Gaza - a new way of seeing

The death toll so far – more than 600 Palestinians killed – most of them women, children and civilian men. 29 Israelis killed, almost all of them soldiers. And yet the UK and US governments keep telling us Hamas are the terrorists.

Whenever Israel’s apologists, like John Kerry or some chap called Hammond, who says he’s now the UK’s Foreign Secretary, are asked to condemn Israel’s slaughter of civilians they always fall back on the mantra that ‘Israel has the right to defend itself.’ But let’s imagine the boot was on the other foot.

Suppose it was the Israelis who had been expelled by terrorists from their country, and then blockaded in a giant prison camp or turned into a subject people whose menfolk could be rounded up and taken away by the occupying Palestinians whenever they felt like it, and who had a little more of their land stolen every day.

Suppose it was the Israelis who had been strung along for decades in a ‘peace process’ which was supposed to free them but never got anywhere. And suppose that every now and then they got fed up, and tried to resist, and that then the Palestinians slaughtered them by the houseful.

Would we hear Kerry and Hammond banging on about the Palestinians’ ‘right to defend themselves’? As one of the more intelligent Israeli newspapers put it: ‘The Palestinians are expelled from their homeland and later attacked in the refugee camps to which they fled, and the Jews boast of being more moral.’

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.)

Bangladesh - the war goes on

It is more than 40 years since the brutal war of independence that allowed the new nation of Bangladesh to emerge from what had been East Pakistan. In that war, up to three million people died.

Now Bangladesh is torn by riots over the conviction of two leading politicians for collaborating with the Pakistan army to target pro-independence activists during the struggle. The spiritual leader of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, Ghulam Azam, has been sent to gaol for 90 years, while another leading member of the party, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, has been sentenced to death.

The verdicts were handed down by the International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka, set up in 2010 by the current government led by the Awami League. Two people have been killed in riots this week, and 100 so far this year.

Mr Mujahid was a student leader in 1971 who wanted to keep Bangladesh part of Pakistan. His party claims the trials are politically motivated, while Human Rights Watch has described them as "flawed".

War crimes - first conviction in Bangladesh

More than 40 years after Bangladesh’s war of independence, in which as many as 3 million people died, a special tribunal in the country has convicted its first war criminal.   Abul Kalam Azad was sentenced to death in his absence for genocide and murder.

Azad is described as a former leader of the youth wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s biggest Islamic party.    Its youth wing was the main source of paramilitary recruits for those supporting West Pakistan’s efforts to stop East Pakistan, as Bangladesh then was, seceding.

Its members are alleged to have abducted and murdered dozens of civilians.   Azad himself is accused of killing at least 12 people and of rape.    He fled the country last year, and is believed to be in Pakistan.

Critics, though, allege irregularities in the judicial process, and complain that it has been subverted in order to damage opponents of the government.

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.)

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

Also called to account

While the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor on war crimes charges continues at the Hague (see yesterday’s blog), the former governor of the Rwandan capital Kigali has been gaoled for life for his role in that country’s genocide in 1994.

The court decided that Lt Col Tharcisse Renzaho, aged 65, had incited soldiers and Hutu extremists to build roadblocks where they could intercept and kill fleeing Tutsis. He was also convicted of being involved in the killing of more than 100 Tutsis at a church. Many victims of the genocide were killed in churches, including 5,000 at Ntarama. Altogether 800,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days – most of them hacked to death with machetes.

Lt Col Renzaho’s lawyer said he would appeal. So far the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has convicted 33 defendants and acquitted six. (see also my blogs of January 23, March 1, 4, 23, 25, and April 9)

**Spanish-speaking readers of this blog, please note that A Disastrous History of the World has just been published in Spain as Historia mundial de los desastres (Turner ISBN 978-84-7506-879-4)

Called to account

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been in the witness box at the Hague, defending himself against 11 charges of war crimes. Taylor, a Baptist lay preacher, is accused by the UN-backed tribunal of directing and arming rebel groups in Sierra Leone in return for diamonds, as they committed murder, rape and torture, and terrorised the civilian population.

An estimated half million people suffered in these atrocities, many of which were committed by child soldiers who had often been drugged. Taylor, the first African leader to be tried by an international court, has dismissed the charges as “lies”. He said he only wanted to bring peace to Liberia’s neighbour.

Back in 1985, Taylor made an astonishing escape from an American prison by sawing through the bars of a laundry room, climbing 12 feet to the ground on knotted sheets, and then climbing a fence. He had been detained there pending extradition to Liberia for allegedly embezzling nearly $1 million from its government and then fleeing the country.

Four others who escaped with Taylor were caught, and only he got away from the USA, leading to claims that there was some collusion from American interests who wanted to see him overthrow the existing Liberian government, which he did in 1990. In the present trial, the prosecution has called 91 witnesses, and the defence says it may call 249. (see also my blog of May 6)

War crimes in Sierra Leone

Three Sierra Leone rebel leaders have been gaoled for a total of 120 years for their part in atrocities in the country’s ten year civil war during the 1990’s. Their group - the Revolutionary United Front - was notorious for forcibly enlisting child soldiers, who became noted for their cruelty and ferocity.

The RUF’s favourite tactic was mutilation, and an estimated 20,000 civilians had arms, legs, or ears cut off with machetes and axes. Rape and murder were also common. Tens of thousands died in the war, and more than two million – a third of the population – were driven from their homes. In 2007, three other defendants were convicted for war crimes, but the leader and deputy leader of the RUF both died before they could be tried.

Rwanda justice

Another Rwandan Hutu has been convicted for his part in the genocide of 1994, in which 800,000 were murdered. Joseph Mpambara was sentenced to 20 years in prison for torture and ordering the murder of women and children. Mpambara, who had been living in the Netherlands since 1998 was arrested by the Dutch three years ago. Last month a former army chaplain was gaoled for 25 years for genocide (see my blog of March 1st).

The wheels of justice continue to turn. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has so far completed 29 cases and has another 23 in progress.