War casts long shadow

An 83 year old Bangladeshi politician has been sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the country’s bloody independence struggle in 1971, which cost up to 3 million lives. A special war crimes tribunal had found him guilty of involvement in the deaths of 372 Hindus.

Abdul Alim, of the Bangladesh National Party, was convicted on nine charges. Last week the tribunal sentenced another senior BNP figure, Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, to death for crimes against humanity. 

Alim was spared the death penalty because of his poor health. Prosecutors say he headed part of a militia fighting on the side of the Pakistan government that was trying to stop Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, breaking away.

Six current and former leaders of the main Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, have  been convicted by the same tribunal. Critics say the trials failed to meet international standards, and dozens of people have died in violent protests against the verdicts.

(See also my blog of July 19.)

Two war criminals sentenced

Two convicted war criminals have received long prison sentences.    The former president of Liberia, Charles Taylor, has been sent to gaol for 50 years for aiding and abetting rebels in Sierra Leone during the civil war of 1991-2002.

The judge at The Hague acknowledged that Taylor had never set foot in Sierra Leone, but declared he had ‘been found responsible for aiding and abetting some of the most heinous crimes in human history.’   

The former president backed rebels from the Revolutionary United Front, who killed tens of thousands of people, employing a strategy of murder, rape, and hacking off limbs. Taylor, who is 64, says he will appeal.  

Meanwhile, in Rwanda, Callixte Nzabonimana, a former youth minister, has been found guilty by a court in Tanzania of genocide and other crimes during the 100 days of madness in 1994, which saw 800,000 people murdered.   He was imprisoned for life, but he too says he will appeal.

Sierra Leone war crimes - call for 80 year sentence

Prosecutors at The Hague are demanding an 80 year prison sentence for former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, after his conviction last week for war crimes in Sierra Leone.

During the 1990’s, Taylor backed rebels from the country’s Revolutionary United Front, who killed tens of thousands of people, employing a strategy, say the prosecution, of  ‘murders, rapes, sexual slavery, looting’ and hacking off of limbs.  In return, he was given ‘blood diamonds’ collected by slaves. 

After his five year trial, Taylor became the first former head of state to be convicted by an international court since the Nuremburg trials following World War II.  He has the right to appeal against the verdict.

A former leader of the RUF, Issa Sesay, is in prison in Rwanda, serving 52 years for his part in the atrocities.  (See also my blogs of 4 March, 15 July and 26 Oct, 2009.)

Bosnia + 20

On this day…..20 years ago, the Bosnian War broke out.    A complicated conflict between Bosnians, Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats left up to 329,000 people dead.

The war was scarred by massacres of civilians such as the one at Srebrenica in 1995 in which Bosnian Serb forces killed more than 8,000 Bosnians.    The United Nations described this as the worst crime on European soil since World War Two.

After Bosnian Serbs bombarded civilians in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, killing more than 100, NATO launched a campaign of air strikes against Serbia, which eventually brought an end to the war.

At the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, 45 Serbs, 12 Croats and 4 Bosnians have been convicted of war crimes.   Most of the Bosnian Serb wartime leadership were convicted, while the former Bosnian Serb president, Radovan Karadzic and the leading general, Ratko Mladic, are currently being tried.

First ever war crimes conviction for International Court

In the first ever verdict from the Intenational Criminal Court, the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga has been found guilty of recruiting and using child soldiers.   Lubanga, who could be gaoled for life, will be sentenced at a later date.

The court was set up 10 years ago, and Lubanga was arrested in 2005.   The prosecution say he armed children as young as nine during a bloody civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Lubanga’s forces were active in the conflict in Ituri in the north-east of the country in which 60,000 people are said to have been killed.

Three other men accused of war crimes in Ituri are still at large.   While some have bemoaned the length of time it has taken for the court to secure its first conviction, Amnesty International said it proved there was a way of calling to account those whom national authorities have failed to prosecute.

Two other Congolese militia leaders are currently being tried, as is the former vice-president of Congo, Jean-Pierre Bemba, for alleged war crimes in the Central African Republic.

(See also my blogs of January 23 and 29, and March 23, 2009, Sept 3 and 9, 2010, May 9, 2011.)

State of denial - Japan and war crimes

A Chinese-Japanese judo event due to have been held in the Chinese city of Nanjing has been cancelled following a Japanese politician’s denial of his country’s notorious ‘Rape of Nanjing’ in 1937.    The Mayor of Nagoya, Takashi Kawamura, said only "conventional acts of combat" had taken place.

Nanjing and Nagoya were twinned in 1978, but now the Chinese have suspended all exchanges between the two cities.    This is the latest in a series of remarks by leading Japanese politicians that indicate a reluctance to face up to the crimes committed by the country during World War Two.

The Japanese took Nanjing in December 1937.   Women and girls aged 10 to 80 were abducted for systematic rape and usually murder, civilians were shot down in the street, captured soldiers were burned alive or tied up and used for bayonet practice, or ripped to pieces by dogs.   Others were machine-gunned, beheaded, or buried alive.

In just a few weeks in December 1937 and January 1938, the International Military Tribunal of the Far East, reckoned the Japanese killed more than 260,000 non-combatants in the city, though some believe the real number was 350,000.   For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Yugoslav war crimes - job done?

161 down, none to go.   The calling to account of suspected war criminals after the tragedy of Yugoslavia has been perhaps the most successful operation of its kind in history.

Last month’s arrest of Goran Hadžíc, the leader of Croatia’s Serb minority during the conflict, meant that not one of the 161 people wanted for trial was still at large.    Hadzic, a former warehouse worker, is alleged to have played a leading role in the destruction of the town of Vukovar in 1991, during which at least 264 people were tortured and killed.

He has already appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia which was set up back in 1993, joining Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.   Ten of the people indicted by the court died before they could be brought to justice, while Slobodan Milosevic died during his trial.

A crucial factor in the successful pursuit of the suspected war criminals has been the wish of the nations of the former Yugoslavia to join the EU, which has enabled international pressure to be brought to bear on their governments, even though many local people deny that any war crimes were committed.

The massacred village

On this day…….67 years ago, the SS murdered 642 men, women and children at the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane.    The victims ranged in age from one week to 90 years.    Most were inhabitants, but a few just happened to be seized as they were cycling through the village.

Soldiers from the 4^th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment were on their way to confront the allies who had landed in Normandy four days earlier, when they were approached by members of the Milice, the French secret police who worked with the Gestapo, to say the Resistance were holding an SS officer hostage in the village of Oradour-sur-Vayres, about 15 miles from Oradour-sur-Glane.   

It seems the SS got the wrong village.    At Oradour-sur-Glane, they herded the men into barns, shot them, then burned down the barns.    Then they locked the women and children in the church, set it on fire, and shot down any who managed to get out.    Just one woman survived.    Finally the village was destroyed.

Today its ruins are still preserved as a monument.

*Something more cheerful.   My friend Johnny Bull’s wonderful picture of the Queen Mary, The Return of the Native, has been selling like hot cakes at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition in London.     Get along to see it while stocks last!

http://johnnybulletins.blogspot.com/2011/01/work-in-progress-return-of-native.html

War crimes arrests - Serbia and Rwanda

Supporters of suspected war criminal, Ratko Mladic, are due to march in Belgrade today to try to stop him being extradited to the Hague to face trial.   The former Bosnian Serb army chief is accused of being responsible for the murder of about 7,500 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, as well as other crimes. 

Serbia’s failure to arrest Gen Mladic for 16 years means that he is now aged 69, and his lawyers have been trying to resist having him handed over to the court on grounds of ill health.    An appeal will be heard tomorrow.    Meanwhile, the Serbian war crimes prosecutor says that anyone who helped to shield Gen Mladic from justice could find themselves in serious trouble.

The general’s political boss, Radavan Karadzic, is already awaiting trial at the Hague after being arrested in 2008.    The former Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic, died during his trial in 2006.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the most notorious leaders of the Rwandan Hutu militia during the 1994 genocide has been arrested.   Bernard Munyagishari was wanted on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

World War Two - last war crimes trial?

In what may turn out to be the last World War Two war crimes trial, 91 year old John Demjanjuk has been found guilty of helping to murder more than 28,000 Jews at the Nazi death camp of Sobibor in what is now Poland.     He was sentenced to five years in prison, but will be released pending appeal.   

Demjanjuk told the court in Munich that he had not served as a guard at the camp, and that he was a prisoner of war.   The case turned on an SS identity card, which the defence claimed was a fake.   In all, an estimated 250,000 people were killed at Sobibor.

In the 1980’s, an Israeli court indentified Demjanjuk as ‘Ivan the Terrible’, a notorious guard at the Treblinka death camp, and sentenced him to death, but the country’s supreme court overturned the verdict after new evidence emerged.

Some of the relatives of those who died at Sobibor said the verdict on Demjanjuk was not the most important thing.    They were satisfied that a court in the city where the Nazi party was born had had to listen to the details of the industrialised murder machine that Hitler’s regime created.    (See also my blog of Nov 30, 2009.)

Congo genocide - trials in Germany

Two Rwandan Hutu leaders have gone on trial in Germany over alleged atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo.   Ignace Murwanashyaka, head of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), and his deputy Straton Musoni face 26 counts of crimes against humanity and 39 of war crimes.

Because both of them live in Stuttgart, they are subject to a new German law which allows foreigners to be prosecuted for crimes committed outside the country.  The two men are accused of ordering militias to commit mass murder and rape during 2008 and 2009.

The prosecutors say the FDLR shot people who would not co-operate with them, used rape as a weapon of war, and burned down whole villages.   A lawyer representing one of the accused claimed the trial was unfair.

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda involved Hutu extremists killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus.   When the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front came to power, many Hutus fled across into Congo, sparking years of unrest.    Between 1998 and 2003, 5 million people died in what became known as ‘Africa’s world war.’

(See also my blogs of Jan 23, March 23, Sept 23, 2009, Sept 3 and 9, 2010.)

Sri Lanka war crimes

A United Nations investigation has concluded that Sri Lankan government forces killed tens of thousands of civilians in the final stages of the country’s civil war in 2009. Its report also says that the Tamil Tiger rebels used civilians as human shields, and that both sides were guilty of atrocities.

The Sri Lankan government had refused to allow the investigating team into the country, and tried to get the report suppressed. It has now rejected its findings.

The report says that government forces deliberately shelled hospitals, UN centres and Red Cross ships in the last rebel-held enclave in the north of the country. It urges Sri Lanka to begin a fair investigation into acts that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said that he cannot investigate the allegations himself unless the Sri Lankan government agrees, or member states make the request, but the pressure group Human Rights Watch disputes this.

Bangladesh - war crimes trials stall

The war that brought independence for Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) ended in 1971. Estimates of the number of lives lost range up to 3 million – many murdered in cold blood by the West Pakistan army - and perhaps 10 million people fled their homes.

Over the last few months, there have been attempts to call to account some of those responsible for atrocities during the conflict. The authorities are not going after the West Pakistan army, but alleged local collaborators who helped them.

Dozens of suspects are banned from leaving the country, and the war crimes tribunal has issued arrest warrants against five party leaders, including two former ministers, though they are not charged with war crimes, and unfortunately, the whole process has become mired in inter-party political rivalries.

The general belief is that if the opposition wins the next general election, due in 2013, it will scrap the war crimes trials, and they are the favourites. No democratic government in Bangladesh’s short history has ever won a second term.

Japanese war crimes - the search begins after 66 years

An excavation has begun in Tokyo to try to find human remains linked to a programme of biological warfare experiments inflicted on prisoners of war during World War Two. At a base in occupied northern China, the Japanese ran an operation known as Unit 731, in which thousands of prisoners were supposed to have been injected with agents causing diseases like typhus and cholera.

The unit is also alleged to have dissected victims alive and to have frozen prisoners to death. It is believed that some of the remains of those killed were taken back to Tokyo for analysis. In 2006, a former nurse, now aged 88, said that she and colleagues at an army hospital at the site now being investigated were ordered to bury numerous corpses, bones and body parts before the Americans came, following Japan’s surrender in August 1945.

According to a history professor at Kanagawa University, the site was the research headquarters of Unit 731. The slowness in looking into the former nurse’s claims will be seen as another example of Japan’s lack of enthusiasm for investigating the crimes the regime perpetrated during World War Two.

Fragments of bone, many showing saw marks, were found at a site nearby in 1989, but the government said they were not linked to Unit 731. In 2002, a Japanese court rejected claims for compensation from 180 Chinese people who claimed they had been victims of Japan’s biological warfare unit.

Cambodia - wheels of justice

More than 30 years after the Cambodian genocide of the late 1970’s, three people accused of plotting it have appeared at the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh.

Nuon Chea, now aged 84, was second-in-command to the notorious Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, and known as Brother Number Two. The other two are the former head of state, Khieu Samphan, and the ex-social affairs minister, Ieng Thirith. Also awaiting trial is Ieng Thirith's husband Ieng Sary, who was the Khmer Rouge foreign minister.

The defendants have been in detention since 2007. A date for the trial has not yet been set, but it is due to begin by the middle of this year. The court which was set up in 2006 has so far tried only one person, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Comrade Duch, who ran the notorious Tuol Sleng ‘special interrogation centre’ in the Cambodian capital. Of 15,000 people held there, only seven are thought to have survived. Duch was found guilty of crimes against humanity.

The latest trial is expected to last for three years, and there are worries about how it will be funded. (See also my blogs of 7 Jan, 4 March, 29 June, and 22 Nov, 2009, and 16 Sept, 2010.)

Iraq - justice for war criminals

While accusations swirl around that the USA turned a blind eye to torture by its Iraqi allies, Saddam Hussein’s former foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, has been sentenced to death by the Iraqi Supreme Court for persecuting Shia Muslim religious parties.

The website Wikileaks has published 400,000 US military logs, which are alleged to demonstrate that Iraqi security forces assaulted detainees with acid and electric drills, beat, mutilated, and summary executed them, and that coalition forces handed prisoners back to them even when there were signs that they had been mistreated.

Tariq Aziz, who spoke good English, was often the front man for Saddam’s regime on Western television. He had already been given prison sentences for his role in the execution of 42 merchants for profiteering and in driving Kurds from their homes.

Aziz, now 74, is reportedly ill after suffering a stroke. He may appeal against the sentence. Two other Saddam aides in the case were also sentenced to death.

Another Khmer Rouge trial

Less than two months after the conviction of former Khmer Rouge prison boss Comrade Duch (see my blog of July 26), another four of its leaders have been indicted for genocide and torture in Cambodia in the 1970’s.

Duch was the first person convicted by the UN-backed war crimes court. Now Nuon Chea, deputy to the notorious KR leader Pol Pot, former head of state Khieu Samphan, former foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith will come before it. All of them deny the charges.

Justice has been a long time coming. The events to which the charges relate took place more than 30 years ago. The defendants have all been held since 2007, and the trial is not expected to start before the middle of next year. All of them are now elderly, and Ieng Sary is in poor health.

The Cambodian genocide was one of the most vicious in history, accounting for perhaps one in four of the country’s people. Apart from those who were murdered – “bourgeois” elements such as lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists and their families - many others died from hunger or overwork, as Pol Pot’s Maoist fanatics emptied the cities and drove people out into the countryside.

(See also my blogs of Jan 7, March 4, June 29 and Nov 22, 2009.)

Cambodian mass murderer held to account

Kaing Guek Eav, alias Comrade Duch, who ran the Khmer Rouge’s Tuol Sleng “special interrogation centre” in Phnom Penh, has been sentenced to 35 years in prison. It is the first verdict handed down by Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal, though Duch’s sentence will be reduced by the 16 years he has already spent in captivity.

Crowds attended the court and many more listened to the live broadcast of the verdict. The prosecution had asked for a longer sentence, and many relatives of Duch’s victims wanted him gaoled for the rest of his life, but one of the prosecutors said the sentence showed that senior Khmer Rouge who had committed crimes would be punished. Four more are awaiting trial.

In the mid-1970's, up to 2 million people – a quarter of the population – were murdered by Pol Pot and his fanatical followers – perhaps 17,000 of them at Tuol Sleng. Before it became a centre for torture and murder, it had been a high school. Now it is a genocide museum, and a very, very sobering place to visit.

(See also my blogs of March 4, June 29 and November 22, 2009.)

Darfur war crimes + warship explosion

Further evidence of a growing determination to hold suspected war criminals to account. For the first time ever the International Criminal Court has called on the UN Security Council to take action against a country for failing to arrest suspects.

The country in question is Sudan, and the suspects former Humanitarian Affairs (!) Minister Ahmed Haroun - who allegedly recruited and armed the Janjaweed militia - and Ali Muhammad Abd-Al-Rahman, one of the militia leaders – both accused of war crimes in Darfur. Today Omar al-Bashir, himself an alleged war criminal, begins a new term as Sudan’s president. More than 300,000 people are believed to have been killed in Darfur. (See my blogs of March 4 and Aug 6, 2009).

On this day…..95 years ago, a huge explosion ripped through HMS Princess Irene, a British navy minelayer berthed at Sheerness in Kent. Aboard were 300 Royal Navy personnel plus 76 dockyard workers. Just one of them survived.

As the First World War was raging at the time, there were all sort of rumours that the blast had been caused by dastardly and ingenious enemy action, but an official inquiry came to the conclusion that it was actually a faulty mine primer. For more details, see A Disastrous History of Britain.

Sri Lanka fights against inquiry

Sri Lanka is trying to block efforts by the United Nations to investigate possible human rights abuses by the government in its war with the Tamil Tigers which ended last year. UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, however, says he will press on, and the International Crisis Group NGO is demanding an inquiry into suspected war crimes by both sides.

The ICG believes the Sri Lankan government may have killed tens of thousands of Tamil civilians. Ministers say it killed none at all, but in northern Tamil areas, people have been demonstrating to demand information about 12,000 who have disappeared. Some may be being held by the army.

The ICG’s head, Louise Arbour, says Sri Lanka’s tactics were based on allowing the army complete freedom to pursue scorched earth policies in rebel territories, making no distinction between combatants and non-combatants, and ignoring any international criticism.

Whatever the IGC’s qualms, some applaud, like Myanmar’s military dictator, Than Shwe. General Than rarely strays from the shores of the country he represses so relentlessly. But he did make a visit to Sri Lanka to see if there were any tips he might pick up. (See also my blogs of Feb 24 and May 11, 18 and 24, 2009.)