Just Foreign Policy News
October 22, 2010
Restore Sanity? Jon Stewart Gave Senator Coburn a Bum Rap on Haiti Aid
Jon Stewart’s campaign against the debasement of public discourse serves the public interest by making it more difficult to shut down needed policy changes, like negotiations to end the war in Afghanistan. Stewart should lead by example by acknowledging that when he accused Sen. Coburn of holding up $1.15 billion in Haiti reconstruction aid, the accusation was false.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/restore-sanity-jon-stewar_b_772476.html
Britain‘s Budget Cuts – Will the Bell Toll For Us?
Failure to cut military spending in Britain will mean draconian cuts in domestic spending, the New York Times reports. Their fate will likely be ours if we don’t get serious about cutting the military budget. But we can’t get serious about cutting the military budget until we end the war in Afghanistan. By dithering about peace talks – excluding Pakistan and key Taliban leaders – the Pentagon is threatening your Social Security check.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/britains-budget-cuts-wi_b_771570.html
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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) The World Health Organization said a cholera outbreak in Haiti has killed more than 150 people, increasing fears of an epidemic that could spread to the encampments that shelter more than a million Haitians, the New York Times reports. The senior program officer in Haiti for the Pan-American Health Organization said the best hope for minimizing casualties was a public education campaign to tell people to drink only clean water, and a bigger effort to get clean water to everyone.
2) The principal reason NPR’s firing of Juan Williams provoked so much fury is that it threatens the preservation of one of the most important American mythologies: that Muslims are a Serious Threat to America and Americans, writes Gleen Greenwald in Salon. That fact is illustrated by a Washington Post Op-Ed from Reuel Marc Gerecht, who is as standard and pure a neocon as exists: an Israel-centric, Iran-threatening, Weekly Standard and TNR writer, former CIA Middle East analyst, former American Enterprise Institute and current Defense of Democracies "scholar," torture advocate, etc. etc. Gerecht hails Williams as a courageous "dissident" for expressing this "truth": "[W]hile his manner may have been clumsy, Williams was right to suggest that there is a troubling nexus between the modern Islamic identity and the embrace of terrorism as a holy act." Above all else, this fear-generating "nexus" is what must be protected at all costs. It is this fear-sustaining, anti-Muslim slander that NPR’s firing of Williams threatened to delegitimize. That is why NPR’s firing of Williams must be attacked with such force: because if it were allowed to stand, it would be an important step toward stigmatizing anti-Muslim animus in the same way that other forms of bigotry are now off-limits, and that, above all else, is what cannot happen, because anti-Muslim animus is too important to too many factions to allow it to be delegitimized.
3) Some experts said reports of high-level talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government could be part of a U.S. "information strategy" to divide and weaken the Taliban leadership, McClatchy reports. "This is a psychological operation, plain and simple," said a U.S. official with firsthand knowledge of Afghan President Karzai’s outreach effort. "Exaggerating the significance of it (the contacts) is an effort to sow distrust within the insurgency," said the U.S. official. "That (psychological warfare) is exactly what it is," said a former senior U.S. official in touch with the White House. "Petraeus has been upping the attack on the Taliban, and trying to intimidate, and at the same time, reaching out : ‘let’s talk.’" Ret. Army Col. Thomas Lynch, a research fellow at the National Defense University, noted that "High-level (peace) talks cannot meaningfully occur without the tacit or explicit acceptance" of Pakistani intelligence.
4) War logs released by Wikileaks show that US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers; the US helicopter gunship involved in killing Reuters employees had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender; and more than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents, the Guardian reports. The war logs show that US and British claims that they do not keep statistics on civilian deaths are untrue. However, the US figures appear to be unreliable in respect of civilian deaths caused by their own military activities. Iraq Body Count says it has identified around 15,000 previously unknown civilian deaths from the data contained in the leaked war logs.
5) Over 300 activists from the aid flotilla "Viva Palestina" crossed Thursday into Gaza by land with tons of medical equipment and food supplies, Haaretz reports.
Israel/Palestine
6) Israeli President Shimon Peres said Israel needs good ties with the US to survive and must be more understanding of U.S. demands over securing peace with the Palestinians, Reuters reports. Peres said an end to the Palestinian conflict would improve the US security position in the Middle East and help isolate Iran. As head of state, Peres lacks executive powers but is often a bellwether of opinion among left-leaning Israelis, Reuters says.
Iran
7) The US again pressed Turkey to comply with unilateral US sanctions against Iran,
Reuters reports. While saying Turkey would comply with U.N. resolutions, Turkey said it had not provided guidelines to its banking sector on how to deal with financial sanctions imposed by Washington and the EU. But the chair of Turkey’s largest energy-to-banking conglomerate Koc Holding said Turkish companies were starting to feel U.S. pressure. Tupras, Europe’s fourth biggest oil refiner and 51 percent owned by Koc, announced in August it was no longer selling petroleum products to Iran. "Tupras’ banking transactions are made in U.S. We are doing business with American Ford and Fiat, and indirectly with Chrysler. We simply can not take such a risk," Mustafa Koc said. Under U.S. law, Turkish banks with business in the US could face U.S. penalties for dealing with Iranian firms blacklisted by Washington.
Honduras
8) the Committee of Relatives of Detained and Disappeared in Honduras says 157 people are currently living in exile due to persecution after the coup, Inside Costa Rica reports. This week 30 US Democratic congressmen denounced the deplorable human rights situation in Honduras and urged their government to stop attempts to achieve the reinstatement of Honduras to the OAS as long as this situation continues.
Haiti
9) An independent commission of inquiry on a prison uprising found that at least 12 inmates were killed by Haitian officers who opened fire "deliberately and without justification," using "inappropriate, abusive and disproportionate force" against unarmed inmates who presented no immediate threat, the New York Times reports. UN officers took no part in the shooting, the commission found, but the commission did fault the UN officers for failing to seek medical help for the wounded they encountered after the shooting.
Colombia
10) Newspaper El Tiempo reported that Colombia’s inspector general said the extrajudicial killing of civilians by the armed forces was caused by pressure to please the high command and the government, notes Colombia Reports. According to the newspaper it is the first time a Colombian watchdog body has contradicted the official line, which is that murders of civilians by the army to inflate kill statistics were isolated cases. According to NGOs, more than 3,700 civilians have been murdered by the military since 2002. Judicial authorities are investigating at least 1,000 cases of extrajudicial murders.
11) The Ombudsman’s National Search Commission coordinator told EFE that Colombia has one of the highest number of forcibly disappeared people in the world, with 50,000 individuals missing, notes Colombia reports.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Cholera Reported in Several Areas in Haiti
Donald G. Mcneil Jr., New York Times, October 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/23/world/americas/23cholera.html
A cholera outbreak in a rural area of northwestern Haiti has killed more than 150 people and overwhelmed local hospitals with thousands of the sick, the World Health Organization said Friday, increasing long-held fears of an epidemic that could spread to the encampments that shelter more than a million of Haitians displaced by the January earthquake.
Even as relief organizations rushed doctors and clean-water equipment toward the epicenter – the Artibonite, a riverine rice-producing area about three hours north of the capital, Port-au-Prince – Haitian radio reported that cholera cases had surfaced in two other areas: the island of La Gonâve, and the town of Arcahaie, which lies closer to the capital. In addition, a California-based aid group, International Medical Corps, said they had confirmed cases in Croix-des-Bouquet.
Relief agencies had long feared a major outbreak of diarrheal diseases, particularly among people living in crowded, unsanitary tent cities, and, as in the case in Artibonite, drinking from rivers.
But the appearance of cholera – which dehydrates and kills victims more rapidly than most other diarrheas – was a surprise. Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean has not seen the vibrio cholerae bacteria, which lives in human intestines, for at least 50 years.
[…] Dr. Michel Thieren, senior program officer in Haiti for the Pan-American Health Organization, a W.H.O. affiliate, said the best hope for minimizing casualties was a public education campaign to tell people to drink only clean water, and a bigger effort to get clean water to everyone.
Cholera has circled the globe in waves since it first appeared in India in 1816. It killed tens of millions of people during the 19th century, and the globe is now in the grip of what is considered the seventh pandemic; a strain presumed similar to the one in Haiti appeared in South America in 1991.
Victims can lose as much as 10 quarts of water a day through diarrhea and die because their electrolytes get out of balance, causing a heart attack, or their blood gets so thick that their organs shut down. It can be fought by rehydrating victims with intravenous fluids and water with salts and sugars. It can be headed off by trucking in clean water or huge filters that can clean local water.
2) The real danger from NPR’s firing of Juan Williams
Glenn Greenwald, Salon, Friday, Oct 22, 2010 08:23 Et
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/22/muslims/index.html
I’m still not quite over the most disgusting part of the Juan Williams spectacle yesterday: watching the very same people (on the Right and in the media) who remained silent about or vocally cheered on the viewpoint-based firings of Octavia Nasr, Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez, Eason Jordan, Peter Arnett, Phil Donahue, Ashleigh Banfield, Bill Maher, Ward Churchill, Chas Freeman, Van Jones and so many others, spend all day yesterday wrapping themselves in the flag of "free expression!!!" and screeching about the perils and evils of firing journalists for expressing certain viewpoints. Even for someone who expects huge doses of principle-free hypocrisy – as I do – that behavior is really something to behold. And anyone doubting that there is a double standard when it comes to anti-Muslim speech should just compare the wailing backlash from most quarters over Williams’ firing to the muted acquiescence or widespread approval of those other firings.
But there’s one point from all of this I really want to highlight. The principal reason the Williams firing resonated so much and provoked so much fury is that it threatens the preservation of one of the most important American mythologies: that Muslims are a Serious Threat to America and Americans. That fact is illustrated by a Washington Post Op-Ed today from Reuel Marc Gerecht, who is as standard and pure a neocon as exists: an Israel-centric, Iran-threatening, Weekly Standard and TNR writer, former CIA Middle East analyst, former American Enterprise Institute and current Defense of Democracies "scholar," torture advocate, etc. etc. Gerecht hails Williams as a courageous "dissident" for expressing this "truth": "[W]hile his manner may have been clumsy, Williams was right to suggest that there is a troubling nexus between the modern Islamic identity and the embrace of terrorism as a holy act."
Above all else, this fear-generating "nexus" is what must be protected at all costs. This is the "troubling" connection – between Muslims and terrorism – that Williams lent his "liberal," NPR-sanctioned voice to legitimizing. And it is this fear-sustaining, anti-Muslim slander that NPR’s firing of Williams threatened to delegitimize. That is why NPR’s firing of Williams must be attacked with such force: because if it were allowed to stand, it would be an important step toward stigmatizing anti-Muslim animus in the same way that other forms of bigotry are now off-limits, and that, above all else, is what cannot happen, because anti-Muslim animus is too important to too many factions to allow it to be delegitimized. The Huffington Post’s Jason Linkins explained the real significance of NPR’s actions, the real reason it had to be attacked: "Yesterday, NPR cashiered correspondent Juan Williams for doing something that had hitherto never been considered an offense in media circles: defaming Muslims. Up until now, you could lose your job for saying intemperate things about Jews and about Christians and about Matt Drudge. You could even lose a job for failing to defame Muslims. But we seem to be in undiscovered country at the moment."
There are too many interests served by anti-Muslim fear-mongering to allow that to change. To start with, as a general proposition, it’s vital that the American citizenry always be frightened of some external (and relatedly internal) threat. Nothing is easier, or more common, or more valuable, than inducing people to believe that one discrete minority group is filled with unique Evil, poses some serious menace to their Safety, and must be stopped at all costs. The more foreign-seeming that group is, the easier it is to sustain the propaganda campaign of fear. Sufficiently bombarded with this messaging, even well-intentioned people will dutifully walk around insisting that the selected group is a Dangerous Menace.
[…] Beyond the general need to ensure that Americans always fear an external Enemy, there are multiple functions which this specific Muslim-based fear-mongering fulfills. The national security state – both its public and private arms – needs the "Muslims as Threat" mythology to sustain its massive budget and policies of Endless War. The surveillance state – both its public and private arms – needs that myth to justify its limitless growth.
[…] The double standard in our political discourse – which tolerates and even encourages anti-Muslim bigotry while stigmatizing other forms – has been as beneficial as it has been glaring. NPR’s firing of Juan Williams threatened to change that by rendering this bigotry as toxic and stigmatized as other types. That could not be allowed, which is why the backlash against NPR was so rapid, intense and widespread. I’m not referring here to those who object to viewpoint-based firings of journalists in general and who have applied that belief consistently: that’s a perfectly reasonable view to hold (and one I share). I’m referring to those who rail against NPR’s actions by invoking free expression principles they plainly do not support and which they eagerly violate whenever the viewpoint in question is one they dislike. For most NPR critics, the real danger from Williams’ firing is not to free expression, but to the ongoing fear-mongering campaign of defamation and bigotry against Muslims (both foreign and domestic) that is so indispensable to so many agendas.
3) U.S. officials, experts: No high-level Afghan peace talks under way
Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers, Fri, Oct. 22, 2010
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/21/102428/us-officials-experts-no-high-level.html
Washington – Despite news reports of high-level talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, no significant peace negotiations are under way in Afghanistan, U.S. officials and Afghanistan experts said Thursday.
These same experts said the reports, which appeared in a number of U.S. media outlets, could be part of a U.S. "information strategy" to divide and weaken the Taliban leadership.
"This is a psychological operation, plain and simple," said a U.S. official with firsthand knowledge of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s outreach effort. "Exaggerating the significance of it (the contacts) is an effort to sow distrust within the insurgency, to make insurgents suspicious with each other and to send them on witch hunts looking for traitors who want to negotiate with the enemy," said the U.S. official. He requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
Ali Jalali, a scholar at the National Defense University and a former Afghan interior minister who maintains close contacts with the Afghan government, said he knew of no significant peace negotiations. "There is a desire (by the Afghan government and its foreign backers) for talks with the Taliban and others, but the situation is not ready for these talks yet," he told McClatchy. "There is a lot of smoke, but no fire."
News accounts have said the talks with the Afghan government were held in Kabul and that the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force, facilitated travel for the Taliban from their sanctuaries in Pakistan.
The reports said the talks had deliberately excluded Mullah Mohammad Omar, the head of the Quetta Shura, the leadership council that controls Taliban forces in southern and eastern Afghanistan from the western Pakistani city of Quetta, and circumvented the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency.
[…] "We have the impression that all of the commanders that have been taken out have been replaced quite quickly," said Thomas Ruttig of the Afghan Analysts Network, a respected independent policy institute. On a scale of one to 100, Ruttig put progress on peace talks "at somewhere between one and two."
"That (psychological warfare) is exactly what it is," said a former senior U.S. official in touch with the White House. "Petraeus has been upping the attack on the Taliban, and trying to intimidate, and at the same time, reaching out : ‘let’s talk.’" The former senior official requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing ties with the Obama administration.
While publicity about peace talks is partly psychological maneuvering, the former senior official said that Petraeus’ strategy of escalating attacks while expressing a desire for diplomacy "seems to me certainly worth trying." He added: "I don’t know if it’ll work."
[…] "High-level (peace) talks cannot meaningfully occur without the tacit or explicit acceptance of the ISI," said ret. Army Col. Thomas Lynch, a research fellow at the National Defense University.
4) Iraq War Logs: Secret Files Show How US Ignored Torture
Massive leak reveals serial detainee abuse
15,000 unknown civilian deaths in war Nick Davies, Jonathan Steele and David Leigh, Guardian, 22 October 2010 21.26 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/iraq-war-logs-military-leaks
A grim picture of the US and Britain’s legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
[…] The new logs detail how:
– US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
– A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
– More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee’s apparent death.
As recently as December the Americans were passed a video apparently showing Iraqi army officers executing a prisoner in Tal Afar, northern Iraq. The log states: "The footage shows approximately 12 Iraqi army soldiers. Ten IA soldiers were talking to one another while two soldiers held the detainee. The detainee had his hands bound … The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him."
The report named at least one perpetrator and was passed to coalition forces. But the logs reveal that the coalition has a formal policy of ignoring such allegations. They record "no investigation is necessary" and simply pass reports to the same Iraqi units implicated in the violence.
[…] The logs also illustrate the readiness of US forces to unleash lethal force. In one chilling incident they detail how an Apache helicopter gunship gunned down two men in February 2007.
The suspected insurgents had been trying to surrender but a lawyer back at base told the pilots: "You cannot surrender to an aircraft." The Apache, callsign Crazyhorse 18, was the same unit and helicopter based at Camp Taji outside Baghdad that later that year, in July, mistakenly killed two Reuters employees and wounded two children in the streets of Baghdad.
Iraq Body Count, the London-based group that monitors civilian casualties, says it has identified around 15,000 previously unknown civilian deaths from the data contained in the leaked war logs.
Although US generals have claimed their army does not carry out body counts and British ministers still say no official statistics exist, the war logs show these claims are untrue. The field reports purport to identify all civilian and insurgent casualties, as well as numbers of coalition forces wounded and killed in action. They give a total of more than 109,000 violent deaths from all causes between 2004 and the end of 2009.
This includes 66,081 civilians, 23,984 people classed as "enemy" and 15,196 members of the Iraqi security forces. Another 3,771 dead US and allied soldiers complete the body count.
[…] However, the US figures appear to be unreliable in respect of civilian deaths caused by their own military activities. For example, in Falluja, the site of two major urban battles in 2004, no civilian deaths are recorded. Yet Iraq Body Count monitors identified more than 1,200 civilians who died during the fighting.
[…] The whistleblowing activists say they have deleted all names from the documents that might result in reprisals. They were accused by the US military of possibly having "blood on their hands" over the previous Afghan release by redacting too few names. But the military recently conceded that no harm had been identified.
[…]
5) ‘Viva Palestina’ activists deliver tons of aid to Gaza Strip
Most of the activists arrived at the Egyptian port El-Arish on flights from Syria, while just 30 activists made the journey with the aid supplies by ship.
Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz, 23:15 21.10.10
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/viva-palestina-activists-deliver-tons-of-aid-to-gaza-strip-1.320496
Over 300 activists from Syrian aid flotilla "Viva Palestina" crossed Thursday the Egyptian Border into Gaza by land with tons of medical equipment and food supplies for the residents of the coastal enclave.
According to the organizers of the flotilla, which departed from the Syrian port of Latkia, activists transported products worth in excess of $5 million.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
6) Peace with Palestinians would help U.S. on Iran: Peres
Dan Williams, Reuters, October 22, 2010
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69L16J20101022
Jerusalem (Reuters) – Israel needs good ties with the United States to survive and must be more understanding of U.S. demands over securing peace with the Palestinians, Israeli President Shimon Peres said in remarks aired on Friday. Peres, Israel’s elder statesman, said an end to the Palestinian conflict would improve the United States’ own security position in the Middle East and help isolate Iran.
His comments came as a diplomatic deadlock deepened over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to bow to demands from Washington to extend a freeze on West Bank settlement building so peace negotiations with the Palestinians can resume.
[…] Washington, which often sides with the Israelis in key diplomatic forums and underwrites their military, has been trying to rein in the nuclear aspirations of Israel’s arch-foe, Iran, through tougher international sanctions. Yet some Arab powers have publicly chafed at that campaign, pointing to the Palestinians’ stalled drive to achieve independence on land Israel occupied in a 1967 Middle East war.
U.S. leaders in recent months have connected the need for peace with the Palestinians to U.S. security interests, blaming the continued tensions for fuelling Islamist militancy.
As head of state, ex-premier Peres lacks executive powers but is often a bellwether of opinion among left-leaning Israelis who oppose the rightist Netanyahu government’s policymaking.
Iran
7) U.S. presses Turkey to enforce sanctions on Iran
Tulay Karadeniz and Ibon Villelabeitia, Reuters, Thu, Oct 21 2010
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69K46920101021
Ankara – A top U.S. government official prodded Turkey on Thursday to enforce international sanctions against Iran, increasing pressure on Ankara to scale back its flourishing trade ties with its neighbor. "All we want is the sanctions to be imposed throughout the world," Stuart Levey, the treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told Turkish broadcaster NTV after meeting Turkish government and banking officials for two days to discuss U.S. and U.N. sanctions.
[…] Turkey is bound by U.N. sanctions despite voting against them along with fellow rotating Security Council member Brazil and has said it is not obliged to follow non-U.N. sanctions. But under U.S. law, Turkish banks with business in the United States could face U.S. penalties for dealing with Iranian firms blacklisted by Washington.
[…] On Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan said in Washington that Turkish banks had become hesitant about dealing with Iran, but Turkey had left decisions on whether to pull back following U.S. and European sanctions up to them.
While saying Turkey would comply with U.N. resolutions, Babacan said Ankara had not provided guidelines to its banking sector on how to deal with financial sanctions imposed by the Washington and the EU.
[…] Despite Ankara’s permissive stance toward Turkish firms dealing with Iran, Mustafa Koc, chairman of Turkey’s largest energy-to-banking conglomerate Koc Holding, said Turkish companies were starting to feel the U.S. pressure.
Tupras, Europe’s fourth biggest oil refiner and 51 percent owned by Koc, announced in August that it was no longer selling petroleum products to Iran. "Tupras’ banking transactions are made in U.S. We are doing business with American Ford and Fiat, and indirectly with Chrysler. We simply can not take such a risk," Koc told Hurriyet daily earlier this week.
[…]
Honduras
8) Coup Forces 157 Hondurans Into Exile.
Inside Costa Rica, Friday 22 October 2010
http://www.insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2010/october/22/centralamerica10102203.htm
Tegucigalpa – A total of 157 people are currently living in exile due to persecution after the coup, reported the Committee of Relatives of Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH). The exiles are leaders of the resistance movement in neighborhoods and communities that have fled the country because their lives were in jeopardy, said Bertha Oliva, Cofadeh coordinator.
[…] This week 30 US Democrat congressmen denounced the deplorable human rights situation in Honduras and urged their government to stop attempts to achieve the reinstatement of Honduras to the OAS as long as this situation continues. "We have received credible reports from human rights organizations that say that abuses continue with impunity," the congressmen said.
During the first half of this year about 3,000 were killed in the country, for an average of 16.27 deaths per day. The victims included 10 journalists, 30 lawyers and several leaders of popular organizations, and most of the crimes have not been investigated so far.
Haiti
9) Report Assails Haiti Officers in Prison Killings
Deborah Sontag and Walt Bogdanich, New York Times, October 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/world/americas/22haiti.html
After officers had quelled the prison uprising in Les Cayes, Haiti, in January, Jacklin Charles, an unarmed detainee, was killed by a bullet to the head as he stood beside a tree in the courtyard. Several witnesses said that the chief of the antiriot police pulled the trigger.
Another detainee, Verlin Potty, was handcuffed and dragged into the dispensary, where officers beat him to death with their batons. The warden is said to have participated in the killing.
These two men were among at least 12 detainees killed by Haitian officers who opened fire "deliberately and without justification," using "inappropriate, abusive and disproportionate force" against unarmed inmates who presented no immediate threat, according to an independent commission of inquiry report on the Jan. 19 uprising.
Most of the dead were summarily executed, the commission found, and at least 14 prisoners were wounded in what amounted to "grave violations of human rights."
In a forcefully worded, detailed report, the commission said that it hoped for an official and public condemnation of the violations, which were initially covered up by the local authorities in Les Cayes. But the report, delivered to Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive on Sept. 2, was not released by the government.
The New York Times, whose investigation of the killings spurred the creation of the commission, obtained a copy from the prime minister’s office late on Wednesday after requesting it repeatedly over the past six weeks.
[…] The seeds for the uprising in Les Cayes were planted right after the earthquake when the detainees, scared to stay in their cells, clamored to sleep in the courtyard. Refused by the warden, they rebelled, throwing metal beds against the cell doors. Several were punished the next day by guards who beat them with batons, the commission said, condemning that mistreatment.
An escape plan was hatched, and on Jan. 19, several detainees attacked a guard who had opened their cell to empty their waste bucket. In the ensuing commotion, the guard fled. As the detainees set fire and vandalized the prison, United Nations officers helped surround the perimeter and provided tear gas, but took no part in the shooting, the commission found.
The commission did fault the United Nations officers for failing to seek medical help for the wounded they encountered after the shooting.
[…]
Colombia
10) Government pressure led to extrajudicial killings: Inspector General.
Adriaan Alsema, Colombia Reports, Thursday, 21 October 2010 07:00
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/12491-pressure-from-above-led-to-extrajudicial-killings-inspector-general.html
Colombia’s inspector general said that the extrajudicial killing of civilians by the country’s armed forces was caused by pressure to please the armed forces’ high command and the government, newspaper El Tiempo reported on Thursday.
According to the newspaper it is the first time that a Colombian watchdog body has contradicted the official line, which is that murders of civilians by the army to inflate kill statistics were isolated cases.
The inspector general’s (IG) comments were made when charging members of the army with "false positive" extrajudicial killings in Soacha, a city south of Bogota, where the army allegedly killed 19 young men and then presented them as guerrillas killed in combat.
The murders were a "criminal plan which only purpose was to meet an institutional requirement, born of the need to show senior commanders, and why not say it, the government, that the fight against legal armed groups was being won," El Tiempo quoted the IG saying when charging two colonels, two majors, four non-commissioned officers and 18 soldiers with the kidnapping and murder of the men.
In the case of the murder of one of the victims, one of the colonels and his troops aimed for "the mentioned homicide [to be] recognized as an operational result by the high command, taking into consideration that this military unit had not had success in quite a while," the IG said.
According to NGOs, more than 3,700 civilians have been murdered by the military since 2002. Judicial authorities are investigating at least 1,000 cases of extrajudicial murders.
11) Colombia has 50,000 disappeared: Official.
Linda Azodi, Colombia Reports, Wednesday, 20 October 2010 14:46
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/12486-colombia-has-50000-disappeared-official.html
Colombia has one of the highest number of forcibly disappeared people in the world, with 50,000 individuals missing, the Ombudsman’s National Search Commission coordinator Andres Peña told EFE on Wednesday. Most of the disappeared are victims of "illegal groups, paramilitaries mainly and guerrillas, and an important part correspond to agents of the state," says Peña.
Colombia’s Congress on Tuesday ratified the United Nations’ International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, adopted in 2006.
[…] The prosecutor general has registered some 27,000 people as missing, but admits there are still many cases that need to be investigated.
[…] Cristian Salazar, director of the Colombia’s office for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) in September encouraged Colombia to ratify the pact, saying that it would mean that families whose loved ones disappeared were able to report the failure of Colombian justice to solve these cases.
–
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
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