Tracking the War on Women in Darfur

Seated on a woven straw mat in a refugee camp in eastern Chad, Dr. Sondra Crosby of the Boston Medical Center listened with mounting distress as the women of Darfur came forward, one by one over 12 days, to tell her their stories of rape, beatings, hunger, and humiliation.

She and three other Boston-area medical specialists interviewed 88 women in November in eastern Chad. This morning they released the results in a report that offers unprecedented and disturbing details on the long-term effects of the assaults - as well as fresh evidence of the continuing violence against the women of Darfur, years after they fled the battlefield.

The 88 women interviewed reported suffering 32 rapes. Of those, 17 occurred in Darfur and 15 in Chad. Seven women reported being the victim of gang rape in Darfur, and three women reported being raped more than once. For two of them, rape in Darfur was followed by rape in Chad.

The story of one woman, in particular, transfixed Crosby, who lives in Dedham with her five adopted children and has made it her calling to investigate cases of torture and abuse.

"The woman told me . . . she was beaten on her arms so badly that she couldn't use them, and she was raped by four to six men," Crosby recalled. "She witnessed the same thing happen to others who were hiding with her. She was eight months pregnant at the time. She described giving birth to a dead baby, and how painful it was. After the rape her husband divorced her."

Read More At CommonDreams.org

UN Poised to Close Gender Gap and Create Women's Agency

The UN is poised to create a powerful new department for women who say they have been sidelined for decades, to rectify a glaring omission in the world body.

Women from developing countries have been let down by the UN, say ministers. Photograph: Martin Godwin/GuardianAdvocates for women's rights are looking for a fully-fledged agency with a budget of $1bn (£639m) on a par with other high-profile UN departments, to address crucial areas such as violence against women, property rights and HIV/Aids.

"The UN record on women has been abysmal," said Stephen Lewis, co-director of Aids-Free World, and an advocate of gender equality. "It has neglected the rights and needs of women everywhere. It's clear to everyone that the marginalisation of women over decades is unacceptable and the best way to correct it is a UN agency like Unicef for children."

Read More At CommonDreams.org

Uighur Guantanamo Inmates Left in Limbo

UN Torture Watchdog Demands Access to Secret Prisons

United Nation’s watchdog on torture has criticised Israel for refusing to allow inspections at a secret prison, dubbed by critics as “Israel’s Guantanamo Bay”, and demanded to know if more such clandestine detention camps are operating.

In a report published on Friday, the Committee Against Torture requested that Israel identify the location of the camp, officially referred to as “Facility 1391”, and allow access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Findings from Israeli human rights groups show that the prison has in the past been used to hold Arab and Muslim prisoners, including Palestinians, and that routine torture and physical abuse were carried out by interrogators. The UN committee’s panel of 10 independent experts also found credible the submissions from Israeli groups that Palestinian detainees were systematically tortured despite the banning of such practices by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1999.

Read More At The National

Philadelphia Inquirer Hires Torture Memo Author John Yoo to Write Column!!

The letters to the editorial page of the Philadelphia Inquirer are on fire. People are writing in, overwhelmingly opposed to the newspaper’s hiring of John Yoo as a columnist, the former Justice Department lawyer who helped write what’s come to be known as the torture memo that claimed the treatment of prisoners amounted to torture only if it caused the same level of pain as “organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.”

WILL BUNCH: I think a problem going back to the Bush’s first term is the media normalizing torture, that makes something like torture, which not only is illegal under a law that was signed by Ronald Reagan, among others, but, is clearly immoral, to make this a kind of a one-hand-on-the-other-hand debate, like it’s something like mass transit funding or something like that. And it’s not.

I think newspapers have a role to reflect the moral positions of their community. Nobody would argue giving a regular monthly column to somebody who advocated something like racial discrimination, for example, or something like—that would be so far out of the mainstream. And I think we need to put torture in that same category.

Read More At Democracy Now!

Russia Stops Gay March

Police in Russia have broken up a march by gay-rights activists in Moscow hours before the Eurovision Song Contest final. At least 30 campaigners had gathered near a university and were later arrested by riot police for taking part in the demonstration condemning the treatment of gays and lesbians in Russia.

The group, which included Peter Tatchell, British gay rights activist, were dragged away by police when they waved flags and chanted slogans demanding equal rights, including: "Homophobia is a disgrace of this country!"

Among those detained was Nikolai Alexeyev, a Russian gay rights leader. Police said they were arresting him for walking with a transvestite.

Read More At Al Jazeera

Saudi Arabia Delays the Right of Women's Vote

Saudi Arabia has delayed municipal elections in which women were hoping to take part for the first time. The vote has been postponed for another two years.

Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, is an absolute monarchy without political parties.
The kingdom held municipial elections in 2005 which were the country's first nationwide polls since its foundation in 1932.

Women were barred from voting or standing for office, but officials said then they would be allowed to stand in the next vote, which had been expected this year.

The election for half the seats on the councils was part of a series of reforms undertaken after the September 11 attacks of 2001 focused international attention on Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah ascended the throne in 2005 promising a programme of cautious reforms in the world's biggest oil exporter. Analysts and diplomats say he faces stiff opposition from senior members of the royal family as well as a powerful religious establishment fearing loss of influence.

Last week, a group of Saudi human rights and oppositionactivists sent a petition to Abdullah demanding political and judicial reforms, including holding elections.

In March, Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz, the interior minister and half-brother of Abdullah, was quoted by a local newspaper as saying that Saudi Arabia had no need for women members of parliament or elections.

Read More At Al Jazeera

New 'Prisoner Abuse' Photographs Emerge Despite US Bid to Block Publication

Graphic photographs of alleged prisoner abuse, thought to be among up to 2,000 images Barack Obama is trying to prevent from being released, emerged yesterday. The shocking images of inmates in Iraq and Afghanistan were published just a day after the US president announced plans for a legal battle stop them ever being seen.

Images emerged from Australia yesterday where they were originally obtained by the channel SBS in 2006 in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal. They risked provoking renewed hostility in the Middle East as Mr Obama attempts to build bridges with the Islamic world.

He is scheduled to make a major speech in Cairo on June 4 when he will launch his version of a plan to bring peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

One picture showed a prisoner hung up upside down while another showed a naked man smeared in excrement standing in a corridor with a guard standing menacingly in front of him. Another prisoner is handcuffed to the window frame of his cell with underpants pulled over his head.

Others yet to be released reportedly show military guards threatening to sexually assault a detainee with a broomstick and hooded prisoners on transport planes with Playboy magazines opened to pictures of nude women on their laps.

The images emerged from Australia yesterday where they were originally obtained by the channel SBS in 2006 in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal. They were not distributed around the world at the time but are now believed to be among those the president is trying to block.
Mr Obama previously committed to allowing thousands of images to be published but changed his mind after senior generals warned that their publication could place US troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan in greater danger.

The president's change of heart brought bitter criticism from the left wingers and the American Civil Liberties Union, which had brought a freedom of information case against the US government applying to see the pictures.

Pledging to fight the case all the way to the Supreme Court, the ACLU accused him of betraying his principles of open government and "complicity in covering up" the "commission of torture by the Bush administration".

"It is true that these photos would be disturbing. The day we are no longer disturbed by such repugnant acts would be a sad one," said Anthony Romero, executive director.

Read More At CommonDreams.org

Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama

As the Obama administration continues to fight the release of some 2,000 photos that graphically document U.S. military abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, an ongoing Spanish investigation is adding harrowing details to the ever-emerging portrait of the torture inside and outside Guantánamo.

Among them: "blows to [the] testicles;" "detention underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep;" being "inoculated … through injection with 'a disease for dog cysts;'" the smearing of feces on prisoners; and waterboarding. The torture, according to the Spanish investigation, all occurred "under the authority of American military personnel" and was sometimes conducted in the presence of medical professionals.

More significantly, however, the investigation could for the first time place an intense focus on a notorious, but seldom discussed, thug squad deployed by the U.S. military to retaliate with excessive violence to the slightest resistance by prisoners at Guantánamo.

Read More At AlterNet

War Crimes Suspect Heads Sudan Post

A man wanted for alleged war crimes in Darfur has been appointed as governor for Sudan's disputed south Kordofan province.

Ahmed Harun was named as being chosen to head the oil-rich region in a decree issued on Thursday by Omar al-Bashir, who is also sought by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes.

Harun, who had been the minister of state for humanitarian affairs, had an arrest warrant issued against him in 2007. Harun is wanted by the ICC for allegedly allowing rapes and murder to be committed in Darfur.

The ICC has 51 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Harun, which were allegedly committed in Sudan's western Darfur region in 2003 and 2004.

Read More At Al Jazeera

Obama to Restart Military Tribunals

President Obama is on the verge of breaking two key campaign promises in his troubled attempt to shut Guantánamo Bay — with plans to revive the military tribunal system set up by George Bush and to continue the indefinite detention of up to 100 inmates.

The moves, which have not yet been signed off by Mr Obama but look increasingly likely, are a result of his promise on his second day in office to shut the Guantánamo Bay prison within a year.

Since then, officials charged with working out how to shut down the prison concede that up to 100 of the 241 detainees remaining are either too dangerous to release or cannot be tried in a military or civilian court. The evidence against many of them is tainted because they were tortured, or involves sensitive issues of national security that cannot be revealed.

The latest Administration thinking has been decried by human rights groups who point out that as a presidential candidate, Mr Obama called the military tribunal system an enormous failure and condemned the indefinite detention of detainees as a gross breach of the US Constitution.

Read More At Times Online

Italy law cracks down on migrants

The Italian parliament has passed a controversial law aimed at deterring illegal immigration through measures including fines of thousands of dollars. The law, which was passed by 297 votes to 255 with three abstentions, creates an offence of illegal entry or residence on Italian soil punishable by fines of between $6,750 and $13,500.

The vote came as the government of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, was already under fire for sending would-be immigrants back to Libya last week without allowing them to apply for asylum.

Italy presented Libya with three patrol boats, the first of a total of six, to help intercept migrants at a ceremony in the Italian port town of Gaeta on Thursday.

The bill increases the period of detention of illegal immigrants for identification from two months to six and makes anyone letting accommodation to them liable to up to three months in jail.
Berlusconi, who claims 76 per cent popular support for the restrictions, said: "We are closing the doors [to immigration] and we will only half open them for those who come to work and to integrate."

The immigration provisions have been attacked by parties on the left, who accuse Berlusconi of harking back to the days of Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator. Italian bishops have also expressed unease at the measures, which are designed to enable illegal immigrants to be brought rapidly before the courts and expelled from the country.

Read More At Al Jazeera

Pakistan Diary: Mass Exodus

"The media here have dubbed this the biggest movement of people since partition... in 1947". The first thing that hits you when you visit a refugee camp is the sheer scale. 'Camp' is too small a word to use- these are cities of canvas and rope. Hussein camp has only been running for a few days. So far it houses 4000 refugees - a small town compared to say Jallala refugee encampment which has upwards of 48,000 people living there.

It is a "massive crisis" - according to Antonio Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees."Pakistan has hosted the largest refugee population in the world - 5 million Afghans - Pakistan now needs help itself and the world must pay attention."

The UN and other aid agencies have a big job on their hands. This is the biggest movement of people in recent times. At least 1.3 million people are on the move and more than 800,000 are registered with the UN alone as refugees.

But behind that figure lies another one. You could call them the forgotten refugees. Since August 2008, people have been fleeing clashes across the North West Frontier Province. The army has been battling Taliban fighters and more than 500,000 refugees have been registered in camps by the UN since August last year. They have been living makeshift accommodation since then. The Red Cross has registered another 400,000.

Read More At Al Jazeera

Lhotsampa Leave Nepal Refugee Camps

Some 100,000 other Bhutanese have lived in bamboo huts on the Terai plains of eastern Nepal since the early 1990s, when they say they were 'ethnically cleansed' from Bhutan.

Another of the seven refugee camps in the region is Timai, where Hari Maya Gurung is crouching on a dirt floor, arranging the few pots and pans that distinguish this room as her kitchen.Her family used to own 15 acres of land in the village of Leopani in southern Bhutan, where they tended three orange orchards and raised cows and oxen. Today all that she possesses can be found within this small hut.

Gurung's great-great-grandfather was among thousands of Nepalese to emigrate to Bhutan a century ago, building farms in the inhospitable southern reaches of that country. The Gurungs and their ilk – called 'Lhotsampa' in Bhutan – were mostly Hindu and comprised the peasant class in a country that was predominantly Buddhist. Bhutan's rulers largely ignored the Lhotsampa until the later half of the 1900s when the government became nervous of their rapidly growing population and increasing political clout.

In 1985, the government passed a law stripping most Lhotsampa of their citizenship, effectively initiating a campaign to dislocate them from the land.

Gurung says the problems for her family started in the mid-1980s when the police in her village began "verifying" citizenship. Unable to produce the required paperwork, she says all nine of her children were categorised as "terrorists" by the Bhutanese state."It was agony," says Gurung, recalling how she pleaded with the authorities for leniency.

Refugees have always accused the army of setting up barracks throughout southern Bhutan and demolishing their homes. They have also accused the military of arresting, torturing, raping and murdering people from their community.The Bhutanese government has denied accusations that it ethnically cleansed the Lhotsampa from Bhutan. Nevertheless, Gurung remembers the night government officials knocked on her door."Nepal is your country" she says they told her. "Leave Bhutan. If we return and you are still here, we will lock you inside this house and burn it down."

Read More At Al Jazeera

Croatia massacre jail term tripled

A Serb officer jailed for the 1991 massacre of people seeking refuge at a Croatian hospital has had his sentence more than tripled to 17 years by a UN war crimes appeal court.

Veselin Sljivancanin, who had been provisionally released in December 2007 after spending four years in custody, had returned to the court in the Netherlands for the judgement on Tuesday.

The prosecution alleged that the former Yugoslav Peoples Army (JNA) laid siege to the city of Vukovar from August to November 1991, when it fell to Serb forces.

Several hundred people sought refuge at the Vukovar hospital in the last days of the siege in the hopes that it would be evacuated in the presence of international observers. But the indictment said that about 400 non-Serbs were removed by the JNA from the hospital, loaded onto buses and taken to JNA barracks and later to a farm in nearby Ovcara where they were beaten.

A court document said: "Soldiers then transported their non-Serb captives in groups of about 10 to 20 to a ravine ... where they killed at least 264 Croats and other non-Serbs."After the killings, the bodies of the victims were buried by bulldozer in a mass grave at the same location."

Read More At Al Jazeera

Back to Jail for Zimbabwe Activists

A Zimbabwe court has revoked the bail of 18 political activists facing charges of "terrorism", ordering them to return to prison in a trial that has been widely denounced as a sham.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the party headed by Morgan Tsvangirai, the prime minister, warned the move could endanger the country's fledgling unity government.

The activists were arrested last year and say they were abducted from their homes by state security agents and tortured into confessing to being party to a plan to remove Robert Mugabe, the president, from power.

The group, which includes Jestina Mukoko, a leading human rights activist, and several MDC members, were granted bail in March with the consent of state prosecutors.The 18 have now been indicted for a trial which starts next month.

Fifteen of the activists appeared in court on Tuesday for the remand hearing, the other three are still in hospital recovering from injuries they said they received at the hands of security forces.

Read More At Al Jazeera

Detained Immigrants at Federal Immigrant Detention Center in South Texas Stage Hunger Strike Over Alleged Abuses, Denial of Due Process

We turn now to the vast network of immigration prisons in Texas, many of which are privately operated by for-profit corporations. As many as a hundred people held at the Port Isabel Processing Center near Brownsville, Texas, have been on a hunger strike since last week to draw attention to alleged abuses in the facility and their extended detention without due process. Prisoners say their complaints to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, or ICE, about lack of medical attention, denial of food and other abuses have fallen on deaf ears.

They began the hunger strike last Wednesday and are demanding to meet with Dora Schriro, the newly appointed special adviser on detention and removal for the Department of Homeland Security.

Independent journalist Renee Feltz interviewed one of the hunger strikers, Rama Carty, for the Texas Observer. Carty was born to Haitian parents in the Democratic Republic of Congo thirty-nine years ago today. He has lived in the United States for thirty-eight-and-a-half years and has been detained by ICE for over thirteen months after serving a two-year sentence for what he says was a wrongful drug conviction. Carty described why people at the facility are refusing to eat.

Read More At Democracy Now!

Torture-tape Gulf Prince Accused of 25 Other Attacks

The wealthy Gulf prince at the centre of a "torture tape" scandal has been accused of attacking at least 25 other people in incidents that have also been caught on film, it has been claimed.

Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan is now under investigation in the United Arab Emirates after the shocking tape showed him beating a man with a nailed plank, setting him on fire, attacking him with a cattle prod and running him over.

But now lawyers for American businessman Bassam Nabulsi, who smuggled the tape out of the UAE, have written to the justice minister of Abu Dhabi - the most powerful of the emirates that make up the UAE - claiming to have considerably more evidence against Issa.

I have more than two hours of video footage showing Sheikh Issa's involvement in the torture of more than 25 people," wrote Texas-based lawyer Anthony Buzbee in a letter obtained by the Observer.

The news of more torture videos involving Issa is another huge blow to the international image of the UAE. The oil-rich state has been keen to develop relations with wealthy western politicians, universities and corporations and to promote an aura of moderation and tolerance. But the shocking video of Issa torturing Afghan grain merchant Mohammed Shah Poor, whom Issa said had cheated him in a business deal, has heavily dented the UAE's reputation. Particularly damaging was the apparent involvement of a policeman in the torture and the impunity with which Sheikh Issa could act, even after the tape emerged. He is a senior prince related to powerful members of the ruling family in Abu Dhabi.

But now it appears the initial tape could just be the beginning of the problem. The new tapes apparently also involve police officers taking part in Issa's attacks, and some of his victims in the as-yet-unseen videos are believed to be Sudanese immigrants.

Read More At the Guardian

BRAZIL: Gay-Bashing Murders Up 55 Percent

In 2008, 190 homosexuals were killed in Brazil, one every two days, representing a 55 percent increase on the previous year – a veritable "homocaust" according to gay rights activists.

The Annual Report on Murders of Homosexuals, produced by the Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB), says that 64 percent of the victims were gay men, 32 percent were transvestites, and four percent were lesbians. "A transvestite is 259 times more likely to be murdered than a gay man," says the study which is based on media reports, since there are no official statistics on hate crimes in Brazil. The study, coordinated by former GGB head Carlos Mott, one of the country’s most outspoken defenders of gay rights, says that 13 percent of the victims were under the age of 21.

Read More At IPS