UN human rights experts voice concern about suspension of Spanish judge

25 May 2010 – A group of United Nations human rights experts today expressed concern about the suspension of a high-profile Spanish judge who had been investigating allegations regarding tens of thousands of enforced disappearances during the country’s civil war and subsequent years.



Spain’s General Council of the Judiciary suspended Baltasar Garzón, an investigative judge, earlier this month as part of a criminal investigation by the Spanish Supreme Court into his actions. His case will now go to trial.


Read more at the UN News Centre

CAMBODIA: Khmer Rouge genocide charge marks milestone for minorities

PHNOM PENH, 24 May 2010 (IRIN) - As judges at Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge tribunal decide whether to include genocide as a charge in the closing order, advocates say prosecuting the crime would represent a milestone for official recognition of the rights of the country's Vietnamese and Muslim minorities.

“There is still discrimination against the Cham, so this sends an important message that Muslims in Cambodia are part of the country,” Lor Chunty, a lawyer representing more than 200 Cham Muslim civil parties in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), told IRIN. 


Read more at IRIN

UNHCR warns governments against forced returns to Somalia

GENEVA, May 21 (UNHCR) – Amid a fast deteriorating situation in Somalia, UNHCR on Friday issued an urgent appeal to governments everywhere not to forcibly return people to that country.

Speaking at a press briefing in Geneva, UNHCR's chief spokesperson, Melissa Fleming, said inconsistencies in the way that countries are dealing with people fleeing Somalia were allowing returns to happen and putting lives at risk.

"Today, we are appealing to all states to uphold their international obligations with regard to non-refoulement," she said. "In recent months there have been incidents of returns . . . These have included a further reported deportation, of over 100 Somalis from Saudi Arabia to Mogadishu in mid May."

Read more at UNHCR

Nigeria police 'routinely kill, rape and torture'

Nigeria's police force carry out extrajudicial killings, torture in custody, and sexual assault against women, according to a study by a civil liberties group.

The report claims that police openly parade suspects for the media, before executing them without trial.

The Open Society Justice Initiative's study is the latest of a number of reports to severely criticise Nigeria's police for brutality and corruption.

The authorities have so far made no comment on the report.

Read more at BBC

Crusading Spain judge Garzon himself a defendant

Baltasar Garzon — who sought to prosecute former Chilean dictator Pinochet— is to be tried on charges that he overstepped by opening an investigation into Spanish Civil War atrocities.

Reporting from Madrid —

Is it a horrible irony or poetic justice?

For years, Baltasar Garzon has been Spain's most controversial crusader, a judge on a mission to fight whatever he thinks is an abuse of power wherever he sees it happening. He has used his courtroom here in Madrid to investigate allegations of torture at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to indict Osama bin Laden and, most famously, to go after former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times

Former Iraqi refugees benefit from UNHCR shelter programme in the south

AL KAHLA DISTRICT, Iraq, May 20 (UNHCR) – Seven years after returning to Iraq from long exile in neighbouring Iran and three years after losing her husband and son in a bomb blast, Suad Jafar finally has something to be happy about –a house of her own.

Suad and her five grandchildren were among a group of 180 Iraqi families, gathering more than 1,000 people, who were given the keys to new houses earlier this month in the southern province of Missan under a UNHCR shelter programme.

Read more at the UNHCR

Malawi: In Letter to President, IGLHRC Condemns Conviction and Ongoing Discrimination

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) and the Malawian organization the Center for the Development of People (CEDEP) condemn today's conviction by a Magistrate Court in Blantyre, Malawi of Tiwonge ("Tionge") Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza for "unnatural offences" and "indecent practices between males" under Sections 153 and 156 of the Malawi Penal Code. The Court is expected to sentence the two on May 20th and issue the full judgment within three weeks. Chimbalanga and Monjeza face up to fourteen years in prison with the possibility of hard labour.


Read more at All Africa

For some gay immigrants, going home is not an option

John Ademola knows there is no asylum from hatred, no refuge from ignorance.

But after decades of battling his own identity as a gay man in Nigeria, afraid for his life and safety, the former Catholic priest who now lives in the Chicago area knows a new reality.

"If any crazy person decides to kill me simply because I'm gay, here [in the U.S.], the community will still ask, 'Why did you do it?' " he says. In America, he says, "there's not a government after me."

Read more at Chicago Now

Some progress in Darfur, but violence persists: UN official

UNITED NATIONS — While the Darfur peace talks have made some progress, combats between government and rebel forces continue, taking a heavy toll in civilian casualties and displacements, the UN's top emissary in the region said Thursday.

"Results have been mixed despite our best efforts," joint UN-African Union mission in Darfur (UNAMID) chief Ibrahim Gambari told the UN Security Council.

Gambari reviewed the situation after three months in western Sudan, where some 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have fled their homes since a civil war broke out in February 2003.

"In the area of security and the protection of civilians some progress has been made, but pockets of instability remain," Gambari said.

Read more at Google

Former Sri Lanka army head denies war crimes

Former Sri Lankan armed forces chief Sarath Fonseka has rejected claims that the army committed war crimes in the final phase of the country's civil war.

The general said that there was no intentional killing of civilians.

His comments were made to reporters in parliament, where he was elected as an MP last month

Read more at BBC

Two nations eject rights researchers

NAIROBI -- The tiny East African nations of Rwanda and Burundi have, within weeks of each other, asked human rights researchers from a New York-based organization to leave their countries, an official said Thursday.

Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch said the organization had been critical of both governments.

Read more at the Washington Post

UN MUST INVESTIGATE SRI LANKA RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

The United Nations must set up an independent investigation into massive human rights violations committed by both government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam forces during the country's civil war, Amnesty International said on the first anniversary of the end of the conflict.

The failure to act has left victims of human rights violations with no access to justice, truth or reparations while hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans displaced at the end of decades-long conflict languish in camps or struggle to rebuild their shattered communities.


Read more at Amnesty International

"For weeks my kids did not talk, they were so scared."

Amnesty International interviewed a survivor of the conflict in Sri Lanka between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government’s armed forces. Vasuki (name changed) gives us a brief snapshot of what it was like living in the war zone trying to stay alive with 2 small children.


Read more here

Serbia hands UN court seized Mladic diaries

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Prosecutors at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal said Wednesday Serbia has sent them a bundle of diaries written by Bosnian Serb wartime military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic and they are seeking to use them as evidence against his former political master, Radovan Karadzic.

Serb security forces seized the 18 notebooks containing about 3,500 handwritten pages in February from the Belgrade apartment of Mladic's wife Bosiljka.

Read more at the Washington Post

Judge Baltasar Garzón suspended over Franco investigation

The stellar career of the crusading Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón may have come to an abrupt end today after he was suspended from his post as an investigating magistrate at Madrid's national court.

The higher council of judicial power, which oversees Spain's judges, temporarily suspended Garzón while the supreme court tries him on charges of distorting the law by opening an investigation into crimes against humanity carried out by the Franco regime.

"It will come into effect as soon as he is told," the council's spokeswoman, Gabriela Bravo, said this morning.

Read more at the Guardian

UN official enlists advertising industry in combating violence against women

14 May 2010 – A top United Nations official has exhorted advertisers to join efforts to stamp out violence against women, calling on the industry to help defy destructive gender stereotypes, a root cause of the scourge.


“The United Nations needs your support in ending one of the most pervasive and brutish challenges of our time, one that affects all people, everywhere,” Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Kiyo Akasaka said of violence against women.


He told advertising titans at a gathering in Moscow yesterday that up to 70 per cent of women experience violence in their lifetime.


Read more at the UN News Centre

No Dismissal in Terror Case on Claim of Torture in Jail

A federal judge in Manhattan declined on Monday to dismiss charges against a man accused in a terrorism case whose lawyers claimed his rights were violated when he was tortured in secret jails run by theCentral Intelligence Agency.

The defendant, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, has been charged with conspiring in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa. The attacks, which were carried out by Al Qaeda, killed 224 people. Mr. Ghailani later worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, the authorities have said.

Read more at the New York Times

U.N. seeks torture probes in Syria, Yemen, Jordan

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations torture watchdog urgedSyria, Yemen and Jordan Friday to investigate what it called numerous and credible allegations that their police and prison authorities routinely tortured detainees.

Its 10 independent experts also voiced concern at "honor" crimes by family members in Syria and Jordan which go unpunished and violence against women and children in Yemen.

Their conclusions on a total of eight countries were issued at the end of a three-week meeting.

Read more at Yahoo News

AYALA v. U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL

AYALA v. U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL

LEONEL EURO AYALA, Petitioner,
v.
U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Respondent.

No. 09-12113.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

May 7, 2010.

Before PRYOR and FAY, Circuit Judges, and QUIST,^[ 1 ] District Judge.

PRYOR, Circuit Judge.

This petition for review presents the issue whether the Board of Immigration Appeals gave reasoned consideration to the application for asylum and withholding of removal of Leonel Euro Ayala, a native and citizen of Venezuela. Ayala, who is homosexual and opposes the Chavez government, alleged that he had suffered past persecution on account of his sexual orientation and political opinion. Both the Board and the immigration judge credited Ayala's testimony that in December 2004 several Venezuelan police officers assaulted him after he left a gay nightclub in Caracas. Ayala testified that the police officers hit him, robbed him, handcuffed him, detained him in a patrol car, placed a hood over his head, and forced him to perform oral sex on one of the officers. The police officers threatened to arrest Ayala for being homosexual and told Ayala "[t]hey could incarcerate [him] or plant drugs in [his] house and that was all as a result of being queer." An immigration judge denied Ayala's application for asylum and withholding of removal, and the Board affirmed the decision.

Read more at Leagle.com

War Crimes In Sri Lanka

Newly revealed evidence of war crimes in Sri Lanka last year makes an international inquiry essential.
( May 17, Brussels, Sri Lanka Guardian) War Crimes in Sri Lanka , the latest report from the International Crisis Group, exposes repeated violations of international law by both the Sri Lankan security forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the last five months of their 30-year civil war. That evidence suggests that the period of January to May 2009 saw tens of thousands of Tamil civilian men, women, children and the elderly killed, countless more wounded, and hundreds of thousands deprived of adequate food and medical care, resulting in more deaths. 

Released on the eve of the first anniversary of the end of the fighting, the report calls for an international inquiry into alleged crimes. The government has conclusively demonstrated its unwillingness to undertake genuine investigations of security force abuses and continues to deny any responsibility for civilian casualties. A true accounting is needed to address the grievances that drive conflict in Sri Lanka, so the international community must take the lead.


Read more at the Sri Lanka Guardian