The United Nations’ special envoy to Syria said Tuesday that the Israeli military’s rapid move to seize Syrian territory following the Assad government’s collapse is a grave violation of a decades-old agreement that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims is now dead. “What we are seeing is a violation of the disengagement agreement from 1974, so we will obviously, with our colleagues in New…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
As rebel leader promises torturers will be held accountable, legal experts consider whether war crimes trials can be conducted
The rebel leader now running much of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has offered rewards for senior army and intelligence officers involved in war crimes, as the Assad regime’s sudden fall brought hopes of justice for the many atrocities of one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships.
“We will not hesitate to hold accountable the criminals, murderers, security and army officers involved in torturing the Syrian people,” Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday. He added that Syria’s new authorities would seek the return of Assad regime officials who have fled abroad.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
The UN’s top independent expert on Palestinian human rights has repeated a call for Israel to be removed from its membership in the United Nations, citing its “relentless attacks” against the institution’s top aid group for Palestinian refugees. On Thursday, UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese said on social media that Israel should be unseated…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Five years ago, a group of 27 law students at the University of the South Pacific came together and hatched a bold new plan to bring the issue of climate justice before the United Nations’ top court. Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change was born, and the youth-led group quickly grew to include more than 100 members from countries across the South Pacific. They were tired of world…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Gaza now has the largest population of child amputees per capita in the world, the UN has reported, as a result of 14 months of Israel’s genocide, which has especially targeted children in relentless bombings and attacks. Israel’s genocide in Gaza has “caused an epidemic of traumatic injuries with no rehabilitation services available,” the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk
Pro-independence Kanak leader Christian Téin will remain in a mainland French jail for the time being, a Court of Appeal has ruled in Nouméa.
This followed an earlier ruling on October 22 from the Court of Cassation, which is tasked to rule on possible procedural mistakes in earlier judgments.
The Court of Cassation found some flaws in the procedure that justified the case being heard again by a Court of Appeal.
Téin’s lawyer, Pierre Ortet, confirmed his client’s detention in a mainland prison (Mulhouse jail, north-eastern France) has been maintained as a result of the latest Court of Appeal hearing behind closed doors in Nouméa on Friday.
But he also told local media he now intends to bring the case to the European Court of Human Rights, as well as United Nations’ human rights mechanisms — especially on the circumstances that surrounded Téin’s transfer to France on 23 June 2024 on board a specially-chartered plane four days after his arrest in Nouméa on June 19.
Nouméa Public Prosecutor Yves Dupas told local media in an interview on Friday that in this case the next step should happen “some time in January”, when a criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation is expected to deliver another ruling.
Reacting to recent comments made by pro-independence party Union Calédonienne, which maintains Téin is a political prisoner, Dupas said Téin and others facing similar charges “are still presumed innocent”, but “are not political prisoners, they have not been held in relation to a political motive”.
Alleged crimes
The alleged crimes, he said, were “crimes and delicts related to organised crime”.
The seven charges include complicity as part of murder attempts, theft involving the use of weapons and conspiracy in view of the preparation of acts of organised crimes.
Téin’s defence maintains it was never his client’s intention to commit such crimes.
Christian Téin is the head of a “Field Action Coordinating Cell” (CCAT), a group created late in 2023 by the largest and oldest pro-independence party Union Calédonienne.
From October 2023 onward, the CCAT organised marches and demonstrations that later degenerated — starting May 13 — into insurrectional riots, arson and looting, causing 13 deaths and an estimated 2.2 billion euros (NZ$3.9 billion) in material damage, mainly in the Greater Nouméa area.
“The judicial inquiry aims at establishing every responsibility, especially at the level of ‘order givers’,” Dupas told local Radio Rythme Bleu on Friday.
He confirmed six persons were still being detained in several jails of mainland France, including Téin.
3 released under ‘judicial control’
Three others have been released under judiciary control with an obligation to remain in mainland France.
“You see, the manifestation of truth requires time. Justice requires serenity, it’s very important”, he commented.
Late August, Téin was also chosen as president of the pro-independence umbrella FLNKS at its congress.
The August 2024 Congress was also marked by the non-attendance of two other main pillars of the movement, UPM and PALIKA, which have since confirmed their intention to distance themselves from FLNKS.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A Fiji solidarity group for the Palestinians has accused the Rabuka-led coalition government of “complicity” in Israel’s genocide and relentless war in Gaza that has killed more than 44,000 people — mostly women and children — over the past year.
The Fijians4Palestine have called on the Fiji government to “uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes”.
“We urge our leaders to use their diplomatic channels to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, to support international efforts in providing humanitarian aid to the affected regions, and to publicly express solidarity with the Palestinian people, reflecting the sentiments of many Fijians,” the movement said in a statement marking the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
The group said it was “ashamed that the Fiji government continues to vote for the genocide and occupation of Palestinians”.
It said that it expected the Fiji government to enforce arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
The Fijians4Palestine group’s statement said:
It has been over one year since Israel began its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Over the past year, Israeli attacks have killed more than 44,000 Palestinians living in Gaza, equal to 1 out of every 55 people living there.
At least 16,756 children have been killed, the highest number of children recorded in a single year of conflict over the past two decades. More than 17,000 children have lost one or both parents.
At least 97,303 people are injured in Gaza — equal to one in 23 people.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, every day 10 children lose one or both legs, with operations and amputations conducted with little or no anaesthesia due to Israel’s ongoing siege.
In addition to the killed and injured, more than 10,000 people are feared buried under the rubble.
With few tools to remove rubble and rescue those trapped beneath concrete, volunteers and civil defence workers rely on their bare hands.
We, the #Fijians4Palestine Solidarity Network join the global voices demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end to the violence. We express our unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The Palestinian struggle is not just a regional issue; it is a testament to the resilience of a people who, despite facing impossible odds, continue to fight for their right to exist, freedom, and dignity. Their struggle resonates with all who believe in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.
Families torn apart
The images of destruction, the stories of families torn apart, and the cries of children caught in the crossfire are heart-wrenching. These are not mere statistics or distant news stories; these are real people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations, much like us.
As Fijians, we have always prided ourselves on our commitment to peace, unity, and humanity. Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.
Today, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, not out of political allegiance but out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.
We unequivocally condemn the State of Israel for its actions that amount to war crimes, genocide, and apartheid against the Palestinian people. The deliberate targeting of civilians, the disproportionate use of force, and the destruction of essential infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, are in clear violation of international humanitarian law.
The intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group is evident. The continuous displacement of Palestinians, the destruction of their homes, and the systematic erasure of their history and culture are indicative of genocidal intent.
The State of Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, characterised by racial segregation, discrimination, and domination, amount to apartheid as defined under international law.
Oppressive regime
The construction of settlements, the separation wall, and the system of checkpoints are manifestations of this oppressive regime. Palestinians are subjected to different laws, regulations, and treatments based on their ethnicity, clearly violating the principle of equality.
We call upon the Fiji government to uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes. We urge our leaders to use their diplomatic channels to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, to support international efforts in providing humanitarian aid to the affected regions, and to publicly express solidarity with the Palestinian people, reflecting the sentiments of many Fijians.
We are ashamed that the Fiji government continues to vote for the genocide and occupation of Palestinians. We expect our government to enforce arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
The silence of the Fiji government is complicity, and history will not forgive their inaction.
Our solidarity with the Palestinian people is a testament to our shared humanity. We believe in a world where diversity, is treated with dignity and respect. We dream of a future where children in Gaza can play without fear, where families can live without the shadow of war, and where the Palestinian people can finally enjoy the peace and freedom they so rightly deserve.
There can be no peace without justice, and we stand in unity with all people and territories struggling for self-determination and freedom from occupation.
The Pacific cannot be an Ocean of Peace without freedom and self determination in Palestine, West Papua, Kanaky and all oppressed territories.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Palestinian diaspora poets, singers and musicians gathered today with solidarity partners from Aotearoa New Zealand, African nations — including South Africa — in a vibrant celebration.
The celebration marked the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People and similar events have been happening around New Zealand today, across the world and over the weekend.
Images by David Robie of Asia Pacific Report.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A community broadcaster in Aotearoa New Zealand has appealed for an end to the “sadistic cruelty” and the “out in the open genocide” by Israel in Gaza and the occupied Palestine territories.
In an open letter, Lois Griffiths, co-presenter of the environmental, social justice and current affairs programme Earthwise on Plains FM, has criticised the “injustices imposed by colonialism” and has cited Bethlehem Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac in saying “Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world”.
Her letter is published by Asia Pacific Report to mark the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
The open letter by Griffiths says:
K Gurunathan’s article “Sparks fly as political tinder of Māori anger builds” (The Press and The Post, November 25) argues that the injustices imposed by colonialism, including the “systematic confiscation of Māori land”, leading to poverty and cultural alienation are factors behind the anger expressed by the recent Hīkoi.
We need to learn Aotearoa New Zealand history.
One needs to learn history in order to understand the present.
But we need to learn world history too.
Coincidentally, I am in the middle of reading Israeli journalist Gideon Levy’s most recent book The Killing of Gaza: reports on a catastrophe.
Levy has been there many times, reporting first hand about the sadistic cruelty imposed on its people, a cruelty that began in 1948.
He explains that Hamas promotes armed resistance as a last resort. Any other approach has been ignored
The Israeli regime is being accused now of war crimes. But war crimes have been going on for decades.
But it sickens me to even think of what is happening now. It is genocide, genocide out in the open.
In the words of Bethlehem Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac: “Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world.”
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Predictably, Israel and its allies condemned the International Criminal Court for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (Washington Post, 11/21/24). A press release from the court (11/21/24) accused the Israeli leaders of “crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024.” These consisted of “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare,” “the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts” and “the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.”
In addition to the US, Israel’s primary source of military and diplomatic support, Israel also received backing from Hungary and Argentina, two nations run by far-right leaders who seek to undo democratic liberalism (Al Jazeera, 11/21/24).
New York Post (11/21/24): “This latest effort is simply another part of the international push spearheaded by Jew-hating high officials around the world to delegitimize Israel.”
There were also the expected cries of foul play in right-wing US media. The Wall Street Journal editorial board (11/21/24) said Israel was merely acting in self-defense because “Hamas started the war on October 7 by sending death squads into Israel.”
“The charge of deliberate starvation is absurd,” the Journal snarled, noting that “Israel has facilitated the transfer of more than 57,000 aid trucks”—in other words, about one-fourth of what Gaza’s 2 million people would have needed to meet their basic needs (NPR, 2/21/24).
Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz wrote in the Journal (11/24/24) that he was “putting together a legal dream team” to defend Israel’s leaders, as if to present Netanyahu as a sort of global stage version of O.J. Simpson. If you want to gauge the seriousness of Dershowitz’s announcement, consider that the “dream team” will reportedly include Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced ex-governor of New York (New York Post, 11/25/24).
Fellow Murdoch paper the New York Post (11/21/24) called the ICC charges “false.” “International Kangaroo Court is more like it,” its editorial board mocked, “and one more reminder why the United States should never recognize the ICC.”
“ICC Unleashes Chaos, Antisemitism” read a headline from an op-ed in the Unification Church–owned Washington Times (11/22/24).
What is the right venue, according to the Washington Post (11/24/24)? Israel will bring itself to justice if it’s committed any war crimes.
While it’s not surprising to see right-wing outlets waving away the atrocities in Gaza, it is striking to see the Washington Post—a vehicle for the establishment center whose slogan is “democracy dies in darkness”—not only condemning the warrants, but arguing that the court should stick to prosecuting enemy states of the United States.
In a brutally honest way, the paper’s editorial board (11/24/24) declared that Israel must be held apart from other regimes who do terrible things, arguing that rules needn’t apply to the West and its allies, since they have the “means [and] mechanisms to investigate themselves.”
The board complained that the international justice system singled out Israel for “selective prosecution” while ignoring rogue regimes:
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons and waged a bloody campaign of ethnic cleansing in his brutal suppression of an uprising that has killed half a million people, many of them civilians. In Myanmar, military dictator Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and his army have been responsible for bombing civilian villages in its war against the long-persecuted Rohingya minority. And in Sudan, a new potential genocide threatens the Darfur region’s Black Masalit people at the hands of Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who is known as Hemedti, and his Rapid Support Forces.
This is a gross oversimplification to the point of deception. In each of the cases the Post names, neither perpetrator nor victim are from countries that are signatories to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, which means that it is extremely difficult for the ICC to claim jurisdiction over them. (Palestine, in contrast, is a signatory to the treaty that established the ICC, which is why the court has jurisdiction over that case.)
In the case of Sudan, the court did manage to prosecute pro-Sudanese government militia commander Ali Kushayb (ICC, 4/5/22) and indict former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (Guardian, 2/11/20) for atrocities committed in Darfur. This was possible because the ICC may also claim jurisdiction when a case is referred to it by the UN Security Council. (The court’s prosecutor has spoken to the legal complexities of confronting the current crisis—ICC, 8/6/24.)
An innovative legal approach involving cross-border claims from Bangladesh has allowed an ICC investigation of Myanmar’s genocide against the Rohingya to proceed, albeit very slowly (CNN, 7/7/23). A similar approach might work with the Syria case (Guardian, 2/16/22), but no member state has referred the case to the court (Atlantic Council, 9/26/24), in contrast to the Israel case.
A more apt comparison would be Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine: Russia, like Israel, is not a party to the ICC, while Ukraine, like Palestine, is. And the ICC has indeed, as the Post quietly acknowledges later in the piece, issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The legal complexities here are manifold, but the Post doesn’t bother to grapple with them, suggesting that it’s the Post more than the ICC that’s guilty of selective prosecution.
The Post went on:
The ICC is putting the elected leaders of a democratic country with its own independent judiciary in the same category as dictators and authoritarians who kill with impunity. Israel went to war in response to the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, which left 1,200 Israelis dead and another 250 taken hostage, around 100 of whom still remain captive. The ICC’s arrest warrant for one of the authors of that massacre, Hamas leader Mohammed Deif, who was probably killed in an Israeli airstrike months ago, looks more like false equivalence than genuine balance.
In fact, the court had sought a warrant for Hamas leader and October 7 attack planner Yahya Sinwar (CNN, 5/20/24), but the Israeli military killed him before the justice system could catch up with him (AP, 10/18/24). If the court had not prosecuted Hamas officials, then the Post and others would accuse it of singling out Israel. When the court does go after Hamas officials, the Post claims it’s political theater. The court can’t win.
Israel’s “vibrant, independent media” reports that it is under heavy censorship, with 2,703 articles redacted by the military in 2023, and 613 banned entirely (972, 5/20/24).
The Post then offered some “to be sures.” Yes, “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed and maimed”; yes, Israel “has fallen short” on allowing in humanitarian aid. But it is the next part where one wonders if the Post board has left the earthly realm for another reality, in which Israel will be held accountable by—wait for it—itself:
Israel needs to be held accountable for its military conduct in Gaza. After the conflict’s end—which is long overdue—there will no doubt be Israeli judicial, parliamentary and military commissions of inquiry. Israel’s vibrant, independent media will do its own investigations. Some Israeli reserve soldiers have already been arrested over accusations of abuse against Palestinian detainees. More investigations will follow. The ICC is supposed to become involved when countries have no means or mechanisms to investigate themselves. That is not the case in Israel.
Has the Post been living under a rock? The biggest story in Israel before last year’s Hamas attack that instigated the attack on Gaza was Netanyahu’s attack on the independence of the judiciary (AP, 9/11/23), and Israel’s right-wing government is continuing this effort (Economist, 9/19/24).
As for the so-called free press, the government has moved to boycott the country’s main liberal newspaper, Haaretz (11/24/24), pulling government advertising and advising ministries to end communication with reporters. Israel has also banned Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera (5/6/24), and at least 130 journalists have been killed during Israel’s military campaigns against Gaza and Lebanon (FAIR.org, 5/1/24; Committee to Protect Journalists, 11/25/24). Military censorship of the media has also increased, the Israeli magazine 972 (5/20/24) found.
In the tiny fraction of cases where soldiers were indicted for killing Palestinians, AP (12/22/22) reported, “Israel’s military prosecutors acted with leniency toward convicted soldiers…with those sentenced for killing Palestinians serving only short-term military community service.”
Meanwhile, there are isolated examples of the Israeli government prosecuting soldiers, but experts believe that most military crimes have gone and will go unpunished (ProPublica, 5/8/24; Al Jazeera, 7/6/24). “Israeli soldiers accused of harming Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the last five years have been indicted in less than 1% of the hundreds of complaints against them,” AP (12/22/22) reported.
When an Israeli court acquitted a border police officer who killed an autistic Palestinian man (BBC, 7/6/23), the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem (6/25/20) said that even the original investigation into the killing was “merely a fig leaf to silence criticism until the public outrage and media attention die down.” It added that, on the whole, “the investigation system works behind the scenes to whitewash the violence and ensure impunity for those responsible.”
Moreover, these investigations are largely of the “bad apple” variety, singling out extreme behavior of lower-ranking members of the military. Does the Post seriously expect Israel to hold accountable those at the top who are prosecuting the war?
Right-wing lawmakers are working to further block investigations, Human Rights Watch (7/31/24) said, a situation that builds an increased sense of impunity, as 972 (8/1/24) noted.
This doesn’t sound like a healthy parliamentary system with democratic guardrails, but a warrior state spiraling into authoritarianism. The Washington Post, too, seems to be moving away from liberalism and a rules-based system, and more toward defending Israel at all costs.
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com.
Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
By Kate Green , RNZ News reporter
A new carbon credit trading deal reached in the final hours of COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, has been criticised as a free pass for countries to slack off on efforts to reduce emissions at home.
The deal, sealed at the annual UN climate talks nearly a decade after it was first put forward, will allow countries to buy carbon credits from others to bring down their own balance sheet.
New Zealand had set its targets under the Paris Agreement on the assumption that it would be able to meet some of it through international cooperation — “so getting this up and running is really important”, Compass Climate head Christina Hood said.
“It’s a tool, it’s neither good nor bad, but there’s going to have to be a lot of scrutiny on whether the government is taking a high-ambition, high-integrity path, or just trying to do the minimum possible.”
The plan had taken nine years to go through because countries determined to do it right had been holding out for a process with the right checks and balances in place, she said.
As it stood, countries would have to report yearly to the UN on their trading activities, but it was up to society and other countries to scrutinise behaviour.
Cindy Baxter, a COP veteran who has been at all but seven of the conferences, said it was in-line with the way Aotearoa New Zealand wanted to go about reducing its emissions.
‘We’re not alone, but . . .’
“We’re not alone, Switzerland is similar and Japan as well, but certainly New Zealand is aiming to meet by far the largest proportion of our climate target, [out of] anywhere in the OECD, through carbon trading.”
The new scheme fell under Article six of the Paris Agreement, and a statement from COP29 said it was expected to reduce the cost of implementing countries’ national climate plans by up to US$250 billion (NZ$428.5b) per year.
COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev said “climate change is a transnational challenge and Article six will enable transnational solutions. Because the atmosphere does not care where emissions savings are made.”
But Baxter said there was not enough transparency in the scheme, and plenty of loopholes. One of the issues was ensuring projects resulting in carbon credits continued to reduce emissions after the credits were traded.
“For example, if you’re trying to save some mangroves in Fiji, you give Fiji a whole bunch of money and say this is going to offset this amount of carbon, but what if those mangroves are destroyed by a drought, or a great big cyclone?”
Countries should be cutting emissions at home, she said.
“And that is something New Zealand is not very good at doing, has a really bad reputation for doing. We’ve either planted trees, or now we’re trying to throw money at offset.”
Greenpeace spokesperson Amanda Larsson said she, too, was concerned it would take the onus off big polluters to make reductions at home, calling it a “get out of jail free card”.
‘Lot of junk credits’
“Ultimately, we really need to see significant cuts in climate pollution,” she said. “And there’s no such thing as high-integrity voluntary carbon markets, and a history of a lot of junk credits being sold.”
Countries with the means to make meaningful change at home should not be relying on other countries stepping up, she said
The Green Party foreign affairs spokesperson Teanau Tuiono said there was strong potential in the proposal, but it was “imperative to ensure the framework is robust, and protects the rights of indigenous peoples at the same time as incentivising carbon sequestration”.
It should be a wake-up call to change New Zealand’s over-reliance on risky pine plantations and instead support permanent native afforestation, he said.
“This proposal emphasises how solving the climate crisis requires global collaboration on the most difficult issues. That requires building trust and confidence, by meeting commitments countries make to each other.
“Backing out of these by, for instance, restarting oil and gas exploration directly against the wishes of our Pacific relatives, is not the way do to that.”
Conference overall ‘disappointing and frustrating’
Baxter said it had been “very difficult being forced to have another COP in a petro-state”, where the host state did not have much to gain by making big progress.
“What that means is that there is not that impetus to bang heads together and get really strong agreement,” she said.
But the blame could not be placed entirely on the leadership.
“The COP process is set up to work if governments bring their A-games, and they don’t,” she said.
“People should be bringing their really strong new climate targets [and] very few are doing that.”
Another deal was clinched in overtime of the two-week conference, promising US$300 billion (NZ$514 billion) each year by 2035 for developing nations to tackle climate emissions.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Broadcasting from Baku, Azerbaijan, on the final official day of this year’s finance-themed United Nations climate summit, we look at how climate justice activists are outraged at how little money is being offered by the most polluting nations to countries most severely affected by climate change. We speak with Mohamed Adow, founding director of Power Shift Africa, and Claudio Angelo…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Uncaptured Media founder Dan Cohen spoke at a Nov. 20 UN Security Council meeting on a U.S. proposal for a UN military intervention in Haiti.
The post Hands Off Haiti first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Palestine’s UN ambassador issued a strong rebuke of the high-powered UN Security Council (UNSC) for failing to stop the genocide in Gaza after the U.S. vetoed a ceasefire proposal for the fifth time on Wednesday, questioning whether the council has decided that it is acceptable to sacrifice Palestinian lives. “There is no right to mass killing of civilians. There is no right to starve an…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In August 2021, following the withdrawal of major U.S./NATO military forces from Afghanistan after two decades of occupation, Taliban forces took effective control over the country. In response, the United States seized the assets of Afghanistan’s central bank totaling around $7 billion. Half of that amount was transferred to the misleadingly named “Afghan Fund” in September 2022, a Swiss-based “charitable foundation” whose only role thus far has been to privately conceal and invest the funds without any concrete plans to return them, as confirmed by U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West. This runs contrary to popular demands by experts and humanitarian organizations who argue that a return of the funds is desperately needed now more than ever to help everyday Afghans.
Afghan women do not have any representation on the board of the “Afghan Fund,” nor do they have any official say over whether the assets should be returned. The board of trustees includes: two men selected by the U.S. State Department, Anwar ul-Haq Ahady and Shah Mehrabi, the U.S. Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs Jay Shambaugh, and Swiss government official Ambassador Alexandra Baumann.
According to a July 2024 press statement from the board of the “Afghan Fund,” some of the stolen assets may also be disbursed to the Asian Development Bank, an institution controlled by the United States, Japan, and Australia via majority shareholder status. While the funds are not returning to the Afghan people, this move shows that a process to return the funds to Afghanistan can begin immediately if the board members agree to do so. Regardless of whether the funds are in fact disbursed elsewhere over time, board members Ahady, Mehrabi, Shambaugh, and Baumann are all culpable in the forced starvation and impoverishment of tens of millions of Afghans – tantamount to the collective punishment of the Afghan people.
According to a January 2024 written testimony by the U.S. Congress-established Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the remaining $3.5 billion in sovereign funds held in the United States may eventually be transferred to the “Afghan Fund” depending on litigation filed by the families of 9/11 victims and other plaintiffs, while other funds held in Europe and the United Arab Emirates may also be added to the “Afghan Fund.” SIGAR found that none of the funds in the “Afghan Fund” as of early 2024 have been spent, are planned to be spent, or will ever be used to provide humanitarian or development assistance. Notably, while no disbursements have been made for the benefit of the Afghan people, portions of the over $340 million in interest that have been accrued from the stolen assets are being used to pay for the “Afghan Funds” operational and administrative costs.
The sudden deprivation of access to its sovereign assets led to a sharp economic and financial crisis in Afghanistan in 2021, which a recent United Nations Development Program (UNDP) study found is disproportionately affecting women and children. The seizure of assets combined with both U.S. and UN sanctions – ostensibly only targeting the Taliban – have hurt ordinary Afghans and aid organizations, affirmed by US-aligned rights groups and media outlets. The same UNDP report found that 69% of Afghans “do not have adequate resources for basic subsistence living,” while an estimated 15.8 million Afghans – including nearly 8 million children – are expected to experience “acute food insecurity” throughout 2024.
Clearly, the “Afghan Fund” – controlled by Western officials and Afghan compradors – has deliberately withheld billions from the suffering Afghan populace. It should be reiterated that a process to return these stolen funds, and in turn mitigate the U.S.-enabled humanitarian and economic crises plaguing Afghanistan, can and must begin right away. The following individuals have full power or influence over the release of the illegally stolen assets back to its rightful owners: the Afghan people.
Under Secretary of the U.S. Treasury for International Affairs
Head of the Prosperity and Sustainability Division at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs
Former government official, economic advisor and central banker to the U.S./NATO occupied Afghanistan
Member of the Supreme Council of Da Afghanistan Bank
U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Deputy Assistant Secretary
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Israel’s escalated assault on Lebanon is killing three children each day on average, the UN children’s agency reports, as Israel’s intensified bombardments and raids take a horrific toll on the country. Over 200 children have been killed in Lebanon over the past two months of Israel’s expanded aggression in Lebanon, according to UNICEF. This amounts to over three child deaths per day on…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We turn to Israel’s war on Gaza. A special UN committee has reported Israel’s actions in Gaza are “consistent with the characteristics of genocide”. Another report by Human Rights Watch finds Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity through its mass forced displacement of Gaza’s civilians.
This comes as the Biden administration has decided to continue arming Israel, even though aid groups say Israel has failed to meet a US-imposed 30-day deadline to increase the flow of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza.
We go now to Deir al-Balah in Gaza, where we’re joined by Arwa Damon, founder of INARA, a nonprofit currently providing medical and mental healthcare to children in Gaza. She previously spent 18 years at CNN, including time as a senior international correspondent.
Thanks so much for being with us, Arwa. This is your fourth trip back to Gaza since October 7, 2023. Tell us what you see there:
ARWA DAMON: You know, Amy, you think you can’t get worse, and then it does. You think people, quite simply, could never cope with these deteriorating conditions, and yet somehow they do. It’s a situation that they have been forced into.
Arguably, the conditions when it comes to access of humanitarian organisations and our ability to distribute aid, aid actually getting into the strip, we’re talking about the lowest levels yet. And this is exactly during the timeframe that the US had given to Israel to actually improve the situation. We’ve seen it getting significantly worse.
We’re not just talking about a shortage in things like flour, food, water, fresh vegetables, you know, hygiene kits. We’re also talking about shortages in what’s available on the commercial market. So, even if you somehow had money to be able to go buy what you need, it quite simply isn’t here.
These hospitals that we keep talking about as being partially functioning, what does that actually mean? It means that if you show up bleeding, someone inside is going to try to stop the bleed, but do they actually have what they need to save your life? No. I was inside visiting some kids here at Al-Aqsa earlier today and over the weekend.
There’s a little 2-year-old boy here whose brain you can see pulsing through his skin. His skull bone was removed. This little boy was not stabilising properly because the ICU was missing a pediatric-sized tracheostomy tube. Now, luckily, we were able to, you know, source some of them, and he has now stabilised, and he is off the ventilator.
Palestinians feel they are being ‘slowly exterminated’. Video: Democracy Now!
But this really gives you an idea of just how serious the situation here is.
People are gathering to demonstrate for things like flour, for bread, for whatever it is that you can imagine. Winter is coming. The rains are coming. This means flooding is coming.
And on top of just, you know, water flooding, we’re also anticipating that the sewage sites are going to be flooding, as well. Aid organizations need to be able to have the capacity and the ability to, you know, shift those sites to areas where they’re not going to pose even more of a health hazard to the community.
So, I mean, it’s a complete and total nightmare. It’s beyond being a nightmare.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about this latest report? The special UN committee says Israel’s actions in Gaza are “consistent with the characteristics of genocide,” coming at the same time as a Human Rights Watch report, and UNRWA talks about famine being imminent in northern Gaza.
ARWA DAMON: So, if we’re talking specifically about the north, the northern province of Gaza, this is an area where Israel launched its military operation there nearly four weeks ago. We have seen people repeatedly being forcibly displaced from their homes. There is very little access to medical assistance there.
There has been absolutely no humanitarian assistance delivered there for about the last month. People are starving. They are dying. And it’s not just bombs that are killing people, it’s also disease.
‘Bombs kill quickly, but disease and starvation, they are slow killers. And that is what a lot of people are facing here.’
— Arwa Damon, founder of INARA,
So, when we look at the nature of what is happening in Gaza, you can’t spend a day here, Amy, and not come away with the notion that you are witnessing a population that is being slowly exterminated. And I say “slowly” because, yes, bombs kill quickly, but disease and starvation, they are slow killers. And that is what a lot of people are facing here.
And talk to anybody in Gaza, and there’s absolutely no doubt in their mind that, one, they are living through their own annihilation, and, two, what Israel is doing in the northern part is going to be repeated elsewhere.
And this is also part of why you see a reluctance among the population to want to evacuate, because Gazans know, Palestinians know that when they leave, they’re not going to be able to go back home. This is what history has taught them.
And there is this very real, ingrained fear among the population here right now that what they’re going through at this moment is not the end. There is actually a real sense that the worst is yet to come.
And they feel completely and totally abandoned by the international community, by global leaders, not to mention the United States. And everyone is convinced that right now Israel is going to have even more free rein to do whatever it is that it wants here.
When you talk to people about what it is that they’re going through, they do feel as if every single aspect of trying to survive here has been carefully orchestrated by Israel so that it is able to sort of meet America’s bare minimum of standards, to allow America sufficient cover to say, “Oh, no, there’s improvement that’s happening.”
And yet, actually, at the core of it is just another way to continue to kill the population.
AMY GOODMAN: And as you talk about the United States, which has given tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, they did recently set a 30-day deadline to increase the flow of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza, but the US has decided to keep arming Israel despite this and despite the number of officials in the State Department and other parts of the US government who have quit over this.
ARWA DAMON: Yeah, and let’s just look at the numbers. Let’s just look at what happened when the US started the clock for that 30-day deadline to improve humanitarian assistance. We saw, very shortly afterwards, the number of trucks accessing Gaza dip significantly, down to 30 a day, keeping in mind that one of the key demands that the US had was that aid be increased to at least 350 trucks.
So we saw this, you know, decrease consistent of roughly 30 trucks a day for most of the month of October. Now, in November, that number did go up to around 60-70, but we’re still talking about, you know, falling extraordinarily short, providing barely 20% of what it is that the population here needs.
We saw less access to these besieged areas in the north, where people are effectively trapped or having to basically risk their lives. We’ve had numerous instances where aid has been delivered to the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north, for example, where, shortly after medical evacuation teams have arrived there, there have been strikes.
You have this very ingrained fear that exists among people right now, especially in the north, where some of them are saying, “Don’t deliver anything, because right after you’re delivering, strikes are happening.”
And just to illustrate how it is that we try to move, so if we’re moving from south to north, for example, or even if we’re moving within the northern areas, those movement requests have to be approved by Israel. And aid organisations are increasingly wary of moving around with what we call soft-skin cars, which is basically your normal vehicle that we use to move around in, because of the increasing frequency of instances at Israeli checkpoints where aid convoys have been shot at by IDF troops after receiving the green light.
The OK to cross through, which means that for a lot of aid organizations, movement is limited to those who have access to armoured vehicles, vehicles that are more secure. And those don’t really exist in Gaza in high numbers at all. And we’re not allowed to bring in more to sort of beef up our capacity to be able to move around safely.
I mean, no matter which way you look at it, Amy, you’re constantly faced by numerous obstacles that don’t need to be there. It feels very deliberate, not to mention the complete and total breakdown of security. Now we have numerous looting instances of aid trucks.
We’ve repeatedly asked the Israeli side to be able to use alternative routes, to be able to use secured routes. Those requests are not being met.
I mean, it’s just — it’s such an impossible situation to operate in. I feel like I keep saying the same thing over and over and over again each time I come in. And the words to demonstrate how much worse it’s getting, quite simply, lack in our vocabulary.
AMY GOODMAN: You also wrote a piece recently, “The Devastation of Lebanon,” for New Lines. And we had this headline, The Washington Post reporting a close aide to Netanyahu told Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner that Israel is rushing to advance a ceasefire deal in Lebanon as a gift to Trump ahead of his January inauguration. Your response to the significance of Trump’s election and what it means to the people of Lebanon and Gaza?
ARWA DAMON: You know, first of all, anyone who lives in the Middle East and anyone who’s kind of been focusing on the Middle East knows very well that it really doesn’t matter who’s in the White House. Whether it’s Republican or Democrat, that really is not going to change significantly US policy towards this region.
But the thing that we’ve been hearing, specifically when it comes to the re-election of Donald Trump, is at least he’s not lying to us. At least whatever America is going to let Israel do, it’s going to be done faster. So, if our end is coming, at least it’s going to come faster.
Whereas when it comes to, you know, specifically the Biden administration, the sense is that the Democrats are far more willing to allow this slower, more painful death. But the end result, no matter who it is, people are fully convinced, is exactly the same.
And all people really want right now is for this to end. People are suffocated. They’re crushed. They cannot keep going like this. And they very much feel as if, you know, no matter what it is, no matter who it is, Arabs are viewed by the United States and by the Western world as somehow being less than . . . their lives are not that valuable.
You constantly hear people in Gaza — and we were hearing the same thing in Lebanon — making comments like, “Well, you know, America, it doesn’t care if we live or die. It doesn’t care how much we suffer. Our lives don’t matter to them.” And that is not really a perspective that changes all that much, no matter who is sitting in Washington.
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, Arwa. Why did you give up journalism for humanitarian work? What do you think you can accomplish at INARA that you couldn’t do as a journalist?
ARWA DAMON: There’s a certain sort of privilege of being able to spend extensive periods of time with people and really get to know who they are. And I feel as if, you know, moving around in the humanitarian sphere, I’m getting a different understanding of sort of people’s emotional journeys, what it actually takes to be able to provide them with assistance.
And it’s provided me a different way of being able to continue to sort of share people’s stories and experiences, but also be able to immediately at least try to provide assistance. You know, the challenge that we have when we’re out in the field as journalists is that you don’t always see the impact.
But when you’re in the humanitarian space, there’s a certain kind of magic when you’re able to just bring a smile to a child’s face. And I needed that.
AMY GOODMAN: Arwa Damon, we thank you so much for being with us. Stay safe. An award-winning journalist, she was with CNN for 18 years but now has founded INARA, a nonprofit currently providing medical and mental healthcare to children in Gaza, speaking to us from Deir al-Balah in Gaza outside Al-Aqsa Hospital.
This article is republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
In closed hearing, Alison Battisson says country has a ‘terrifying’ record of detaining people unlawfully for indefinite periods
An Australian human rights lawyer and a former long-term immigration detainee have given private testimony to the United Nations on Australia’s detention and consular practices, condemning successive governments for “criminalising immigration” and alleging inadequate support for victims of hostage diplomacy.
Alison Battisson, from the charitable law firm Human Rights for All, and the former detainee Said Imasi addressed the UN working group on arbitrary detention in Geneva this week, in special closed sessions marking the group’s 30th anniversary.
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Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
On August 11, 2022, workers in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) penned an open letter about their experiences in the program. “As it currently stands,” they wrote, “the [SAWP] is systematic slavery.” The article was written by Jamaican workers, but they asserted that migrants of other nationalities had faced similarly dehumanizing experiences. “It feels like we’re in prison,” they continued. “[Bosses] physically intimidate us, destroy our personal property, and threaten to send us home.” Workers were “treated like mules” by unaccountable companies that the Canadian government had empowered to repress migrant workers’ labour rights and political voice.
The SAWP was created in 1966, a time of labour militancy for much of the Canadian working class – in fact, in the mid-1960s, Canadian workers were striking more than one thousand times per year. The SAWP, which allows Canadian businesses to employ workers from Mexico and the Caribbean on temporary visas, provided Canadian companies with workers who existed in a more precarious position than Canadian employees. Therefore, they were less likely to cause labour disruptions.
From the very start, workers in the SAWP resisted their dehumanization and exploitation. In 1966, a group of Jamaican workers refused to work on Saturday, the Sabbath day of the Seventh-day Adventist faith. One year later, Trinidadian workers engaged in wildcat strikes, hoping to pressure their employer to rectify their poor working conditions and unequal pay between Canadian and Caribbean employees.
Gabriel Allahdua, whose 2023 book Harvesting Freedom is the first published account of the life of a migrant farm worker in Canada’s SAWP program, wrote: “I began to notice the echoes of slavery, indentured labour, and colonialism in my experiences as a migrant farm worker.”
Ottawa launched the SAWP at the same time that Canadian capital was globalizing. While Ottawa was promoting Canadian investments around the world, the Canadian government also spent money in nations like Allahdua’s home country, St. Lucia, to persuade workers into joining the SAWP. Workers were presented with a rosy, misleading notion of Canada’s government and society, bolstered by Ottawa’s funding of education initiatives overseas. With this hopeful image of Canada in their minds, many workers initially felt privileged to join the SAWP. However, even for those who were optimistic about their lives in Canada, there were often early warning signs. Allahdua himself noted that, in the early 1990s, the Canadian government was funding unpopular resource extraction projects in the region. “This was an early red flag about Canada for me,” he wrote.
When Allahdua arrived in Leamington, Ontario, the greenhouse and migrant worker capital of Canada, his preconceptions about the country were “completely shattered.” His employer worked him for fourteen hours or more each day, and there were no mandated breaks. It was, to use Allahdua’s word, an “authoritarian” system. According to Canadian law, migrant workers were not entitled to the following: “daily and weekly limits on hours of work; daily rest periods; time off between shifts; weekly/bi-weekly rest periods; eating periods; overtime pay.” At the same time, companies exercised total surveillance over workers’ lives. All activities were logged so the bosses could track workers’ movements; meanwhile, employers flaunted their power over workers, openly telling Allahdua and his fellow migrant workers “If you only knew how much money I’m making off you” and “We own you all.”
When workers tried to unionize, they were fired, as Allahdua observed when a group of Mexicans who tried to unionize were simply replaced with Guatemalans. “The element of fear is built into the SAWP and serves as a powerful tool for employers,” writes Allahdua. “A populace in fear cannot fight back.”
As Edward Dunsworth explains in his introduction to Allahdua’s book:
…workers in the SAWP are tied to a single employer, unable to freely choose or change who they work for. Those employers wield an immense amount of power over workers, and not only during the workday. Workers live in employer-provided housing, and they often find their social and private lives – where they go, who visits the bunkhouse, and so on – monitored and controlled by their bosses…A further disincentive against rocking the boat is the fact that employers enjoy essentially free rein to fire workers and send them back to their home countries should they be dissatisfied with them in any way. In the SAWP, then, farmers are not only participants’ employers, but also their landlords and immigration agents.
Effectively, the Canadian government has stripped an entire population of their labour and political rights in order to benefit Canadian businesses.
In addition to dehumanizing the migrant workforce, the SAWP is useful to Canadian capital because it suppresses wages. A 2014 study from the C.D. Howe Institute admits as much: “The goal of a temporary foreign worker (TFW) program is to accommodate shortages of labour that otherwise would cause wages to rise substantially or possibly stop production because of the difficulty of finding resident workers.” A 2012 analysis of Canada’s migrant labour regime also notes that the program “has the broader function of regulating labour supply in a fashion optimal for employer bargaining power.” In other words, it serves companies’ profitability by attacking the rights of workers.
“From the standpoint of capital,” write professors Geoffrey McCormack and Thom Workman in The Servant State: Overseeing Capital Accumulation in Canada, “migrant workers make the perfect worker: obedient, non-confrontational, cheap, unlikely to organize a union…”
Alone in a foreign country, Allahdua and his coworkers lived in low-quality company housing in which visitors were not allowed. Many of his fellow migrant labourers had low literacy rates and did not understand the contracts they had signed. “The program is calling for people of colour,” writes Allahdua.
The program is calling for people who are illiterate, or who are struggling with English, or who have English as a second language. The program is calling for people who are largely ignorant about labour issues and human rights issues. These are the kinds of people that the program is really calling for – people who are easily exploited. To me, this was the slavery and colonial handbook being used in modern Canada…So many of these [injustices] make me think about the conditions of enslaved Africans during the colonial period in the Caribbean (and elsewhere) and of the indentured labourers who came afterwards.
In 2022, the Canadian Migrant Workers Centre interviewed 30 migrant labourers who had fled their workplaces. The results show that racism and abuse are ingrained in the everyday functioning of Canada’s migrant labour system.
29 [of the 30] had experienced financial abuse. This came in the form of unpaid wages, unpaid overtime, excessive hours, forced return of wages to the employer, and extortionate recruitment fees. Seventy percent of the workers experienced employers who were verbally and psychologically abusive. They had faced verbal insults, threats of deportation, and/or racist and discriminatory remarks. Thirty percent of the workers experienced physical abuse by their employer, and 10% experienced sexual abuse.
A United Nations report released in 2024 accused Canada of relying on modern-day slavery. Released by UN investigator Tomoya Obokata, the report notes that Canada’s foreign worker program is a “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” In researching the report, Tomoya investigated working conditions in Ottawa, Moncton, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. According to the UN’s findings, Canada’s migrant labour regime “institutionalizes asymmetries of power that favour employers and prevent workers from exercising their rights.”
One year prior to being accused of contemporary slavery, the Canadian government approved the hiring of 239,646 temporary foreign workers, more than double the 2018 total. Despite global condemnation, Canada has continued to impose “contemporary slavery” on migrant workers so Canadian companies can increase their profits. Many employers now use temporary workers as a permanent labour supply.
By promoting neoliberal policies and imperialist interventions abroad, Canadian foreign policy helps create the conditions that force citizens of the Global South to migrate to Canada, where many are deprived of their rights so that Canadian companies can profit. Ottawa’s globalization agenda, aimed at promoting Canadian profits abroad and restricting foreign states’ ability to rein in capital, “directly feeds into the displacement of workers from their countries of origin – and their subsequent migration to countries like Canada,” as Amanda Aziz of the Migrant Workers Centre writes.
When migrant workers displaced by globalization organize to improve their pay and working conditions in Canada, they are often abused, fired, and deported, as many personal testimonies reveal. This needs to change. Canadians must organize to dismantle the system of “contemporary slavery” that our leaders have allowed to grow, in spite of UN warnings, on behalf of Canadian businesses.
The post Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers Program is a Massive Violation of Human Rights first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The Biblical Book of Job chronicles a string of catastrophes relentlessly plaguing the main character, Job, who loses his prosperity, his home, his health, and his children. Eventually, an agonized Job curses his own existence as well as the god that created him.
Numerous interpretations of the story exist, and more than one version has circulated through the ancient Near East. One version concludes with Job avowing repentance. “I know that my redeemer liveth, and so I repent in dust and in ashes.”
The Latin root for the word ‘repent’ is pensare – to think. ‘Repent” suggests an effort to rethink.
Job’s surprising repentance has been on my mind as calls increase, in 2024, for the United Nations to rethink its relation to Israel as a member state. Increasingly, civil society groups are pressuring Permanent Missions to the UN to eject Israel as a voting member of the General Assembly.
To paraphrase Pankraj Mishra, writing for the New York Review of Books, a stunned world has watched with disbelief as the United States provisions Israel with weapons enabling a mass murder spree across the Middle East.
Palestinians in the West Bank have recently urged all organizations demanding UN compliance with the International Criminal Court ruling of July 2024 to sign a letter available at World BEYOND War which urges Member States of the United Nations General Assembly to fulfill their duties.
Following up on the potential of this letter, a new coalition, “Global Solidarity for Peace in Palestine” has issued a letter to His Excellency Mr. Philemon Yang, the President of the United Nations General Assembly asking him to convene an urgent meeting of the General Assembly to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, establish and secure humanitarian aid corridors and ensure the complete withdrawal of Israel from the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
The letter additionally requests:
To further support these efforts, the letter calls for the establishment of an unarmed UN peacekeeping mission in the OPT under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to ensure the safety and dignity of all civilians.
In a way, Israel has already removed itself from norms maintained by the UN Charter as it has consistently flouted UN treaties, Resolutions and Advisory opinions. We must not forget that Israel refuses to acknowledge to the UN its possession of nuclear weapons.
I felt startled, during an initial planning call held with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, when one of them spoke of the evacuation he and his family faced, that very day, and said, “We are facing the final solution. Israel is imposing the final solution on us.” Other participants spoke of having shuddered during bombings, day and night.
Journalist Mehdi Hasan, writes movingly in the Guardian of how absurd it is that the United Nations’ General Assembly agrees to seat Israel as a U.N. member nation.
Israel’s abusive repudiation of the very idea of the United Nations, its escalating and lethal violation of countless international norms, its repeated, lethal attacks on U.N. sanctuaries and peacekeepers justifies its expulsion. Hasan reminds us that Israel’s outgoing Ambassador to the United Nations shredded the UN charter while standing at the General Assembly podium. This is the Charter that declares the UN mission to eradicate the scourge of warfare for future generations.
It is time for the clouds to part above the burning lands of West Asia – for the suffering there to be comforted and their pitiless accusers rebuked by the gathered voice of humanity, by the agent that created Israel and can, when it wishes, “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” The work here is ours, and so let our United Nations demand, and not beg, humanity from Israel and from its imperial sponsor the United States.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The Committee to Protect Journalists joined two other press freedom organizations in calling on authorities in Guinea-Bissau to accept and implement recommendations to improve its press freedom record at the country’s January 2025 Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
The UPR is a peer review mechanism of the United Nations Human Rights Council, through which the human rights records of the Council’s member states are reviewed every 4.5 years, and recommendations are made for improvement.
Since January 2020, authorities in Guinea-Bissau have undermined press freedom through physical and verbal attacks, arbitrary detention of journalists, and legal harassment, according to the October 2024 submission by CPJ, the local journalists’ union (Sinjotecs), and the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA).
The three organizations recommend that Guinea-Bissau improve its press freedom record by investigating and ensuring accountability for past attacks on the press, ending arbitrary detentions and media shutdowns, repealing laws that criminalize journalism, and allowing the press to establish self-regulatory mechanisms.
The UPR submission is available in English here.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A UN special committee has found that Israel’s tactics of starvation and mass civilian slaughter in Gaza are “consistent with genocide,” in one of the strongest worded reports by a UN group yet on the Israeli siege. The 27-page report documented the first nine months of Israel’s assault and was prepared by a UN committee established in 1968 to investigate Israeli human rights practices in the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Report also refers to Israel ‘using starvation as a weapon of war’ and running ‘apartheid system’ in West Bank
A UN special committee has said that Israeli policies and practices in Gaza are “consistent with the characteristics of genocide”.
The committee, set up in 1968 to monitor the Israeli occupation, also said in its annual report that there were serious concerns that Israel was “using starvation as a weapon of war” in the 13-month-old conflict, and was running an “apartheid system” in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
President-elect Trump has named New York GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik as his choice for ambassador to the United Nations. The nomination is one of the first major appointments Trump has made since winning the election last week. Stefanik has been a staunch Trump loyalist going back to his first term in office, and she has been one of the most vocal supporters of the war in Gaza over the last year.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
For the thirty-second time in so many years, the US blockade of Cuba was globally condemned at the UN General Assembly’s annual vote in October. Only Tel Aviv joined Washington in defending the collective punishment, which is illegal under international law.
For the vast majority of Cubans, who were born after the first unilateral coercive measures were imposed, life under these conditions is the only normalcy they have known. Even friends sympathetic to socialism and supporters of Cuba may question why the Cubans have not simply learned to live under these circumstances after 64 years.
The explanation, explored below, is that the relatively mild embargo of 1960 has been periodically intensified and made ever more devastatingly effective. The other major factor is that the geopolitical context has changed to Cuba’s disadvantage. These factors in turn have had cumulatively detrimental effects.
Cuba in the new world order
The Cuban Revolution achieved remarkable initial successes for a small, resource-poor island with a history of colonial exploitation.
After the 1959 revolution, the population quickly attained 100% literacy. Life expectancy and infant mortality rates soon rivaled far richer countries, through the application of socialized medicine, prioritizing primary care. Cuba also became a world sports powerhouse and made noteworthy advances in biotechnology. At the same time, Cuban troops aided in the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa, among many other exercises of internationalism.
Cuba did not make those advances alone but benefitted from the solidarity of the Soviet Union and other members of the Socialist Bloc. From the beginning of the revolution, the USSR helped stabilize the economy, particularly in the areas of agriculture and manufacturing. Notably, Cuba exported sugar to the Soviets at above-market prices.
The USSR’s military assistance in the form of training and equipment contributed to the Cuban’s successfully repelling the US’s Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. In addition, the Socialist Bloc backed Cuba diplomatically in the United Nations and other international fora. East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, for example, also assisted with economic aid, investment, and trade to help develop the Cuban economy.
The implosion of the Socialist Bloc in the late 1980s and early 1990s severely impacted Cuba.
No longer buffered by these allies, the full weight of the US-led regime-change campaign sent Cuba reeling into what became known as the “Special Period.” After an initial GDP contraction of about 35% between 1989 and 1993, the Cubans somewhat recovered by the 2000s. But, now, conditions on the island are again increasingly problematic.
A new multipolar world may be in birth, but it has not been able to sufficiently aid Cuba in this time of need. China and Vietnam along with post-Soviet Russia, remnants of the earlier Socialist Bloc, still maintain friendly commercial and diplomatic relations with Cuban but nowhere the former levels of cooperation.
Ratcheting up of the US regime-change campaign
The ever-tightening US blockade is designed to ensure that socialism does not succeed; to strangle in the cradle all possible alternatives to the established imperial order.
The initial restrictions imposed by Dwight Eisenhower in 1960 banned US exports to Cuba, except for food and medicine, and reduced Cuba’s sugar export quota to the US. Shortly before the end of his term in 1961, the US president broke diplomatic relations.
He also initiated covert operations against Cuba, which would be significantly strengthened by his successor, John Kennedy, and subsequent US administrations. Since then, Cuba has endured countless acts of terrorism as well as attempts to assassinate the revolution’s political leadership.
John Kennedy had campaigned in 1960, accusing the Eisenhower-Nixon administration of failing to sufficiently combat the spread of communism. Kennedy was determined to prevent communism from gaining a foothold in America’s “backyard.” He made deposing the “Castro regime” a national priority and imposed a comprehensive economic embargo.
After Kennedy’s failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis the following year, he initiated Operation Mongoose. The president put his brother Robert Kennedy in charge of attempting to overthrow the revolution by covert means. This CIA operation of sabotage and other destabilization methods was meant to bring to Cuba “the terrors of the earth.”
Post-Soviet era
Subsequent US administrations continued the policy of blockade, occupation of Guantánamo, and overt and covert destabilization efforts.
Former CIA director and then-US President George H.W. Bush seized the opportunity in 1992 posed by the implosion of the Socialist Bloc. The bipartisan Cuban Democracy Act passed under his watch. Popularly called the Torricelli Act after a Democratic Party congressional sponsor, it codified the embargo into law, which could only be reversed by an act of congress.
The act strengthened the embargo into a blockade by prohibiting US subsidiaries of companies operating in third countries from trading with Cuba. Ships that had traded with Cuba were banned from entering the US for 180 days. The economic stranglehold on Cuba was tightened by obstructing sources of foreign currency, which further limited Cuba’s ability to engage in international trade.
The screws were again tightened in 1996 under US President Bill Clinton with the Helms-Burton Act. Existing unilateral coercive economic measures were reinforced and expanded.
The act also added restrictions to discourage foreign investment in Cuba, particularly in US-owned properties that had been expropriated after the Cuban Revolution. The infamous Title III of the act allowed US citizens to file lawsuits in US courts against foreign companies “trafficking” in such confiscated properties.
Title III generated substantial blowback and some countermeasures from US allies, such as the European Union and Canada, because of its extraterritorial application in violation of international trade agreements and sovereignty. As a result, Title III was temporarily waived.
Later, US President Barack Obama modified US tactics during his watch by reopening diplomatic relations with Cuba and easing some restrictions, in order to unapologetically achieve the imperial strategy of regime change more effectively.
But even that mild relief was reversed by his successor’s “maximum pressure” campaign. In 2019, US President Donald Trump revived Title III. By that time, the snowballing effects of the blockade had generated a progressively calamitous economic situation in Cuba.
Just days before the end of his term, Trump reinstated Cuba onto the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) after Obama had lifted it in 2015. The designation has had a huge impact on Cuba by reducing trade with third countries fearful of secondary sanctions by the US, by cutting off most international finance, and by further discouraging tourism.
President Joe Biden continued most of the Trump “maximum pressure” measures, including the SSOT designation, while adding some of this own. This came at a time when the island was especially hard hit by the Covid pandemic, which halted tourism, one of Cuba’s few sources of foreign currency.
In the prescient words of Lester D. Mallory, US deputy assistant secretary of state back in 1960, the imperialists saw the opportunity to “bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”
US siege on Cuba perfected
In addition to the broad history outlined above of incessant regime-change measures by every US administration since the inception of the Cuban Revolution, some collateral factors are worthy of mention.
Major technological advances associated with computer technology and AI have been applied by the US to more effectively track and enforce its coercive measures. In addition, the fear of US fines for violation of its extraterritorial prohibitions on third-country actors has led to overcompliance.
Uncle Sam has also become ever more inventive. Visa-free entry (VWP) into the US is no longer available to most European and some other nationals if they stopped in Cuba, thereby significantly discouraging tourism to the island.
The internal political climate in the US has also shifted with the neoconservative takeover of both major parties. Especially now with the second Trump presidency, Cuba has fewer friends in Washington, and its enemies now have even less constraints on their regime-change campaigns. This is coupled by a generally more aggressive international US force projection.
Under the blockade, certain advances of the revolution were turned into liabilities. The revolution with its universal education, mechanization of agriculture, and collective or cooperative organization of work freed campesinos from the 24/7 drudgery of peasant agriculture. Today, fields remain idle because, among other factors, the fuel and spare parts for the tractors are embargoed.
Cuba’s allies, especially Venezuela, itself a victim of a US blockade, have been trying to supply Cuba with desperately needed oil. Construction of 14 oil tankers commissioned abroad by Venezuela, which could transport that oil, has been blocked. Direct proscriptions by the US on shipping companies and insurance underwriters have also limited the oil lifeline.
Without the fuel, electrical power, which run pumps to supply basic drinking water, cannot be generated. As a consequence, Cuba has recently experienced island-wide blackouts along with food and water shortages. This highlights how the blockade is essentially an economic dirty war against the civilian population.
Cumulative effects on Cuban society
Life is simply hard in Cuba under the US siege and is getting harder. This has led to recently unprecedented levels of out migration. The consequent brain-drain and labor shortages exacerbate the situation. Moreover, the relentless scarcity and the associated compromised quality of life under such conditions has had a corrosive effect over time.
Under the pressure of the siege, Cuba has been forced to adopt measures that undermine socialist equality but which generate needed revenue. For example, Obama and subsequent US presidents have encouraged the formation of a small business strata, expanding on the limited “reforms” instituted during Raúl Castro’s time as Cuba’s president.
The Cubans will surely persevere as they have in the past. “The country’s resilience is striking,” according to a longtime Cuba observer writing from Havana.
Besides, the imperialists leave them little other choice. A surrender and soft landing is not an option being offered. The deliberately failed state of Haiti, less than 50 miles to the east, serves as a cautionary tale of what transpires for a people under the beneficence of the US.
Now is an historical moment for recognition of not what Cuba has failed to do, but for appreciation of how much it has achieved with so little and under such adverse circumstances not of its making.
The post Why Cuba Hasn’t Adjusted to US Sanctions after Six Decades first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The Committee to Protect Journalists and 10 other journalism and human rights groups sent a letter on Monday, November 11, to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva ahead of its November 13 Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Nicaragua’s human rights record.
The letter is a response to a September report by the State of Nicaragua asserting that there have been no violations of freedom of expression during the U.N. evaluation period (2019-2023). But reports from press freedom and human rights groups and international bodies show that press freedom in the country is nearly nonexistent.
The coalition of organizations calls on the Nicaraguan government to stop persecuting and criminalizing journalists and other dissenting voices, and urges the UNRHC to support press freedom and adopt measures to protect it.
Read the letter in English here.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
From Uncaptured Media:
The video provides a stunning and emblematic example of on-going police massacres of civilians as the U.S. government pushes for a UN intervention….
Go to Uncaptured Media.
The post Drone Captures Haitian Police Execution of an Innocent Man first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Ethiopian authorities to accept and implement recommendations on improving press freedom conditions and guaranteeing the safety of journalists during the United Nations’ upcoming review of its human rights record.
Earlier this year, CPJ submitted a report assessing Ethiopia’s press freedom and journalist safety record from 2019, as part of the country’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) scheduled for November 12. During the UPR, the United Nations Human Rights Council peer reviews the human rights record of a country, and considers recommendations on how a country can better fulfill its international human rights obligations.
CPJ’s report to the U.N. detailed the arbitrary detention, physical violence, harassment, and severe legal restrictions Ethiopian journalists face. CPJ made several recommendations including promptly releasing detained journalists, investigating attacks on the press, ensuring accountability for violence against journalists, and amending repressive laws to align with international human rights standards.
CPJ’s UPR submission on Ethiopia is available in English here.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Asia Pacific Report
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry has rejected media reports that it has pulled out of mediation efforts between Israel and Hamas but added that it has “stalled” its efforts until all parties show “willingness and seriousness” to end the war.
News of the suspension comes as Gaza marks 400 days of war with more than 43,000 Palestinians being killed, 102,000 wounded and 10,000 missing.
The death toll includes at least 17,385 children, including 825 children below the age of one, and nearly 12,000 women.
In a statement on X, the ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said Qatar had informed the relevant mediation parties 10 days ago of its intentions.
Al-Ansari also said that reports regarding the Hamas political office in Doha were inaccurate, “stating that the main goal of the of the office in Qatar is to be a channel of communication between the concerned parties”.
Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs @majedalansari : Qatar’s efforts to mediate between Hamas and Israel are currently stalled #MOFAQatar pic.twitter.com/pvHFKuxqA2
— Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Qatar (@MofaQatar_EN) November 9, 2024
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson also said that the country would not accept that its role as a mediator be used to “blackmail it”.
“Qatar will not accept that mediation be a reason for blackmailing it, as we have witnessed manipulation since the collapse of the first pause and the women and children exchange deal, especially in retreating from obligations agreed upon through mediation, and exploiting the continuation of negotiations to justify the continuation of the war to serve narrow political purposes,” he said in the statement posted on X.
Criticism aimed at Israel
Commentators on Al Jazeera pointed to the criticism being primarily aimed at Israel and the US.
Senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said Qatar had been spearheading the attempt at reaching a ceasefire “for so long now”.
“Clearly, there have been attempts by a number of parties, notably the Israelis, to undermine the process or abuse the process of diplomacy in order to continue the war.”
Earlier, Cindy McCain, executive director of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), said immediate steps must be taken to prevent an “all-out catastrophe” in northern Gaza where Israeli forces have maintained a monthlong siege on as many as 95,000 civilian residents amid its brutal military offensive in the area.
‘Unacceptable’ famine crisis
“The unacceptable is confirmed: Famine is likely happening in north Gaza,” McCain wrote on social media.
Steps must be taken immediately, McCain said, to allow the “safe, rapid [and] unimpeded flow of humanitarian [and] commercial supplies” to reach the besieged population in the north of the war-torn territory.
World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has added his voice to rising concerns, saying on social media it was: “Deeply alarming.”
A group of global food security experts has reported that famine is likely “imminent within the northern Gaza Strip”.
Meanwhile, more than 50 countries have signed a letter urging the UN Security Council and General Assembly to take immediate steps to halt arms sales to Israel.
The letter accuses the Israeli government of not doing enough to protect the lives of civilians during its assault on Gaza, reports Al Jazeera.
