RIGHTS-LIBERIA: ‘We Will Use Our Children as Shields’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

By Rebecca Murray

Children play at the Harbel marketplace.

HARBEL, Liberia, Dec 9 (IPS) – “We are not just going to let a bulldozer come in and demolish our land. If possible we will use our children as shields. We will have to do that,” exclaims Eric Lavella, a middle-aged Firestone factory worker living in the heart of Liberia’s largest rubber plantation, 60 kilometres south of the capital Monrovia.

Lavella’s neighbourhood of Firestone contractors, retirees, marketers and squatters — estimated by community leader, Reverend Johnson Flumo, to be around 3,000 — is crowded into breezeblock and corrugated metal shacks haphazardly built in the town of Harbel’s marketplace.

But after more than two decades of selling food, clothing and plastic Chinese goods, the market dwellers’ days are numbered. Firestone intends to shift the vendors to a newly constructed market next month and tear down the old commercial lot. The new location will have over 1000 stalls, but no housing. Both sites are on land Firestone says is theirs until their lease runs out in 2041.
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Popularity: 86% [?]

RIGHTS-NEPAL: ‘Maoists Slow to Return Seized Property’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Renu Kshetry

KATHMANDU, Dec 9 (IPS) – Tej Bahadur Roila, a member of the Nepal army, is unable to return to his home in the Khotang district of Eastern Nepal because his property, seized by Maoist rebels in the middle of the decade-long civil war they waged against the monarchy, has not been returned.

The political arm of the rebels, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) — which emerged as the largest political party elections held in April following the 2006 peace deal — has done little to fulfil pledges to return property grabbed by cadres from absentee landlords and people who fled the rural areas for safety.

Chances are slim that Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, still known by his nom de guerre ‘Prachanda’, will be able to fulfil solemn promises made in Parliament on Nov. 10 that seized property will be returned to owners by mid-December.
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Popularity: 87% [?]

RIGHTS: Bipartisan U.S. Panel Offers Blueprint to Prevent Genocide

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 8 (IPS) – A bipartisan task force of former top national security policymakers is calling on the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama to make the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities overseas a top U.S. foreign policy priority.

In a report released here Monday, the group, which was co-chaired by former President Bill Clinton’s Pentagon chief, William Cohen, and secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, argued that mass atrocities threaten core U.S. national interests and that the national security bureaucracy should be reformed to reflect that priority.

Its release came on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the U.N.’s adoption of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the 20th anniversary of its final ratification by the United States.
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Popularity: 90% [?]

US-IRAQ: Immunity Recedes for Private Contractors

Global Intelligence News / IPS

William Fisher

NEW YORK, Dec 5 (IPS) – The virtually total impunity from prosecution accorded to private contractors in Iraq may be coming to an end.

Under the new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) approved by the Iraqi government last week, U.S. contractors will be subject to Iraqi law for the first time. Moreover, some observers believe that Iraq may be able to hold them legally accountable for offences allegedly committed even before the SOFA was approved.

And, at the other end of the U.S-Iraq equation, after months of seeming inactivity — marked by continuing doubts about whether the U.S. even has legal jurisdiction over the contractors — the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) may soon bring charges against three to six contractor-employed security guards for their involvement in the shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007.
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Popularity: 96% [?]

Q&A: ‘We Have to Develop Our Modern Sharia’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Abderrahim El Ouali interviews MOSTAFA HANNAOUI, founder of the Rights and People project

CASABLANCA, Dec 4 (IPS) – A unique human rights project has been recently set up to empower more than 300 million people in the Arab world to campaign for their individual human rights, according to Mostafa Hannaoui.

Hannaoui, the founder of the Rights and People project, has the vision of providing Arabic-speaking people with the knowledge they need to engage in a region-wide debate on rights issues.

Central to his project will be open access to information about the use of the death penalty in the 24-country region and reporting the day-to-day struggle for the observance of the most fundamental of all rights, the right to life.

IPS: You recently announced the founding of a new abolitionist project called Rights and People. What are you aspiring to achieve?

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Popularity: 19% [?]

RIGHTS-MAURITANIA: ‘Chains Are Jewellery For Men’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Ebrimah Sillah

DAKAR, Dec 3 (IPS) – Mauritania’s security forces are again accused of routine and systematic torture of political opponents and Islamists accused of links with international terrorist groups. A report released by Amnesty International today details cruel violations of human rights, poor prison conditions and a judicial system that offers little protection.

One detainee — accused of membership of a terrorist organisation — told a visiting Amnesty International delegation in February this year how security officers tortured him into coma.

”They forced me to bend double, got hold of my hands and legs, and joined them under the knees at the height of the shin. They tied them together with handcuffs, then placed an iron bar under my knees and suspended me from the ceiling. They then hit me with sticks and truncheons. I regularly lost consciousness in this position.”
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Popularity: 24% [?]

RIGHTS: Ret. Officers Urge Obama to Expunge ”Stain of Torture”

Global Intelligence News / IPS

William Fisher

NEW YORK, Dec 3 (IPS) – As a group of retired military leaders prepared to urge U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to quickly put an end to the harsh interrogation practices inflicted on security prisoners, a new United Nations report charged that Iraqi authorities were committing ”grave human rights violations” in their treatment of thousands of detainees.

”Grave human rights violations … remain unaddressed,” the U.N. report said. It cited ”ongoing widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees by Iraqi law enforcement authorities, amid pervasive impunity of current and past human rights abuses.”

The U.N. report cast doubt on whether Iraq will be prepared to professionally manage control over thousands of security detainees now in U.S. custody under a new security pact that would end the U.S. mission there by 2012. Approved by Iraq’s parliament last week, the agreement mandates that U.S. forces transfer to Iraqi custody all detainees believed to be a major threat and to release the rest ”in a safe and orderly manner”.
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Popularity: 20% [?]

RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: Enlarged Capital Crimes List Belies Promises – Activists

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, Dec 2 (IPS) – The decision to add ”cyber terrorism” to Pakistan’s long list of capital crimes has raised questions on whether the new government has the resolve to carry through its promise to commute the death sentences of 7,000 prisoners.

Last month, President Asif Ali Zardari issued a decree making internet crime punishable by execution or life imprisonment — if ”the death of any person” has resulted.

The new offence brings to 28 the number of crimes that carry the death sentence in Pakistan.

News of the new punishment, which took effect retrospectively on Sep. 29, was immediately denounced by human rights activists.

”We have criticised the government for enlarging the number of offences for which death is awarded,” I.A. Rehman, director of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), told IPS.
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Popularity: 26% [?]

Q&A: ‘Religious Institutions and Islamists Oppose Abolition’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Abderrahim El Ouali interviews BRAHIM AHENSAL of the Moroccan Human Rights Association

CASABLANCA, Dec 1 (IPS) – King Mohamed VI of Morocco could easily abolish the death penalty by royal decree. But by keeping capital punishment on the statute books, the young King is yielding to official religious institutions and Islamists, says Brahim Ahensal.

Ahensal, a member of the Moroccan Human Rights Association, says abolition will depend on the degree of engagement from human rights NGOs and progressive political forces.

Ahensal speaks of the difficulties activists face in their daily battle against capital punishment.

IPS: Once again you marked the World Day against the Death Penalty by holding a sit-in. Is this the only way to express your opposition to the death penalty in Morocco?
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Popularity: 20% [?]

RIGHTS-HUNGARY: Activists Seek to Reverse Draconian Law

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Dec 1 (IPS) – A Hungarian rights organisation is seeking to return the country to the days when all life prisoners had a right to a review of their sentences, giving hope to eight who have been sentenced to imprisonment until they die.

In 2001, Hungary passed a special law for the gravest of crimes. This removed for these the right of conditional release after 30 years in jail. Judges were allowed to send these convicted killers to prison for the rest of their natural lives.

The prime minister at the time was Viktor Orban, a conservative populist who advocated tougher sentencing policies. In 2002, as outgoing prime minister, he called on Europe to consider the reintroduction of the death penalty following a meeting with relatives of the eight victims who died in a violent bank robbery.
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Popularity: 22% [?]

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