Archive for the ‘War Crimes’ Category

AOL: As Many as 200 Women, Babies Gang-Raped in Congo

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Dana Kennedy ContributorAOL News
(Aug. 23) — As many as 200 women were systematically gang-raped by Rwandan and Congolese rebels over a four-day period last month less than 20 miles from a U.N. peacekeeping base in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations and aid groups reported.

The Associated Press reported that four baby boys were also raped in the attacks that began in a key mining district on July 30. U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters today the rebels blocked a key road during the raping and looting spree.

The eastern Congo is known as the “rape capital of the world” where savage mobs use sexual violence to subdue the population and vie for control of the “conflict minerals” used to make cell phones and laptops around the world.

IrishTimes.com: The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism

Friday, August 20th, 2010

ROBERT GERWARTH

HISTORY: The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism By David Olusoga and CasperW Erichsen Faber and Faber, 379pp. £20

IN AUGUST 2004, the German Minister for Development Aid, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, travelled to Namibia to apologise on behalf of the German government for a genocidal massacre that had been committed 100 years earlier.

Following the 1904 Herero uprising against colonial rule in what was then German South-West Africa, the local military commander, General Lothar von Trotha, defeated the rebellious Herero in the Battle of Waterberg and forced the several thousand survivors into the desert of Omaheke, where most of them died of starvation or thirst. A few months later, a second indigenous people, the Nama, suffered a similar fate. Over the following three years, “suspicious” Herero and Nama were interned in a concentration camp on Shark Island, where conscious neglect led to horrific death figures among the inmates. In total, up to 75,000 men and women, roughly half of the Herero and Nama populations, perished in what some historians consider the first genocide of the 20th century.

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AP: Gruesome charges detailed against suspected Nazi

Friday, August 20th, 2010

The Associated Press

Saturday, July 31, 2010 | 12:22 a.m.

The world’s third most wanted Nazi suspect was involved in the entire process of killing Jews at the Belzec death camp: from taking victims from trains to pushing them into gas chambers to throwing corpses into mass graves, a German court said Thursday.

Samuel Kunz, an 88-year-old who has lived undisturbed for decades, was indicted last week on charges of involvement in the killing of 430,000 Jews _ after a career as an employee in a government ministry and obscurity in a quiet village just outside the former West German capital of Bonn.

On Thursday the court in Bonn that indicted him revealed more details of the charges against him, describing in gruesome detail some of the crimes the suspected former death camp guard allegedly committed in occupied Poland from January 1942 to July 1943.

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Canadian Free Press: U.N.: Security situation in Darfur worsens

Friday, August 20th, 2010

By Sandy Williams  Thursday, July 29, 2010

Bettina Peter, CNN, edition.cnn.com

United Nations (CNN)—The security situation in war-ravaged Darfur shows no sign of improvement as fighting has intensified between rebel groups and the Sudanese government, the United Nations Security Council was told Tuesday.

“We are alarmed,” U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said after hearing the report. “This deteriorating security situation is unacceptable and it needs to be effectively addressed.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pointed out in his latest report that incidents of violence over recent months have surpassed bloodshed in the same time period last year by far.

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Radio Dabanga: ICRC: concerns over aid access to Darfur’s Marra, Moon and Si mountains

Saturday, July 31st, 2010
KHARTOUM

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expressed concern about the humanitarian conditions in the areas Jebel Marra, Jebel Moon and Jebel Si, as a result of clashes between government forces and the Justice and Equality Movement in recent months. The fighting has led to further displacement of the population of Darfur. The ICRC pointed out that it has not delivered any aid there and has difficulty accessing these areas following renewed fighting late last February, and insecurity resulting from the spread of banditry and crime.

Sudan Tribune: African Union moves aggressively to shield Bashir from prosecution

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

July 28, 2010 (WASHINGTON) — The heads of states who attended the African Union (AU) summit in Kampala this week decided to take a more radical approach towards the International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment of Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir and adopted a final resolution that stresses non-cooperation with the Hague tribunal and also condemned the conduct of its prosecutor.

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Bloomberg: African Union Asks United Nations to Suspend Arrest Warrants for al-Bashir

Saturday, July 31st, 2010
By Fred Ojambo – Jul 27, 2010 1:45 PM EDT Tue Jul 27 17:45:27 UTC 2010

The African Union called for the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants against Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir to be suspended while the continental body carries out a probe into alleged genocide in Darfur.

The Hague-based court earlier this month charged al-Bashir with three counts of genocide against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. The court had issued a warrant against al-Bashir in March for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“We have decided to establish our own mechanism,” AU President Bingu wa Mutharika told reporters today in Kampala at the end of a three-day summit of African leaders. “We are asking the United Nations to suspend for the period of 12 months” the arrest warrants against al-Bashir, he said.

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Bosnian Serb leader denies Srebrenica genocide

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

(AP) – Jul 12, 2010

BRATUNAC, Bosnia-Herzegovina — The Bosnian Serb leader is denying the Serb massacre of Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995 was genocide.

Milorad Dodik spoke Monday at a commemoration for Serbs killed during the war around the eastern town of Srebrenica. At a military cemetery in Bratunac he said he recognized the massacre was a crime but it cannot be qualified as genocide.

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NPR:Foreign Policy: Peace in Sudan Is More Than Ceasefire by Megan Flemming

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

July 15, 2010

Megan Flemming is a policy analyst at the Save Darfur Coalition.

On Monday, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber judges issued a second arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, this time for three counts of genocide. Darfur activist groups here in the U.S. welcomed the news while calling on world leaders to prevent the type of retaliation against the people of Darfur that Bashir masterminded after the first arrest warrant in March 2009. As the world responds to the ICC’s milestone decision, it’s worth highlighting why this case and the overall push for justice for Darfur is so essential and urgent: without accountability, a negotiated peace will be little more than a long-term ceasefire.

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Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Peacekeepers: 221 Killed in Sudan’s Darfur in June

VOA News 11 July 2010

International peacekeepers said Sunday that 221 people have been killed in Sudan’s volatile Darfur region in June.

The United Nations – African Union peacekeepers in Darfur said most of the deaths were due to inter-tribal clashes.

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