Kenya
BBC
15 July 2005 Thousands flee from Kenyan raids This is the worst attack in a
long-standing feud Kenyans living near a village where 76 people, 22 of them children,
were massacred on Tuesday, have fled their homes in fear of further attacks. Some
6,000 people from around Turbi village in north-eastern Kenya have gone to Marsabit,
the nearest large town, a Kenyan Red Cross official said. Two men were killed
in apparent revenge attacks on Thursday, police said and more huts have been burnt
in Turbi. Security forces in armoured cars and helicopters are pursuing the raiders.
Machete attacks Hundreds of armed men surrounded Turbi primary school and nearby
houses and opened fire as children were making their way to school early on Tuesday.
The situation is very sad on the ground, everybody is mourning the dead Bonaya
Godana Former Kenyan foreign minister In pictures: Kenya massacre Raid survivors'
tales The BBC's Adam Mynott in Turbi says witnesses report that many of the children
were hacked to death with machetes as they arrived at the school. "Three [children]
from strand eight were caught in the school compound when they were trying to
rescue the young ones, to run out of the school. They were killed there," said
head teacher Guay Sako. Ten bandits are also said to have died in the violence.
Feuding clans The raid on Turbi - populated by the Gabra clan - is blamed on the
rival Borana, some of whom come from Ethiopia. The two groups have feuded over
water and pasture in the semi-arid region. Kenyans say the killers have fled north,
towards Ethiopia, and they have stolen cattle, goats and camels. Hostile area,
hostile groups In Marsabit 16 people are being treated in hospital, our correspondent
in Turbi says. Among those who fled the violence, one person said he left because
his home had been destroyed and had no confidence in the security forces. Confirming
the deaths of two Borana men in Moyale near the Ethiopian border, the area's deputy
police commander Hezbon Kadenge told the AFP news agency: "The tension here is
very high, the two clans are completely at odds." Cross-border raids for livestock
are common in the area but correspondents say this is one of the most deadly such
attacks in Kenya's history. Presidential appeal On Wednesday, President Mwai Kibaki
appealed for calm. Government spokesman Alfred Mutua said Kenya had started diplomatic
channels to bring those responsible to justice. This seven-year-old boy was air-lifted
to Nairobi 560km away But he hinted that the raiders would be caught before they
reached the border, 200km away, with lots of livestock. "They don't just disappear
into thin air," he said. Deputy provincial police officer Gerald Oluch told the
BBC's Network Africa programme that some cattle stolen by them had been recovered.
"More than a 100 policemen are on the ground, and the army," he said, adding other
units were on their way.
BBC 15 July
2005 Crack troops seek Kenya killers This is the worst attack in a long-standing
feud Some 2,000 elite soldiers have arrived in northern Kenya to seek those responsible
for this week's massacre of 76 people, 22 of them children. They will also try
to prevent further revenge attacks between the feuding Gabra and Borana communities.
Some 6,000 people have fled to the area's main town Marsabit, a Kenyan Red Cross
official said. One man has survived a revenge attack in which nine people were
pulled from a priest's car and hacked to death. Bude Wako, 35, stayed alive for
48 hours under a pile of bodies, reports the Daily Nation newspaper. Three [children]
from strand eight were caught in the school compound... They were killed there
Guay Sako Press seeks answers Catholic Bishop killed The priest was forced to
watch the killings but was not physically harmed by a group of Gabras, taking
revenge on any Boranas they found. The Boranas were accused of responsibility
for Tuesday's massacre in Turbi village. Meanwhile, an Italian Roman Catholic
Bishop has been killed in an area further south also inhabited by the two groups.
Police are investigating whether the killing of Bishop Luigi Locati was linked
to the communal violence. Government criticised The bodies of five suspected attackers
have been found, after a clash with security forces on Wednesday, police spokesman
Jasper Ombati told the AFP news agency. Fifteen of the attackers have now been
killed, he said. Two men were killed in apparent revenge attacks on Thursday,
police said. Four helicopters - two from the police and two from the military
- are ferrying police men and crack troops from the General Service Unit around
the area, as far as the Ethiopian border, where the attackers are suspected to
have fled. Hostile area, hostile groups In pictures: Kenya massacre Correspondents
say there has been much public criticism of the government's response to the killings.
Two ministers in the president's office have now gone to the area, to try and
cool tensions. Government spokesman Alfred Mutua said the authorities had been
organising meetings between community leaders since the latest cycle of clashes
began in January. He also said that Kenya had started diplomatic channels to bring
those responsible to justice. But he hinted that the raiders would be caught before
they reached the border with Ethiopia, 200km away, with hundreds of animals they
had stolen from Turbi. "They don't just disappear into thin air," he said. Machetes
Hundreds of armed men surrounded Turbi primary school and nearby houses and opened
fire as children were making their way to school early on Tuesday. This seven-year-old
boy was air-lifted to Nairobi 560km away The BBC's Adam Mynott in Turbi says witnesses
report that many of the children were hacked to death with machetes as they arrived
at the school. "Three [children] from strand eight were caught in the school compound
when they were trying to rescue the young ones, to run out of the school. They
were killed there," said head teacher Guay Sako. Cross-border raids for livestock
are common in the area but correspondents say this is the most deadly such attacks
in Kenya's history.
BBC 15 July, 2005
Kenya press looks for massacre answers Alongside outrage and disgust at Tuesday's
massacre of more than 75 people in the village of Turbi, near Marsabit, Kenyan
newspapers are also looking for explanations. Widespread poverty, a struggle for
economic advantage, and long-standing neglect of the area by politicians are some
of the answers offered in commentaries and editorials. Mention is also made of
the conflict in the border region between neighbouring Ethiopia and the Oromo
Liberation Front.--- Though inter-clan conflicts in Marsabit and other areas in
North-Eastern Province are sadly becoming a common phenomenon, Tuesday's attack
was the most horrendous and devastating... These senseless killings must come
to an end... Only by tackling the high levels of poverty will a long-term solution
to the conflicts in the area be ensured. People Daily - The conflict in Marsabit
is emblematic of a larger trend... Although Marsabit is Kenya's driest district,
it offers a range of possibilities that can enhance the country's economic well-being...
It is time to rethink national policy and practical responses on the ground. Paul
Goldsmith in The Nation ---- Fundamental questions have to be raised as to why
the government cannot contain insecurity in the northern frontier districts...
Ultimately, the entire government machinery, including the provincial and political
leaders, must give an account as to why such a massacre could be perpetrated with
such ease. The Nation ---- There is something disappointing in the way the central
government has reacted to this tragedy... Though the president condemned the attack,
and assured the people of security, his words sounded hollow in the face of the
fact that no senior government officials deemed it necessary to rush to Marsabit,
assess for themselves what was happening and comfort the people. The Standard
--- This is not the time to apportion blame. We must look at the situation afresh
and seek long-term solutions... Any strategy to end cattle rustling and other
forms of insecurity must involve a close partnership with the neighbours - Somalia,
Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda. The Nation -- Yesterday's attack fitted into mind-boggling
pattern in which raiders cross from Ethiopia, perpetrate their senseless act and
disappear into their country... Of more urgency here is for the government to
secure the borders... The government should raise this matter with its Ethiopian
counterpart with a view to putting an end to these killings... The government
must protect its people. The Standard ---This week's events could be attributed
to resentment that the Oromo may have harboured due to Kenya's cooperation with
Addis Ababa... With its tentacles thus spread across the region, the Oromo Liberation
Front remains a potent threat to regional stability... It would be interesting
to know why the government has not seen it fit to establish a garrison in North-Eastern
Province. Peter Kimani in The Nation ---- The Oromo have been waging a bitter
war against the Ethiopian government in a bid to form their own nation-state -
along the same lines as Eritrea... Researchers believe the carnage in the north
is basically a search for and desire to control an enlarged Oromo territory. The
Standard -- BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television,
press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaus abroad.
The Nation (Nairobi) OPINION 18 July 2005 The Massacre Could Have Been Averted
By Billow Kerrow Nairobi American writer Negely Farson once said of North Eastern
Kenya: "There is one half of Kenya about which the other half knows nothing about,
and seems to care even less". The people of Marsabit, like others in the then
Northern Frontier Districts, did not participate in the Lancaster House constitutional
conference of 1963. Mzee Jomo Kenyatta slapped emergency rule on the region two
weeks after independence, and it lasted for 30 years until 1997, leaving behind
a trail of death, destruction and violation of human rights. More importantly,
it led to the region lagging behind in socio-economic and human development. The
region is characterised by poverty, illiteracy, poor infrastructure, lack of economic
opportunities and unending conflicts. Forty years after Lancaster, will they participate
in the new constitutional referendum that guarantees them a right to economic
development? Quite unlikely, if the current conflict persists. The feuding Marsabit
clans are pastoralists. Pastoralism is a nomadic way of life that centres on livestock
production and extensive use of rangelands. Pastoralist conflicts Despite early
predictions by colonialists that pastoralism will die before the end of 20th century,
the pastoralist areas today cover 80 per cent of the country's land mass, and
account for over 50 per cent of livestock production, contributing about 16 per
cent to the country's GDP. Yet, neither the Government, nor the vast majority
of Kenyans, understand the pastoral community. And much less the pastoralist
conflicts which have increased in frequency and scale of ferocity in recent years.
A recent study identifies the causes of conflicts in Marsabit District as the
competition over use, access to and control of pasture resources in the district
among the Borana, Gabra and Rendille communities. The violent conflicts among
these communities have been aggravated by loss of traditional authority, failure
by the Government to understand the traditional grazing boundaries, and the spread
of automatic weapons. Inflammatory remarks by political leaders may actually
trigger a conflict, but are not necessarily the underlying causes of the conflict.
The regional nomadism in search of pasture across the borders have created animosities
between various communities. Above all, there is a growing sense of failure by
the Government to provide physical security which has led to most communities
establishing armed militias to safeguard them. Corruption and indifference amongst
security officers in the region have eroded confidence. In most instances, the
administrators lack proper understanding of the pastoralist communities. In
2000, at the height of the bloody conflict between clans in Garissa, it was the
arrival of Mohamud Saleh as PC that not only ended the conflict, but restored
enduring peace and tranquillity in the entire province. Mr Saleh comes from the
area and hence understood the people, the region and the dynamics of the conflict.
No sooner had he been transferred in 2003 than a bloody conflict started in Mandera
in 2004. The new PC, Mr Abdul Mwasera, lacked the capacity to understand the conflict
that raged on for more than a year and led to over 65 persons dead. Nor did
he attempt to impartially address the conflict through the involvement of leaders.
Yet, it took a panel of religious leaders a couple of weeks to study the conflict
and arbitrate between the warring communities, leading to subsequent peace that
holds till today. Given the increasing incidents of violent conflicts in Northern
Kenya in the past two years, there is growing concern that the Government is not
doing enough to address the short- and long-term causes of the conflict, and lacks
an effective response mechanism. The ongoing disarmament of these communities
is not a panacea for these conflicts. There has been an attempt by the Government
to channel more development resources to the area, but it is too little to have
any impact. In 2004/5, the Government spent over Sh5 billion on relief food in
Northern Kenya, but less than 10 per cent of that in tangible development projects.
The use of military jets, tanks and helicopters may be a show of strength by
the Government, but it will not resolve the conflict. What we need is a different
show of strength by the Government - a socio-economic one that is characterised
by economic opportunities, better rangelands management, development of infrastructure,
recognition of the pastoralist way of life, and peace-building dialogue. It
took more than 12 hours for the report of the Turbi massacre to reach Marsabit.
Clearly there is lack of basic communication equipment such as radio calls or
telephone facilities even in divisional offices. The majority of the divisional
administrative offices do not even have vehicles. In a special development proposal
submitted to the Government in May 2003 by pastoralists MPs through the Ministry
of Planning and National Development which sponsored the workshop, communications
facilities for at least divisional offices was identified as an urgent requirement
for rapid conflict response. and the Government urged to supply them. Long-term
solution The long-term solution is to address socio-economic development. Poverty
is as high as 76 per cent in the region, with enrolment in schools still below
30 per cent. Health coverage is the poorest in the country, with an average of
one doctor to 120,000 people, Access to clean water supply is below 10 per cent,
whilst there is no all-weather road in the entire North East Kenya, making travel
very difficult. Peace meetings chaired by Government authorities simply lord it
over the people but do not provide enabling environment for frank and open dialogue.
Blaming political leaders will only inflame their communities. Authorities
have to exercise impartiality in their actions as suggestions of bias only antagonise
the offended communities. It pays to engage political leaders in security
matters at district level. The utter disregard of the views of leaders by security
apparatus is responsible for the failure to prevent the flare-ups. The Government
should deploy administrative officers who hail from these regions as they have
a better understanding of their communities. More often than not, the culprits
in such massacres are known by the victims and should be arrested. The police
who have remained too long in the area suffer inertia due to corruption and should
be moved after such incidents. Mr Kerrow is Kanu's Shadow Finance Minister
and the MP for Mandera Central
News24.com
SA 20 July 2005 2 held over inter-clan clashes Inter-clan violence killed
55 Kenyan clan clashes: 21 dead Nairobi - Kenyan police said on Wednesday they
had arrested two local officials in connection with the murder of nine people
in an apparent revenge attack for a deadly village massacre in northern Kenya
last week. The pair, from the Gabra clan, were detained on Tuesday after they
were identified by a witness as being involved in the slaying of nine members
of the rival Borana clan after Borana raiders attacked the village of Turbi, they
said. "We arrested two chiefs because we believe they were involved or were
among the people who killed nine people after the Turbi massacre," said Robert
Kipkemoi Kitur, assistant police commissioner in Eastern Province where the violence
occurred. "A survivor of the attack identified the two chiefs as being among people
who attacked them," said Kitur from the provincial of Embu. "If we find it is
true, then we shall straightaway charge them with murder for their heinous act."
Nine suspects in custody The incident, in which 10 Boranas riding in a church
van driven by a Catholic priest were pulled out and all but one beaten to death,
took place within hours of the July 12 raid on Turbi which targeted members of
the rival Gabra clan. The massacre at Turbi, about 580km northeast of Nairobi,
the church van killings and other revenge attacks in the region, killed at least
82 people, including 26 children. The arrest of the two administrators from
Moyale district brings to nine the total suspects now in custody for alleged involvement
in the grisly cycle of inter-clan violence rooted in long-standing disputes over
water and pasture in the semi-arid region, according to police.
Rwanda
Mail & Guardian (South Africa) www.mg.co.za US first lady seeks advice on preventing
genocide Jennifer Loven | Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 14 July 2005 12:38 United
States First Lady Laura Bush says she is looking to Rwandan President Paul Kagame
to suggest how the world can make sure that a genocide his country experienced
more than a decade ago is not repeated in Sudan's Darfur region, or anywhere else.
Bush was closing out a week-long trip through Africa with a visit on Thursday
to Rwanda, where a 100-day slaughter in 1994 by Hutu militias killed nearly half
a million minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. She was being joined there by
Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "I look forward to talking
with both the first lady of Rwanda, as well as the president of Rwanda, about
what the rest of the world can do in situations similar to this, like in Darfur,"
Bush said on Wednesday to reporters. On the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan
genocide last year, Kagame criticised other nations and institutions for failing
to halt the killing. Instead of strengthening its peacekeeping force, the United
Nations pulled troops. Both former US president Bill Clinton and the UN have since
apologised. The massacre ended when Tutsi rebels led by Kagame ousted the extremist
government. Bush, in several events in Kigali, was promoting US-supported efforts
to help Rwanda by supporting women in political life and helping girls get an
education. "The healing process, the reconciliation that Rwanda has managed to
have is really amazing considering how extensive the genocide was and how violent,"
she said. Her first stop, however, was the Kigali Memorial Centre -- Gisozi Genocide
Memorial -- where she planned to lay a wreath and sign a visitors' book. "The
genocide was recent enough that everyone still remembers it and no doubt many,
many people are still grieving for their family members, their loved ones that
they lost," Bush said. "How difficult it must be, to live with a genocide like
that in your country, to live with it in your history, is really, really hard
to imagine." There were no indications that Bush planned to make a direct public
link between what happened in Rwanda and the situation now in Darfur. More than
two years of conflict there have left tens of thousands dead and more than two
million displaced in Sudan, mostly as the result of a counterinsurgency by Arab,
pro-government militias against black African rebels. Paul Rusesabagina, the lifesaving
hotel manager portrayed in the movie Hotel Rwanda, recently accused the world
of failing Darfur now just as it did Rwanda in 1994. Before travelling to Rwanda,
Bush was spending the morning in Zanzibar, Tanzania's Indian Ocean archipelago.
She planned to reach out to its large Muslim community at a time when there are
concerns the semiautonomous area could turn toward a stricter form of Islam. Mindful
of the 1998 deadly truck bombings of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam and in
Nairobi, the capital of neighbouring Kenya, Washington is keeping an eye on an
area where anti-Western rhetoric increasingly has been a feature of Friday sermons.
Bush was also to visit the US-funded school Al Rahma Madrasa Pre-Primary School
to demonstrate the US's role in ensuring education for the community, and to a
teacher-training school that is receiving 20 000 books donated through private
and public money in the US. -- Sapa-AP
www.iol.co.za
17 July 2005 Africa moved me, says Laura Bush July 17 2005 at 02:36PM By
Jennifer Loven American First Lady Laura Bush heard a Rwandan girl tearfully describe
raising her three young brothers, their father killed in the 1994 genocide and
their mother dying of Aids. She saw kilometres of South African shanty towns crowded
in the shadow of Cape Town's wealth. She met women risking ostracism by flaunting
their HIV-positive status as the only way to make inroads against the disease
that is crippling Africa. Moved by the orphans and many others she met on a weeklong
trip, the First Lady said on Friday she would try to make sure the United States
kept its promises to the world's poorest continent. - "In a lot of cases in international
aid ... the pledges are made, but they're never really carried through," she said.
That's why she wanted Cherie Blair, wife of British prime minister Tony Blair,
to join her for the last day in Rwanda. The symbolism was clear - the wife of
the leader of the United States, the globe's largest donor to Africa, and the
wife of the British leader, who made Africa's problems Topic A at last week's
summit of wealthy democracies, going from that meeting to Africa. Bush made the
trip to South Africa, Tanzania and Rwanda to spread the word of American help.
She returned home determined to be an advocate, saying she would tell her husband
what she had seen and that she hoped congress would agree to his proposal to double
aid to Africa by 2010 to $8.6-billion. "It's life-changing for me to see the real
scope of what the problems are. But not only that, to be inspired by people who
are dealing with these problems." The last day was the most wrenching of the trip.
The first lady and one of her twin daughters, Jenna, went to a poor, remote corner
of Zanzibar, where children at a US-funded Muslim school played on a swing made
of rope and tyres. She visited an evangelical church in Kigali where missionaries
try to help Rwandans pick up the pieces of the genocide-shattered country by giving
shelters to their orphans and treatment to their Aids-inflicted. At times - holding
an affection-starved HIV-positive orphan in her lap or gazing at giant photographs
of children at Kigali's genocide museum - her drawn expression revealed the difficulty
of preventing her feelings from spilling into the open. "Especially the last
day was very emotional," she said. Her exposure to the slaughter's lingering effects
and her brief talk with President Paul Kagame prompted Bush to say that the atrocities
in nearby Sudan's Darfur region need the United States' sustained attention.
This article was originally published on page 12 of Sunday Argus on July 17, 2005
Salon.com
(Guardian UK) 20 July 2005 Conversations with mass murderers In Machete Season,
10 Hutu men recall how they enjoyed slaughtering their neighbours with machetes
and clubs - and, six years after the Rwanda genocide, feel no guilt Suzy Hansen
Wednesday July 20, 2005 The 1994 Rwandan genocide was ignored by most of the world
as it raged on. But in years since, the horrific event that claimed 800,000 deaths
has garnered worldwide attention, thanks to numerous books and documentaries,
and even a Hollywood film. Philip Gourevitch's masterly We Wish to Inform You
That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, based on his dispatches from
Rwanda for the New Yorker, became an award-winning bestseller. Romeo Dallaire,
the United Nations commander stationed in Rwanda at the time, recently participated
in a documentary based on his own memoir, Shake Hands With the Devil. And last
year, the tragedy of the slaughter was brought to the big screen in the surprisingly
good Hotel Rwanda, a film starring Don Cheadle that managed to grab three Oscar
nominations. These renderings of the genocide include many unfathomable images
of men furiously hacking at other men, of whole communities decimated while seeking
refuge in church, of bloated, days-old bodies choking the country's rivers. As
by now most people know, in Rwanda, the vast majority of the Hutu population participated
in the mass killing of their fellow Tutsi countrymen (as well as Hutu moderates)
in only 100 days, a little more than three months. The killing was done without
the efficient aid of gas chambers or bombs or machine guns; instead, most of the
murders were of the one-on-one sort - a very personal, laborious killing in which
many, many people willingly, almost enthusiastically, took part. Although western
writers and artists have attempted, and will continue attempting, to translate
the reality of a mass extermination, it's a nearly impossible task. They succeed
in many ways, but what they can't quite get across is technical: what is it like
for one entire population to kill another, day after day, for an entire season
of the year? Did the men go to work too? Did they make love at night, and
wake up and kill in the morning? Did they read books, get drunk, tell bedtime
stories - all after a day's kill? Did they cry? Machete Season: The Killers
in Rwanda Speak, the second book on Rwanda by French journalist Jean Hatzfeld,
attempts to answer some of these questions, and gives this madness a shocking
sort of order. Hatzfeld interviewed 10 Hutus six years after the genocide, while
the men served time in jail. These Hutus were from the rural Nyamata district
(population 119,000), which includes a small town and 14 surrounding hills (Rwanda
is lush and mountainous) split almost half between Hutus and Tutsis. Beginning
in April 1994, within six weeks, five out of every six Tutsis in Nyamata were
killed. The 10 men, ranging from 20 to 62 years of age, hailed from these hills,
where most of them were farmers. "None of them has ever quarrelled with his Tutsi
neighbors over land, crops, damage, and women," Hatzfeld writes. In fact, they
lived next door to Tutsis, played soccer with them, went to church with them.
"But these 10 banded together," Hatzfeld explains, "because of the proximity of
their fields, their patronage of a cabaret, and their natural affinities and shared
concerns". Hatzfeld gives the reader a basic sense of who the men are - the little
detail already provided in this review - but he wisely lets the men talk first
before proffering their proper biographies. "That bunch was famous on the hill
for carousing and tomfoolery," said Clementine, a local Hutu who is married to
a Tutsi. "Those fellows did not seem so bad." The Rwandan genocide officially
began after the death of President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, whose plane was
mysteriously shot down on April 6 1994. The death of the president was the excuse
the Hutu extremists needed to begin the killing that they had long planned. (Obviously,
Rwandan history is ever more complicated: Hutu extremists had long been paranoid
about Tutsi power; at various times Tutsis had suffered, and been slaughtered,
at the hands of Hutus; a group of exiled Tutsis organised the Rwandan Patriotic
Front, with whom Habyarimana had signed peace accords in 1993. Later, the RPF
would enter Rwanda and stop the genocide.) Hatzfeld's band of ordinary Hutus,
incited by extremists broadcasting on the radio, gathered together, singing songs
and screwing around, and then headed down to the marshes where they believed the
Tutsis were hiding. The new killers indeed bonded immediately: "We gathered
into teams on the soccer field and went out hunting as kindred spirits," said
Ignace. "We had to work fast, and we got no time off, especially not Sundays -
we had to finish up," said Elie. "We cancelled all ceremonies. Everyone was
hired at the same level for a single job - to crush all the cockroaches." The
most difficult part of all of this is to comprehend the moment when men become
killers. The Hutus claimed not to have been forced to kill, though they did fear
the consequences of not joining in at the beginning. By the time of the interviews,
killing strikes them as quite normal. It's not as though their first kill is particularly
memorable. Still, they attempt to recall it: Fulgence: "First I cracked an old
mama's head with a club." Alphonse: "I was quite surprised by the speed of death,
and also by the softness of the blow." Adalbert didn't remember the "precise details"
of his first kill: "Therefore the true first time worth telling from a lasting
memory, for me, is when I killed two children, April 17." They meditate on
murder like this throughout the book. Elie: "The club is more crushing, but the
machete is more natural. The Rwandan is accustomed to the machete from childhood.
Grab a machete - that is what we do every morning." Alphonse: "Saving the babies,
that was not practical. They were whacked against walls and trees or they were
cut right away." Indeed, especially for farmers, slicing at things was routine.
The men use the word "cut" to describe their murders, as if what they did was
akin to dragging a paper edge across a thumb. Obviously it's a callous way of
distancing themselves from their deeds, but it also signals the parallel they
saw between hacking Tutsis and working in the fields. Yet, there were differences.
"Killing was a demanding but more gratifying activity," said Pio. "The
proof: none ever asked permission to go clear brush on his field, not even for
a half-day." Soon it became addictive, and there were rewards: "We could no longer
stop ourselves from wielding the machete, it brought us so much profit." The looting
that accompanied the killing was dazzling for the poor farmers, and it offered
a way for the women to pitch in (though some women and children did kill). They
stole everything - some even grabbed the bloodstained clothing of the dead. "If
you went home empty-handed, you might even be scolded by your wife or your children,"
one man said. And despite knowing that their husbands were out raping women and
then killing them, most wives still made love to their husbands at night. Many
men insisted that this life - the one where they woke up and killed people all
day - was a better one. "Man can get used to killing, if he kills on and on,"
said Alphonse. Fulgence went one step further: "The more we saw people die, the
less we thought about their lives, the less we talked about their deaths. And
the more we got used to enjoying it." As the killing went on, the men became
intoxicated by the idea of "finishing the job". The idea appears to have been
that when it was all over, the Tutsis would be gone, and there would be no reminder
of them. So the drive to kill every last Tutsi became more ferocious. In Nyamata
not one bond of friendship spared a life, writes Hatzfeld; unlike in Nazi Germany,
for example, Tutsis found "not a single escape network". But there was another
key component to the genocide's ferocity: no one was watching. There is nothing
so damning in Machete Season as when the men speak of the "whites". One man suggests
that the idea of genocide germinated in 1959, when Hutus massacred many Tutsis
"without being punished". And, in 1994, Hutu extremists gradually realised that
the world was averting its eyes from the present atrocities as well. "All the
important people turned their backs on our killings," said Elie. "The blue helmets,
the Belgians, the white directors, the black presidents, the humanitarian people
and the international cameramen, the priests and the bishops and finally even
God ... We were all abandoned by all words of rebuke." Pancrace agreed: "Killing
is very discouraging if you yourself must decide to do it ... but if you must
obey the orders of the authorities ... if you see that the killing will be total
and without disastrous consequences for yourself, you feel soothed and reassured."
These were ordinary men, for sure. And ordinary men would have feared the punishment
of others; as soon as the west pulled out of Rwanda they knew they were free to
kill. It's clear that if some force had been monitoring them, at least some
of the motivation to kill would have withered away. Fittingly, one of the chapters
in the book is titled A Sealed Chamber. Perhaps not surprisingly, because of
this long absence of condemnation, the men have no regrets. "I want to make clear
that from the first gentleman I killed to the last, I was not sorry about a single
one," said Leopord. Hatzfeld notes in amazement that the killers speak in
monotone and "never allow themselves to be overwhelmed by anything". During the
men's seven years in prison, they knew of not one Hutu suicide. If they were depressed,
it was only because they were locked up. "Aside from the anguish of my years in
prison," said Pancrace, "I do not see my life as harmed by all these regrettable
events." The unfortunately candid Elie takes a stab at remorse: "In prison and
on the hills, everyone is obviously sorry. But most of the killers are sorry they
didn't finish the job." Machete Season is realistic and, above all else, terrifying;
Hatzfeld brilliantly organises his subjects' stories for maximum effect. His method
captures the rhythm of a genocide - the cold, workmanlike, fierce nature of its
repetition. The book goes on and on, the killers are still alive, they persist,
they won't stop talking. Just when you think they won't mention their machete
again, it's back. When the men return home from jail, it's to a country in trauma.
"The silence on the Rwandan hills is indescribable and cannot be compared with
the usual mutism in the aftermath of war," writes Hatzfeld. What Hatzfeld
suggests is the possibility of an Africa in turmoil because of many of its people's
learned fatalism. Perhaps the most terrible line in Machete Season is spoken
by Pio, who noted with astonishment the silence with which the Tutsis confronted
their deaths, even as he came near to where they hid in the marsh, machete in
hand. They did not fight back. They did not cry out. "They felt so abandoned
they did not even open their mouths." · Suzy Hansen, a former editor at
Salon, is an editor at the New York Observer. This article has been provided by
Salon through a special arrangement with Guardian Newspapers Limited.
Sudan
IRIN
15 July 2005 Local militias causing havoc in the south - CPMT [ This report does
not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] © NAIROBI, 15 Jul 2005
(IRIN) - Armed Lou Nuer militias left their established routes and water points
from January to June to carry out aggressive acts against communities in the Upper
Nile region of southeastern Sudan, a report by the US-sponsored Civilian Protection
Monitoring Team (CPMT) said. "The Lou Nuer conflict with other communities generated
an unacceptable scale of displacement and deprivation among the general population,"
the CPMT said in its June report. It documented a number of incidents from heavy
fighting and rape to cattle rustling, particularly near Duk Padiet in western
Jonglei State. The conflict continued to contravene the Comprehensive Peace Agreement
signed by the government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A)
on 9 January, which guaranteed the security of south Sudanese civilians, it added.
"These people, looking forward to peace after decades of conflict, are losing
confidence in the "peace" as they continue to be killed, robbed and looted," the
CPMT warned. Traditionally, the Lou Nuer, who inhabit the water-scarce middle
Jonglei region, move with their livestock between rainy season and dry season
pastures on a seasonal basis. During the dry season, water and pasture become
limited and most pastoralist groups move their livestock towards the so-called
"toich", the floodplains of the Nile. Despite the fragile and complex environment,
reports from Pact, an agency supporting grass-roots peace efforts in Sudan, have
highlighted some positive conflict-resolution efforts also underway in the area.
When the Lou-Nuer left the "toich" to return to their home-areas in May, a full-scale
conflict with a group of some 3,500 armed Gawar Nuer and Holl Dinka was prevented
by a "rapid response" initiative led by local peace actors, which opened a safe
passage for the Lou Nuer through Duk Dinka territories. According to Pact, several
Lou community leaders had led efforts in Waat and Yuai to reconcile the divided
Lou community with the hope that this would provide a foundation for positive
relationships among communities and their neighbours. A UNICEF-sponsored report
on grassroots conflicts in Sudan said as the dry season progressed, pastoralists
from various ethnic groups tended to concentrate around the last available water
and grazing resources, increasing incidents of cattle rustling, abductions, and
violent clashes. As a result, most communities had formed their own informal militia
- known as the 'jesh mabor' or white army - for self-defence. However, these
groups served as a pool of men and boys periodically mobilised by actors in the
wider civil war, such as the Sudanese government, the SPLM/A and Nuer factions
that split from the SPLM/A in 1991. A humanitarian source in the region said overall,
cattle rustling and violence in the region was less prevalent than in the past.
"It has now been reduced to pockets of violence," he said. The general opinion,
he added, was that the proliferation of weapons in the region had brought harm
to the people and the arms needed to be collected. "Almost everyone of the age
of 16 and above is carrying a gun. It creates a lot of havoc and fear among the
people," he said. He also warned against treating the Lou Nuer as a homogeneous
group. Gabriel Yuol Dok, deputy chairman of the South Sudan Liberation Movement/Army,
formed in 1999 in the Upper Nile region to restore order and unity among the Nuer
people, said a Lou-Lou reconciliation conference had taken place in Yuai from
5 - 11 July. "The people have agreed to try to resolve the conflict amongst themselves,
stop the fighting and cattle rustling and restore the unity of the people in Yuai,"
he said on Friday. "There have been no reported incidents lately. It is relatively
stable at the moment."
Reuters 20
July 2005 Rice says US could send ambassador to Sudan again Wed Jul 20,
2005 5:30 PM GMT By Saul Hudson DAKAR (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice held out the possibility of sending an ambassador to Sudan for the first
time since 1997, in a sign of improving ties after the installation of a new government.
"We are looking to the day when we can put (ambassadorial) representation there,
because obviously things are moving pretty quickly in Sudan," Rice told reporters
en route to Senegal, where she arrived on Wednesday on her first trip to the continent
as secretary of state. Leaders of a coalition peace government were sworn
in on July 9. That marked a new era after two decades of north-south civil war
and raised the prospect of better ties with Washington despite U.S. accusations
Sudan has aided genocide and been a sponsor of terrorism. The return of a U.S.
ambassador would show international acceptance of the Khartoum government, something
which Sudan's leaders covet, U.S. officials say. But Rice said such a move
would depend on Khartoum resolving a conflict in the western region of Darfur
and being removed from a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. At a news
conference in Dakar, she said she would demand on a visit to Khartoum and Darfur
on Thursday that Sudanese leaders act to stop the violence, which she called genocide.
"I will start from the point it could also be a new day if this new government
... exercises its responsibility toward all the people of Sudan, including the
people of Darfur," she said. "We don't rely on words, we rely on actions," she
added. "We have gotten some help from the Sudanese government but by no means
enough." Violence has abated this year in Darfur, after tens of thousands of people
died and about 2 million were driven from their homes following a rebel uprising
in early 2003. Washington last year accused President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's
government of helping militia commit genocide in Darfur. Senegal's Foreign
Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio said his government was "totally dissatisfied" at
the African Union's failure to stop the killing despite sending troops to the
region. "Those militias are still very active, killing people, burning villages,
raping women," he said, standing alongside Rice. HOST TO BIN LADEN The United
States hopes a new vice president -- former southern rebel John Garang, who has
frequently visited Washington -- will help improve ties between the two countries.
Ambassador Tim Carney left Khartoum in 1997 after the United States imposed sanctions
on Sudan for what it said was its support for terrorism. The top U.S. representative
in the country is a charge d'affaires. Frosty U.S. ties with Khartoum, where Osama
bin Laden lived from 1991 to 1996, reached a low in 1998 when Washington launched
missiles to destroy a pharmaceuticals plant it said was linked to the al Qaeda
leader and was making ingredients for chemical weapons. Rice's top diplomat for
Africa, Connie Newman, said a carrot-and-stick policy was needed for Sudan, which
had responded last year to pressure over Darfur because it did not want to be
a pariah state. Rice, who noted a threat of U.N. sanctions remained, said it
was difficult to balance the goal of helping establish a new government with that
of trying to hold Sudan accountable for atrocities in Darfur. "I'll admit that
it is not the easiest thing to manage," she said.
Togo
IRIN 15 July
2005 People still fleeing in fear of persecution, says human rights league
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] ©
IRIN Togolese refugees at Hilacondji, border with Benin LOME, 15 Jul 2005 (IRIN)
- Frightened citizens are continuing to stream into the offices of the Togo Human
Rights League (LTDH) to complain of political persecution, despite government
assurances that it is now safe for people who fled the country in recent weeks
to return home, a leader of the rights group said. “The human rights situation
today in Togo is catastrophic,” Togoata Apedo-Amah, LTDH secretary-general, said
in an interview on Thursday. “Togo has descended into barbarity.” Almost three
months after a disputed presidential election degenerated into violence, sending
38,000 refugees fleeing into Benin and Ghana, government opponents still live
in fear of arrest and persecution, Apedo-Amah said. Sitting at a desk piled high
with complaints of rights abuse filed in June and July, Apedo-Amah said “only
this week a young man from Kpalime said his father had been abducted at 11 p.m.
by non-identified individuals.” Other complaints include rape, notably against
a 92-year-old woman whose oldest child is 71. Apedo-Amaha highlighted another
case where 13 young girls from the town of Kpalime, 150 km north of Lome near
the Ghana border, had been detained and raped for three days by a group of men
wearing military gear. Young men arrested with them were beaten on the penis during
the rapes, he added. Apedo-Amah, whose organisation is criticised by the authorities
as being close to the opposition, said that the LTDH had received complaints from
many people who feared arrest because they had monitored voting booths on behalf
of the opposition during the 24 April presidential election. The poll was called
hurriedly following the death of Togo’s president for 38 years, Gnassingbe Eyadema.
His son Faure Gnassingbe was officially declared the winner, despite opposition
claims that the ballot was rigged. The father-to-son succession triggered violent
street protests put down by security forces. Earlier this month, the UN refugee
agency UNHCR said between 20 and 60 Togolese refugees were still registering for
asylum daily at Hilacondji, the main border crossing with neighbouring Benin.
Most were young people afraid of being abducted or arrested at night, UNHCR officials
said. UNHCR said in a statement that over 3,000 new refugees fled to Benin and
Ghana in June alone. Despite pledges of help and safe return from President Gnassingbe’s
new government, only a handful of the 38,000 who fled Togo over the last three
months have actually gone home, the officials added. Food aid is urgently needed
both for the refugees and the families in Benin and Ghana who have been hosting
them and sharing their scant resources, the UN food agency World Food Programme
said in a statement on Friday. It appealed for US $3 million to prevent an estimated
66,500 people going hungry. “The victims of Togo’s turmoil are some of the least
acknowledged in the world,” said WFP’s West Africa director Mustapha Darboe. WFP
said the aid was needed to feed 21,000 refugees in Benin, 17,000 in Ghana and
10,000 who are internally displaced people within Togo, as well as 18,500 people
in Benin and Ghana who have hosted the refugees. The government has put the casualty
toll during the election violence at less than 100, while the LTDH has said 790
people were killed in the election strife, mostly at the hands of the security
forces and pro-government militiamen. In Lome, Communications Minister Kokou Tozoun
dismissed the LTDH’s claims of continuing persecution. “Give us the names of those
who are sought or arrested,” he told IRIN. “During the elections there were people
who committed crimes, who killed, who burned Malian people alive. Those guilty
of these crimes cannot go unpunished,” he added. Tozoun, who until recently served
as Foreign Minister under Gnassingbe's father, said the government was still urging
refugees to come home and also was releasing prisoners from Togo's jails. But
Apedo-Amah retorted that the government’s planned release of several hundred detainees
was a propaganda exercise aimed at securing European Union funds. “They’re releasing
them because of the visit by an EU follow-up mission,” he said. An EU team is
in Togo on a weeklong visit to assess whether the new government is sticking to
an April 2004 deal to implement 22 commitments to promote democracy and human
rights. The EU cut off aid to the former French colony in 1993 because of “democratic
deficiencies” and is refusing to resume aid until it is satisfied that Togo has
improved its poor record. Justice Minister Abi Tchessa said earlier this week
that 105 prisoners had been freed in Lome and hundreds more would be allowed to
walk free from other jails as part of a humanitarian scheme aimed at decongesting
prisons countrywide. He said the main beneficiaries would be detainees who had
almost completed their jail terms and prisoners who had been held for long periods
on remand without being brought to trial. The EU team, which toured some of Togo’s
jails, also met members of the so-called six-party opposition alliance whose joint
candidate was defeated in the April election. This so called "radical" opposition
has refused to join a government of national unity formed by the new president.
This includes a sprinkling of defectors from the opposition ranks as well as hard-line
stalwarts of the Eyadema regime. The new president is a 39-year-old graduate of
business schools in France and the United States.
Uganda
15
July, 2005, 17:23 GMT 18:23 UK E-mail this to a friend Printable version Killings
in Uganda cattle battles By Will Ross BBC News, Kampala Without guns herders feel
powerless to stop thefts At least 25 people have died in two days of clashes between
the army and cattle raiders in north-east Uganda. Humanitarian sources report
that four children and a teacher were among the civilians killed in the crossfire
in Karamoja on Wednesday and Thursday. An army commander said the trouble began
when Pian warriors raided cattle from the rival Bokora ethnic group. Battles ensued
after soldiers recovered the cattle, which many keep as a store of wealth in this
gun-ridden region. The Ugandan army has been operating a voluntary disarmament
exercise in Karamoja, which is one of the least developed areas of Uganda. But
cattle raids and general banditry have increased in recent years with great loss
of life. Ambush The worst of the clashes have taken place in Karamoja's Nakapiripirit
district. It is not yet clear how many people have died, but a district official
said many civilians were caught in the crossfire and the fighting in Nabelatuk
had left around 30 Ugandan soldiers dead. Cows are a major commodity in the area
The area's army commander, Colonel Silver Kayemba, described this as an exaggeration,
saying five soldiers were killed and 14 were wounded when a group of Pian warriors
ambushed an army unit. He said after the army recovered the animals raided earlier
this week, the warriors took revenge by attacking the soldiers. He reports that
soldiers have killed 20 of the warriors since then. Another source reports that
huts were set ablaze during the clashes. Gunshots A district official said the
Pian population had become angry after several raids by Bokora warriors in recent
months. He said the army had not reacted to the raids. The official estimates
that the Pian had lost over 2,000 cattle in the past two months. There are reports
of other violence in Karamoja this week. Humanitarian sources report that a commercial
vehicle was ambushed on Wednesday, leaving four local police dead. It is also
reported that warriors from other rival ethnic groups have taken advantage of
the violence in Nakapiripirit district and carried out cattle raids. People in
Moroto town reported hearing gunshots on Friday morning. A disarmament exercise
was carried by the army out three years ago, but was effectively abandoned as
soldiers were relocated to deal with the conflict in northern Uganda. This week's
clashes are a reminder that the Karamoja problem is great and still needs to
be resolved.
Zimbabwe
BBC
17 July 2005 Demolitions Are Suspended in Zimbabwe By REUTERS HARARE, Zimbabwe,
July 16 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe has temporarily halted its demolition of illegal
business premises to allow their owners time to register them with authorities,
The Herald, the nation's official newspaper, said Saturday. The police have
taken the two-month crackdown to more affluent areas after razing shacks, unregistered
stalls and workshops in the country's poor urban townships in an operation
that aid agencies said had left at least 300,000 people homeless and without income.
"The demolition of illegal structures has been temporarily suspended with government
giving owners of such structures 10 working days - starting on Monday - to regularize
them with council," The Herald said. The announcement offers temporary relief
to residents in Harare's once-prosperous suburbs, who had started pulling down
their own home-based kiosks after the police warned that their crackdown on illegal
structures would be extended to new areas.
Americas
www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries
25 June 2005 General Carlos Suárez Mason Hardline general at the heart of Argentina's
ruthless dictatorship Phil Gunson Saturday June 25, 2005 The Guardian General
Carlos Suárez Mason, who has died, aged 81, of heart failure following an emergency
operation, was known in 1970s Argentina as a hardliner's hardliner. As commander
of the 1st Army Corps for the first three years following the 1976 military overthrow
of María Estela "Isabelita" Perón, he was responsible for the repression in Buenos
Aires and outlying areas, and for dozens of clandestine torture centres. "I was
never soft," he told Noticias magazine in 1996, in his only press interview. "I
never ordered anyone shot. Some we eliminated. That is more or less clear."
In this context, "some" amounted to perhaps 5,000 people, who disappeared and/or
were tortured and executed. The precise figure will never be known, and Suárez
Mason always attributed torture testimonies to the activities of subordinates,
of which he had no personal knowledge. Although he died a prisoner, Suárez
Mason was never convicted in Argentina of any of the 600 or so crimes - including
more than 400 kidnappings and 30 murders - of which he was accused. In Italy,
he had been sentenced to life imprisonment in his absence for the murder of Italian-Argentinians,
and the German and Spanish authorities had unsuccessfully sought his extradition.
He was also accused of illicit enrichment and of using this wealth to finance
anti-subversive campaigns elsewhere in Latin America. Other allegations linked
him to Bolivian generals involved in drug-trafficking. Born in Buenos Aires,
Suárez Mason graduated from military academy in 1944, along with future junta
leaders Jorge Rafael Videla and Roberto Viola. He took part in the 1951 uprising
against General Juan Dom- ingo Perón, and, as a result, was forced into exile
in neighbouring Uruguay. There, he continued to conspire against Perón until the
latter's overthrow in 1955. During the dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía, who
seized power in Argentina in 1966, Suárez Mason was military attaché to Ecuador.
He became a general in 1972 and was given a prominent role in state intelligence,
before taking over the strategically located 1st Army Corps. As a radical anti-communist
- as well as an anti-Perónist - he joined Videla in plotting to oust Perón's widow,
Isabelita, and setting up a regime dedicated to conducting a dirty war against
leftist guerrillas and their allies. "In war, there are no excesses," he said
in 1996. "War is a game in which the most violent wins." The official history
of the dirty war speaks of some 12,000 victims, though human rights activists
claim the figure is nearer 30,000. Many were later revealed to have been thrown
from aircraft over the River Plate estuary - drugged, but alive. In the latter
part of the dictatorship, which ended after Argentina's defeat in the 1982 Falklands
war, Suárez Mason was made chairman of the state oil corporation, YPF. The company
was pillaged by the government, which ran up huge debts in its name, and the general
allegedly sold adulterated petrol to finance his anti-communist operations. Put
on trial with other leading generals after the return to civilian government,
he fled Argentina in 1984, ending up (via central America, whose rightist dictatorships
he had helped prop up) in San Francisco. There, he was eventually arrested at
the request of the Buenos Aires government, put on trial and ordered to pay millions
in damages to victims and relatives by then living in the United States. In 1988,
he was extradited to Argentina, but before his trial concluded, President Carlos
Saúl Menem pardoned the generals and he walked free. In the late 1990s, the
trials began again, this time for the stealing of babies born in jail to disappeared
women prisoners, a crime outside the terms of the earlier pardon. Earlier this
month, the Argentinian supreme court ruled that the generals' amnesty was illegal
under international law. Suárez Mason had been held under house arrest because
of his advanced age. However, he allegedly violated the terms of his detention
by leaving home for an 80th birthday celebration at Argentino Juniors football
club. As a young man, he had been an enthusiastic goalkeeper, and among his contributions
to Argentinian football was the watchful eye he kept on the career of Diego Maradona,
a military conscript and youth international in the 1970s. Still protesting his
innocence, the general was re-arrested and sent to the Villa Devoto prison, where
he was kept in solitary confinement while awaiting trial. "Hell reserves the right
of admission," said the headline in the leftist daily Página 12 on learning of
his death. He is survived by his wife, Angélica Alais, and four children. · Carlos
Guillermo Suárez Mason, soldier, born January 2 1924; died June 21 2005
www.buenosairesherald.com
June 2005 ENGLISH VERSION The devil’s disciple HERALD STAFF VERSIÓN ESPAÑOL
El discípulo del diablo El finado ex-general Carlos Guillermo Suárez Mason,
símbolo de la represión militar, nunca fue juzgado ni condenado por sus muchos
crímenes (635 imputaciones, casi todas de homicidio) y ahora jamás lo será a pesar
del fallo emitido la semana pasada por la Corte Suprema y que reabre la posibilidad
de varios procesos por violaciones de los derechos humanos, incluido el numeroso
conjunto de casos que implicaron al primer cuerpo de ejército que Suárez Mason
comandó entre 1976 y 1979. Razón de más para un veredicto sobre el ex-militar.
Lea más The late ex-general Carlos Guillermo Suárez Mason, an icon of military
repression, was never tried or convicted for his many crimes (635 counts of mostly
murder) and now never will be despite last week’s Supreme Court ruling to reopen
the various trials of human rights violations, including the large cluster of
cases surrounding the first army corps he commanded between 1976 and 1979. All
the more reason for a verdict on him now. The 1976-83 dictatorship is often facilely
linked to Nazism and fascism but in fact Suárez Mason was one of the few cases
where that shoe (or should we say jackboot?) fits. Whatever the crimes of humanity
under his presidency, Jorge Videla had a definite self-image of defending Western
Christian civilization rather than imposing Nazi barbarity while his economy minister
José Martínez de Hoz dreamed of an age of privatization and modernization once
Peronist populism had been removed, realizing too late that the military caste
is even more wedded to a big state and big government. No such subtleties apply
to Suárez Mason — in an interview earning him a 42-month sentence for racial discrimination
which he was still serving upon his death on Tuesday, he described Jewry as a
world power although some of his best friends were Jews (inaccurately including
the Alemann brothers in that category). Along with the late former Buenos Aires
provincial police chief Ramón Camps, Suárez Mason was part of the lunatic fringe
of the military régime which was phased out once it had done its worst — the “we
Argentines are right and human” mentality caused the junta to resist the tremendous
world pressure preceding the 1978 World Cup but in their hearts they knew the
world was right and people like Suárez Mason and Camps were weeded out in 1979.
In 1981 Suárez Mason became trustee of YPF state oil company in a triumphant assertion
of economic nationalism and statism over Martínez de Hoz who was replaced that
year. No matter how bad his military peers were, Suárez Mason always managed
to be worse — a “red faction” supporter of crude military rule in 1962 when even
such a despot as Juan Carlos Onganía favoured “blue faction” legalism, the only
ex-general to flee justice (extradited from the United States in 1988), the only
“dirty warrior” over 70 years to go to prison for violating house arrest by
spending his birthday at his beloved Argentinos Juniors soccer club (from which
he was expelled), etc. No loss to mankind.
Canada
Muslims
Against Terrorism 15 July 2005 m-a-t.org Muslim’s
Holocausts and Genocide Remembrance Day Media is requested to run special
stories on the sufferings of Muslims Muslims Against Terrorism (MAT) was founded
in Calgary, Alberta, Canada on January 11, 1999. The main objective of MAT is
to create awareness about the dangers of violence and terrorism. The tragedy of
9/11 brought more focus to MAT and this small Calgary based organization spread
rapidly all over the world. We now have chapters in several cities of Canada,
USA, UK, Netherlands, Pakistan, Australia, Malaysia and Singapore. MAT also works
with other organizations to promote tolerance and peace in the society. We
do recognize and honour the victims of various genocides and holocausts including
the holocaust and genocide of Jews, Christians, Aboriginals, and several other
communities. However, we are very surprised that neither the Canadian media, nor
any other world body recognizes the Muslim victims of various Holocausts and Genocides.
In 2002, MAT and several other Muslim organizations declared July 15 as a “Muslims
Holocaust and Genocide Remembrance Day”. The first Holocaust against Muslims
was carried out by the crusaders. On Friday, July 15, 1099 the crusaders captured
Jerusalem and murdered thousands of Muslims. More than 70, 000 dead bodies of
Muslim children and women were found in the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem alone.
There have been several other Holocausts and genocides of Muslims; Crusaders killed
more than half million Muslims during and after occupying Jerusalem. Ganges Khan
and his forces killed more than a million Muslims during the occupation of Iraq
and neighboring areas. Thousands of Muslims were killed / forced to change religion
by Spanish Crusaders in South America More than a million Muslims were killed
/ displaced by Spanish and other European extremists during the rebellion against
the Ottoman Empire. More than 3 million Muslims were killed / displaced by the
European colonial powers during and after the occupation of Muslim countries after
World War I and II. More than 5 million Muslims were killed / displaced by Tsars
of Russia More than a million Muslims were killed / displaced by Communist Government
of Russia More than 1.5 million Muslims have been killed in China, Cambodia, Vietnam,
and other Far East countries since the world war II More than half million Muslims
have been killed / displaced in Burma since World War II More than half million
Muslims have been killed in India and Kashmir since 1947 More than half million
Muslims were killed by Serbs and Croats in Bosnia during early 90s. More than
100,000 Muslims were killed in Kosovo and Albania during mid 90s. More than 5
million Muslims have been killed / displaced in Palestine since 1948 More than
5 million Muslims were killed / displaced by the Russian occupation of Afghanistan
More than one million Muslims children died from malnutrition in Iraq during the
US/UN embargo on Iraq during 1990s. Thousands of Muslims have been killed by the
secular governments in Muslim countries, backed by the Western Governments, since
the independence from the colonial powers. Currently, hundreds of innocent civilians
have been killed by the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan References: H.G.
Wells, “A Short History of the World,” Penguin Books, 1949 “Chambers Dictionary
of the World History,” Chambers, 1994. G. C. Kohn, “Dictionary of the Wars,” Doubleday,
1987. Erna Paris, “The End of the Days,” Lester Publishing, 1995. David Brownstone
and Irene Franck, “Timelines of the War,” Cittle, Brown and Company, 1994. A.
Hourani, “A History of the Arab Peoples,” Harvard University Press, 1991. Roland
Oliver and J. D. Fage, “A Short History of Africa,” 1968. J. Burne, Editor, “Chronicle
of the World,” Longman, 1989. N. Davies, “Europe, A History,” Pimilico, 1997.
P. Hitti, “History of the Arabs,” Mcmillan, 1990. T. Pakenham, “The Scramble For
Africa,” George Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997. J. A. hammerton, “The Outline History
of the World,” The Amalgamated Press Ltd., 1993. Cox, George, W, The Crusades
(1886); Laffan, R.G.D (ed. and trans.), Select Documents of European History 800
- 1492, (1929) Note: Anyone who will be able to prove that the above mentioned
numbers of Muslim casualties are wrong, will be rewarded with CDN$1000.00 We request
the Canadian and international media to honour the Muslim victims of so many genocides
by recognizing “Muslim’s Holocaust and Genocide Remembrance Day” on July 15. MAT,
Alberta chapter will be holding a memorial service on Friday, July 8, 2005 at
the Monterey Park Community Centre, 2707 Catalina Blvd. NE Calgary, AB at 1:30
PM MAT, Ontario chapter will be holding a memorial service on Friday, July 15,
2005 at the Burnhamthorpe Community Centre, 1500 Gulleden Drive in Mississauga,
Ontario, Canada. Coincidently, this year July 15 falls on Friday. The first
holocaust of Muslims was also on Friday, July 15, 1099. For information, please
send email to matinfo@m-a-t.org OR (403)-208-7148 Muslims
Against Terrorism (M-A-T) First Anti-Terrorism NGO in the World for Global Peace
and Justice (Founded in Calgary on January 11, 1999) www.m-a-t.org
Prof. Syed B. Soharwardy, founder of MAT, was born in a very highly respected
religious family in Karachi, Pakistan. His father and Murshad (spiritual guide),
Allama Syed Muhammad Riazuddin Soharwardy (May Allah shower His blessings upon
him) was a Khateeb and Imam of a famous mosque, Jamia Bughdadi Masjid, Martin
Road, Karachi. Syed B. Soharwardy's grandfather, Allama Syed Muhammad Jalaluddin
Chishty (May Allah shower His blessings upon him) was a Grand Mufti of Kashmir
(Baramula).. . Prof. Soharwardy is the founder of Muslims Against Terrorism. He
founded this organization in January 1999. Mr. Soharwardy has addressed hundreds
of gatherings in Pakistan, USA, UK and Canada on various topics of Islamic faith.
Mr. Soharwardy can be contacted at Soharwardy@shaw.ca
Guatemala
Reuters
17 July 2005 Guatemala police files on abuses found - ombudsman 17 Jul
2005 01:08:45 GMT Source: Reuters GUATEMALA CITY, July 16 (Reuters) - Some 30,000
police files have been unearthed and confirm that human rights abuses took place
in the 1980s at the height of the country's civil war, Guatemala's human rights
ombudsman said on Saturday. The documents, discovered in archives of the now defunct
National Police, contain information about disappearances in the 36-year civil
war during which rights groups estimate 200,000 people died and 50,000 vanished,
ombudsman Sergio Morales said. "This is one of the most important discoveries
in recent times," he told local radio. Security forces are accused of carrying
out illegal detentions, disappearances, summary executions, kidnappings and torture
during the war, which ended in 1996 with peace accords between the government
and leftist insurgents. The war pitted largely poor rural dwellers against a government
backed by the United States and Guatemala's urban elite. The army was accused
of wiping out entire villages that it said harbored guerrillas. Activists from
dozens of rights organizations have demanded the Guatemalan government carry out
a full examination of the archives. The National Police was replaced with a new
police force after the civil war ended.
AP
18 JUly 2005 Guatemala Apologizes for 1982 Massacre GUATEMALA CITY -- Under
orders from an international court, Guatemala apologized Monday for the government-directed
massacre of 226 people in a highland village during the nation's bloody civil
war. Vice President Eduardo Stein traveled via helicopter to Plan de Sanchez,
95 miles north of the capital, Guatemala City, to formally accept government responsibility
for the killings by soldiers on July 18, 1982. The government was ordered to apologize
by the Inter-American Human Rights Court, which also decreed that the state pay
survivors and relatives $7.9 million in damages in a ruling last fall. Stein said
the army had "unleashed bloodshed and fire to wipe out an entire community." Soldiers
aided by members of civilian patrols stormed into Plan de Sanchez in search of
leftist guerrillas who rebelled against the government during the 1960-1996 war.
They used machetes and machine guns to kill inhabitants, and forced groups of
men and women into homes which they set ablaze or pelted with grenades. Additionally,
a helicopter bombed the area, considered a stronghold of rebel activity. The war
killed 200,000 people before a U.N.-brokered peace treaty was signed by both sides
in December 1996. The overwhelming majority of victims were Mayan civilians killed
by soldiers or paramilitary forces in massacres meant to weed out support for
guerrillas. The Plan de Sanchez killings took place during the 18-month dictatorship
of Efrain Rios Montt, whose government directed a scorched earth policy that international
observers say led to some of the war's worst human rights violations. Stein said
he insisted the ceremony take place in Plan de Sanchez and called the court ruling
historic. "The people want moments that commemorate their victims," he said. "But,
more than anything, they don't want what happened to keep being denied officially."
