Africa

San Francisco Chronicle 26 June 2005 Rape as a weapon of war It persists in Africa where HIV/AIDS takes a heavy toll - César Chelala Sunday, June 26, 2005 Rape as a weapon of war is taking a particularly heavy toll on women's lives in today's conflicts around the world, particularly in several African countries. It is a form of gender genocide. A high proportion of the women who are victims of rape end up infected with sexually transmitted diseases and infections, including HIV/AIDS. Because most of the countries experiencing internal strife lack medicines and basic health care services, becoming HIV-infected is virtually a death sentence. "It's much more dangerous to be a civilian in these wars than to be a soldier," Jan Egeland, a top U.N. relief official said last week, the New York Times reported. Sexual violence in parts of Africa, he said, "persists virtually unchallenged." Rape as a weaponof war in Rwanda has practically stopped now, and is much less frequent in Sierra Leone and in Liberia, but it continues on a wide scale in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Sudan. It is estimated that half a million of Rwanda's population of 8 million are living with HIV/AIDS. A high proportion of those are women raped and infected during that country's bloodshed in 1994. In the Congo, where more than 3 million people have been displaced by war, fighters have raped more than 40,000 women and girls over the past six years, according to Amnesty International. In Uganda, soldiers from the Lord's Resistance Army use rape and mutilation of women in their struggle to replace a secular government in the country. In Sudan, there is documentation of a pattern of rapes against women in Darfur by the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia. In the Congo, human rights activists say that girls as young as 3 years old have been raped by knives, sticks and guns. Military personnel and informal militias are particularly at risk of exposure and transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV/AIDS. While STD infection rates among military personnel is generally two to five times higher than in civilian populations, in times of conflict the difference can be 50 times higher or more. Some estimate that approximately 60 percent of combatants in Congo are HIV-infected and Zimbabwean troops there may be up to 70 percent infected. The group Women's Equity in Access to Care and Treatment has estimated that 67 percent of rape survivors in Rwanda are HIV-infected. Many women become pregnant after being raped, a consequence sought by some rapists as a perverse form of punishment. In other cases, women raped are killed afterward by the perpetrators. Among those who survive, high proportions are forced to become sex slaves. Some survivors of rape stated that they were told that they were left alive so that "they might die of sadness." For many men, the rape of their wives is a form of humiliation not only for themselves but also for their ethnic, tribal or religious group, leading many husbands and communities to reject the victims and even their children. The women, having endured the brutality of rape and its physical and psychological consequences, then find themselves denied their most basic human rights. Even when pregnancy does not occur, men in patriarchal societies still may reject their wives, mothers or daughters after they have been raped. Given the scale of abuses against civilians, including the rape of children as young as 8 and women as old as 80, an international commission of inquiry should be created to focus on sexual crimes. It should investigate and document rape and other forms of sexual violence for the purpose of prosecuting the perpetrators of those crimes. Except for a few cases, the rapists enjoy total impunity. According to Juan E. Méndez, the U.N. secretary general's special adviser on the prevention of genocide, "Trying those accused of rape, and punishing those guilty, is a necessary step toward eliminating rape as a weapon of war, and its terrible consequences." César Chelala, an international public health consultant, is the author of "AIDS: A Modern Epidemic," a publication of the Pan American Health Organization. Page F - 3

IPS 29 June 2005 Africans Back U.N. Intervention for Serious Abuses Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, Jun 29 (IPS) - Africans strongly support military intervention authorised by the United Nations Security Council to stop serious abuses of human rights in their region, according to a just-released survey which also found that they prefer U.N. forces to those of the African Union (AU). The survey of nearly 11,000 Africans from eight countries -- Angola, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe -- found that about two-thirds of respondents agreed that the U.N. should have the right to intervene in such cases and that just over half agreed that intervention was justified even without the Security Council's authorisation. The surveys, which were conducted by Globescan between late last year, were released here Wednesday along with a the results of a new poll of U.S. public opinion by the University of Maryland's Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) that also found continuing majority support for U.N. military intervention in Darfur, Sudan. The U.S. poll, which was conducted just last week, found that 61 percent of respondents said U.N. members should ”step in with military force to stop the violence in Darfur” and that 54 percent said the United States should be willing to contribute troops to such an operation. A higher percentage -- nearly three quarters -- of U.S. respondents said they thought NATO, including the U.S., should contribute equipment and logistical support to the current AU monitoring operation in Darfur, Sudan, where as many as 400,000 have died as a result of a two-year-old counterinsurgency campaign against the region's African inhabitants that the Bush administration has called ”genocide.” ”What is quite striking here is that even as the U.S. is tied down in Iraq and suffering daily casualties, a majority of Americans would support contributing troops to a multilateral operation in Darfur,” said Steven Kull, PIPA's executive director. ”This suggests that what is occurring there goes against strongly held values in the American public.” ”Indeed, multiple polls have now found that many Americans believe that if severe human rights abuses are occurring, especially genocide, the U.N. should have the right to intervene and the U.S. should be willing to contribute troops,” he added. The belief that military intervention for humanitarian purposes should trump concerns about national sovereignty in cases of serious abuses of human rights is apparently shared by most Africans, according to the Globescan surveys which, however, found a significant divergence of opinion among citizens of specific individuals. Support for U.N.-authorised intervention was strongest in Ghana (80 percent), Kenya (75 percent), Nigeria and Tanzania (66 percent), Zimbabwe (65 percent), and Cameroon (64 percent). In Angola, support for U.N. intervention was 55 percent, while in South Africa a plurality of 47 percent of respondents took the same view. Overall, only 19 percent of respondents opposed U.N.-authorised intervention, although opposition was almost twice as high in Angola, at 37 percent, according to the Globescan survey. Asked a choice of actors to intervene in conflicts ”like Darfur,” 30 percent of the African respondents said they preferred U.N. peacekeeping operations, while 22 percent opted for an AU force. Only five percent said they would prefer the intervention of a ”rich” non-African nation, and seven percent they would support all three options. The U.N. was most preferred by Ghana, home of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Kenya and Zimbabwe, while it was least preferred by South African respondents a plurality of whom nonetheless favoured U.N. intervention over any of the alternatives. ”Clearly, Africans are looking outside their own countries and especially to the United Nations to help deal with some of their problems,” said Globescan's Lloyd Hetherington. ”Contrary to their leaders, it appears that they would like to see the U.N. intervene in dealing with problems such as the crisis in Darfur, with a growing confidence in the African Union to also take on this role.” Thirteen percent of African respondents said they either opposed any foreign military intervention (11 percent) or no intervention at all (2 percent), while 24 percent expressed no opinion. The greatest number of people rejecting any foreign military option were found in the one Francophone country, Cameroon. The preference for the United Nations, according to a Globescan analysis, reflected a broader confidence in the world body despite its mixed record in Africa in recent years. Overall, 69 percent of Africans polled said they have a lot or some trust in the U.N. to operate in the best interests of their society. This was slightly higher than their confidence in the AU (63 percent), their national governments (59 percent), local governments (51 percent), and tribal councils (45 percent). Just over one-third of Africans interviewed by Globescan said they had heard or read a great deal or a fair amount about the Darfur conflict, according to the report. When compared with other recent polls on Darfur, the latest U.S. survey showed that public attitudes are affected by whether or not the violence amounts to genocide. Last December, when PIPA informed respondents that Bush himself had labeled the violence in Darfur a ”genocide,” 75 percent of respondents said the U.N. should intervene with military force, and 60 percent said the U.S. should contribute troops. But when PIPA last week presented the situation more equivocally as ”large-scale violence in Darfur àthat some, including the Bush administration have called genocide,” support for U.N. intervention was 13 percent lower and support for U.S. troops contributions 6 points lower.

Congo, DR see Australia

AP 26 June 2005, 6:48PM Rape being used more often as a weapon of war in Congo Brutal attacks are one of the most serious challenges for those trying to protect civilians By BRYAN MEALER Associated Press PANZI, CONGO - The teenager with flowers in her hair crossed her hands to keep them from trembling and described how she was raped by 10 militiamen. ADVERTISEMENT Abducted two years ago when she was 16, Ombeni was kept as a concubine in the forests of eastern Congo. She became pregnant and at nearly nine months' gestation, her captors cut her with a machete, leaving the baby dead and abandoning the girl in the forest. "I laid there for one week," Ombeni said. She was eventually rescued by a woman who was foraging for food and made her way to a clinic for rape victims. She is one of thousands of women who are brutally raped each year in Congo, another layer of degradation in a war that never seems to end. In a briefing before the U.N. Security Council last week, U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said rape as a weapon of war was at its worst in eastern Congo and the Darfur region of Sudan. Egeland said the scale, prevalence and profound impact of sexual violence made it one of the most serious challenges facing those trying to protect civilians caught up in war. Ensuring rapists were punished and restoring local justice systems were key to addressing the problem, he said. In Congo, for those who manage to survive kidnappings and gang rapes, there is the clinic at Panzi General Hospital. Located on the outskirts of the provincial capital Bukavu, it treats more than 300 rape victims each month. Ombeni has spent months at the clinic, undergoing three operations to repair her bladder and awaiting a fourth. She says her captors were not trying to "deliver my baby, but to kill me and the baby." With funding from the European Commission, the clinic provides medical and psychiatric care, as well as counseling to help women re-enter society. Rape victims are often ostracized in Africa, where husbands and families routinely kick out their wives and mothers if they have been raped. The United States government also provides funding to more than a dozen organizations in the region offering counseling, family mediation, medical care and legal representation to victims and their families. Since 2003, the combined programs have helped more than 16,000 women. Most rapes in the area are committed by Rwandan Hutu rebels, who fled into eastern Congo after Rwanda's 1994 genocide, said Panzi's medical director Denis Mukwege. Generally, militiamen will circle a village and rape all the women, he said. Then they'll choose the young ones and take them as slaves into the forest-covered mountains. "This is not an issue of sexual desire," he added. "The aim is to destroy." The number of rape cases is increasing, he said. Since January, 1,700 women have been admitted to the clinic. The clinic expects to treat about 3,600 women by year's end — up from 2,700 last year. Mukwege said this number is only a fraction of the women who are raped in outlying villages. Most choose to keep silent, fearing reprisals by militia or banishment. When victims arrive at the Panzi clinic, they're put in touch with Cecile Mulolo, a psychologist who counsels the women, who often turn up alone. Mulolo visits a recovery ward where a dozen patients have undergone surgery to treat injuries from brutal rapes. "I praise God that I'm alive, that I made it here," one girl said.

June 17, 2005 latimes.com : World E-mail story Print Most E-mailed Sudanese Visitor Split U.S. Officials By Ken Silverstein, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON — A decision by the CIA to fly Sudan's intelligence chief to Washington for secret meetings aimed at cementing cooperation against terrorism triggered such intense opposition within the Bush administration that some officials suggested arresting him here, sources said. The internal debate over the April visit by Maj. Gen. Salah Abdallah Gosh, whose government Washington accuses of committing genocide in the Darfur region, goes to the heart of a broader dispute about the CIA's alliances with foreign intelligence services. ADVERTISEMENT Critics say that when the U.S. works with controversial countries such as Sudan, it suggests that it isn't serious about promoting democracy and human rights. Many experts on intelligence matters, however, say that Washington has no choice but to rely on some governments with questionable human rights records to help fight its war against terrorism. Gosh's agency has allowed the CIA to question Al Qaeda suspects living in Sudan and detained foreign militants moving through the country on their way to joining Iraqi insurgents, U.S. and Sudanese officials have said. The trip was intended to help strengthen the relationship. With plans for the visit on the verge of collapse, two people familiar with the situation said, a compromise was struck with opponents of the visit in the State and Justice departments. Gosh was allowed to come, but a scheduled meeting with CIA Director Porter J. Goss was canceled. The CIA, Justice Department, State Department and Sudanese government declined to comment about the dispute on the record because of the sensitivity of the relationship. But Ted Dagne, a Sudan specialist with the Congressional Research Service, said State Department officials believed Gosh's trip would "send a political signal to the [Sudanese] government that Darfur would not prevent Sudan from winning support in Washington." The disclosure of Gosh's visit, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, also angered some members of Congress. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus criticized the visit during a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday. Rep. Donald M. Payne (D-N.J.) told a State Department official who was testifying on Capitol Hill last month that bringing Gosh "to visit Washington at this time is tantamount to inviting the head of the Nazi SS at the height of the Holocaust." A senior U.S. official, who commented officially but declined to be named, defended the visit. "Mr. Gosh has strategic knowledge and information about a critical region in the war on terror. The information he has is of substantial value to law enforcement, the intelligence community and the U.S. government as a whole, and this relationship will be of both current and future value." Gosh's visit, the official added, did not mean that Sudan would receive "a free pass on critical policy issues" such as Darfur. Partnerships with foreign governments, known as liaison relationships, are "an indispensable part of CIA's counterterrorism strategy," former agency Director George J. Tenet told the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks last year. Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, who spent 33 years at the CIA and founded its counterterrorism center, said dealing with controversial regimes is sometimes unavoidable. "You have no choice but to work with and recruit the bad guys because the Mother Teresas of the world don't have the information you need," he said. However, others say the U.S. often ends up protecting extremely repressive regimes, including some in the Mideast. "The method of governing in the Middle East is to force your enemies to keep their heads down," said Bob Baer, a former CIA officer. Intelligence agencies there "let people know that if they plan anything against the regime, they're going to die." The CIA inevitably becomes committed to protecting elites that offer to collaborate on intelligence, he said. The CIA's relationship with Sudan is especially controversial because of the government's previous ties to Islamic radicals. Osama bin Laden lived in Khartoum, the country's capital, from 1991 to 1996, before he departed for Afghanistan. In 1993, the Clinton administration put Sudan on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, and the Bush administration has kept it there. The U.S. continues to harshly criticize Sudan for human rights violations. In September, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell accused Sudan of committing genocide in Darfur. President Bush reiterated that charge this month. Yet cooperation between the CIA and the Mukhabarat, Sudan's intelligence agency, has steadily grown since the Sept. 11 attacks. "Sudan's overall cooperation and information sharing improved markedly and produced significant progress in combating terrorist activity," the State Department said this year in a report on global terrorism. CIA and Mukhabarat officials have met regularly over the last few years, but Gosh had been seeking an invitation to Washington in recognition of his government's efforts, sources told The Times. The CIA, hoping to seal the partnership, extended the invitation. "The agency's view was that the Sudanese are helping us on terrorism and it was proud to bring him over," said a government source with knowledge of Gosh's visit. "They didn't care about the political implications." But an internal debate erupted after word of the invitation spread to other government agencies. Their concern stemmed in part from a 2004 letter that 11 members of Congress sent to Bush, which accused Gosh of being a chief architect of the violence in Darfur. The letter said Sudan had engaged in a "scorched-earth policy against innocent civilians in Darfur." It identified 21 Sudanese government, military and militia leaders as responsible and called on the administration to freeze their assets and ban them from coming to the U.S. Gosh was No. 2 on the list. Sudan's government has rejected accusations of genocide. It says the clashes in Darfur are part of long-standing conflicts between farmers and nomadic tribes that are fueled by disputes over water, land and other resources. It denies that senior officials such as Gosh have ordered attacks on civilians, which it blames on militias operating largely beyond its control. Two senior U.S. officials told The Times that they have no direct evidence that Gosh has directed military operations in Darfur. Several sources, including a State Department official, said the question of the propriety of the visit provoked sharp divisions at that agency. Similar opposition emerged at the Justice Department, where officials discussed arresting Gosh, according to two sources. One person said Gosh learned of the discussions during his meetings with CIA officials. Despite the internal dissension, CIA chief Goss remained committed to the trip. However, sources said, he agreed to scratch his meeting with the Sudanese official. Gosh arrived here aboard a CIA jet and met with other senior agency officials April 20 and 21. The CIA canceled the meeting with Goss on the second day, saying that the director was unavailable because he needed to attend John D. Negroponte's swearing-in to the position of director of national intelligence, a source said. Gosh returned to Sudan on April 22, again traveling in a jet provided by the CIA. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who wrote to the administration this month protesting Gosh's visit, said the CIA should not have brought him to Washington and could have arranged to meet him in Sudan or a neighboring country. "I understand that in the intelligence business you have to deal with unsavory figures, but this sends very bad signals," he said. "Unless he's providing information that's going to save the Western world, it's hard to see how you can justify this." Payne was equally harsh. "How can the administration say that genocide is occurring in Darfur and then bring Gosh over here?" he said. "It was a dastardly and unconscionable act." Payne, of New Jersey, said he asked about Gosh's visit in the meeting with Rice. He said she defended the visit, saying that "in situations of high stakes, there has to be a balancing and that you sometimes need to do things that you wouldn't under normal circumstances." David Shinn, director of East African affairs at the State Department from 1993 to 1996, said the Bush administration's engagement with the Sudanese government had produced important gains. In January, Muslim government forces in the north and Christian and animist rebels in the south agreed to end a two-decade civil war in a deal brokered by the U.S. The peace agreement will take effect next month, when a national unity government is to be formed. "Counterterrorism cooperation and ending the war with the south are pretty big deals," said Shinn, who also worked at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum. "Engagement with Sudan is appropriate, and so is putting pressure on the government in Darfur. The two are not mutually exclusive." Shinn also said that some U.S. critics of engagement had been largely uncritical of human rights violations by southern rebels during the civil war. "A lot of people blame the government for all of the problems there," he said. "There are bad guys on the other side, too."

Ethiopia

The Ethiopian Herald (Addis Ababa) 28 June 2005 Court Passes Prison Sentence On Genocide Convicts, Acquits Suspect By ENA Addis Ababa The Federal High Court has sentenced six people, who were convicted of involving in genocide in the former Chebo and Guraghe Province to up to 11 years' prison terms. The 6th Criminal Bench of the Federal High Court passed the verdict on five of the defendants after looking into their cases in absentia. The court sentenced Beyene Delme to 11 years behind bar, while it sentenced Adugna Ali, Wondimu Gebre, Gulima Gemechu and Argawa Jeda to 10 year jail terms each. The other convict, Getu Gebre-Michel also received 10 years behind bars on court's session held on June 15, 2005. The court has ordered the Federal Police and the Central Prison to arrest the convicts and enforce the decision passed in absentia. The court also stripped off the civil rights of the convicts for three years after their release from jail. Meanwhile, the Federal High Court has acquitted Brig.-Gen. Kebede Armidie, who was accused of committing the crime of genocide while he was Commander of the 92nd Militia Brigade in the former Eritrea province. The Special Prosecutor had filed charges against Brig.-Gen. Kebede for ordering the killing on July 12, 1979 of Second Lieutenant Deboch Kebede at Nakfa front in the former Eritrea province. Although the Special Prosecutor had presented to the court what it said would substantiate the charge, the jury, however, decided by a majority vote that the evidence presented does not corroborate the allegation. The Special Prosecutor had nevertheless appealed to the Federal Supreme Court which decided that the accused should defend. As per the decision of the Supreme Court, the case was brought back to the Sixth Criminal Bench of the Federal High Court, where the defendant presented his defense witnesses through whom he proved his innocence. He was, accordingly, acquitted by the court on May 23, 2005 from the charges filed against him.

Liberia

The NEWS (Monrovia) 16 June 2005 Punish Perpetrators of River Gee 'Massacre' Youths Insist By Monrovia The River Gee Progressive Youth Alliance (GEPAY) is demanding the speedy prosecution of perpetrators of the River Gee Massacre. It can be recalled in March 2004, the Chairman of the Independent National Human Rights Commission, Atty. Dempster Brown accused a Lebanese Businessman Abbas Fawaz and Internal Affair Minister Dan Morais for their alleged link to the massacre of 369 persons in River Gee County. Atty. Brown then quoted eyewitnesses and escapees of the alleged massacre that the act occurred in April of 2003 in the towns of Youbor and Tuobo Gbahieleken, Grahoo District. He claimed that the escapees told him those militiamen loyal to exiled former President Charles Taylor slaughtered men, women and children. Minister Morais has since denied the allegation linking him to such massacre and threatened to take court action against Atty. Brown. Since the revelation by Atty. Brown, nobody has been brought to book thus leaving youths of the county to raise another alarm. GEPAY, in a release said, "We are calling on Chairman Charles Gyude Bryant to immediately dismiss without precondition those government officials who are accused of killing River Gee Citizens." Describing the massacre as "barbaric", the group insists that the perpetrators should not go unpunished; if the nation must set its human rights record straight and promote peace and reconciliation.

Sudan

BBC 17 Jun, 2005 Sudanese flee south despite peace South Sudan remains one of the world's poorest regions Thousands of southern Sudanese are still crossing into Uganda despite a peace deal in January that ended the 21-year civil war. The United Nations refugee agency said at least 7,500 people had fled into Uganda this year. They say they were fleeing ethnic tension, food shortages and forced recruitment into the former rebel army. Some described horrific attacks by Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army, which has bases in southern Sudan. They said they had witnessed their neighbours being hacked to death. The refugees said that food distribution had stopped in refugee camps inside Sudan. The continuing crisis in Sudan has jeopardised the scheduled repatriation of at least 160,000 refugees from Uganda, which had been due in October, said UNHCR official Roberta Russo. During the war, some two million people died and hundreds of thousands fled into neighbouring countries. Many more fled their homes but remained within Sudan. Thousands have already started to return home. Under the peace deal, the mainly Christian and animist former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army will share power and wealth with the Muslim-dominated government. After years of fighting, southern Sudan is one of the world's poorest regions.

washingtonpost.com 14 June 2005 A Sudan Story By Stephen R. Weissman Post Tuesday, June 14, 2005; A21 The scene : A home in Washington, Christmas 2005. Son : Dad, tell me again how you helped save all those people's lives -- mostly kids. Dad : Well, son, it was like any other big political campaign I've worked on. Last June everybody we knew was just heartbroken about the killing and starvation in Darfur, Sudan, and frustrated by their inability to help stop it. It wasn't that Americans, the most generous people in the world, wouldn't lift a finger to help people in extreme danger, including Africans. The basic problem was that the groups that were working hardest to save the people in Darfur didn't seem to know enough about how American politics works in the 21st century. Then someone decided to hire our political consulting and lobbying firm. We set up a campaign plan, just like we do for candidates or businesses and governments trying to influence federal domestic policy. Eight weeks after we began, President Bush announced an agreement for rapid deployment of a 25,000-member African Union-NATO "protection" force to beef up the small African "observer" force on the scene. Son : Wow! How did you do that? Dad : We were hired by a coalition of groups that were active on the issue. We supplied them with our normal major-policy-change package. It's standard for tough domestic issues: · Lobbyists, many of them former members and staffers of the administration and Congress. · Pollsters to see what arguments would fly with the general public. · TV ads. The main one, "Muna's Story," played eight or 10 times on broadcast and cable networks in selected media markets to create public pressure on President Bush, key congressional leaders, vulnerable candidates and people who might want to run for president in 2008. The spot began with a map showing how close Sudan is to the Middle East. Then you saw a beautiful 14-year-old girl standing in front of a tent in a ramshackle refugee camp in the desert, saying, "I remember my village." Shift to a peaceful, sunlit place, houses with thatched roofs, small gardens. Suddenly there was a horrifying shot of an entire village going up in flames from a bombing raid by the Sudanese government. Then Muna said, "This is what the government soldiers and their Janjaweed militias are doing to us. I think Americans care about what happens to people like us." A young ex-Marine who had advised the African observers came on: "Every single day you go out to see more dead bodies"; meanwhile, the numbers "200,000 dead" and "2 million homeless" appeared on the screen. "Experts and senators from both parties agree a larger joint African and Western force can stop this genocide." The ad ended, "Please call this number or visit this Web site now to ask your representatives in Congress and President Bush to send help immediately before it's too late." The ad campaign was followed up by our free-media blitz, which helped get hundreds of stories printed, produced and played on talk radio, cable TV and popular news Web sites. · Targeted mail and Web appeals -- based on polling, list purchases and data-mining technology -- to build the coalition's dues-paying membership and grass-roots lobbying operation. We focused on key groups likely to be supportive, such as those with strong religious connections (including evangelical Protestants), African Americans and NPR listeners. Within a month we had 600,000 messages from concerned citizens rolling into the White House and Congress. We got many of our members and supporters to organize local meet-ups and to participate in nearly 500 personal meetings with members of Congress. Son : But Dad, this must have all cost a fortune. Who paid for it? Dad : We spent $6 million over two months, but that was a good deal -- about a third of what the health insurance industry spent on the "Harry and Louise" ads that torpedoed the Clinton health plan. Some of the money was donated by a couple of big foundations, mainly to subsidize the coalition's expanded educational work. Maybe they got tired of funding think tanks and advocacy groups that produced great foreign policy ideas but lacked the grass roots to get the government to implement them. Even more important, a few really rich people chipped in to finance most of the lobbying effort. One was the son of a businessman who had earlier given big bucks to the John Kerry campaign. Another was a wealthy Republican woman who had done a lot of fundraising for the GOP national convention because she believed the president would stand strong against the threat of terrorism. Son : Why didn't this kind of thing happen earlier, before so many people had died? Dad : Somehow, a lot of smart, well-intentioned people felt that influencing foreign policy was completely different from influencing domestic issues -- health care, Social Security, energy, the environment. They hoped that getting op-eds and editorials published in the newspapers, testifying before Congress, putting good information out on beautiful Web sites that relatively few people knew about, and fostering student activism might be enough to shame our government into doing something effective. Son : I hope I get a chance to help people like that someday. Dad : Let's pray you don't have to. The writer, former staff director of the House subcommittee on Africa, works on campaign finance policy issues. He is the author of "A Culture of Deference: Congress's Failure of Leadership in Foreign Policy."

US Congress report calls for rapid UN reforms Wed June 15, 2005 4:15 PM GMT+02:00 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. congressional report on Wednesday criticized the United Nations as lacking oversight and accountability and urged rapid management reforms by Secretary-General Kofi Annan amid dismal staff morale. The report from a bipartisan task force gave dozens of recommendations, including creation of a rapid-reaction capability to prevent genocide and of a new human rights council. It opposed creating a standing U.N. military force. "The need for internal reform has never been more pressing," the report said. "If we are to see the United Nations recover from its present difficulties, American leadership will be indispensable in effecting change," it said. The report follows a slew of scandals at the United Nations, from sex abuse by peacekeepers to allegations of corruption in the Iraq oil-for-food program, which is the subject of many other investigations. The report also appeared to stop far short of endorsing legislation proposed by Republicans to tie U.N. reforms to U.S. payment of dues to the world body. But it said without far-reaching reforms at the world body, challenges to international security and development would be all the greater. Task force members interviewed scores of U.N. officials for the study. "The stories heard were frequently grim accounts of poor management, excessive politicization, and missed opportunities for reform," the report said. "Despite the efforts of a few member states, the United Nations remains lacking in oversight and accountability," it added. The task force, created by the U.S. Congress last December to find ways to make the U.N. more effective, was led by former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, a Democrat. Several members of Congress have called on Annan to step down because of the scandals in the oil-for-food program and what they see as his poor management style. Rep. Henry Hyde, an Illinois Republican who chairs the House International Relations Committee, has introduced legislation that would withhold half of the United States' dues to the United Nations unless it makes certain reforms. The United States is by far the biggest donor to the United Nations and contributes 22 percent of the regular operating budget and nearly 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget. Hyde's bill is expected to be put to a vote in the House on Thursday. The Bush administration opposes it so far and there is no companion measure in the Senate, which would have to approve. The task force backed many of Annan's own recommendations to overhaul the world body, including a proposal for a permanent Human Rights Council to replace the current Human Rights Commission, which has been criticized because its members include countries with poor human rights records such as Libya and Zimbabwe. The task force will discuss its findings with Congress in a hearing on June 22.

Government pleased with UN resolution on truth commission 22 Jun 2005 13:16:16 GMT Source: IRIN BUJUMBURA, 22 June (IRIN) - The government of Burundi has welcomed the UN Security Council's adoption of a resolution to create a mixed truth commission and a special court to prosecute war crimes and human rights violations committed during decades of civil war in the country, Justice Minister Didace Kiganahe said on Tuesday. He attended a special briefing on 15 June in New York, the UN headquarters, on the preparation of resolution 1606, which the Council adopted on Monday. Once operational, the truth commission and the special chamber would fall under Burundi's judicial system. It would comprise three international and two Burundian commissioners, mandated to investigate killings that have taken place in the country since independence in 1962 through 2000, when Burundian parties signed the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Accord. The commission would have become operational in September but Kiganahe said he had asked for more time to allow the new government, which would be in place in September following presidential elections on 19 August, to take stock of the situation. The commission and special court would also classify the types of crimes committed and identify those behind them. Kiganahe said those responsible for the crimes would thus be known, and if they sought forgiveness, they would be accorded a chance to defend themselves. Those found responsible would be punished. The commission's findings would help the special chamber, also composed of three international and two Burundian judges, to judge those responsible for crimes committed in 1972 and 1993. Mass killings of the majority Hutu by the minority Tutsi occurred in the country in 1972 and those of the Tutsi, by the Hutu, in 1993. The 1993 deaths followed the assassination, by Tutsi paratroopers, of the first Hutu democratically-elected president, Melchior Ndadaye. Kiganahe said the presence of international commissioners and judges would lend fairness to the conclusions of the mixed truth commission and special chamber, for both the Hutu and the Tutsi. However, not all Burundians favoured the creation of the commission. The chairman of the Action Contre le Genocide (Action Against Genocide or AC Genocide), Venant Bamboneyeho, said neither the truth commission nor the special chamber would be helpful to Burundi. "That special chamber has not been created anywhere else, why will it work for Burundi?" he said. He added that the commission would have been suitable for the country had genocide crimes not been committed. AC Genocide has made several appeals to the UN to set up an international judicial commission of inquiry before the holding of general elections in Burundi to ensure that those implicated did not take part in the polls. Bamboneyeho said setting up such a special chamber now that a series of elections are already under way in the country was treacherous. The Arusha peace accord signed in 2000 provided for the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission and an international judicial commission of inquiry. Kiganahe said Burundi would set up a 25-member truth and reconciliation commission as the law setting it up was promulgated in December 2004. However, a UN mission, led by the Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Tuliameni Kolomoh, to Burundi in May 2004 to investigate the feasibility of an international judicial commission, recommended the merger of a truth commission and the special chamber into a single mechanism. On Tuesday, Kiganahe said the idea of a special tribunal for Burundi that the government requested in 2002 was rejected because it would be expensive and, by experience, inefficient. However, he deplored the fact that the "the reconciliation aspect has not been given its due importance" in setting up of the truth commission and special chamber for Burundi. Rwanda

June 22, 2005 latimes.com : World Print E-mail story Most E-mailed Rebels Fear of Revenge Keeps Them in Congo By BRYAN MEALER, Associated Press Writer KAZIBA, Congo -- With Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders, the four young killers paced the dusty chicken yard in their Wellington boots, growing more nervous by the minute. The fidgety gunmen -- Rwandan Hutu rebels who fled to Congo after killing in Rwanda's 1994 genocide -- said they were ready to return home after living like fugitives for 11 years. But they were wary. From afar in Europe, their leader, Ignace Murwanashyaka, has promised some 8,000 fighters of his Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda, known by its French acronym FDLR, would disarm and leave Congo for home. But in the dense forests of eastern Congo, the fighters say they fear going home means humiliation, imprisonment or death. Earlier this month, Murwanashyaka, who lives in Germany, toured the rebel camps trying to persuade his troops to return home. He had little to say as he left, leading many to believe he'd made little progress. The Hutu rebels are warlords over entire areas of Congo's forests, controlling gold mines and villages. Every week, they are accused of raping and killing local residents. Large parts of FDLR territory are too dangerous for even Congo's army or U.N. peacekeepers. The U.N. would like to see the Hutus go home and has promised to help with any repatriation, but could instead find itself fighting them. Last week, the U.N. general in charge of peacekeepers in eastern Congo told The Associated Press he was planning stepped-up operations against gunmen in the region using attack helicopters and Guatemalan special forces. There are signs of dissension among the Hutu fighters. Earlier this month, four of them stopped a passing U.N. officer's vehicle and hinted they wanted help going home. For a promise of beer, the rebels agreed to meet at a nearby wooden shack, where they could talk without being seen by their comrades. Several rebels have been executed by their officers, accused of trying to desert. Soon after arriving at the rendezvous, the rebels became paranoid, afraid their fellow soldiers stationed nearby would see them talking to the United Nations. "How has our life been in the bush? It has been hell," said one of the rebels, who only gave the name Abdul. His soiled yellow shirt featured dozens of tiny American flags. "We can be at ease only in our own country." Abdul said he was 27-years old, meaning he was just a teenager when he joined the execution squads that slaughtered 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the Rwandan genocide a decade ago. "We have killed, but they have killed, too," said Abdul, speaking about Rwanda's Tutsi army, who were also accused of massacring thousands of ethnic Hutus in Congo following the genocide. Rwanda's president Paul Kagame -- the former Tutsi rebel leader who finally crushed the genocide -- has refused to offer any guarantees of amnesty to the rebels. "We know Kagame very well," said Nkunda, another rebel. "He'll put us in prison and make us build houses for Tutsis." "We need guarantees," said Nkunda. "We're afraid the government will sell us out. We need them to find us jobs and guarantee our livelihood." Rwanda invaded Congo twice, in 1996 and 1998, intending to drive out the rebels, but never seemed to succeed in catching them. The 1998 invasion sparked a five-year war in Congo that sucked in six African armies and killed nearly 4 million people, mostly from war-induced sickness and hunger, aid groups say. The rebels talked about being lonely in the forest, and how it's hard to meet women. A dowry cost around $300, said Abdul. "I've never even seen fifty dollars," he said, shrugging his shoulders. The rebels chain smoked cigarettes while chickens scratched at the dirt. An old woman in an open doorway pounded manioc root into flour, oblivious of all the talk of genocide, loneliness and revenge. Two fellow rebels in plainclothes suddenly appeared, wondering what was going on. The U.N. officer shook his head. As feared, the four Hutu rebels got cold feet and ditched their plans for repatriation. "Maybe next Saturday," one of them said. He strapped on his Kalashnikov and went off to drink his beer

Rwanda

AP 29 June 2005 Rwanda: No death penalty if Canada deports genocide suspect KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) -- Rwanda is ready to forego seeking the death penalty to ensure a former government adviser is returned from Canada to face charges related to the 1994 genocide, an official said Wednesday. Canada's Supreme Court ruling Tuesday that Leon Mugesera helped incite the slaughter and should be deported to face trial in his homeland. With all of Leon Mugesera's legal channels exhausted, the Canadian government must now decide whether Canada, which has no death penalty, will send a man to Rwanda where he faces a possible death sentence. Ottawa may seek a pledge from the government in Kigali that it will not execute Mugesera if he is convicted of inciting genocide. "We are happy with the decision and we are ready to make any necessary guarantee that any party would require, including that this man would not face the death penalty," Deputy Chief Prosecutor Martin Ngoga told The Associated Press. "For us, there is nothing that should stand in the way of having this man tried in Rwanda," Ngoga said. "We have assembled all the necessary evidence to have him prosecuted if he is brought to Rwanda. We are ready and we have expressed our intention to have him here." More than 500,000 Tutsi ethnic minority and politically moderates from the Hutu majority were killed in a 100-day genocide orchestrated by the extremist Hutu government then in power. The Canadian government has sought to deport Leon Mugesera for a decade on grounds that he promoted hatred, genocide and crimes against humanity in a speech he made two years before the killings began. Mugesera, who moved to Spain, then Canada before the genocide began, had appealed against two deportation orders by Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board. He became a permanent resident of Canada in 1993 and lives with his family in the French-speaking province of Quebec. Mugesera's lawyer said his client feared he would be tortured and killed if forced to return to Rwanda. A Canadian appeals court ruled two years ago that the evidence did not indicate Mugesera deliberately incited murder. The appeals panel said the translation of the speech cited by the government in seeking Mugesera's deportation was inaccurate. But the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the lower court erred in its review of the case. The decision exhausts Mugesera's legal channels, leaving it up to the Justice Ministry to take the next step. Mugesera was accused of encouraging attacks on Rwanda's Tutsi minority in a 1992 speech. At the time, he was an adviser to Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death in a plane crash in April 1994 sparked the genocide. "In this case, the allegation of incitement to the crime of genocide was well founded," the court ruled. "Mugesera's message was delivered in a public place at a public meeting and would have been clearly understood by the audience."

Sudan

BBC 18 June 2005 Sudan 'foes' sign landmark deal NDA chairman Mohammed Osman al-Mirghani called for co-operation The Sudanese government and the biggest opposition grouping have signed a landmark reconciliation agreement. The deal, signed in Cairo, brings the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) into a power-sharing administration set up with ex-southern rebels in January. The NDA includes some of Sudan's oldest parties. They went into exile after the Islamist-backed 1989 coup that brought the current government to power. The deal does not include the Darfur conflict - a big obstacle to peace. January's peace agreement with the southern rebels ended more than 20 years of civil war. 'Backbone to unity' There were cheers and applause as NDA chairman Mohammed Osman al-Mirghani signed the accord with Sudanese Vice-President Ali Osman Taha at a ceremony broadcast live by Egyptian television. The Sudanese people are the main beneficiary of this agreement, which heralds a new era Mohammed Osman al-Mirghani NDA chairman Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak attended the event, along with his Sudanese counterpart, Omar al-Bashir, the former southern rebel leader, John Garang, and the leadership of the opposition alliance. "We are starting a new era where Sudan is free of struggle... Let us work hand in hand to offer the Sudanese the prosperity they have been lacking," said Mr Bashir. "This latest agreement... will be the backbone of Sudanese unity," he said. Mr Mirghani said the deal "heralds a new era in which all of us have to co-operate to achieve global peace, strengthen the march towards real democracy". More than two million people have fled their homes in Darfur The NDA alliance includes some of Sudan's oldest political parties, such as the Democratic Unionists, along with the Communists and various trade union and professional groups. They will now take up seats in an interim government, broadening the base of support for the historic peace deal signed earlier this year to end the civil war in the south. But according to the opposition alliance, key details have yet to be finalised, including of its share of seats in the administration and whether its fighters will be demobilised or integrated into the national army. The Egyptian president said the Cairo accord "should serve as an inspiration for finding a settlement for Darfur, this crisis we all look forward to end".

Reuters 21 June 2005 UN says rape is systematic weapon of war in Darfur Tue 21 Jun 2005 23:42:38 BST By Claudia Parsons UNITED NATIONS, June 21 (Reuters) - One medical charity has has treated 500 victims of sexual violence in Darfur in four months and this is just a fraction of such attacks in the Sudanese province, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday. Under-Secretary General Jan Egeland told the Security Council women and children were being systematically raped and assaulted in the ravaged region and urged Sudanese authorities to do more to protect civilians and end a culture of impunity. Addressing the U.N. Security Council on the need for more international effort to protect civilians in armed conflicts, Egeland said Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo were among the countries where sexual violence was worst. The Darfur conflict broke out two years ago when rebels took up arms against the Sudanese government, complaining of discrimination. Khartoum is accused of retaliating by arming militias who burned villages and killed and raped civilians. At least 180,000 people have died from violence, hunger and disease and two million have been driven from their homes. Egeland said medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres had reported treating 500 survivors of sexual violence in Darfur in just four months. "We believe this represents only a fraction of the total victims," he said, adding that the impact of the violence was compounded by Sudan's failure to acknowledge the scale of the problem and to act to stop it. "Not only do the Sudanese authorities fail to provide effective physical protection, they inhibit access to treatment." He said in some cases unmarried women who became pregnant after being raped had been treated as criminals and subjected to further brutal treatment by police. "This is an affront to all humanity," Egeland said. The U.N. Security Council has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged war crimes in Darfur. Earlier this month Sudan formed a special court to try alleged criminals in the western Darfur region. RAPE AS WEAPON "In Darfur ... rape is systematically used as a weapon of warfare," Egeland said. France had organized the debate on civilian casualties around the world, an issue which has been before the council for several years and eventually resulted in a mandate for peacekeepers to protect civilians. Egeland said that while he was concerned about the targeting of civilians in conflicts around the world, including Iraq where he said as many as 1,000 civilians may have been killed since April, his biggest concern was Africa. "In North Kivu, in eastern Congo, one nongovernmental organization reported 2,000 cases of sexual abuse ... in one month," Egeland said. He said most of the cases were rape. He said U.N. officials in the area estimated there were at least 25,000 cases a year of sexual violence against women and children in North Kivu, a situation partly attributable to the breakdown of discipline in the regular armed forces. The United Nations has more than 16,000 peacekeepers in the Congo, where peace deals in 2003 officially ended a five-year war that killed nearly four million people, mostly from hunger and disease. Armed groups still operate in much of the east. He picked out Ivory Coast, Liberia, northern Uganda and Nepal as areas where civilians were most endangered by conflicts. "Today it is much more dangerous to be a civilian than to be a soldier in most of the armed conflicts," Egeland said.

VOA 22 June 2005 Official Says US Committed to Darfur Solution By Dan Robinson Capitol Hill 22 June 2005 Robinson report (Real Audio) Download 453K Listen to Robinson report (Real Audio) Download 453K Members of Congress are urging stronger U.S. action to quell violence in Sudan's Darfur region. A top State Department official appeared at a hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday to discuss what the Bush administration is doing to support African peacekeeping efforts. U.S. legislators have made clear what they think needs to be done to stop killing in Darfur, and one of the items at the top of the list is more American support for an expanded African Union peacekeeping force. Robert Zoellick is welcomed by an African Union soldier as he arrives in Northern Darfur region's administrative capital El Fasher (file) Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick says the administration is committed to strengthening the AU force, while continuing to work to help Sudan resolve its long-standing ethnic and political divisions. "A key component which many of you refer to is the need to expand the AU mission. You have just gotten the AU security forces up to about 2,700," Mr. Zoellick said. "Over the course of this year we have urged them [and] they have agreed to expand to 7,700. There is some discussion among the African Union about possibly going up to a higher number, they have referred to 12,000, but frankly each of [these steps] take work." Mr. Zoellick said the United States has carried most of the weight of assisting peacekeeping efforts in Darfur, for example through airlifting Rwandan members of the AU force and constructing facilities for them. The United States has provided hundreds of millions of dollars for humanitarian needs in Darfur and neighboring Chad, including refugee assistance, support for African Union troops, and to help implement the North-South agreement between Khartoum and southern rebels. Tom Lantos Congressman Tom Lantos, the top Democrat on the committee, has been recommending for some time that the United States persuade NATO to get involved in Darfur. "Has the administration considered the possibility of calling a NATO emergency session to call on our NATO allies, particularly the ones who have no forces in the two main areas [Iraq and Afghanistan] where we are currently committed, so that an interim major NATO force could be put in place to prevent what we correctly called genocide," he said. Mr. Zoellick says obtaining a NATO agreement to put forces on the ground in Darfur would be difficult, adding that time must be given for an African solution to work. Wednesday's hearing provided another opportunity for some lawmakers to voice concern about a visit to Washington in April by Sudan's intelligence chief. Administration officials have said the visit by Salah Abdallah Gosh was necessary as part of ongoing intelligence consultations with Sudan involving the war on terrorism. But to some members of Congress, this sent the wrong signal about U.S. intentions to put an end to killing in Darfur. Donald Payne Congressman Donald Payne was more blunt in denouncing the visit last May. "A person who leads the killing, who instructs the Janjaweed [Arab militia]), who has blood on his hands, who allows rape to go on, who condones killing of children, burning of villages, bombing of cities, he was flown to Washington, D.C. to meet with our State Department and CIA officials. It's a disgrace," Mr.Payne said. Mr. Zoellick Wednesday said such contacts provide another opportunity for the United States to drive home points about the need for cooperation on Darfur. "When the [Sudan] intelligence official came to the United States, we coordinated with the [U.S.] intelligence agencies," Mr. Zoellick said. "The State Department actually saw the intelligence official, and we coordinated with our intelligence officials to drive home the message that counter-terrorism cooperation was not enough, that we had to action on Darfur, and the implementation of the North-South agreement." Congressman Payne told VOA Wednesday that, although he has no direct evidence regarding the role Mr. Gosh may have played in Darfur, "everything leads" to him having been involved. The chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Congressman Henry Hyde, said Sudan's "reported cooperation" in the war on terrorism should not outweigh the issues of Darfur or the need to see the North-South Sudan agreement succeed.

BBC 24 June 2005 Sudan planes 'bomb' rebel forces As in Darfur, the government is accused of ignoring the east Sudanese government warplanes have dropped bombs on north-eastern rebel forces who have been fighting the army since Sunday, the rebels say. A number of people were injured in the raid, the Eastern Front rebels said. The group complains the Beja and Rashaida communities have been marginalised in favour of Arab groups and want a fair share of resources. Sudan accuses Eritrea of backing the rebels who hold an area close to the joint border, where they operate. 'Hospitals full' "Today they are bombing with aircraft... We are collecting information on the number of people injured," said Eastern Front spokesman Salah Barqueen. He also said that hospitals in Tokar and Sudan's largest port, Port Sudan, were full of civilian casualties. Q&A: Eastern rebellion Simmering rebellion There has been no independent confirmation of these claims. "They are bombing because they failed to face our troops on the ground, so now they are doing the same as in Darfur," Mr Barqueen said. More than two million people have fled their homes in a separate conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan. In Darfur, many refugees said their villages were bombed before Arab militias rode in on camels and horses, killing, raping and looting. The rebels are positioned south of Tokar, 120km from Port Sudan, which is vital to Sudan's growing oil industry. Both sides say have been heavy casualties in fighting on the ground since the weekend. Rebels fall out The clashes are a setback for efforts to bring peace to Sudan, which were boosted at the weekend when a deal was signed between the government and the biggest opposition grouping, the National Democratic Alliance. Eastern rebels were part of the NDA alliance, which has been exiled for more than 15 years. The rebels said they launched their biggest offensive for years when they attacked three garrisons near Tokar on Sunday. They also claim to have captured 20 soldiers but admit they do not control Tokar itself. Attempting to defuse the rebellion, Khartoum said last month it would give about $88 million to develop east Sudan. Meanwhile, talks in Nigeria to solve a separate conflict in Sudan's western region of Darfur have suffered new setbacks, amid arguments between the two rebel groups talking to the government. The Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) accused the Sudan Liberation Army of attacking its positions.

Reuters 25 June 2005 East Sudan rebels urge media to view bomb damage By Ed Harris ASMARA, June 25 (Reuters) - Rebels in Sudan's remote east urged the world's media on Saturday to come and see damage in civilian areas that they say was caused by government bombing. Rebels from Sudan's Eastern Front parade north of Kassala town, near the Eritrean border, in March 2005. (AFP). The Eastern Front insurgents -- lesser-known but with similar complaints to rebels in the western Darfur region -- say Khartoum ordered warplanes to bomb the area in recent days in retaliation for attacks on army bases. The government of Africa's largest nation, already under pressure for its military tactics in Darfur including aerial attacks, denies any bombardment in the east and there was no immediate confirmation from witnesses in the region. "They failed on the ground, so they bombed the whole area," Salah Barqueen, spokesman for the Front, told reporters in neighbouring Eritrea on Saturday. "We are inviting the international media to come and see for themselves what happened ... The Khartoum government are liars, big liars." As well as reports of injuries to civilians and livestock, the Front official said civilian houses and wells were damaged. "Why would we say (invent) this story now? There have been plenty of other opportunities," he said. There were no immediate reports of any injured being brought into the hospitals in Tokar or Port Sudan. SEARCH OPERATIONS Sudanese officials have confirmed aerial "search operations" were under way in the east to find those responsible for attacks on military posts last weekend that rebels say led to the capture of 20 soldiers. But they deny bombing. The Front, like the Darfur rebels, say they are fighting to end neglect and discrimination against Sudan's outlying areas from central government. They want a bigger share of power and wealth in the oil-producing nation. If the bombings were confirmed, it would be the first time in years that warplanes had targeted the eastern areas. Analysts fear eastern Sudan could become the next major flare-up in Sudan, where the Darfur conflict has brought international condemnation and a 21-year-old war in the south only ended a few months ago. The Front says bombing in the last couple of days took place in the Barka Valley west of Tokar, a town 75 miles (120 km) south of Port Sudan on the Red Sea. The latest offensive first broke out in the east last weekend near Tokar, when Front fighters attacked army bases. The eastern rebels have held a small piece of territory just next door to Eritrea in eastern Sudan since the late 1990s. The Eastern Front has friendly ties with rebel groups in Darfur and former rebels in the south. Although a poor and arid area, the east of Sudan is crucial to its budding oil industry as it contains a major port. Barqueen said Khartoum's peace overtures were hypocritical. "They talk about peace in Cairo, they talk about peace in Abuja, they talk about peace in Naivasha. But at the same time, they are killing people," he said, referring to various recent rounds of peace negotiations Sudan has held with different opposition groups.

AFP 25 June 2005 US to consider lifting sanctions on Sudan: FM WASHINGTON, June 24 (AFP) -- Sudan's Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has agreed to consider the possibility of lifting sanctions imposed on the northeast African state. Mustafa Ismail Speaking after talks with the top US diplomat, he said "most of the problems" that used to hinder normal relations between the two countries had been removed and that he urged her to lift the trade and economic sanctions. "Secretary Rice told me, she promised me, that she is going to start looking at it," Ismail told reporters at the State Department. State Department officials were not available for comment. Rice did not speak to reporters. Ismail's visit to the State Department prompted concern among some lawmakers because of Khartoum's role in the violence in the Darfur region that President George W. Bush's administration has called genocide. The sanctions against Sudan has been in place since 1993 when it was put on the State Department list of states that sponsor terrorism. Ismail's visit comes several months after the trip by Sudanese intelligence chief Salah Abdallah Gosh, who was invited by the CIA to share information about the war on terrorism, according to news reports. The visit sparked outrage because of the violence in Darfur, with lawmakers saying Washington was letting Sudan's strategic role in the war on terrorism overshadow the need to confront the genocide. The conflict is believed to have left between 180,000 and 300,000 people dead and displaced some 2.4 million from their homes, with 200,000 fleeing into neighbouring Chad. A ceasefire, concluded in April last year, has never been respected. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who has made two visits to Sudan in recent months and who met Ismail on Thursday, talked about the possibility of his going to Khartoum for the July 9 inauguration of the Government of National Unity.

Reuters 29 June 2005 Sudan may not be trying key Darfur suspects - ICC 29 Jun 2005 06:07:47 GMT Source: Reuters Background CRISIS PROFILE-What's going on in Sudan's Darfur? MORE By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS, June 29 (Reuters) - Sudan has promised to prosecute murder and rape suspects in Darfur but the key perpetrators may not be among those Khartoum plans to put on trial, the prosecutor of a global court said on Wednesday. Darfur is the first case the U.N. Security Council has referred to the new International Criminal Court but Sudan has said it would not extradite anyone. Instead Khartoum announced it would hold its own trials of 160 alleged suspects. In a report ahead of his first appearance before the Security Council on Wednesday, prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said any Sudanese trial probably would not conflict with an ICC probe aimed at "prosecuting persons most responsible for crimes." He said that in Sudan there appeared to be an "absence of criminal proceedings relating to the cases on which the Office of the Prosecutor is likely to focus." Moreno-Ocampo has received 2,500 items including documents, video footage and interview transcripts as well as a list of 51 suspects, including army and government officials, from a U.N-appointed International Commission of Inquiry. An estimated 180,000 people have died in the Darfur, in Sudan's west, and 2 million have fled their homes to escape slaughter, pillaging and rape in what the United States has termed "acts of genocide." The fledging ICC, the world's first permanent criminal court, was created to try perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. It is a tribunal of last resort when local judicial systems are unable or unwilling to do so. But Moreno-Ocampo said once he had completed his investigation, his office would determine whether any ICC cases were "the subject of genuine national" prosecutions in Sudan. The Security Council decided that Sudan over the past two years had not brought suspects to justice and asked the ICC, based in The Hague, Netherlands, to do so instead. The United States, which opposes the court, abstained in the resolution, adopted on March 31. Moreno-Ocampo said he had met Sudanese officials in the Netherlands and received information about the country's legal system. He also met officials from the African Union, which has a monitoring force in Darfur. But he said his investigation required "specific, full and unfettered cooperation of the Government of Sudan and other parties in the conflict." While Moreno-Ocampo has set up an investigative team, he gave no indication when he would seek to visit Sudan or whether the Khartoum would issue a timely visa. The ICC, unlike temporary tribunals, has no time limit for its work. Its indictments remain in force until the suspect is tried, dies or runs out of hiding places. Moreno-Ocampo, 52, an Argentine, prosecuted generals in his country's "dirty war" in 1985, when wounds from the 1976-1983 dictatorship were still fresh. As many as 30,000 people were killed or disappeared.

Uganda

Crisis Group 23 June 2005 Building a Comprehensive Peace Strategy for Northern Uganda Peace may yet be possible in Northern Uganda in 2005. While mediation has occurred in recent months against a backdrop of continuing atrocities against civilians by the insurgent Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), many of the elements seem to be in place for a deal between the LRA and the government of President Yoweri Museveni. However, in addition to clearer LRA commitment to the process, a more comprehensive framework is needed, including increased backing for the mediation, a more robust effort to reintegrate LRA returnees into society, a justice component that complements the peace process, improved reconciliation initiatives, and a hearts-and-minds strategy so the North feels government commitment. The overall strategy also needs more visible international support, especially from the U.S. Crisis Group reports and briefing papers are available on our website: www.crisisgroup.org

The Monitor (Kampala) 28 June 2005 Kisanja Passes 1st Vote By Richard Mutumba, Gerald Walulya & Emma Mutaizibwa Parliament The Constitution Amendment Bill that includes the proposal to lift presidential term limits passed the first major step in Parliament after pro-Movement MPs voted overwhelmingly to send it to the next stage. A total of 232 members voted in support of the motion seeking to commit Constitution (Amendment) Bill No.3 to the committee stage where each clause will be considered independently. Fifty MPs opposed the motion, while one, UPDF representative Col. Fred Bogere, abstained. Earlier in the day police crushed an opposition demonstration that was organised to protest against the impending removal of term limits. Parliament's public gallery was filled to capacity, while down in the chamber the famous Movement "yellow girls," clad in shouting yellow attire, foot-stamped and shouted loudly whenever a member voted "aye". Yesterday's voting pattern suggested there was little hope of the opposition MPs stopping the Bill from finally sailing through. According to the Constitution, the Bill required the support of two-thirds majority of members (at least 196 MPs) to proceed to the next stage. It will now go through two more stages before it is passed. These include the committee stage and the motion for a third reading of the Bill. This stage will also require two-thirds majority. Yesterday the new system of open voting, which was included in the parliamentary rules of procedure about four months ago, was put to test for the second time. During the voting exercise presided over by the Speaker, Mr. Edward Ssekandi, new voters emerged on the side of the pro-third term camp, including the recently converted Capt. Guma Gumisiriza, Dr Steven Chebrot, Prof. Ephraim Kamuntu, and the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee chairman, Mr Jacob Oulanyah. At least 148 MPs contributed to the heated debate on the Bill, which started last week. Yesterday's voting attracted a large number of pro-Movement MPs including all the army representatives. Brig. Andrew Gutti, who recently replaced Brig. Henry Tumukunde was one of the members who voted in favour of the motion seeking the Bill to proceed to the next stage. The Bill has 98 clauses. The Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee had proposed that 60 clauses should be dropped and be handled later by the next Parliament in order to expedite the constitution amendment process. This is yet to be agreed on, although the House is expected to pronounce itself on the proposal at the committee stage some time next week. The opposition maintains that the proposal to remove presidential term limits is meant to open the door for President Yoweri Museveni, whose last constitutional term expires next year, to contest for the 2006 and future elections. The ruling Movement and its supporters in Parliament argue, on the other hand, that term limits unfairly deny citizens the opportunity to choose a leader of their choice who could have served beyond the two terms currently provided for in the Constitution. The Bill also proposes the introduction of dual citizenship and it seeks to create the constitutional office of the Prime Minister and the Deputy Attorney General. Other clauses in the Bill include giving Kampala a special status, holding both Presidential, Parliamentary and district chairperson elections on the same day.

Zimbabwe

BBC 17 June 2005 What lies behind the Zimbabwe demolitions? By Joseph Winter BBC News website The homes of some 200,000 Zimbabwean city dwellers have been demolished in the past three weeks, according to the United Nations. See before and after images of township clearance in Harare. Enlarge Image Police have been moving from area to area, in some cases forcing people to knock down their own homes. In others, they have turned up with bulldozers to demolish structures which they say have been built illegally. "We were busking, enjoying the winter sun when we heard trucks and bulldozers roll in. There was pandemonium as we rushed to salvage the little we could," one resident of the capital, Harare told the BBC News website. "In no time the cottage I had called home for three years was gone. Then it dawned on me that I was now homeless, you try and pinch yourself and wake up but this was no dream. My life had been shattered before my very own eyes." Worshippers at a Harare mosque have even been made to destroy it, says opposition MP Trudy Stevenson. Thousands of desperate Zimbabweans are living on the streets, others have gone back to their rural homes, while some have managed to squeeze into parts of the cities not yet touched by what some are calling the "tsunami". No-one was spared, not even 80-year-old grannies Tinashe, Harare Send us your account President Robert Mugabe said "Operation Murambatsvina [Drive out rubbish]" was needed to "restore sanity" to Zimbabwe's cities, which he said had become overrun with criminals. His critics say it is no coincidence that opposition to his rule is strongest in urban areas - and that in March the opposition Movement of Democratic Change (MDC) won almost all urban seats for a second election in a row. 'Pre-emptive strike' "This is harassment of urban voters," MDC secretary general Welshman Ncube told the BBC. He says the government wants people to go to rural areas, where they can be controlled more easily. Some children left school after their homes were demolished "It could also be a pre-emptive strike against poor urban people who will be worst affected by the inevitable hunger which is going to stalk the population in the next few months." The UN World Food Programme estimates that more than three million people will need food aid in the coming year. Some of the areas where whole rows of houses have been destroyed, such as Mabvuku and Tafara, have seen anti-government riots in the past few years. So far, the security forces have managed to put a lid on such protests and prevent them spiralling into mass demonstrations capable of toppling the government. But maybe Mr Mugabe does not want to take any chances. Zimbabwean politics is, however, rarely that simple. 'Necessary evil' Many of the illegal structures which have been demolished were built on farms seized from their white owners in the past five years of a controversial land reform programme. This government has been shooting itself in the foot for a long time - The question is whether the people are willing to take political action Welshman Ncube, MDC This is Mr Mugabe's core policy and most of those who have moved onto the farms are supporters of his Zanu-PF party. Zanu-PF chief whip Jerome Macdonald Gumbo points to this as proof that the operation is not political. "Harare used to be a very smart town. Now it has become dirty and dangerous," he said. "The exercise is painful but it has to be done. It is a necessary evil." Mr Ncube says that the government is actually quite glad to be moving against the war veterans, who spearheaded the invasion of white-owned farms in 2000, attacking opposition supporters as they went and paving the way for Zanu-PF's victory in the 2000 parliamentary elections. "If they could destroy the war veterans, who have been holding this government to ransom, that would be an added bonus," he says. Economic control Last year, Jabulani Sibanda, the leader of the veterans of Zimbabwe's 1970s war of independence, was disciplined by Mr Mugabe, after being identified with a Zanu-PF faction which had fallen from the president's favour. These are the remains of a mosque built in Harare's Hatcliffe township Human rights lawyer Brian Kagoro agrees that the eviction of Zanu-PF supporters from the farms shows that Operation Murambatsvina cannot simply be described as punishment for pro-opposition urban voters. But he says that whoever the victims are, their rights have been violated. "They should have been given adequate notice. Children have been pulled out of school and people with Aids have had to stop their treatment." Some have been living in their shacks for more than 10 years and been told to demolish it in a single day, he says. He also says that the government is destroying informal "flea markets" in order to tighten its control of the economy. 'Hypocrisy' Most of all, the government wants to bring all the foreign currency generated in Zimbabwe into formal structures and stamp out the black market. Some traders have been found with huge caches of foreign currency. Supporters of President Mugabe (in photo) have not been spared Mr Gumbo denies that the action has been unfair. "These people knew that the structures were illegal - we always told them not to build them. They did not think the government would take any action," he said. He also accuses the opposition of hypocrisy, after previously criticising the government for tolerating a situation of lawlessness. A coalition of opposition groups, including the MDC, last week organised a general strike to protest at the demolitions but it was a failure. Mr Ncube says that Zimbabweans are angry but they are not prepared to stand up and take the risks needed to change the government. "Every second person wants someone else to take action on their behalf." So he is reluctant to predict that the demolitions will alienate a new section of Zimbabweans from Zanu-PF and drive them into the arms of his party. "This government has been shooting itself in the foot for a long time, alienating more and more constituencies. The question is whether the people are willing to take political action," he says.

SAPA 21 June 2005 Mugabe targets backyard gardens By Staff Reporter Last updated: 06/21/2005 15:58:17 ZIMBABWEAN police have extended a demolition campaign targeting the homes and livelihoods of the urban poor to the vegetable gardens they rely on for food, saying the crops planted on vacant lots are damaging the environment. President Robert Mugabe was quoted Tuesday as saying concern about the campaign was misplaced and agreeing to allow in a UN observer. The crackdown on urban farming - at a time of food shortages in Zimbabwe - is the latest escalation in the government's monthlong Operation Murambatsvina, or Drive Out Trash, which has seen police torch the shacks of poor city dwellers, arrest street vendors and demolish their kiosks. Mugabe defends the campaign as a cleanup drive. But the political opposition, which has its base among the urban poor, says the campaign is meant to punish its supporters. The United Nations estimates the campaign has left at least 1,5 million people homeless in the winter cold. Police say more than 30 000 have also been arrested, most of them street vendors the government accuses of sabotaging the failing economy by selling black market goods. Senior assistant police commissioner Edmore Veterai said Zimbabwean authorities were now targeting urban farming, saying the practice was causing "massive environmental damage," state radio reported Tuesday. The destruction of city plots is a painful reminder of one of the most hated policies of the white government that ruled before independence in 1980 - the random slashing of crops on roadsides and railroad embankments. The current crackdown comes when this southern African country needs to import 1,2 million metric tons of food to avoid famine. Years of drought, combined with the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans, have slashed agricultural production. Many poor families depend on their vegetable patches for food and a tiny income at a time of 144 percent inflation and 80 percent unemployment. Many of the capital's two million residents till any vacant ground they can find for an annual production of 50 000 metric tons of corn - over a fifth of their total food requirements - according to farming expert Richard Winkfield. The Reverend Oskar Wermter, former secretary to the Zimbabwe Roman Catholic Bishop's conference and a parish priest in one of the poorest downtown areas, called the crackdown against these plots "insane and evil". "They are sleeping in the open air - tiny children and people dying of Aids - and people you thought still had some decency are defending this crime against humanity," said Wermter. "It is a watershed, it is the beginning of the end, but the end will be terrible." Charlie Hewat, executive director of Environment Africa, said controlled urban agriculture was essential for the poor throughout the developing world's cities. There were, however, no legal allotments in Harare. The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change has accused the 81-year-old Mugabe of imitating Cambodia's former Pol Pot regime by driving pro-MDC urban voters back to rural areas for "re-education." It alleges food access is being used as a weapon of political reprisal following March 31 parliamentary elections won by Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front. Mugabe expressed surprise at the "misplaced hue and cry over Operation Murambatsvina" in a recent telephone conversation with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, presidential spokeseperson George Charamba told The Herald newspaper. Mugabe agreed in the phone call to let Anna Tibaijuka, Tanzanian head of the United Nations Habitat agency, come as Annan's envoy to asses the impact of Operation Murambatsvina, Charamba confirmed. On Sunday, police spokeseperson Whisper Bondayi said the demolition campaign was also being extended to wealthier suburbs. He said some residents had illegally converted their homes into offices and workshops. No demolitions have been reported in such neighborhoods. Wealthy home owners have recourse to judges and lawyers - unlike the poor who rush to salvage what possessions they can before their homes are burned or bulldozed. However, police have arrested 335 prostitutes and 161 illegal aliens - mostly "fugitives from justice in their own countries" - in raids on lodges and apartments near downtown Harare, Bondayi told Tuesday's edition of The Herald. - Sapa-AP

BBC 24 June 2005 Africa rejects action on Zimbabwe The opposition say their supporters are being punished The African Union has rejected calls from the UK and the US to put pressure on Zimbabwe to stop its demolition of illegal houses and market stalls. An AU spokesman told the BBC that it had many more serious problems to consider than Zimbabwe. The UN says that 275,000 people have been made homeless. At least three children have been crushed to death. Urging the AU to take action, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described recent events as "tragic". The opposition say the demolitions are meant to punish urban residents, who have rejected President Robert Mugabe in recent elections. He denies this, saying the crackdown is designed to "restore sanity" in urban areas, which he says have become overrun with criminals. 'Irritated' "If the government that they elected say they are restoring order by their actions, I don't think it would be proper for us to go interfering in their internal legislation," AU spokesman Desmond Orjiako told the BBC's Network Africa programme. She was killed when the walls collapsed on top of her Lavender Nyika Mother of Charmaine, 2 Why Africa won't speak out Human tragedy Have Your Say His comments were backed up by South Africa, Zimbabwe's giant neighbour, which some see as the key to solving Zimbabwe's problems. Presidential spokesman Bheki Khumalo said he was "irritated" by calls from UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to do more to end the "horrors" in Zimbabwe. "South Africa refuses to accept the notion that because suddenly we're going to a G8 summit, we must be reminded that we must look good and appease the G8 leaders," he said. "We will do things because we believe they are correct and right." The G8 summit of the world's most powerful nations is due to discuss efforts to relieve poverty in Africa on 8 July in Scotland. The UK wants the G8 to do more to forgive Africa's debts and improve its term of trade. See before and after images of township clearance in Harare. Enlarge Image The US insists that such efforts should only be made if African countries improve their standard of governance. Correspondents say that many African leaders see Mr Mugabe as a hero for leading the fight against colonial rule. South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki has questioned why the West is so concerned by Zimbabwe but makes relatively little noise about other African emergencies, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, where some three million people died in a civil war, and where armed bands kill, rape and loot with impunity in some areas. The BBC's Elizabeth Blunt also says that many African countries have carried out similar slum clearances and so will be unwilling to criticise Zimbabwe. Living rough Some 46,000 people have been arrested for trading without a licence, hoarding and illegal possession of foreign currency, Zimbabwe's police chief Augustine Chihuri said, according to state radio. Mr Chihuri said that burglary and car-theft had declined by 20% since the operation began four weeks ago. Some children have left school after their homes were demolished The children who have died were crushed to death when their homes were knocked down during Operation Murambatsvina [Drive out rubbish]. One of those killed in the capital, Harare, was the 18-month-old son of a police officer, reports the state-run Herald newspaper. The police have moved across Zimbabwe's urban areas, armed with bulldozers and sledge-hammers, destroying shacks and informal markets. Often, residents have been made to demolish the structures themselves. The United Nations is due to send a special envoy to Zimbabwe to investigate the demolitions. Many people are living on the streets, while others have returned to their rural homes, encouraged by the government.

BBC 24 June, 2005 Why Africa won't condemn Zimbabwe blitz By Elizabeth Blunt BBC News Foreign ministers from the G8 grouping of the world's richest and most powerful countries have called on other African leaders to denounce the forced evictions which are causing so much suffering in Zimbabwe. Some children in Zimbabwe have left school after their homes were demolished Yet many of those other African governments have overseen similar brutal evictions in their own countries, and yet have suffered very little outside criticism. The sad truth is that what is going on in Zimbabwe at the moment is not at all unusual. From one end of Africa to the other, governments have set about slum clearance schemes without any consideration for the people who live there, or any sense of responsibility for what happens to them afterwards. Unsanitary Nigeria, the current chair of the African Union, was the scene of a huge mass eviction in 1990, when around 300,000 people were bulldozed out of the Maroko neighbourhood in Lagos in a single week to make way for corporate office buildings and executive villas. Soldiers cleared the Washington area of Abidjan in Ivory Coast at gunpoint in 2002, turning people out of their homes, sometimes with less than an hour's notice. See before and after images of township clearance in Harare. Enlarge Image Hundreds of families in Bonaberi area of Douala in Cameroon, lost their homes in similar purges. In every case it was absolutely true that the areas were unsanitary, and the houses built without permission, yet there was never any sense that these exercises were being carried out to give residents a better place to live. The evicted families inevitably were driven further to the margins and ended up living in even worse conditions. The victims of the Zimbabwe eviction are lucky that because of the political campaign being run against President Robert Mugabe, both inside and outside the country, there are well-organised and well-funded people calling attention to their plight. But it seems unlikely that Africa's other leaders will sympathise with the displaced rather than with a fellow president cleaning up his country's city, and will speak out on their behalf.

AFP 25 June 2005 Mugabe knocks demolition critics June 25, 2005 HARARE, Zimbabwe (Agence France-Presse) -- President Robert Mugabe yesterday hit back at what he termed "unprecedented" international criticism of his government for its neighborhood demolition drive and said there were plans to resettle the hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans left homeless. "I am addressing you against the backdrop of unprecedented renewed attacks on our party, our government and country by the usual British-led anti-Zimbabwe Western coalition," he said in an address to his ruling ZANU-PF party. Mr. Mugabe singled out former colonial ruler Britain, which has repeatedly criticized Zimbabwe for human rights abuses and the seizure of white-owned farms in 2000, saying it was leading international condemnation. "The latest pretext is the clean-up operation we launched nearly a month ago, whose objectives are both clear and laudable," said Mr. Mugabe in the address, excerpts of which were shown on state television and quoted by the New Ziana news agency. "This is the program which has drawn broadsides from a motley of our habitual critics, led of course by Britain and as usual supported by the Washington administration and the government of Australia," he said. "Even more ridiculous is the fact that the new World Bank president, himself an ex-official of the American administration, joining in the attack without any firsthand impression of what is going on here. What has the World Bank to do with it?" Mr. Mugabe asked. World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz described the evictions as a "tragedy" when he traveled to South Africa last week. But more criticism of the demolitions came yesterday even as Mr. Mugabe made his defense. Ten human rights experts, who report to the U.N. Human Rights Commission on issues from torture to health, said they "deplore and demand an end to the government's campaign of forced evictions." The crackdown has violated international human rights rules, they said in a statement from Geneva. They also expressed "deep concern at the rapidly deteriorating situation of respect for civil, political, economic and social rights in Zimbabwe." British charity Action Aid International, meanwhile, urged African regional groupings and pan-continental organizations to pressure Zimbabwe. For the past month, police have been carrying out Operation Murambatsvina, which means "drive out the rubbish," demolishing backyard shacks and shop stalls in cities and towns across Zimbabwe and leaving between 200,000 and 1.5 million people homeless, according to the U.N. and the political opposition. Mr. Mugabe said he found it hypocritical for Western countries to criticize the demolition campaign of the "illegal structures" when he had agreed to let a U.N. special envoy carry out an assessment of the situation. He said the visit by envoy Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka would enable U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to "understand and appreciate what Zimbabwe is trying to do for its people who deserve better than the shacks that were now being romanticized as fitting habitats for them."

Reuters 27 June 2005 U.N. Envoy to Study Zimbabwe Crackdown By REUTERS HARARE, Zimbabwe, June 26 (Reuters) - A special envoy from the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, arrived in Zimbabwe on Sunday to assess conditions here with international criticism increasing over President Robert Mugabe's crackdown on shantytowns. The envoy, Anna Tibaijuka, the executive director of U.N.-Habitat, the United Nations housing agency, will spend several days observing the results of the government campaign that has demolished tens of thousands of homes and shops and left as many as 300,000 people homeless. "I'm here at the request of the secretary general to assess the situation here and to see how we can work together to put everything in the way that everybody would like to have them," said Ms. Tibaijuka, of Tanzania. "The secretary general is of course following the situation with keen interest," she said. The destruction of housing has added to the misery of Zimbabweans, who are already facing their country's worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, with shortages of food and fuel. Western countries have been increasing their criticism of the operation, in which at least two children have been crushed to death as houses were demolished and many families have lost their housing or income. Mr. Mugabe, whom critics accuse of using the campaign to single out political opponents in Zimbabwe's urban shantytowns, said he welcomed the chance to explain the operation to the United Nations. "Our people," he said in remarks published Saturday in the state news media, "deserve much better than the shacks that are now being romanticized as fitting habitats for them."

Americas

Argentina

washingtonpost.com 24 June 2005 New Hope for Justice in Argentina Ruling Clears Way For Military Trials By Monte Reel Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, June 24, 2005; A20 BUENOS AIRES -- For two decades, Estela de Carlotto has kept in a folder the name of the man she believes killed her daughter Laura, who vanished in 1977, at the height of the Argentine military government's crackdown against political dissidents, known as the "dirty war." Until recently, though, she saw little point in pursuing the case. The man was a low-ranking military official, legally exempt from punishment for crimes committed in uniform. Instead of brooding fruitlessly, Carlotto banished him to the file on her office shelf. But last week, Argentina's Supreme Court ruled that laws passed in the 1980s to protect such officers were unconstitutional. That meant Carlotto and other relatives of the thousands of people believed tortured and killed during a seven-year dictatorship were finally free to seek criminal and civil cases against the officers they held responsible. Soon after she heard the news, Carlotto reached for the long-untouched folder. "I'm going to start looking into this man, to find out where he is, and to start compiling all of the information that I can about him," said Carlotto, 75, a widow with white curls and a composed, determined air. "If I can prove he killed my daughter -- that he pulled the trigger -- he will finally go to jail." The Supreme Court decision is the latest in a series of steps Argentina has recently taken to confront its bloody past. At least 10,000 Argentines disappeared during the dictatorship, which means that further investigations into past human rights abuses could affect a wide swath of the population on a deeply personal level. While human rights groups have praised the court decision, critics argue that the country is foolishly picking at wounds that had started to heal. And while some victims' relatives say they are eager to take advantage of the ruling, others are not sure they want to endure the legal and emotional ordeal of digging into long-ago crimes. In the mid-1980s, the civilian government led by President Raul Alfonsin moved cautiously on human rights issues to avert a possible military coup. Prosecutions were confined to leaders and senior officers of the 1976-83 military dictatorship, while lower-ranking officers were given immunity. After that, a succession of civilian rulers maintained that it was better to turn toward the future than dwell on the past. "Something happened after they passed the protections. Maybe some part of the population thought justice was hopeless after that point," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch, speaking from Washington. "Only in recent years have they realized it's possible again." It was not until President Nestor Kirchner took office in 2003 that officials began pushing to hold the military more accountable. Kirchner has fired several commanders. He also removed a Catholic bishop assigned to the armed forces for declaring that the health minister should be "thrown into the sea" -- a fate many long-missing dissidents are believed to have suffered -- for suggesting abortion should be legalized. Moreover, in the past two years, four of the Supreme Court's nine justices have been impeached or have resigned under threat of impeachment. Last week, the four new justices appointed by Kirchner voted in favor of reversing the immunity laws. The vote was 7 to 1 with one abstention. "The laws of immunity are not applicable to crimes against humanity," Justice Antonio Boggiano said in explaining his vote. "If they were applied, they would be unconstitutional." Laura Carlotto, a 22-year-old political activist, was 2 1/2 months pregnant when she disappeared on Nov. 26, 1977. Ten months later, her family got a call from military officials who said she had been killed during a shootout between the army and members of a radical political group. "They lied, saying that she'd never been kidnapped and that she was fully armed when she was killed," said Estella de Carlotto, who eventually received her daughter's body. "Forensic analysis showed that she had been shot at a distance of 30 centimeters, lying on her back, on the floor. One of her arms had been broken, probably because she tried to resist." Several witnesses later said they had seen Laura in a military detention center. They said that she gave birth there to a boy named Guido on June 26, 1978, and that a high-ranking officer claimed the baby as his own. In 1985, during a government investigation of military crimes, a former soldier testified that he knew who had shot and killed Laura. Carlotto obtained a copy of the testimony but took no action. "It was never my intention to pursue him myself. I want the justice system to pursue him," she said. "People sometimes ask me what I would do if I ever met him face to face . . . . I say I would feel deep pity for him, and enormous contempt." Carlotto did make efforts to locate Guido, who would be 27. She joined an advocacy group dedicated to finding an estimated 500 children of those known as "the disappeared" who were believed to have been illegally adopted by military families. Although she never tracked down her grandson, she helped 80 children of victims discover the truth about their adoptive parents and steered them toward their biological families. Recently, she has noticed that Argentines are increasingly willing to delve into the past, especially young people whose parents disappeared years ago. Despite the psychological upheaval, she said, almost every day someone walks into her office seeking to investigate personal history. "Everyone has his own time, but it seems that many of the children get more courage to investigate this as they get older," Carlotto said. "The doubts they might have grow into certainties. They start to say, 'I need to know who I really am.' " As he grew up, Matias Olivera always knew his father had been kidnapped at a train station on his way to work. But the crime occurred when Matias was an infant, and he had a happy childhood with a mother and stepfather who loved him. He never told his friends about his father's fate, and he avoided advocacy groups for relatives of the disappeared. But two years ago, he said, an indefinable urge prompted him to type his father's name into the Google Internet search engine. Links filled the screen. He followed them to Web sites for human rights groups, biographies of the disappeared and a history of his father's labor union. He created a folder to file the information he collected. "I don't know why, but it seems like a lot of young people had decided to put a wall between themselves and this subject," said Olivera, 27, who works for a telecommunications company. "But in the last couple of years, everything seems to have started over. A lot of people my age are going through the same process that I am." The recent Supreme Court ruling filled Olivera with contradictory feelings. He said he had learned the location where his father was detained and the name of the officer who ordered it. With more effort, he said, he could probably create a detailed picture of his father's last days and add that to the folder. For now, however, Olivera plans to leave the case alone. The justice system might finally be ready for him to dig deeper into his father's fate, but he's still not sure he's ready to handle the entire, grim truth. "I don't really want to know how he was tortured and killed, and I don't care about getting revenge," Olivera said, pausing to control a surge of emotion. "But when things like this happen, it reminds you how much of your life is connected to that time. You start to see that even though you might have been safe during your own life, what happened back then can ruin your life in many ways."

Canada

Canadian Press 27 June 2005 Court to rule on Rwandan deportation Accused war criminal Jim Brown Leon Mugesera, right, and and his lawyer Guy Bertrand smile as they walk out of a Quebec City courtroom April 12, 2001. (CP/Jacques Boissinot) OTTAWA -- More than a decade after the Rwandan genocide, the Supreme Court of Canada is set to rule on whether Leon Mugesera, once a high-profile political figure in the African country, should be kicked out of Canada for allegedly helping to set the scene for the slaughter. The federal government has been trying for years to deport Mugesera on grounds that he incited fellow Hutus to kill Tutsis, their traditional ethnic and political rivals. At issue is a speech Mugesera gave in late 1992 in which - according to federal lawyers - he counselled murder, promoted genocide, spread hatred and thus committed a crime against humanity. Two immigration tribunals have ordered his removal from Canada, but the Federal Court trial and appeal divisions overturned the verdicts. The Supreme Court is to weigh in on the matter Tuesday. Mugesera, now a resident of Quebec City, has been defended by maverick lawyer Guy Bertrand, who insists his client is being persecuted by federal authorities based on flawed evidence. "Mr. Mugesera never incited people to kill Tutsis or political opponents," Bertrand argued in written submissions to the Supreme Court. "His speech should be read in the context of legitimate defence." Bertrand maintained that Tutsis who died in Rwanda were not targeted because of their ethnic identity but because they were "aggressors" invading from neighbouring Uganda, or were allied with the invaders. Bertrand also contended that Justice Minister Irwin Cotler is biased against his client and attempted to "infiltrate" Canada's highest court by appointing Justice Rosalie Abella to the bench. Abella joined the Supreme Court last summer but did not sit on the Mugesera case. She stepped aside because her husband Irving, a former head of the Canadian Jewish Congress, had written to then-immigration minister Denis Coderre urging him to appeal the last Federal Court decision and continue pressing to deport Mugesera. Bertrand nevertheless contended the whole Supreme Court had been tainted by Abella's appointment and demanded the case against his client be thrown out. Justice Department lawyers called the allegations "absurd, even shocking" and said they didn't deserve serious consideration. The eight remaining judges on the court rejected Bertrand's effort to quash proceedings and went ahead with a hearing in December. Mugesera was a district vice-president of the Mouvement republicain nationale pour la democratie et developpement, or MRND, a Rwandan political party, when he gave a fiery speech to 1,000 party members in November 1992. He was later quoted as telling the crowd they should kill Tutsis and "dump their bodies into the rivers of Rwanda." He also allegedly spoke of "exterminating these bastards" and warned that "the person whose neck you do not cut is the one who will cut yours." The Federal Court of Appeal concluded, however, that some of the comments had been badly translated and may have been altered to make Mugesera look guilty. The court agreed other comments were accurately reported but said they must be read in context. Mugesera had a reputation as a "fervent supporter of democracy, patriotic pride and resistance to invading forces," said the three-judge appeal panel. They described the overall themes of his speech as "elections, courage and love." The judgment shocked human rights groups and Rwandan exiles who had been campaigning to have Mugesera deported. The Rwandan government of the day issued an arrest warrant against Mugesera following the 1992 speech, but he fled the country and made his way to Canada. Eight months after his arrival here, Hutus in his homeland massacred an estimated 800,000 Tutsis. Mugesera says he also suffered in the strife that swept the country, losing 26 relatives including his mother and mother-in-law. He and his wife and five children were granted permanent residence in Canada in 1993, but Ottawa moved to revoke that status in 1995, saying Mugesera had lied about his background. He had been teaching at Laval University in Quebec City but lost his job when the accusations were levelled against him.

Colombia

BBC 29 June 2005 Colombia war crimes probe urged The AUC has been laying down its arms under a disarmament deal A human rights coalition has called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate alleged war crimes by Colombia's main paramilitary group. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), said the right-wing AUC militia had committed 2,000 atrocities since December 2002. The FIDH also condemned laws setting out incentives for the AUC to disarm, saying they amount to an amnesty. The government insists the legislation is vital to the peace process. Bogota has been holding talks with the AUC aimed at getting the group to renounce violence. Justice A report submitted by the FIDH said the AUC had been guilty of assassinations, kidnappings and mass killings since it entered the peace process more than two years ago. QUICK GUIDE The Colombian conflict "Tens of thousands of crimes are being committed on a monthly basis," Alirio Uribe Munoz, the FIDH's vice president said on Wednesday. "An ICC investigation is the only hope that there will be justice against those who commit crimes against humanity," he said. The ICC, based in the Hague in the Netherlands, is allowed to launch prosecutions against suspected war criminals where other means for trying them have failed. Colombia is one of nearly 100 nations that have ratified the ICC's charter. 'Government complicity' The FIDH attacked Colombia for approving legislation that, it says, effectively grants the AUC immunity from prosecution. According to its critics, the law promises AUC members - several of whom are wanted in the US on cocaine trafficking and terrorism charges - immunity from prosecution and extradition. The FIDH report named several paramilitary soldiers as war crimes suspects. It also calls for Colombian officials - including President Alvaro Uribe - to be prosecuted for their alleged failure to prevent and punish the crimes. Colombia's paramilitaries have their origin in private armies formed by wealthy landowners to combat Marxist rebels.

Haiti

NYT 16 June 2005 How Haiti's Future May Depend on a Starving Prisoner By GINGER THOMPSON PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, June 11 - Once again, one man has become the center of a political storm that threatens to foil this country's uphill struggle for stability. This time, it's not Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former priest and charismatic slum leader who was deposed last year by an armed uprising and forced into exile. It is the man who rose and fell in Mr. Aristide's shadow, his former prime minister, Yvon Neptune. The former senator and radio talk show host has been jailed for a year without charges under a new government installed by the United States and is slowly starving himself to death in a minimum-security prison cell. Last year, Haiti's new government arrested Mr. Neptune, 58, accusing him as the mastermind of a massacre in a small northern town, St.-Marc. Prime Minister Gérard Latortue argued that justice was the best way to heal Haiti's wounds, and promoted the case as proof that no one, no matter how powerful, could stand above the law. But as the anniversary of Mr. Neptune's arrest approaches, his continued detention has become an embarrassment to the Bush administration and a symbol of the failures of what was supposed to be Haiti's transition to a fully functioning democracy. From prison, the former prime minister has denounced his case as a "political witch hunt" aimed at seeking vengeance, not justice, against those who supported Mr. Aristide. In February he started a series of hunger strikes to demand that the government try him or set him free. When a visitor went to the two-story house where Mr. Neptune is being held, the former prime minister could not lift his bony body off a foam mattress on the floor of his cell. He was wearing striped boxer shorts and listening to music on a Walkman. His most striking feature was the lines of his rib cage. "I feel weak," he said barely above a whisper. "Some days I feel weaker than others. But it was my choice to go on hunger strike." The hunger strikes have sent Mr. Neptune twice to the hospital in critical condition and brought expressions of concern, even outrage, about the injustices that continue to plague Haiti's justice system. Only about 20 of the more than 1,000 prisoners at the federal penitentiary have been convicted of crimes; many have spent years awaiting trial. But Jocelyn McCalla, executive director of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights in New York, said much more is at stake than Haiti's justice system. Rather than a political achievement for Haiti's interim government, he said, it has become a serious liability less than four months from the start of important national elections. And rather than uniting this violently polarized society, Mr. McCalla said, the case against Mr. Neptune has seemed only to keep old political hostilities festering, raising questions about the crimes of the past government, and about the legitimacy of the current one. "The Neptune case has raised hard questions about the legitimacy of the United States' intervention in Haiti," Mr. McCalla said. "The intervention was based on the premise that the United States was ousting a criminal despot, namely President Aristide, who had used his powers to subvert democracy, and that the interim government was going to establish rule of law. That has not happened." It is not easy to tell exactly what happened in St.-Marc. Estimates of the dead range from 5 to 50. But according to rights investigators and reports by the Haitian press, the violence had its roots in the upheaval that ousted President Aristide. That rebellion began in early February 2004 in Gonaïves, when a rag-tag group of former soldiers attacked police stations and forced officers to abandon their posts. Word spread rapidly to St.-Marc, where Aristide opponents who called themselves Ramicos attacked the police station and set up barricades. Mr. Neptune arrived there in the presidential helicopter on Feb. 9. Witnesses said he toured the city, summoned police officers back to their stations and vowed in an angry speech that the government would not surrender. "What we are doing is to make sure that peace is re-established," he was quoted as saying in a Haitian newspaper account. "We are encouraging the police to get together with the population so that the cycle of violence