"Sodomy Laws" Rooted in British Colonialism

Although 66 countries signed a statement at the United Nations on Dec. 19 affirming that human rights protections extend to sexual orientation and gender identity, activists note that dozens of nations still criminalise homosexuality and seven impose the death penalty.The New York-based

Human Rights Watch says that the oppressive legacy of British colonialism is at the heart of many of these laws that penalise consensual sexual activity among adults of the same sex. According to a report titled "This Alien Legacy", launched last week, more than half of the world's remaining "sodomy laws" derive from a single law on homosexual conduct that British colonial rulers imposed on India in 1860.

The law, known as Section 377 under the Indian penal code, was designed to set standards of behaviour, both to "reform" the colonised and to protect the colonisers against "moral lapses". It was the first colonial "sodomy law" integrated into a penal code, and it became a model for countries across Asia, the Pacific Islands and Africa -- almost everywhere the British imperial flag flew.

Read More At IPS

Cutters Turn Razors on Babies to Evade FGM/C Law

Women performing excisions in Burkina Faso are cutting babies instead of young girls to escape increased scrutiny, according to the government and organisations fighting female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).

FGM/C has been outlawed in Burkina Faso since 1996 and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and US$1500 in fines. In the years following the law the number of FGM/C victims younger than five years old increased from 20 percent in 1998 to 31 percent in 2003, according to the government.

At least 70 newborns nationwide were admitted for hospital emergency care after botched cuttings in the first three months of 2008, according to the government.

Read More At IRIN

Rohingya Refugees Face Deportation

A group of Rohingya refugees who were beaten and burned by Myanmar soldiers as they tried to flee on boats to Thailand are facing likely deportation back to Myanmar. The 78 refugees were intercepted earlier this week by Thai authorities, who have themselves faced accusations of abusing Rohingya boat people in recent days.

One man who gave his name as Sutamin said he was taken onto a military vessel, where soldiers wrapped a cloth around a wooden stick, doused it in kerosene, ignited it and held it to his skin. "I got beaten. Everybody got beaten," he said. "But not a normal beating - this was very hard. I was tortured."He said the soldiers had also tied a noose around his neck and threatened to strangle him.

On Wednesday 66 members of the group appeared in court in the town of Ranong in southern Thailand to hear charges of illegally entering the country. They were not represented by lawyers and will not have an opportunity to defend themselves.The remaining members of the group were minors too young to appear in court.

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Congo Militia Leader 'Trained Child Soldiers to Kill'

A Congolese militia leader trained child soldiers to kill and pillage, the international criminal court heard as it finally began its historic first trial today.Thomas Lubanga, the former head of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), appeared before the court six years after the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal was set up in The Hague on charges of conscripting children under 15 and sending them into battle.

The UPC "recruited and trained hundreds of children to kill, pillage and rape", the chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said in an opening address.

"Hundreds of children still suffer the consequences of Lubanga's crimes. They cannot forget what they suffered, what they did, what they saw. They cannot forget the beatings they suffered, they cannot forget the terror they felt and the terror they inflicted. They cannot forget the sounds of the machine guns, they cannot forget that they killed. They cannot forget that they raped, that they were raped."

Read More At The Gaurdian

Plight of Greece's Migrants Worsens

On Wednesday, shortly after 7 pm local time,a fire razed 65 huts in the sprawling settlement of rudimentary homes of corrugated cardboard, plastic sheeting and scrap wood, that has for more than a decade sheltered countless illegal migrants, mostly from Afghanistan. While no one was injured, more than 400 illegal migrants lost the roof over their heads right in the middle of Greece's cold, wet winter.

Almost 48 hours after the devastation, aid workers and illegal migrants told Al Jazeera that Greek government officials had yet to respond to the practical needs of those left homeless.

"Last night I slept on the road; tonight I will sleep on the road," says Irfan, a 14-year-old Afghan who has lived in the camp for one month. "I need a home."

Read More At Al Jazeera

Private Assassins Target Gangs In Guatemala

Earlier this fall, the head of the Organization of American States warned that violent crime is an epidemic in Latin America, fueled by street gangs, drug trafficking and poverty. There, gun homicides are four times the world average.

In Guatemala, people have had enough of corrupt police and brutal extortions by gangs. They've turned to vigilantism. Lynch mobs and death squads are now commonplace. Twenty-five years ago, public enemy No. 1 was the leftist guerrillas who were at war with the government of Guatemala. They were branded subversives, delinquents, anti-social elements, and they were disappeared by death squads in the dark of night.

Today, the enemies of society are the maras, the street gangs whose members are estimated to number 80,000. And the violent campaign to eradicate them is called limpieza social, or social cleansing.

Read More At NPR

DR Congo's Bemba Accused of Ordering Mass Rapes

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in The Hague have accused Jen-Pierre Bemba, a former rebel leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo, of ordering mass rapes.At a hearing on Monday to decide if Bemba will face trial, the prosecutors said he had used rape to terrorise civilians suspected of supporting rivals in the Central African Republic.

Bemba, who also served as vice-president in DR Congo's post-civil war transitional government, faces three counts of crimes against humanity and five counts of war crimes."Bemba's men went from house to house, pillaging and raping mothers, wives and daughters," Petra Kneuer, the prosecutor, said.The troops were instructed to "traumatise and terrorise" the population to prevent them from supporting any resistance to Ange-Felix Patasse, the Central African Republic president, the prosecution said."To do this, he [Bemba] chose rape as his main method," Kneuer said.

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UN Struggles to House Displaced After Gaza Invasion

Democrats Inch Toward Torture Probe

On Wednesday – the first working day of the Obama administration – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would support funding and staff for additional fact-finding by the Senate Armed Services Committee, which last month released a report tracing abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, decision to exclude terror suspects from Geneva Convention protections.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, who issued that report, echoed Reid’s comments, saying “there needs to be an accounting of torture in this country.” Levin, D-Michigan, also said he intends to encourage the Justice Department and incoming Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate torture practices that took place while Bush was in office.

Read More At Consortium News

Israeli Forces Arrest Seven Children in West Bank

Seven children from Toura al-Gharbeiah village (near the West Bank city of Jenin) were arrested on Tuesday by the Israeli authorities; they are currently detained in Salim detention and interrogation center, in the northern West Bank. Two of the children are only 12 years old; two are 13; another two are aged 15; and the seventh is 17.

The Israeli intelligence, police and army entered Toura al-Gharbeiah village and arrested the seven children from their respective homes.The children were then assembled in a public building in the village, and interrogated there. They were alleged to have thrown stones at the Wall and were intimidated into confessing.

Read More At Electronic Intifada

Thailand Accused of Mistreating Muslim Refugees

Nearly 1,000 refugees were detained on a remote island in December before being towed out to sea and abandoned with little food or water, rights group says. Hundreds of Muslim refugees from Burma (Myanmar) are feared missing or dead after Thai troops forced them onto boats without engines and cut them adrift in international waters, according to human rights activists and authorities in India who rescued survivors. The revelations have shone a spotlight on the Thai military's expulsion policy toward Muslims it sees as a security threat.

Nearly 1,000 refugees were detained on a remote island in December before being towed out to sea in two batches and abandoned with little food or water, according to a tally by a migrant-rights group based on survivors' accounts and media reports. The detainees, mostly members of Burma's oppressed Rohingya minority, then drifted for weeks. One group was later rescued by Indonesia's Navy, and two others made landfall in India's Andaman Islands. Photos of refugees on a Thai island show rows of bedraggled men stripped to the waist as soldiers stand guard.

Read More At The Christian Science Monitor

KENYA: Hiding From the Cruellest Cut

Hundreds of girls between seven and 17 are seeking refuge in church compounds in western Kenya to avoid the ritual removal of their clitorises, a practice that remains common despite its illegality.

"Local authorities must ensure that these girls are not ostracised by the community and that their education is not disrupted," Andrew Timpson, a senior protection officer for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Kenya, told IRIN on 16 December. Timpson made a field visit to Kuria East and Kuria West districts in early December to examine the condition and protection needs of 342 girls who had fled their homes to avoid undergoing female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).

Read More At IRIN

Sudanese Refugees Live in Fear of LRA Assaults

Iraq to Reopen Abu Ghraib

The Iraqi government will reopen the notorious Abu Ghraib prison next month under the name of Baghdad Central Prison, a senior justice official has said.

The announcement came as the US military began handing over detainees in its custody to the Iraqis under a new security agreement.

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Migrants break out of Italian camp

Hundreds of asylum seekers and hopeful migrants have broken out of a holding centre on the Italian island of Lampedusa and marched to the town hall. Bernardino De Rubeis, the island's mayor, said that 700 out of about 1,300 people at the centre walked out on Saturday morning.

"It is a very tense situation," he said. Police said the group forced open the gates of the camp and marched peacefully to the town centre to protest against their detention.


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UN human rights official: Gaza evokes memories of Warsaw Ghetto

There is evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day campaign in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry, UN investigator Richard Falk said Thursday. The mental anguish of the civilians who suffered the assault is so great that the entire population of Gaza could be seen as casualties, said Falk, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"To lock people into a war zone is something that evokes the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto, and sieges that occur unintentionally during a period of wartime," Falk, who is Jewish, said, referring to the starvation and murder of Warsaw's Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.

Read More At Haaretz

The International Criminal Court's Dream of Global Justice

The International Criminal Court in The Hague is supposed to bring war criminals to justice, but it has yet to deliver a single verdict. Can international law bring peace to war-torn regions -- or does it actually hinder the peace process?Calvin Ocora is afraid whenever he hears a rustling sound in the jungle. At any time or place, it could happen again, just like on that day in May that he barely survived.

Ocora had fallen asleep under the mango tree -- and that nap probably saved his life. If it had not been so hot, and the shade of the tree had not been so cool, Ocora and his eight goats probably would have been back in the village of Lukodi in northern Uganda when it was transformed into a killing field.

Read More At Spiegel Online International

Lawyer and Journalist Are Shot Dead In Moscow

A prominent Russian human rights lawyer who often clashed with the security services was shot and killed along with a student journalist investigating neo-Nazi activity on Monday in central Moscow, prompting grief and outrage from colleagues who suspect they were targeted for their work.

The brazen daytime attack occurred moments after the lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, 34, stepped out of an afternoon news conference he had called to protest the release on parole a few days earlier of the highest-ranking Russian officer convicted of atrocities in the Chechen war.
Authorities said a gunman wearing a dark ski mask shot Markelov in the head on a street not far from the Kremlin. The journalist, Anastasia Baburova, 25, may have attempted to stop the assailant, and he shot her in the head as well before escaping into a nearby subway station, officials said.

Read More At the Washington Post

Deaths in Moscow: Russian Political Murders

The killing of Mr Markelov eliminated a man whose name in Chechnya, according to Tatyana Lokshina of Human Rights Watch, a campaigning group, “was synonymous with hope for justice.” It also epitomised the atmosphere of lawlessness and impunity that has flourished in Russia in recent years.

The list of dead journalists, campaigners for civil liberties and those who seriously harm the interests of over-mighty state officials is getting longer by the day. On January 13th a former Chechen rebel, Umar Israilov, who had turned against Mr Kadyrov and formally complained to the European Court of Human Rights of his involvement in kidnappings and torture, was gunned down in Vienna.

Last August Magomed Yevloyev, a journalist and owner of an opposition internet site in another north Caucasus republic, Ingushetia, was detained and “accidentally” shot by an interior ministry guard. His supporters blamed Ingushetia’s then president and interior minister. To the joy of the whole republic the Kremlin fired both men in October. But on December 30th Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, appointed the former interior minister to a new job of “federal inspector” in Moscow. Impunity, it seems, still prevails.

Read More At The Economist

Thai Forces Accused of Towing Migrants Out to Sea on Barges

The Thai armed forces have been accused of towing hundreds of migrants out to sea last month and leaving them to their fate with inadequate food and water and only paddles as a means to reach land.

The migrants allegedly arrived off Thailand's Andaman coast after setting sail from Bangladesh. Most of them are from the Rohingya ethnic minority, tens of thousands of whom have fled to Bangladesh to escape repression and economic hardship in their homeland in western Burma.

The Thai authorities are accused of towing them back out to sea on barges without engines and abandoning them. Reports in the regional news media say that hundreds have died and that many bodies have been found trapped in mangrove forests around India's Andaman Islands. Hundreds more people, starving and dehydrated, have been rescued by Indian and Indonesian authorities after days adrift.

Read More At The Washington Post

ICRC Fear For Sri Lanka Civilians

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says that intense fighting in northern Sri Lanka has caused a "massive displacement" of civilians. It says thousands of people trapped inside rebel-held territory have had to flee several times in recent months. An ICRC official, Paul Castella, told the BBC that fighting had stopped relief supplies being delivered to rebel-held areas for nearly a week and that there were serious concerns about a lack of food.

Read More At BBC

Italy pressed by UN over migrants

The UN's refugee agency says it is increasingly concerned for the welfare of nearly 2,000 migrants at a detention centre on a southern Italian island.

The centre on Lampedusa has a capacity of 850, forcing hundreds of people to sleep outdoors in the cold, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.

It said Italy's new immigration policy was partly to blame for the conditions.
Italy reported a sharp rise in the number of migrants arriving by sea on the island from Africa in 2008.

Correspondents say many would-be migrants are fleeing wars or poverty in countries such as Somalia and Eritrea and risk the dangerous Mediterranean crossing to enter Europe.
People smugglers charge them about $1,000 (£685; 710 euros) each to make the often stormy crossing in barely seaworthy vessels.

Read More At BBC

Activist's 'Railroad' Helps Gay Iranians

"Not quite three years ago, Arsham Parsi was an Iranian refugee in Turkey. Today, he is executive director of the Iranian Queer Railroad, trying to help 200 people down the same road he took to Toronto.

On a recent trip to Turkey, he secured refugee status from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for 45 Iranian gays, but they are awaiting interviews at the Canadian and U.S. embassies. Canada, the U.S. and Australia are the likely destinations for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people on his "railroad," because those countries recognize the kind of persecution they face."

Read More At The Star

Senegal Jails 9 Men For Homosexuality

Nine gay men in Dakar, Senegal, were jailed for eight years Jan. 6 for the crimes of having gay sex and belonging to a “criminal association,” an HIV-services group.

On Dec. 19, police raided the apartment of gay leader Diadji Diouf, arrested him and the other men, and confiscated condoms and lubricants. The men were taken to a police station and held until Dec. 24, then transferred to a detention center, where they were held until trial. Human Rights Watch said the men were beaten while in custody.

The men received the maximum five-year sentence for engaging in what the Penal Code calls “an improper or unnatural act with a person of the same sex” and three additional years for being members of the HIV-services organization AIDES Sénégal, the “criminal association.”

Read More At San Francisco Bay Times

Murders highlight increasing violence against trans people in Honduras

"A leading human rights group has claimed that the murder of a trans activist in Honduras is part of a series of violent attacks on the community. In addition to the attacks, on December 20th, members of the police assaulted a transgender activist doing HIV/AIDS outreach work in Tegucigalpa.

'The transgender community is terrified,' said Indyra Mendoza, director of the Honduran lesbian and feminist group Cattrachas. But these attacks will not silence the community in Honduras, and we will continue to work to ensure that the rights of transgender people are recognised and protected."

Read More At PinkNews

The Bush/Cheney Torture Legacy Still Being Whitewashed

Even as the convening authority of the Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Susan Crawford, finally comes forward with revelations of torture at Guantanamo Bay against suspected terrorist Mohammed al-Qahtani, our corporate media and others continue to whitewash the Bush/Cheney torture legacy.

In the first place, this is not new information, by any stretch. Almost three years ago, in February 2006, Jean Mayer wrote in the New Yorker about the General Counsel of the U.S. Navy, Alberto Mora’s attempt to put a stop to the torture. Mayer’s article describes a 22-page memo by Mora, released in July 2004, which showed that in 2002 Mora tried to put a halt to what he saw as “a disastrous and unlawful policy of authorizing cruelty towards terrorism suspects”.

Read More At Democratic Underground

The United States as Torture Central

The United States was truly torture central at that time, not by virtue of its own use of torture, but by its sponsorship of regimes that used it extensively. Add to this the fact that this country is always in the forefront of technological advance in the tools of repression, as well as war, and in those earlier years carried out major operations in the supply of torture technology and training in its use. Electronic methods of torture were used extensively by U.S. and mercenary army forces in Vietnam and, in the 1960s and 1970s, U.S. experts advised client-state torturers from Vietnam to Brazil and Uruguay on the permissible limits of electronic torture to prevent premature death under "interrogation," among other advanced techniques.

Read More At Z Magazine

Obama To Close Secret CIA Prisons Immediately

President Barack Obama will shut down a secret network of CIA prisons immediately. He has also ordered that the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay be closed within one year. Alex Cohen talks to Slate.com senior editor Dahlia Lithwick about what this means for the future of detainees.

Read More At NPR

Obama Orders Closure of Guantanamo Prison, Interrogations Must Follow Army Field Manual

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This morning, I signed three executive orders. First, I can say without exception or equivocation that the United States will not torture. Second, we will close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and determine how to deal with those who have been held there. And third, we will immediately undertake a comprehensive review to determine how to hold and try terrorism suspects to best protect our nation and the rule of law.

The world needs to understand that America will be unyielding in its defense of its security and relentless in its pursuit of those who would carry out terrorism or threaten the United States. And that’s why, in this twilight struggle, we need a durable framework. The orders that I signed today should send an unmistakable signal that our actions in defense of liberty will be just as our cause and that we, the people, will uphold our fundamental values as vigilantly as we protect our security. Once again, America’s moral example must be the bedrock and the beacon of our global leadership.

Read More At Democracy Now!

How the U.S. Army's Field Manual Codified Torture -- and Still Does

The President of the National Lawyers Guild Marjorie Cohn has stated that portions of the Army Field Manual's protocol, especially the use of isolation and prolonged sleep deprivation, constitutes cruel-and-unusual punishment and is illegal under the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Yet, the interrogation manual is still praised by politicians, including then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, who in December 2007 said he would "have the Army Field Manual govern interrogation techniques for all United States Government personnel and contractors."

Read More At AlterNet

4 Prisoners Die in Thailand As A Result of Torture

Released today, Thailand: Torture in the southern counter-insurgency, says that people are being brutally beaten, burnt with candles, buried up to their necks in the ground, subjected to electric shocks and exposed to intense heat or cold. Amnesty International gathered information about at least four people who died as a result of torture.

Read More At Amnesty International

Muntazer Al-Zaidi Seeks Asylum in Switzerland

The Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at US President George W Bush is seeking asylum in Switzerland, Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve reports.

Muntazer al-Zaidi has been in custody in Iraq awaiting trial since the incident during a visit by Mr Bush to the country in mid-December. He fears for his safety in his Baghdad prison, the paper says, quoting his lawyer, Mauro Poggia. The lawyer argues his client likewise cannot resume his old job in Iraq.

Since his arrest, the Iraqi has reportedly been beaten in custody, suffering a broken arm, broken ribs and internal bleeding."

Read More At BBC

Obama pick rejects waterboarding

Eric Holder, the US attorney-general choice nominated by Barack Obama, the US president-elect, has said he believes the controversial interrogation method of "waterboarding" to be torture.

Speaking at his confirmation hearing at the US senate on Thursday, Holder also said he did not think a US president had the power to "immunise" an intelligence offcer to carry out torture and not face charges. "No-one is above the law, the president has a constitutional obligation to faithfully execute the law of the United States," he said in Washington DC.

Read More At Al Jazeera

David Ngaruri Kenney

David Ngaruri Kenney, co-author of Asylum Denied, will be sworn in as a US citizen on January 16, 2009 through the Office of US Immigration and Citizen Services in Baltimore, MD. In a recent letter to supporters, Kenney expressed how meaningful the ceremony is for himself, his family and expressed gratitude to the many people who have supported his endeavors since leaving his home country 14 years ago.

Bush Admits Signing Off on Torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

President Bush acknowledged that he personally authorized the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was held in a secret CIA prison where he was waterboarded over 100 times. Bush made the disclosure on Fox News Sunday.

President Bush: “One such person who gave us information was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed… And I’m in the Oval Office, and I am told that we have captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the professionals believe he has information necessary to secure the country. So I ask, ‘What tools are available for us to find information from him?’ And they gave me a list of tools. And I said, ‘Are these tools deemed to be legal?’ And so, we got legal opinions before any decision was made.”

From Democracy Now!

Son of Charles Taylor Sentenced to 97 Years for Torture

The son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been sentenced to ninety-seven years in prison for mutilations and executions carried out in Liberia, in the first US prosecution for torture committed abroad. Charles “Chuckie” Taylor, Jr., was convicted in October by a jury in Miami, Florida on eight torture and conspiracy charges for killings, beatings and atrocities committed while he headed a paramilitary force in Liberia. The charges said he and his colleagues burned their victims with hot irons, molten wax and boiling water and applied electric shocks to their genitals. The thirty-one-year-old Taylor is a US citizen who was born in Boston. Taylor was the first person charged under a 1994 extraterritorial torture statute, which allows prosecutors to charge a US citizen or someone present in the United States with acts of torture or conspiracy to torture outside the country.

From Democracy Now!

Former Gitmo guard speaks of inmate 'torture'

The US Department of Defence says its policy is to treat detainees humanely.But Chris Arendt has told the BBC some of his fellow guards were so violent as to be psychotic. He says what he saw there amounted to torture.

"I saw people storm into the cell and beat that detainee, and then zip-tie the detainee and pull them out. I saw that done excessively," he said. "I saw people kicking detainees in the face. It's torture, it's a means of extracting information that I didn't even believe these people probably had."

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has written a letter to US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates protesting the "inhumane and unlawful practice" of force-feeding hunger strikers at the prison. "Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said there were 34 hunger strikers at the prison and that 25 of them were being force-fed.

"Force-feeding is universally considered to be a form of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment," Mr Dakwar wrote to Mr Gates."Debilitating risks of force-feeding include major infections, pneumonia and collapsed lungs," said Mr Dawkar, recalling that five detainees have died in custody at the US naval base prison.

Read More At ABC News

Obama: Gitmo Likely Won't Close in First 100 Days

President-elect B arack Obama said this weekend that he does not expect to close Guantanamo Bay in his first 100 days in office.

When asked if he plans to require that every government interrogation program be under the same standard and in accordance with the Army Field Manuel, Obama said, " My general view is that our United States military is under fire and has huge stakes in getting good intelligence. And if our top army commanders feel comfortable with interrogation techniques that are squarely within the boundaries of rule of law, our constitution and international standards, then those are things that we should be able to."

Read More At ABCNews

Immigrant Advocates Decry Ruling On Lawyer Error

When immigrants face possible deportation, they don't have the right to a state-appointed attorney. Now, Attorney General Michael Mukasey says this means they also don't have the right to a new hearing if the lawyer they hire turns out to be incompetent or a fraud.

Immigrant advocates say a Justice Department ruling issued Wednesday by Muksasey could hurt thousands of immigrants seeking to stay in the U.S

Read More At NPR

US Rejects Request to Let Haitians Temporarily Stay in US

The Miami Herald reports the Bush administration has rejected a request by Haitian President René Préval and others to allow tens of thousands of undocumented Haitians living in the United States to stay until their homeland recovers from a string of deadly summer storms. Randy McGrorty of Catholic Legal Services criticized the decision. McGrorty said, “The successive storms destroyed 15 percent of Haiti’s GDP. That’s the equivalent of eight to ten hurricane Katrinas hitting the United States in a month’s period of time.”

From Democracy Now!

Australia tells US it won't accept Gitmo detainees

Australia has told the United States for a second time that it will not resettle detainees freed from the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, the acting prime minister said Saturday.

Most come from Yemen, but others are from Azerbaijan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Chad, China and Saudi Arabia. Some have been held without charge since the prison camp opened in 2002 to hold so-called "enemy combatants" accused of having links to the al-Qaida terror network or Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime.

Read More At NPR