at the United Nations were moving toward a doctrine of intervening in any country where a civil war or a humanitarian crisis was getting out of control. That was the UN's main lesson from the 1994 Rwanda genocide. But then the post-9/11 "preemptive intervention" in Iraq to destroy then-alleged weapons of mass destruction put a bad name on such well-meaning meddling.

The UN now remains wary of acting in such an assertive, sovereignty-busting way – even in the face of another genocide. And the result in Sudan is global intervention by dribs and drabs – and with many doubts.

Sudan did allow in a force of 7,000 soldiers from the African Union in 2004. That proved ineffectual, as expected, and left more than 2 million refugees still vulnerable to attacks. But even with the new UN African Union Mission in Darfur (Unamid), peacekeepers won't be able to disarm militias or arrest suspected war criminals. They can only protect civilians. And they are allowed to operate only "without prejudice to the responsibility of the government of Sudan," according to Tuesday's UN resolution. That's a loophole for Sudan to block anything.

In addition, the UN officers must be African, no sanctions are threatened if Sudan doesn't comply, and the UN secretary-general is not obligated to report violations.

Perhaps this UN move is the baby-step needed to end Darfur's tragedy and provide enough security to feed the refugees. If it fails, and China agrees, the UN can move to tougher sanctions. Still needed is international pressure on Darfur's rebel groups to unite and negotiate a peace deal with Khartoum – one that equitably distributes power and wealth to Sudan's regions. It is that inequality that lies at the heart of the dispute.

Since 2003, the conflict has claimed more than 200,000 lives and has shown the weakness of the UN as a global body. To end both, Darfur first needs a peace. Only then can it use peacekeepers.

Ron Paul's Latest Darfur Outrage

Rep. Paul, who believes that any U.S. action overseas is "interventionist", has cast the only vote in Congress against the U.S. government divesting in Sudan until it's government stops committing genocide in Darfur.

In other words, he wants the U.S. government to continue to do business as usual with the tyrants in Khartoum. How can he justify this outrage against human rights?

read more at: U.S. House of Representatives bill protects those divesting investments in Iran, Darfur - International Herald Tribune

Full text of bill H.R. 180 and roll call vote available at Thomas.

Petition to UN: Deploy Darfur Peacekeepers!

Take Action: End the Delays - Deploy the Peacekeepers

Although the UN Security Council authorized a robust peacekeeping force for Darfur one year ago, the force has still not been deployed - the first time the UN has ever failed to deploy an authorized peacekeeping mission.

On July 31, the UN Security Council authorized yet another peacekeeping force: a hybrid United Nations-African Union force similar to one that the Sudanese government has said it will accept.

Fill out the form at the link above to add your name to a petition urging UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to pressure world leaders to stand behind their commitment to deploying this new peacekeeping force without further delays.

US urges Japan to apologize for enslavement of 200,000 'comfort women'

from BBC NEWS

US lawmakers have called on Japan's government to formally apologise for its role in forcing thousands of women to work as sex slaves in World War II.

The symbolic and non-binding resolution was passed during a vote in the House of Representatives.

Up to 200,000 "comfort women" from across the Far East were part of Japan's military brothel programme.

Japan says it has shown sufficient remorse over the issue. A spokesman said the resolution was "regrettable".

Chief Cabinet Spokesman Yasuhisa Shiozaki told a news conference that Japan had "handled the comfort women issue with sincerity".

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had "clearly explained his views" on the subject during a visit to Washington in April, he said.

'Nauseating' denials

The resolution calls on Japan - one of the strongest US allies in Asia - to "formally acknowledge, apologise and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner" for the suffering of the women.

"Those who posit that all of the comfort women were happily complicit and acting of their own accord simply do not understand the meaning of the word rape"--Tom Lantos, House Committee on Foreign Affairs chairman

Earlier this month, a group of Japanese lawmakers demanded the US government retract the resolution, saying it was based on "wrong information that is totally different from the historical fact".

Tom Lantos, chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, described attempts to deny the use of sex slaves as "nauseating".

"There can be no denying the Japanese imperial military coerced thousands upon thousands of Asian women," Mr Lantos said.

"Those who posit that all of the comfort women were happily complicit and acting of their own accord simply do not understand the meaning of the word rape."

In 1993 Japan issued an official apology for the suffering of comfort women, acknowledging its involvement managing the brothels. But it was never approved by parliament and Japan has rejected most compensation claims, saying they were settled by treaties.

Mr Abe caused an uproar in March when he said there was no proof that the government or the military had forced the women into sexual servitude.

He later apologised, saying he felt sympathy for those affected.

The resolution comes at a difficult time for Mr Abe. On Sunday his ruling coalition suffered a crushing defeat in upper house polls, losing its majority and handing control of the house to the opposition.

He is facing pressure from the public and the media to step down, but the premier says he plans to remain in office and continue with an agenda of reform.

Sudan will punish Darfur refugees who go to Israel

from Ynetnews:

Sudanese Interior Minister Zubair Bashir Taha blamed Israel for using his country's refugee crisis to undermine Sudan's international reputation, Ynet has learned Monday.

In a press conference held in Khartoum Sunday, Taha said some 3,000 refugees had found their way to Israel via Egypt. About 40 percent of them are from southern Sudan and some 35 percent are from Darfur.

The Sudanese authorities, he added, would "find the appropriate way to deal" with those who "dared immigrate to Israel."

Read the rest here...

Sudan: "Jews behind Darfur conflict"

from Ynetnews: Sudanese defense minister says '24 Jewish organizations fueling conflict in Darfur' by Yaakov Lappin

Sudan's defense minister, Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, has accused "24 Jewish organizations" of "fueling the conflict in Darfur" last week in an interview with a Saudi newspaper.

Hussein was interviewed during an official state-visit to the Saudi kingdom last week.

A journalist from Saudi Arabia's Okaz newspaper asked Hussein: "Some people are talking about the penetration of Jewish organizations in Darfur and that there is no conflict there?"

A journalist from Saudi Arabia's Okaz newspaper asked Hussein: "Some people are talking about the penetration of Jewish organizations in Darfur and that there is no conflict there?"

"The Darfur issue is being fuelled by 24 Jewish organizations, who are making the largest amount of noise over the issue, and using the Holocaust in their campaigning," the Sudanese defense minister replied.

Hussein added that the Darfur conflict was driven by "friction between farmers and herders and shepherds. Among the biggest problems is that of water, which is used to exploit the differences and fuel the conflict."

"Are these Jewish groups supporting (the rebels) financially?," the interviewer from Okaz asked Hussein.

"Yes, they provide political and material support through their control over the media and across American and British circles," Hussein said, adding that Jewish groups were using "all means to fuel these conflicts."

He added that Western reports of 200,000 people dying in Sudan were false, and said: "We talk about 9,000 dead as a result of either government or rebel actions."

'We came to Israel to look for a better place'
Several days ago, Sudan's Interior Minister, Zubair Bashir Taha, lashed out at Sudanese refuees who had sought asylum in Israel, and accused "Isaeli authorities of encouraging the Sudanese refugees to come to their country."

He added that his ministry was "very confused" by Sudanese citizens who came to Israel."

The Sudan Tribune quoted a Sudanese refugee as telling al-Jazeera television: "We were surprised when we came here. We met good people, who welcomed us and gave us food. We feel that we are extremely happy. We hope that the Israeli government would find a solution for us and our children. We came here to look for a better place."

Meanwhile, in the US, a number of Jewish organizations have attempted to raise awareness over the plight of Sudanese citizens who face mass killings and ethnic cleansing from the Sudanese government. Some 20 Jewish organizations joined the 'Save Darfur Coalition,' along with other religious communities and American civil rights groups.