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December 16, 2008
Posted 10:44 AM
by Mary
Tuareg faction says it has kidnapped a United Nations diplomat in Niger. (Al Jazeera) Robert Fowler, a Canadian national, disappeared after driving out of the capital on Saturday. A group calling itself the Front des Forces de Redressement (FFR) said in a posting on its website on Tuesday that it was holding Fowler, who had been on private business at the time. "On December 15, 2008, fighters of the Front des Forces de Redressement (FFR) carried out a commando operation in the Tillaberi region in which we detained four people including a Canadian diplomat, Mr Robert Fowler," the website read. There was no immediate independent confirmation of the authenticity of the message. It was signed by Rhissa ag Boula, a leader of Tuareg fighters in the 1990s. The message said Fowler was in good health and that the operation was a warning to "all diplomats who collaborate with the ethnic-killing regime of [Niger President] Mamadou Tandja". The FFR split in May this year from the Niger Justice Movement (MNJ), which operates mainly in the desert north. The groups say the Tuareg people are being neglected and marginalised by the government. Mohamed Ben Omar, Niger's minister of communication, said that Fowler had been planning to attend celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of Niger gaining its autonomy from France and was not on official business. Labels: canada, Niger, Tuareg
Posted 10:39 AM
by Mary
Israel denies entry to UN rights investigator 15 Dec 2008 12:53:00 GMT Source: Reuters JERUSALEM, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Israel denied entry on Monday to a special U.N. investigator who planned to travel to the Palestinian territories to document human rights conditions, Israeli and U.N. officials said. Border police prevented Richard Falk, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Israeli behaviour in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, from entering Israel when he arrived at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv on Sunday. Falk had angered Israel by making remarks comparing its forces' actions in the Gaza Strip to those of the Nazis in wartime Europe. He was put on a plane back to Geneva on Monday. U.N. officials said Falk, who is Jewish, has been tasked with preparing reports on human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "He was coming to follow up on his mandate, meet people and collect first-hand information," a U.N. official said. A U.S. professor, Falk is fiercely critical of what he describes as "pro-Israel" influence on U.S. foreign policies. Labels: Israel, Palestine, Settlers, UN observer
December 14, 2008
Posted 1:14 PM
by Mary
Moreno-Ocampo and the Future of the ICC Helena Cobbam "The International Criminal Court started its work in 2002 with great fanfare and expectations. The hopes of its many supporters around the world (but concentrated particularly in rich western countries) was that this new court could bring a new day of "accountability" to the perpetrators of some of the most heinous mass crimes of our day. Sadly, those hopes have not been realized. And not just because of the complete inability of the ICC to even start grappling with Pres. Bush's perpetration of a monstrous Crime Against the Peace in 2003, and his administration's perpetration of numerous serious war crimes subsequent to that big original crime. But beyond that big lacuna, the way the ICC itself has gone about its business since 2002 has also been deeply, perhaps fatally, flawed... And one person who has certainly contributed to these mistakes has been the Chief Prosecutor, Argentina's Luis Moreno-Ocampo. Tragically, one of the main problems for this court that was meant to usher in this new era of "accountability" has been that the degree to which the court's own major organs are-- or even, can be-- held accountable to the public they purport to serve is extremely limited; or, almost non-existent..." Labels: ICC
December 12, 2008
Posted 11:19 AM
by Mary
The Legacy of Resolution 194 The UN Resolution That Time Forgotm By GHADA KARMI, Counterpunch
Sixty years ago, on 11 December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly passed an important resolution about Israel and the Palestinians. It called on the newly formed Israeli state to repatriate the displaced Palestinians “wishing to live in peace with their neighbours…at the earliest practicable date”, and to compensate them for their losses. A Conciliation Commission was set up to oversee the repatriation of the returnees. Though never implemented and frequently ignored since then, Resolution 194 has haunted the Israeli-Palestinian peace process ever since, and has proved the most insurmountable obstacle in all peace negotiations. It is the legal basis for the ‘right of return’, to which Palestinians have clung for sixty years. Far from this fundamental plank of the Palestinian cause being protected and preserved, it has been used like a political football between the parties, sometimes to attack, sometimes to defend, and now as something to bargain over. Through this process the discourse about the right of return has become deliberately ambiguous or vague, responding to Israel’s anxieties. To assert, against this background of appeasement, that the right of return is the sine qua non of any solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem is viewed today as ‘unrealistic’ and old-fashioned, even an obstacle to peace, as if the passage of sixty years had disqualified the Palestinians from entitlement to their homeland. Israel, conversely, shows no such ambiguity in its perennial and unambiguous rejection of the right of return... There is only one solution for this sixty-year old impasse that addresses the rights of Palestinians, Israelis and the needs of justice. Only a unitary state in Israel-Palestine can encompass the returning Palestinians and ensure the continued existence of an Israeli Jewish community, however egregious their presence in that land. In this anniversary year, it is time that Resolution 194 was laid to rest, not by neglect as Israel has long been hoping, but by a new UN resolution. This will affirm the Palestinian right to return to the towns and villages their ancestors had inhabited for generations, and call for Israelis and Palestinians to share the land between the Mediterranean and the river Jordan, in a secular, democratic state, where the rights of all its citizens to freedom of worship, security, and equality are enshrined in law. Neither side can win the war over exclusive ownership of historic Palestine. Israel’s attempt to do so has only caused unending conflict and suffering. The UN made Israel and must now unmake it, not by expulsion and displacement as in 1948, but by converting its bleak legacy into a future of hope for both peoples in one state. If that happens, it will be an anniversary truly worth celebrating. Labels: Palestine
December 2, 2008
Posted 3:47 PM
by Mary
POLITICS: U.N. Assembly Head Hailed for Blasting Israel By Thalif Deen InterPress News ServiceUNITED NATIONS, Dec 2 (IPS) - The president of the General Assembly, Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, dropped a political bombshell last week when he lashed out at Israel for its repressive actions in the occupied territories, including the recent blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza. "What is being done to the Palestinian people seems to me to be a version of the hideous policy of apartheid," he told delegates, during a meeting commemorating the "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People". A senior U.N. official told IPS: "I cannot remember any Assembly president so publicly vocal in denouncing Israel." D'Escoto damned both the Israelis and the United Nations for the plight of the Palestinians. "And he was on target," the official added. "I believe," D'Escoto said, "that the failure to create a Palestinian state as promised is the single greatest failure in the history of the United Nations." Nadia Hijab, senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Palestine Studies, told IPS that D'Escoto's comments are a welcome reminder of the reality on the ground, and "a valiant attempt to hold the international community responsible for its posturing on the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and siege of Gaza." She said Father Miguel's "remarkable statement" carries more resonance given the silence of world powers. Labels: Israel, Palestine, UNGA
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"War does not determine who is right--only who is left." - Bertrand Russell
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