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:: ONU - XX Assemblea Generale (1965): |
La
XX Assemblea Generale dell’ONU (1965)
dichiara "la legittimità della
lotta da parte dei popoli sotto
oppressione coloniale, per esercitare il
loro diritto all' autodeter-
minazione e
all'indipendenza".
Inoltre, l'Assemblea invita "tutti
gli Stati a fornire assistenza morale e
materiale ai movimenti di liberazione
nazionale nei territori coloniali". |
|
:: ONU
- Risoluzione 1514 |
"L'Assemblea
Generale dichiara che: la soggezione dei
popoli a dominio straniero, conquista e
asservimento costituisce una negazione
dei diritti umani fondamentali, è
contraria alla Carta delle Nazioni Unite
ed è un impedimento alla promozione
della pace e della cooperazione mondiali.
Tutti i popoli hanno diritto
all' autodeter-
minazione; in virtù di
tale diritto essi devono liberamente
determinare il loro status politico e
liberamente perseguire il loro sviluppo
economico, sociale e culturale". |
|
:: Convenzione
di Ginevra, Protocollo Addizionale I
(1977): |
La lotta
armata può essere usata, come ultima
risorsa, come mezzo per esercitare il
diritto all' autodeter-
minazione. |
|
:: Tribunale
penale internazionale |
In
base allo Statuto del Tribunale penale
internazionale, sono definiti “crimini
di guerra”:
(1) attacchi lanciati intenzionalmente
contro popolazione civili in quanto tali
o contro civili che non prendano
direttamente parte alle ostilità;
(4) attacchi lanciati intenzionalmente
nella consapevolezza che gli stessi
avranno come conseguenza la perdita di
vite umane tra la popolazione civile, e
lesioni a civili o danni a proprietà
civili ovvero danni diffusi duraturi e
gravi all’ambiente naturale che siano
manifestamente eccessivi rispetto all’insieme
dei concreti e diretti i vantaggi
militari previsti. |
:: Iraq anthem
(click to listen)
|
|
Syria: Deported Palestinian journalist speaks out about torture in custody
Amnesty International |
May 17, 2012 - A prominent journalist has told Amnesty International how Syrian government forces tortured and detained him in deplorable conditions before deporting him to Jordan on Monday. Salameh Kaileh, a 57-year-old Jordanian national of Palestinian descent, has lived and worked in the Syrian capital Damascus since 1981. On 24 April, plain clothes officials from Syria’s Air Force Intelligence arrested him during a raid on his flat in Barzah, a Damascus suburb. Amnesty International considered him to be a prisoner of conscience, held solely for exercising his right to freedom of expression. "The main reason for my arrest, from what I understood, is a conversation I had on Facebook with a friend outside Syria about my position on the revolution and my opinion about the Muslim Brotherhood and so on," Kaileh told Amnesty International.Following his arrest, Kaileh was held at a Syrian Air Force Intelligence branch in Damascus, where he was insulted and beaten for days...
continua / continued  [88133] [ 18-may-2012 01:49 ECT ] |
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Hanging by a thread: Babylon World Wonder at risk from oil
RussiaToday |
May 17, 2012 - The site of the legendary hanging gardens of Babylon is in danger of being wrecked by an oil pipe. The historic area in modern-day Iraq has seen many invasions over the years, from Roman to American, but now faces a domestic threat. The magnificent gardens allegedly built for a king’s homesick wife in the 6th century BC were one of the Ancient World’s seven wonders...Iraq’s Oil Ministry plans to extend a strategic route to export oil through six provinces at the center and south of the country...US troops turned ancient Babylon into a military base, damaging the historical site by "digging, cutting, scraping and leveling", according to a 2009 UNESCO report. The world-famous Ishtar Gate and Processional Way were among key structures damaged, while contents of the Nebuchadnezzar and Hammurabi museums and of the Babylon Library and Archive were stolen and destroyed during the war. Now, Babil Fortress that has withstood Assyrian, Roman, Islamic and American invasions, is under threat from the new Iraqi government’s desire for cheap oil exports...
continua / continued [88130] [ 18-may-2012 01:14 ECT ] |
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US DEA Kills Innocent Civilians in Honduras -- US Media Silent
Dan Kovalik
May 17, 2012 - According to the Honduran newspaper, Tiempo, as well as the Honduran human rights group, COFADEH, the agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), dressed in military uniforms, killed at least four and possibly six civilians in a raid which took place on Friday, May 11. The victims included two pregnant women and two children. The newspaper Tiempo did not pull any punches, writing that those killed "were humble and honest citizens." Apparently, the DEA agents fired from helicopter gunships upon a boat carrying civilians on the Patuca back to their community of Ahuas which itself is located in the Mosquito coast of Honduras. According to Tiempo, the DEA mistakenly fired upon the civilian boat because it was well-lit while the intended target -- a boat carrying drug traffickers -- was floating down the river without its lights on...
continua / continued [88128] [ 18-may-2012 00:59 ECT ] |
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Syria News - May 16, 2012 (Warning: Graphic Videos)
Local Coordination Committees of Syria + Videos |
May 16, 2012 - The number of martyrs in Syria has gone up to 40 thus far, including a child and 21 martyrs during the Shammas Massacre in Homs last night. In addition, 26 martyrs were reported in Homs,5 in the Damascus Suburbs, 4 in Daraa, 3 in Idib,1 in Hama and 1 in Deir Ezzor...Daraa: The number of wounded and martyrs has risen after an ambulance was targeted by the security forces gunfire and other ambulance cars and doctors were prevented from aiding them....Damascus Suburbs: Kesweh: The UN Observers came to the city for a brief period, no longer than 5 minutes, to visit one street. They did not leave their vehicles, nor speak with any residents...
continua / continued [88123] [ 17-may-2012 23:22 ECT ] |
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Victim of Torture and CIA Rendition Gets His First Day in Court — in Europe
By Jamil Dakwar, ACLU
May 16, 2012 - Tomorrow, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Europe's top human rights court based in Strasbourg, France, will hear arguments in El-Masri v. "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia." Tomorrow's hearing marks the first case to come before the court against a European nation for complicity in the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program. The case was brought against Macedonia by the Open Society Justice Initiative on behalf of Khaled El-Masri. El-Masri, a German citizen, who was abducted by Macedonian authorities at a border crossing in December 2003 and held incommunicado for 23 days. He was then handed over to CIA operatives who drugged, hooded, and strip-searched him before putting him on a secret flight to Afghanistan where he was secretly held, tortured and abused for about four months, only for the U.S. government to realize that they had the wrong person...
continua / continued [88117] [ 17-may-2012 21:16 ECT ] |
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Lower Courts to Hear Iraqi Civilians’ Claims of Beatings, Forced Nudity, Broken Bones, and Rape at Hands of Corporate Defendants
Center for Constitutional Rights
May 16, 2012 - Today, a federal appellate court dismissed the appeals of two private military contractors who had argued they were immune from litigation when they engage in torture. The corporate defendants, CACI and L-3, have argued that they should receive the same protections as the United States government and that, therefore, any of their wartime activities – including torture – are similarly beyond review of the courts. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, sitting en banc, remanded the cases to the district courts that had previously rejected the corporations’ novel claims of immunity, in order to allow fact-finding to proceed. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is co-counsel on the cases, which were filed in 2008. "Today’s ruling provides an opportunity for victims of torture at Abu Ghraib to tell their stories to an American court and to obtain justice from the private military contractors who played such a prominent role in one of the most shocking episodes of abuse in recent American history," said CCR Legal Director, Baher Azmy, who co-argued the case...
continua / continued [88116] [ 17-may-2012 21:08 ECT ] |
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Gaza- Occupied Lives: Not knowing what your son looks like
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) |
May 16, 2012 - Abu Hosni Sarfiti (61), who lives in Sheik Radwan, Gaza City, is very familiar with the issue of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails: "I have three sons and four daughters. Two of my sons were killed by the Israeli army: my oldest son, Hosni, was 23 years and Mohammed was 7 years old when he was killed. My only living son, Ali Nidal al Sarfiti, has been in prison since 7 July 2002, when he was arrested at the Erez crossing. He had been given a permit by the Israeli authorities to travel through the crossing, but when he arrived there that day, he was taken to jail. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison for participating in resistance activities during an army incursion in Jabaliya. Ali is now 32 years old. He was engaged when he was arrested, but that has ended."...
continua / continued [88118] [ 17-may-2012 21:29 ECT ] |
|
In Yemen, eating is a luxury millions struggle to afford
by Lara Sukhtian
May 16, 2012 - For almost half of Yemen's 22 million people, eating has become a luxury they can't always afford. On a bad day, Umm Ahmad and her family of five, who live in Sanaa's shanty-town district of Al-Sunaina, go without any food at all. On a better day, Umm Ahmad's husband, who works as a vendor, selling baby clothes in the market, comes home with "500 Yemeni riyals (about $2.30/1.79 euros) and we eat." "Have pity on us," she says, breaking into tears as she clutches her sick and hungry daughter Amira and describes her family’s daily struggle to survive....
continua / continued [88112] [ 17-may-2012 18:49 ECT ] |
|
Arrested development: The criminalization of America’s schoolchildren
By John W. Whitehead
May 16, 2012 - For those hoping to better understand how and why we arrived at this dismal point in our nation’s history, where individual freedoms, privacy and human dignity have been sacrificed to the gods of security, expediency and corpocracy, look no farther than America’s public schools. Once looked to as the starting place for imparting principles of freedom and democracy to future generations, America’s classrooms are becoming little more than breeding grounds for compliant citizens of the police state. In fact, as director Cevin Soling documents in his insightful, award-winning documentary The War on Kids, which recently aired on the Documentary Channel, the moment young people walk into school, they increasingly find themselves under constant surveillance: they are photographed, fingerprinted, scanned, X-rayed, sniffed and snooped on...
continua / continued [88109] [ 17-may-2012 17:45 ECT ] |
|
A Bombed Libyan Village Where NATO's "Collateral Damage" Has A Name And A Face
Benjamin Barthe, LE MONDE |
May 16, 2012 - Nine months have passed but the rubble has yet to be removed. Bombed by NATO last August, the house of the Gafez family in Majer, a town about 150 kilometers east of Tripoli, still looks like a shriveled soufflé. Fourteen people died in the explosion. Twenty others died a few minutes later when bombs struck the farm of the neighbors, the Jaroods. Men, women and children, struck dead in the middle of a Ramadan evening. What about clearing away the debris? Rebuilding? Haj Ali, the patriarch of the Gafez family never considered it. There are questions of money and of health, but also of honor, says the friendly mustachioed man. That’s because NATO doesn’t want to hear about the martyrs of Majer. The military alliance continues to insist that the bombs dropped on Aug. 8 were aimed at "legitimate military targets."...
continua / continued [88111] [ 17-may-2012 18:06 ECT ] |
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Iraq snapshot - May 16, 2012
The Common Ills
May 16, 2012. Chaos and violence continue, Nouri wants his 'accomplishments' acknowledged (if only there was one to point to), State of Law insists a conspiracy is a foot!, a US House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee hears that a change VA wants to make will actually hurt disabled veterans, and more...UPI notes, "A prison that Iraq's government said it closed a year ago is still open and being used for torture and unlawful detentions, a human rights group said Tuesday." Al Mada notes Human Rights Watch published their report yesterday and that the secret prisons are in the Green Zone, one of which is Camp Honor which the government insists was closed. Mohammed Tawfeeq and CNN quote Human Rights Watch's Joe Stork stating "It's a matter of grave concern that Iraqis in so many walks of life, officials included, are afraid for their own well-being and fear great harm if they discuss allegations of serious human rights abuses." Al Arabiya adds, "The rights group called for Baghdad to start an independent investigation into allegations of torture and mistreatment, as well as other issues, at Camp Honor and other jails."...
continua / continued [88107] [ 17-may-2012 16:48 ECT ] |
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Israel’s Tireless Efforts to Conceal the Historical Events Leading to Its Creation
Erasing the Nakba
by NEVE GORDON
May 16, 2012 - I first heard about the Nakba in the late 1980s, while I was an undergraduate student of philosophy at Hebrew University. This, I believe, is a revealing fact, particularly since, as a teenager, I was a member of Peace Now and was raised in a liberal home. I grew up in the southern city of Be’er-Sheva, which is just a few kilometres from several unrecognised Bedouin villages that, today, are home to thousands of residents who were displaced in 1948. I now know that the vast majority of the Negev’s Bedouin population was not as lucky, and that, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, most Bedouin either fled or were expelled from their ancestral lands to Jordan or Gaza....
continua / continued [88103] [ 17-may-2012 16:03 ECT ] |
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Peace-making without Mediators
By Nicola Nasser
May 16, 2012 - The International Crisis Group, in an executive summary on May 7, 2012, concluded that the U.S.-led mediation efforts have "become a collective addiction, … And so the illusion continues," adding: "All actors are now engaged in a game of make-believe: that a resumption of talks in the current context can lead to success; that an agreement can be reached within a short timeframe; that the Quartet is an effective mediator, …" On April 26, the American Jewish newspaper "Algemeiner" described the "Middle East Quartet" as "An Institutionalized Failure." Israel, U.S. and the Quartet mediators are all winners in this "make-believe" non-delivering mediation; the Palestinian people are the only losers. Palestinians have had enough and now saying enough is enough: Peace is a mirage, peace-making is a failure, peace process is a sham, peace mediators are a fake, and if all the parties involved can enjoy the luxury of "addiction" to the status quo, Palestinians cannot; their survival is at stake...
continua / continued [88100] [ 17-may-2012 12:56 ECT ] |
|
Our Olympic Hell: A Militarised, Corporate, Jingoistic Disgrace
Andy Worthington |
May 16, 2012 - Last month, when it was revealed that the MoD was siting surface-to-air missiles on the roofs of residential buildings as part of the bloated security measures for the Olympics — estimated to cost at least £1.4 billion, to be paid for by taxpayers — there was a brief flurry of outrage, although not enough to bring the plans to an end. Two weeks ago, during a week-long "military exercise" in London, Simon Jenkins, in the Guardian, captured something of the surreal excesses involved when a pliant government comes up against the extraordinary demands of the International Olympic Committee: RAF Typhoon jets are to scream back and forth over the Thames. Starstreak surface-to-air missile batteries are being set up in East End parks and on flats in Bow, with 10 soldiers manning each one. Army and navy helicopters will clatter back and forth, with snipers hanging from their doors "to shoot down pilots of terrorist planes"...
continua / continued [88094] [ 17-may-2012 10:57 ECT ] |
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A Global Crime Spree
What’s NATO Ever Done?
by JOHN LaFORGE |
May 15, 2012 - Wondering why anyone would confront NATO’s summit in Chicago this month? A look at some of its more well-known crimes might spark some indignation. Desecration of corpses, indiscriminate attacks, bombing of allied troops, torture of prisoners and unaccountable drone war are a few of NATO’s outrages in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere. On March 20, 2012 Pakistani lawmakers demanded an end to all NATO/CIA drone strikes against their territory...While bombing Libya last March, NATO refused to aid a group of 72 migrants adrift in the Mediterranean. Only nine people on board survived. The refusal was condemned as criminal by the Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog. NATO jets bombed and rocketed a Pakistani military base for two hours Nov. 26, 2011—the Salala Incident— killing 26 Pakistani soldiers and wounding dozens more. NATO refuses to apologize, so the Pakistani regime has kept military supply routes into Afghanistan closed since November....
continua / continued [88081] [ 16-may-2012 02:31 ECT ] |
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Iraq: Mass Arrests, Incommunicado Detentions
Notorious Prison in Use a Year After Government Said It Was Shut Down
Human Rights Watch
May 15, 2012 - Iraq’s government has been carrying out mass arrests and unlawfully detaining people in the notorious Camp Honor prison facility in Baghdad’s Green Zone, based on numerous interviews with victims, witnesses, family members, and government officials. The government had claimed a year ago that it had closed the prison, where Human Rights Watch had documented rampant torture. Since October 2011 Iraqi authorities have conducted several waves of detentions, one of which arresting officers and officials termed "precautionary." Numerous witnesses told Human Rights Watch that security forces have typically surrounded neighborhoods in Baghdad and other provinces and gone door-to-door with long lists of names of people they wanted to detain. The government has held hundreds of detainees for months, refusing to disclose the number of those detained, their identities, any charges against them, and where they are being held...
continua / continued [88077] [ 16-may-2012 01:15 ECT ] |
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US/Israeli Special Relationship
by Stephen Lendman
May 15, 2012 - Strategic interests largely benefitting Israel, not shared values, are at issue. Washington doesn't provide the Jewish state more aid than all other nations combined because of historic binding ties. On March 25, 1948, Harry Truman met secretly with Chaim Weizmann (Israel's first president). He pledged support for the future Jewish state. Minutes after midnight on May 15, 1948, America was the first country to extend recognition. A special relationship began. Thereafter it's grown financially, politically, militarily, diplomatically, and counterproductively. Israel clearly benefits. America loses more than it gains. Serious reassessment is long overdue...
continua / continued [88076] [ 16-may-2012 01:05 ECT ] |
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War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia Finds Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld Guilty of Torture in Guantánamo and Iraq
Andy Worthington |
May 15, 2012 - ...On Friday the tribunal duly found George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William J. Haynes II, Jay S. Bybee and John Yoo guilty of the crime of torture, noting, as the Malaysian Insider described it, that "they had wilfully participated in the formulation of executive orders and directives to exclude the applicability of international conventions and laws" — namely the UN Convention against Torture (1984), the Geneva Conventions (1949), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter — "in relation to the war launched by the US and others in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in March 2003," and also that, "Additionally, and/or on the basis and in furtherance thereof, the accused authorised, connived in, the commission of acts of torture and cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment against victims in violation of international law, treaties and aforesaid conventions."...
continua / continued [88071] [ 15-may-2012 22:01 ECT ] |
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A Palestinian mother grapples daily with the traumas of the Nakba
Mya Guarnieri
May 15, 2012 - Amira is a 30-year-old Palestinian woman, struggling to raise her three children in Shuafat Refugee Camp. Amira grapples with fear, feelings of vulnerability, and isolation from her family in Amman. But her biggest concern is teaching her children to love... As for Amira’s personal thoughts about the nakba, she feels that the conditions in Shuafat are designed to push Palestinians out. She thinks that limiting family visits is also an attempt to put pressure on the Palestinians, to encourage them to emigrate. The nakba, Amira says, is ongoing. "We are humiliated every day, we are consumed every day, we are exhausted every day… it’s not because we work, no, it’s because something is consuming us from inside. You don’t feel like a human anymore. It’s like, why am I supposed to show my bag what’s inside my bag three times a day or four times a day? It’s like there is no privacy, my life is not mine…
continua / continued [88070] [ 15-may-2012 21:45 ECT ] |
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Palestinians in Egypt insist on right to return
Rami Almeghari |
May 14, 2012 - Said Mohammad al-Shorbajy wants to die in Palestine. "That is my only wish, which I hope God will grant me," he said. An ailing man in his late sixties, he is originally from Jaffa, a Palestinian city now in Israel. He has lived in the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria for the past four decades. His father, Mohammad, was a fishmonger in Jaffa. During the Nakba — the wave of ethnic cleansing that led to Israel’s establishment in 1948 — his family was forced from their home. At that time, Said, who is also known as Abu Mohammad, was only three years old...
continua / continued [88058] [ 15-may-2012 17:55 ECT ] |
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Third intifada is the only alternative left for Palestinians
By Abdel Bari Atwan
May 14, 2012 - For 64 years the Palestinians have patiently and steadfastly continued their struggle for justice, enduring the longest occupation in modern history.Recently, however, other events throughout the region have dominated the world’s press. First, the 'war on terror’, then the invasion of Iraq, apprehension about a nuclear Iran, and now the turmoil of the Arab revolutions.
Has the Palestinian cause been side-lined, or even forgotten, in the clamour for democracy and the horror of so much violence? Six Palestinian hunger-strikers lie close to death having refused food for up to 76?? days, but even in the Arab press their sacrifice is not given the attention it deserves...
continua / continued [88052] [ 15-may-2012 10:17 ECT ] |
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