Europe: stay or leave? Focus on fact - 10

Today’s fact: My father and grandfather both had to go to war in Europe. My son and I have not had to go to war in Europe. I am very grateful.

The greatest achievement of the EU is surely that it has made war in most of Europe unthinkable. When you remember that more than 450,000 British people were killed in World War Two, and about 750,000 in World War One, while millions more were injured, and millions more lost their homes, it is odd that nobody seems to care about this.

Perhaps people in Britain now just take peace in Europe for granted. That is very, very foolish. The peaceful years since the founding of the EU are actually a glaring exception in Europe’s history. Before that, since the dawn of time, the continent’s history has been dominated by virtually unrelieved war.

What is particularly worrying about the anti-Europeans, is that they do not just want to leave the EU, they want to destroy the organisation and make everyone else leave too.

But even if that happened, in this day and age you could not get, say, ten years of war, with mass rape and murder, atrocities on all sides, hundreds of thousands driven from their homes, could you? No? Ever heard of Yugoslavia?

However much you hate immigration, is this a price worth paying to reduce it? War is hell. Keep it out of Europe. Vote Stay.

20 years on - Karadzic convicted

As the old saying goes: ‘the wheels of justice grind slow, but they grind exceeding small.’ It is more than 20 years since the Srebrenica massacre, and eight years since the trial began at The Hague of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic for his part in it.

But now he has finally been sentenced to 40 years in prison on one charge of genocide and nine other counts, including crimes against humanity over the siege and shelling of Sarajevo which left nearly 12,000 people dead. Defending himself, Karadzic had denied the charges.

Karadzic’s lawyer says he will be appealing against the verdict. Meanwhile, the trial of General Ratko Mladic, who commanded the Bosnian Serb forces, is drawing to a close.  

The United Nations top human rights official Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein welcomed the verdict against Karadzic as ‘hugely significant’, but the current president of the Bosnian Serb Republic, Milorad Dodik, rejected it.  (See also my posts of 5 April 2012 and 28 July 2015.)

70 years on Japan and S Korea agree deal on women forced into sexual slavery during WW2

During World War Two, about 200,000 Asian women were forced to work as ‘comfort women’ – sex slaves for Japanese soldiers in military brothels. Many were Korean, and today Japan has agreed to apologise for its actions and pay compensation of £5.6 million to South Korea.

Japan has accepted ‘deep responsibility’ and the South Korean government says the deal will close the matter. Both countries have agreed to stop criticising each other publicly over the issue, and South Korea says it will look into removing a statue commemorating the women, which activists had put up outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul.

It is not clear whether the women will receive direct payments. The wording of the deal suggests Japan will provide ‘support’ and finance ‘projects for recovering honour and dignity and healing psychological wounds.’

Only 46 of the Korean women are still alive. They have tended to regard earlier apologies from Japan as grudging and insincere and they appear divided on this agreement, with some wanting a direct apology to them as individuals and direct compensation.

War crimes: Of Bangladesh and long shadows

Facebook has been restored in Bangladesh, after a three-week shutdown following the hanging of Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid for war crimes during the country’s bloody struggle for independence from Pakistan 44 years ago.

A special war crimes tribunal had found Chowdhury guilty of 9 charges including genocide, arson and persecuting people on religious and political grounds. While Mujahid was convicted of 5, including abduction and murder.

Both were prominent opposition politicians. A senior figure in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Chowdhury had been elected an MP 6 times. Mujahid, an Islamist, was social welfare minister from 2001 to 2006. Both men maintained their innocence.

The tribunal was set up in 2010 by the current government, following an election pledge to bring murderers to justice, but human rights groups argue the men were not given a fair trial.

Srebrenica - the battle over its history

Twenty years ago this month, 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were murdered by Serb forces at Srebrenica in the worst mass murder in Europe since World War Two. It was condemned as genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, and also by the International Court of Justice.

But Serb leaders deny the massacre was genocide, arguing that Serb victims of the wars that followed Yugoslavia's break-up have been forgotten, and a recent UN Security Council resolution denouncing it was vetoed by Russia.

Today Bosnia is split between Serb, Bosnian and Croat run sectors. Bosnian children learn all about the massacre, while Bosnian Croat children hear little about it, and Bosnian Serb children are taught that its mastermind, Ratko Mladic, currently on trial at The Hague, was a hero.

Srebrenica has never recovered, but one bright spot in the story is the absence of inter-communal revenge killings, though worryingly last month ISIS released a video calling on Balkan Muslims to murder their non-Muslim neighbours. 

5 things we have learned from Gaza

1. Western governments do not seem to understand the word ‘terrorism’. Israel has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians – the vast majority of them women, children and other civilians. Hamas has killed 46 Israelis – almost all of them soldiers, and yet for Western governments, it is Hamas who are the ‘terrorists’.

2. The US, and its allies such as the UK, have squandered any influence they had in the region by their relentless, unquestioning support for Israel. Now the Palestinians take no notice of them because they are simply part of the enemy keeping them in servitude, and the Israelis take no notice because they know however badly they behave, the West will do nothing.

3. Understandably, would-be peacemakers are focused on just stopping the fighting. And, heaven knows that would be nice, but if the causes are not addressed – Israel’s blockade of Gaza, its illegal occupation of the West Bank and its constant theft of Palestinian land – then any ceasefire will just be an interval and war will soon be resumed.

4. The Israelis are not interested in any such settlement, particularly with American dollars and weapons pouring in. ‘Mowing the lawn’ (that’s what Israel calls its regular attacks on Gaza) is very popular.  After all, it allows Israel to steal a bit more Palestinian land every day, extending its empire and making the prospect of a Palestinian state a little more impossible every day.

5. However attractive it may appear in the short term, this does not represent a viable long-term strategy for Israel.  It is making the neighbours who surround it hate it more and more, while its cruel oppression of another people is corroding its own sense of right and wrong, and increasingly infecting its politics with racism and extremism. The window of opportunity for Israel to make an equitable, peaceful settlement with the Palestinians may be shorter than it realises. When empires collapse, it often happens surprisingly quickly.

Euripides warned: ‘The strong should not abuse their strength, nor the fortunate think Chance will bless them forever.' Israel needs to take note today. Tomorrow may be too late.

www.haaretz.com shows some people in Israel are thinking about these issues.

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.’

Rwanda genocide - first conviction in France

For the first time, a French court has handed down a prison sentence for involvement in the Rwanda genocide of 1994. Former spy chief Pascal Simbikangwa, aged 54, has been sent to gaol for 25 years.

He was found guilty of being involved in genocide and crimes against humanity. Simbikangwa, who was paralysed in a car crash, was arrested in 2008 while living under an alias on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte.

The convicted man, who rose to be third in command of Rwanda's intelligence services, was accused of supplying arms and issuing instructions to Hutu militia who were manning road blocks and killing Tutsi men, women and children as well as moderate Hutus. At least 800,000 people perished in just 100 days.

Rwanda’s current government has long accused France of helping in the genocide. (It was an ally of the Rwandan regime at the time.) But now the French are investigating another two dozen cases linked to the genocide.

Bangladesh war crimes execution

The execution that attracted most attention over the last few days was the killing – apparently by machine gun fire – of Jang Song Thaek, the uncle of North Korea’s young dictator, Kim Jong Un, but there was another of great significance in Bangladesh.

An Islamist leader, Abdul Kader Mullah, was hanged after being found guilty of crimes during Bangladesh’s bloody war of independence in 1971, which cost the lives of up to 3 million people. He was the first person to be executed following conviction by Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal.

At his trial, he was described by prosecutors as the ‘Butcher of Mirpur’, a suburb of the capital, Dhaka, where he is alleged to have been involved in the massacre of unarmed civilians and of intellectuals who supported independence from Pakistan. Mullah always denied the charges, and human rights groups have expressed concern about the court’s fairness.

Another 4 members of Mullah’s Jamaat-e-Islami party are also facing the death penalty. His execution has led to clashes in which at least 5 people have died.

Cambodia - justice and killing fields

Bringing alleged war criminals to justice decades after the event is never a straightforward process, and it has proved particularly difficult in Cambodia, where up to 2 million people, a quarter of the country’s population at the time, perished during Pol Pot’s 1970’s reign of terror.

Last month, the last two surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime made closing statements at their trials. ’Brother Number Two’, 87 year old Nuon Chea (pictured) and Khieu Samphan, aged 82, the regime’s head of state, both deny crimes against humanity. A verdict is expected early next year, and they are still due to face genocide charges at some future date.

Nuon Chea expressed remorse for the suffering endured by the Cambodian people, but blamed it all on subordinates. The only leader convicted so far is Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, who admitted charges against him. (see my blog of 26 July, 2010) Another defendant, Ieng Sary, died in March, while his wife was ruled unfit to continue her trial. (see my blog of 16 March)

The country’s prime minister, Hun Sen, was himself a Khmer Rouge battalion commander, and the government has often seemed less than enthusiastic about  the court, but more than 100,000 Cambodians have attended the hearings.

UN inspectors move in - in Sri Lanka

As the Syrian government agrees to allow UN inspectors to visit the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, the organisation’s human rights commissioner, Navi Pillay, has arrived in Sri Lanka for a fact-finding mission in areas scarred by that country’s long and bloody civil war.

The UN has said that at least 40,000 civilians, mainly Tamils, died in the final months of the conflict in 2009 as the Tamil Tigers were finally defeated. The government was accused of shelling hospitals and refugee camps, but it has resisted international calls for the allegations to be investigated.

Over the last two years, the UN Human Rights Council has passed two resolutions demanding that Sri Lanka launch an independent investigation, while Canada has called for a boycott of a Commonwealth summit scheduled to take place in Colombo in November.

Ms Pillay is expected to hold meetings with members of the Tamil community as well as with the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, before reporting back to the UN.

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".

Darfur - lest we forget

So far this year, an estimated 300,000 people have fled their homes in Sudan’s Darfur region according to the United Nations.    After a peace deal was signed in 2011, violence had died down, but not out.

Altogether, about 1.4 million people are now homeless, and 300,000 are believed to have died since the conflict began in 2003.  While on a visit to a refugee camp, the UN’s top humanitarian official, Valerie Amos, said the situation was ‘extremely worrying’.

She said displaced people faced chronic food shortages, and had to walk in fierce heat to get water.  They also lacked access to health care and education, while rebels were obstructing the distribution of aid.

The conflict began with rebels complaining that the Sudanese government favoured Arabs and oppressed black Africans.  Since it started, the mainly Arab Janjaweed militia has been accused of carrying out ethnic cleansing and genocide, and President al-Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes.

(See also my blogs of March 4, 5 March, 6 Aug, 21 Sept, 2009 and 27 May 2010.)

* The fifth in my series of videos on Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters features the Battle of Hastings.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtIhODt-Wrc&feature=youtu.be

 

Cambodia - Justice delayed..................

‘Justice delayed is justice denied’, goes the old saying.   Its truth was dramatically illustrated this week when Ieng Sary, so-called Brother Number 3, died during his trial for his part in the Khmer Rouge’s campaign of mass murder in Cambodia in the 1970’s.

Ieng Sary, who had been the Khmer Rouge’s foreign minister, was aged 87 and in poor health.  He had denied the charges against him.     During the regime’s reign of terror, up to 1.75 million people, a quarter of Cambodia’s population, were exterminated.

So far, only one person has been convicted for his role in these events. Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison.   Proceedings against Ieng Sary’s wife, Ieng Thirith, were suspended when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.  Now following Ieng Sary’s death, there are only two remaining defendants, both of whom are frail and suffering from high blood pressure.  

Like Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, they have been in custody since 2007.  With Cambodians seeing the opportunity of calling to account those accused of participation in one of the worst crimes in history slipping away, the country’s Centre for Human Rights has urged the authorities to proceed as quickly as possible.

 (See also my blogs of 16 Sept, 2010 and 1 Feb, 2011.)

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.