Africa

IRIN 19 Nov 2004 Africa: Rapid response team trained [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] ADDIS ABABA, 19 Nov 2004 (IRIN) - The first ever African UN rapid response, disaster mitigation team is ready for deployment to emergencies around the continent, officials said on Friday. The UN's Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team would be used for natural and man-made emergencies in Africa and across the globe. "It was important to establish an African team, as it will be able to respond faster to an emergency in Africa as well as have a better understanding of the culture and speak the language," said Jesper Lund, the course organiser. "Upon request of a disaster-stricken country, the team can be deployed within hours to carry out rapid assessment of priority needs and to support national authorities and the United Nations resident coordinator to coordinate international relief on-site," he added. The team, which is provided free of charge to the disaster-affected country, is responsible for providing first-hand information on the emergency situation. "The UNDAC Team consists of disaster management professionals who are nominated and funded by member governments, UN agencies and international organisations, and are permanently on stand-by to deploy to relief missions following disasters and humanitarian emergencies anywhere in the world," Lund added. It will also assess priority needs of the victims to the international community through the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Its activities will also help strengthen national and regional disaster response capacity, officials who took part in the training told IRIN. To date the UNDAC Team has conducted 123 emergency missions in more than 68 countries since its creation in 1993. They were among the first into the troubled region of Darfur in western Sudan and were deployed in Haiti. Their two-week training was completed on Friday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Some 34 participants from 14 different African nations took part in the two-week training course, organised by the OCHA Field Coordination Support Section in Geneva, Switzerland and supported by the OCHA Country Office in Addis Ababa.

Algeria

BBC 28 Oct 2004 Algeria 'terror leader' arrested German prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant for Saifi Algeria has taken custody of one of its most wanted terror suspects, handed over by Libya, the government says. Amar Saifi, known as 'Abderrezak El Para' is accused of being behind last year's kidnapping of 32 tourists from Germany and elsewhere in Europe. The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) he leads is allegedly linked to al-Qaeda. He was reportedly arrested in March by rebels in Chad. It is not clear how he fell into Libyan hands. In July, the rebel Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad (MDJC) said that Libya had threatened to bomb their positions unless he was handed over. Ransom demand The GSPC is one of the last groups fighting a 12-year civil war in Algeria, in which some 150,000 people have been killed. Germany issued an international warrant for his arrest in September 2003. The warrant accuses him of kidnapping, extortion, membership of a foreign terrorist organisation and attempted blackmail of the German government. Germany is reported to have paid a ransom for the hostages, but the government has refused to confirm or deny this. The tourists were captured in small groups during a spate of kidnappings in the Sahara desert. All but one of the hostages - a German woman who died of heat stroke - were freed.

BBC 2 Nov 2004 Algeria proposes general amnesty By Mohammed Arrezki Himeur BBC correspondent in Algiers The conflict with Islamists has taken a huge toll A general amnesty is being considered for Algerians implicated in violence and murder during the past 12 years. The conflict between the government and Islamist militants has claimed at least 100,000 lives since it started in 1992. But it now seems to have abated and President Abdelaziz Bouteflika believes the time is right to try to move to the next stage to bring peace to Algeria. He was speaking during events to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the war of independence against France. But the president said such a decision could not be taken by his government alone, despite his party's overwhelming victory in April's election. Travesty He said that that vote does not give him a go-ahead to declare such a general amnesty. He suggested that a referendum would be needed, because, according to the constitution, the people are sovereign and not parliament or the president. The general amnesty is supposed to cover all those who have been implicated in the sectarian violence of the past decade, in this case not only the armed Islamists but also members of the security forces accused of torture, and summary executions. There are also those involved in the disappearance of more than 7,000 Islamist prisoners, arrested during this period. The families of the victims of both the Islamists and members of the security forces do not generally agree with each other - but they have found common ground over a possible amnesty. Both sides say it is a travesty of justice. President Bouteflika though, sees a general amnesty as being part of the country's path to dialogue that will eventually end the conflict with reconciliation.

Botswana

AFP 5 Nov 2004 Bushmen Testify in Botswana Land Dispute By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ABORONE, Botswana, Nov. 5 (Agence-France Presse) - San Bushmen resumed testimony on Friday in the Botswana High Court to challenge their resettlement from what they claim is ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Taking the stand for the first time since the case was postponed three months ago, Motsoko Ramafoko, a witness for the San, told the court that people were removed from the land against their will. He said people did not want to be relocated to the town of New Xade, outside the park in central Botswana. "First they took our wives, loaded them in the trucks and off they went to New Xade," he said. "Then they came for us men." The San are asking the High Court to declare that the government's 2002 decision to resettle the Bushmen in settlements outside the game reserve was illegal. Survival International, a London-based group that has been waging a 30-year campaign in support of the rights of the San, maintains that they were driven out of the Kalahari to make way for diamond mining, a claim the government has denied. The case is expected to continue for at least a month.

Burundi

IRIN 1 Nov 2004 Tutsis finally accept interim constitution [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] BUJUMBURA, 1 November (IRIN) - Concerns of a constitutional crisis in Burundi abated on Monday when six Tutsi-dominated parties dropped their long-standing opposition to the country's current interim constitution. The interim constitution is necessary to avoid a constitutional void, the chairman of the main Tusti-dominated Parti de l'unite pour le progres national Jean, Baptiste Manwangari, told reporters on Monday. However, he said his parties still wanted changes to be made to the final constitution. The interim constitution has been in effect since 20 October when the country's transitional, two-chamber parliament voted for it to stay in force for six months. Officially, the transition period ended on Monday, but the interim constitution allows the country's institutions to stay in place until elections are held in 2005. Local elections are scheduled for 9 February, communal elections for 23 February and legislative elections for 9 March. MPs from the Tutsi-dominated parties had boycotted the parliamentary vote on the interim constitution saying it mostly takes into account the interests of Hutu-dominated parties. A referendum is to be held on 26 November in which voters will be asked whether they want the interim constitution to stand as the permanent constitution after the current transitional government ends. In a statement released on Saturday, the Tutsi-dominated parties called for dialogue on the final constitution before the referendum takes place and for amendments to be allowed.

Reuters 4 Nov 2004 UN to revisit massacre probe after Burundi criticism By Patrick Nduwimana BUJUMBURA, Nov 4 (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Thursday it plans to revisit its investigation into the slaughter of about 160 Congolese refugees at a Burundi camp, after it was criticised by Burundi's government last week. The U.N. report, delivered last month, sought to determine who was responsible for an Aug. 13 massacre at the desolate Gatumba transit camp in western Burundi, near the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo. More than 160 Congolese refugees were burned, hacked and bludgeoned to death. U.N. investigators incriminated Burundi's Hutu rebel Forces for National Liberation (FNL) in the attack, and said other groups it did not name may have been involved. Burundi last week called the report ignorant of the availale evidence. Foreign Minister Therence Sinunguruza said there was proof showing a coalition of FNL rebels, Congolese traditional Mai Mai fighters and Rwandan Hutu militia had been responsible. Nureldine Satti, the deputy special representative to Burundi for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said any new evidence would be added to the report. "We never said that the U.N. report on Gatumba was perfect. It was not easy to produce a perfect report, especially in such difficult circumstances of inquiry. Everything is to be improved," Satti told reporters. "We will continue to re-examine the facts, in case we have new evidence which was not known before, and we will add them for an updating of the first report," he told a regular press briefing. The U.N. report said evidence was contaminated at the scene, making investigators' job that much harder. "We said other forces may have taken part in the massacre, but we didn't have enough evidence to say exactly which other forces were involved," Satti said. "There are no big divergences between the U.N. report and the one by Burundi's government." Burundi plans to publish the results of its investigation soon and says it will bring those responsible before the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague, a course the U.N. report urged.

Agence France-Presse 4 Nov 2004 Former fighters loot civilians in Burundi: UN BUJUMBURA, Nov 4 (AFP) - Armed gangs, reportedly including members of a former rebel group, have been looting food and property from impoverished villagers, the UN mission in the small central African country said Thursday. The UN force monitoring a post-war ceasefire and a political settlement stated that it "deplores the looting by armed elements, believed to include members of the CNDD-FDD, of food and possessions from the least favoured people, who have scarcely enough to survive on." The Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) and their political National Council (CNDD) signed an overall peace pact with the government a year ago, as part of a process to end a civil war which erupted in October 1993 and claimed some 300,000 lives. About 15,000 former FDD fighters are grouped into camps awaiting disarmament while some now fight alongside the regular army in dealing with the country's last small remaining rebel group. However, UN agencies and other organisations have for several months stopped providing food for ex-rebels who are not in the camps. The UN World Food Programme each week distributes an average "200 tonnes of food to about 30,000 vulnerable people in Rural Bujumbura", the area around the capital, according to the WFP. UN Burundi Operation (ONUB) spokesman Adama Diop said the food was supplied in convoys and distributed under the supervision of some of the UN military personnel in the country, where almost 5,500 peacekeepers are deployed. "The looting happens later," an WFP source said, asking not to be named. "Often it's at night, when people have gone home to their hills." Local officials said 100 households were robbed last week at Ruziba, their hillside community 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Bujumbura, the day after the WFP supplied food there. ONUB's deputy head, Nureldine Satti, said that if former rebels were fighting alongside the regular army, "we believe feeding them is the government's responsibility." No one in the FDD could be reached for immediate comment on the statements.

AFP 20 Nov 2004 Burundi's last rebel group no longer a threat to peace: minister DAR ES SALAAM, Nov 20 (AFP) - Burundi's defence minister said Saturday that the war-ravaged central African state's last active rebel group, the National Liberation Forces (FNL), no longer stood in the way of peace efforts. "Today, the FNL does not constitute a threat as such to the peace process in Burundi," General Vincent Niyungeko said on the sidelines of a conference in Tanzania's main city, Dar es Salaam, on peace in Africa's Great Lakes region, which includes Burundi. Burundi is trying to turn the page on a civil war which, since a variety of Hutu armed groups rose up in 1993 against a government and army then dominated by the Tutsi minority, has claimed more than 300,000 lives and devastated the tiny country's infrastructure. With the exception of the FNL, now estimated to have just a few hundred men under arms, all of these groups have joined a transitional power-sharing administration. Over the next few months, a series of elections is expected to usher in a permanent government. The minister recalled that 16 of the country's 17 provinces have enjoyed peace since the largest former rebel group, the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), signed a peace deal a year ago. The FNL has rebuffed overtures to open negotiations with the government. "This movement has become militarily marginal. It is not in a position to hamper the electoral process," said Niyungeko. "The FNL have lost enormous amounts of territory following joint actions by the army and the FDD," a military expert who asked not to be named told AFP. "We believe they now have between 300 and 500 fighters and are not able to mount major attacks," he added.

AFP 26 Nov 2004 Rebels clash with Burundi army, 17 reported dead BUJUMBURA, Nov 25 (AFP) - Members of the sole remaining rebel group in Burundi clashed twice with army patrols this week, losing 17 men in the firefights, military sources said Thursday. In another reported incident, a soldier let off a rocket launcher during a visit by President Domitien Ndayizeye to northern Burundi, killing another member of the president's guard. In the first of the two reported clashes between guerrillas and the army, 10 guerrillas were killed and two army soldiers were injured in fighting just north of the capital, the military sources said. A second confrontation south of Bujumbura Thursday reportedly resulted in a further seven rebel deaths. The sources said the army seized small arms and mortar shells. On Saturday, Defence Minister General Vincent Niyungeko said that the rebels, members of the outlawed National Liberation Forces (FNL), no longer stood in the way of efforts to restore peace after a decade of conflict that has claimed some 300,000 lives. With the exception of the FNL, now estimated to have just a few hundred men under arms, several other Hutu armed groups have joined a transitional power-sharing administration. A series of elections has been scheduled over the next few months aimed at forming a permanent government. A military expert said the FNL is likely to have no more than 300 to 500 fighters, and can no longer mount major attacks, having lost most of the territory it once held. Meanwhile, army spokesman Adolphe Manirakiza said the shooting incident in Ndayizeye's entourage Thursday was "completely involuntary." He said a soldier riding in the lead vehicle inadvertently fired his rocket-launcher, gravely wounding a companion who died later of his injuries. Ndayizeye was visiting the province of Cibitoke, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Bujumbura, as part of a campaign to encourage citizens to register for voting in upcoming elections, the president's office said. But political sources said that so far, only 50,000 of the three million Burundians believed eligible to vote had registered. A referendum for a new constitution was to have taken place on Friday, but has been put back until December 22 for "logistical reasons."

Côte d’Ivoire

IRIN 28 Oct 2004 Côte d'Ivoire: Rebels declare state of emergency, warn of return to war [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] BOUAKE, 28 October (IRIN) - The rebel movement which controls the northern half of Cote d'Ivoire declared a state of emergency on Thursday and warned that the West African country was heading back towards an early resumption of civil war. "Disarmament is no longer a live issue, because the war isn't over yet. It is going to resume shortly," rebel leader Guillaume Soro told a press conference in Bouake, the rebel capital in central Cote d'Ivoire. He said the New Forces rebel movement had ordered its seven ministers in Cote d'Ivoire's broad-based government of national reconciliation to return to Bouake immediately for consultations. This move raises the prospect that the rebels may withdraw from the power-sharing government for the third time in 13 months. Colonel Soumaila Bakayoko, the rebel military commander, meanwhile announced the imposition of a state of emergency and a 9.00pm to 6.00am curfew in all rebel-controlled areas. Following the discovery of a large consignment of weapons and ammunition hidden in a commercial truck entering Bouake on Tuesday, all vehicles would be searched as they entered the rebel zone, including UN vehicles and the vehicles of humanitarian organisations, he added. The rebels displayed 80 AK-47 assault rifles, nine RPG-7 rocket grenade launches, 20 hand grenades and a large cache of ammunition which they said had been hidden in the truck beneath bags of rice. They accused President Laurent Gbagbo of sending the weaponry clandestinely to supporters of Ibrahim Coulibaly, an exiled rebel leader known as "IB," who is widely seen as a challenger to Soro for the leadership of the rebel movement. At least 99 people died during two days of clashes between supporters of Soro and IB in the northern city of Korhogo in June, according to the UN human rights mission which conducted an inquiry afterwards. The rebels' decision to suspend their participation in Cote d'Ivoire's power-sharing government follows a fresh impasse in the country's flagging peace process. President Gbagbo, the rebels, and parliamentary opposition parties agreed at a meeting in the Ghanaian capital Accra on July 30 to a timetable for the rapid implementation of political reforms and an early start to disarmament. However, Ggagbo failed to deliver the promised reforms by the agreed deadline of 30 September, so the rebels refused to begin handing in their weapons to UN peacekeepers on 15 October as planned. The civil war broke out in September 2002 and rebel forces quickly seized control of the north of Cote d'Ivoire, whose cocoa and coffee exports have made it the most prosperous country in West Africa. However, the fighting stopped seven months later following the signing of the French-brokered Linas-Marcoussis peace accord in January 2003. Gbagbo has never disguised his dislike of Marcoussis, saying it gave too many concessions to the rebels. He and his Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party have dragged their feet over implementing many of the political reforms which the peace agreement demands before the holding of fresh presidential elections in October 2005. The rebels have cited slow progress in the implementation of these reforms to justify their refusal to disarm. Despite the presence in Cote d'Ivoire of 4,000 French troops and 6,000 UN peacekeepers to keep the two sides apart, a series of government crises over the past year have raised the ugly prospect of the country sliding back into conflict. Tension has increased markedly over the past week. A group of rebel fighters exchanged fire with a patrol of French peacekeepers 50 km south of Korhogo on Tuesday, a French military spokesman said. Meanwhile, in Abidjan, the "Young Patriots," a militia-style youth movement which supports President Gbagbo, has resumed its former tactic of seizing and ripping up opposition newspapers on sale in the street. Soro's decision to recall all rebel ministers to Bouake meant that the rebels were unlikely to take part in a special cabinet meeting on Friday, called to accelerate the passage of the remaining political reforms. Most of these are aimed at giving greater rights to four million immigrants in Cote d'Ivoire from other West African countries and their descendants. Specific measures to be discussed on Friday include a new nationality law and the creation of an independent national electoral commission to oversee future elections and the organisation of a referendum to approve a constitutional ammendment that would make it easier for the children of immigrants to run for the presidency. One official close to independent Prime Minister Seydou Diarra, said the embattled prime minister still hoped the rebels would turn up for the meeting. "The Prime Minister cannot give a reaction now, but I am sure he will be hoping to the last minute that everybody will come tomorrow," she told IRIN. Officials at the presidency were not immediately available for comment.

IRIN 29 Oct 2004 Pro-Gbagbo militias undergo military training in the heart of Abidjan [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] © IRIN Leader of the GPP militia group Zuegen Toure (left), with Moise Kore (right), his "Defence Minister," and a group of GPP volunteers at their training camp in Abidjan ABIDJAN, 29 Oct 2004 (IRIN) - Even the girls have shaved heads in the Institut Marie-Thérèse, a primary school named after the wife of Ivory Coast’s first president. Dressed in kaki T-shirts and camouflage gear, they work in the kitchen to prepare food for the young men who invaded the school grounds on August 15. These "Young Patriots" have turned it into a military training camp for young hardline supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo. The school, in Abidjan's bustling Adjame district, now serves as the headquarters of Cote d'Ivoire's best-trained militia organisation, the Patriotic Grouping for Peace (GPP). The entrance to the playground is protected by sandbags and a barrier of old tyres in the road outside forces cars to slow down and negotiate the hazard in single file. Zeguen Toure, the GPP's undisputed leader, makes no bones about his organisation's real aims. “The authorities have a passive attitude in managing the situation and we are tired of that,” he said. “We back the president in everything he does, but we’re tired of his negotiating." "Our only aim is war and we will decide ourselves when the time is right.” The school's classrooms have been turned into orderly dormitories and TV-rooms packed with youngsters in military camouflage wearing polished new boots. They stand to attention and salute smartly as visitors enter the room. "We are not just a gang of killers" Toure told IRIN during a tour of the premises that the building is now used to provide military training for 1,600 GPP volunteers. Detailed drawings of an automatic rifle and its various parts on a blackboard, made clear that this training included instruction in the use of fire-arms. But Toure denied that his men were just political thugs who attacked people suspected of being rebel sympathisers at the behest of the president and the barons of his Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party. “We are here to show that we are not a gang of killers,” Touré told IRIN. “In fact, we will tidy up the neighborhood.” “Organizations like the United Nations say bad things about us, they say we are a tribal militia,” he said. “But we are just volunteers who consider it their duty to defend Cote d'Ivoire. All we want is to take our country back from the rebels.” The GPP and other pro-Gbagbo militia groups sprouted into existence after Cote d'Ivoire plunged into civil war two years ago, leaving the country partitioned between a rebel-controlled north and a government-controlled south. They form part of a hadline nationalist movement known collectively as the Young Patriots. Diplomats say its key leaders take their orders from the presidential palace and the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based thinktank, came to the same conclusion in a report published in July. Although nobody knows for sure who commands the militia groups, ICG said, they have "internal hierarchies leading up to the presidency." The man widely suspected of coordinating their activities is Bertin Kadet, a former defence minister, who now acts as Gbagbo's personal adviser on security matters. Bizarrely, the GPP's training camp is situated in a lively and populous neighborhood that is considered a stronghold of the Rally of the Republicans (RDR) opposition party, accused by Gbagbo of being hand in glove the rebels. A peace agreement in January 2003 led to a ceasefire just over three months later and the establishment of a broad-based government of national reconciliation. But after two years of tortuous negotiations, the peace process remains deadlocked and rebel leader Guillaume Soro warned earlier this week that Cote d'Ivoire was heading back towards open conflict. Uncompromising towards the rebels The civil war has spawned dozens of nationalist movements pledging their support for President Gbagbo, although for a long time the existence of armed militias among them was denied by the government. The demands made by these groups change according to the political climate, but their belligerent stance is unmistakable. Generally speaking, the Young Patriots refuse to acknowledge the rebels’ right to share in government and want them to be crushed by force unless they agree to lay down their weapons unconditionally. They claim that the large community of immigrants from other West African countries in Cote d'Ivoire is in league with the rebels since many of them ethnic have links with the rebels bedrock supporters in the north of the country. And they accuse France, the former colonial power which has 4,000 peacekeeping troops in Cote d'Ivoire, of supporting the rebel cause. French citizens and French commercial interests have repeatedly been attacked by the pro-Gbagbo militants. The Young Patriots have even demonstrated outside the headquarters of the UN peacekeeping force in Abidjan and have smashed UN vehicles to press their demands that the 6,000 UN peacekeeping troops disarm the rebels by force. The movement draws much of its support from students and the fast-growing ranks of unemployed youth. The leaders of the Young Patriots frequently whip their followers into a frenzy with intimidating xenophobic rhetoric. Their favourite rallying place is the "Sorbonne," the former speakers' corner in Abidjan's downtown business district. During their protest demonstrations, the Young Patriots can make a lot of noise. Earlier this year the movement managed to fill sports stadiums in Abidjan with several thousand people for its rallies. The most prominent Young Patriot leader is Charles Ble Goude, a charismatic student drop-out who is invariably accompanied by armed bodyguards. He enjoys the permanent use of a suite at the prestigious Hotel Ivoire and is widely believed to be bankrolled by the presidential palace. But the organisation which Ble Goude personally heads, the Panafrican Congress of Young Patriots (COJEP) does not have the very blatant military identity of Toure's CPP. Former student leaders at the helm Diplomats fear what may happen if the armed militias are let loose on the city, rather than stone-throwing tyre-burning demonstrators who are usually the most visible face of the Young Patriots. A UN inquiry into the government's bloody repression of a banned opposition demonstration in Abidjan last March concluded that at least 120 people were killed over a two-day period as armed militiamen joined police and soldiers to hunt down suspected opposition supporters in some of the city's poorest suburbs. Toure, like Ble Goude and Soro, the rebel leader, is a former activist in FESCI, Cote d'Ivoire's main student association. All three men are in their mid-30s and know each other personally. Toure, who is 36, told IRIN that he once studied economics and computer science, but one man who knows him well said he had never held a real full-time job. Toure confirmed that Moise Kore the man he describes as his "Defence Minister" was a serving member of the security forces, but he declined to say what rank he holds or in which regular unit he serves. Individual GPP militia members do not carry arms, but they are taught how to use them, Touré said. “Former army officers come and train my men,” he said. “As for arms, it’s easy to get them. Arms are everywhere.” Touré said Ivory Coast’s security forces alone were not strong enough to “liberate” the country on their own and the militias had been created to help them complete the task. “Our security forces cannot defend everybody. The conventional army is not the most appropriate army for warfare with rebels,” he said. But Toure dismissed the notion that most militia groups consist of people from President Gbagbo's Bété ethnic group from south central Cote d'Ivoire and their close relatives, the Attié and Dida. “I myself, I am a northerner,” he said, pointing out that he came from Touba, near the western frontier with Guinea. Last year, it was a common sight to see small groups of militia recruits jogging through the streets of Abidjan, particularly in neighborhoods where Gbagbo was popular. The militias disappeared from public view after Prime Minister Seydou Diarra asked the security forces to disband them in August 2003, but Abidjan residents say they are still very much in evidence. One blast on a whistle brings them into the street “Every neighborhood has its own militia, but it’s not like they hang out together all the time,” a Lebanese businessman told IRIN on condition of anonymity. “Yet, they’re organized. It only takes one blow of the whistle to get them pouring out onto the streets.” Apart from the GPP, the best-known militia force in Cote d'Ivoire is the Front for the Liberation of the Greater West (FLGO), which is based in the western town of Guiglo, near the buffer zone between the loyalist army and the rebels. Long after fighting died down in the rest of Cote d'Ivoire, the area around Guiglo remained plagued by ethnic conflict, fuelled by the presence of militia groups, some of which recruited heavily among Liberian refugees. According to the International Crisis Group, FLGO leader Mao Gloféi is a member of the central committee of Gbagbo's FPI and a close aide to the mayor of Guiglo. Gloféi speaks openly about his “armed movement”, but it is unclear how many men are under his command. Back in Abidjan, Touré said the authorities have accepted his informal takeover of the Institut Marie-Therese. However, one local government official in Adjame said the mayor and his staff could do little about the GPP's presence there since the militia group had an influential patron: Finance Minister Paul Bouhoun Bouabre, a leading member of the FPI and a close associate of the president. Toure himself declined to say who paid for the GPP's military uniforms, its food, weapons and training. “We are volunteers, we finance ourselves,” he said with a grin.

NYT 5 Nov 2004 Ivory Coast Cease-Fire Ends With Airstrikes Against 2 Rebel Towns By SOMINI SENGUPTA DAKAR, Senegal, Nov. 4 - Government planes in Ivory Coast conducted bombing raids against two rebel-held towns starting shortly after sunrise on Thursday, ending a tenuous yearlong cease-fire and signaling a possible resumption of civil war. A spokesman for the French military in Ivory Coast, Col. Henri Aussavy, said the raids began at 7:15 a.m. against a rebel base in Bouaké, a guerrilla stronghold. Two more raids followed, one on the rebel-run television station in Bouaké and a third farther north, at Korhogo, an official with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast said. There were no confirmed reports of casualties, but a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a telephone interview that at least a dozen wounded had been evacuated from Bouaké. There were no reports of rebel retaliation. In Abidjan, a commercial hub, government loyalists held a demonstration threatening a full-scale war to recapture territory that has been in rebel hands since the outbreak of civil war in September 2002, according to news agency reports. "We are going to reconquer our territory, and reunify Ivory Coast," Col. Phillipe Mangou, a government military chief for operations, told The Associated Press. There was no official government comment on the air raids. The bombings ended a cease-fire between rebel forces and the government of President Laurent Gbagbo as well as a power-sharing deal that had allotted important cabinet posts to rebel leaders. The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, called the airstrikes a "major violation of the cease-fire" and warned Mr. Gbagbo and the rebels against further hostilities. In a statement on Thursday, the Security Council urged that the cease-fire be "fully respected." Mr. Gbagbo's government has violated some of the terms of a truce agreement signed in January 2003, and the rebels have refused to disarm. Ivory Coast, a former French colony, is the world's largest producer of cocoa and was once an oasis of prosperity and political stability in West Africa, welcoming migrant workers from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali to work on the vast plantations. But a fall in cocoa prices, gradual economic decline and simmering grievances by the largely Muslim north erupted into full-scale civil war. Rebels control the north and the government holds the south, and tribal and religious loyalties have added a particularly nasty flavor to the conflict. The last major upheaval was in March, when a government crackdown on a demonstration in Abidjan left 120 people dead, according to a United Nations inquiry. Some 6,000 United Nations peacekeepers and 4,500 French troops are posted in Ivory Coast, charged with keeping the warring parties at bay.

Human Rights Watch 4 Nov 2004 Côte d'Ivoire: Civilians must not be targeted (New York, November 4, 2004) - As fighting renewed in Côte d'Ivoire on Thursday, Human Rights Watch called on all parties to refrain from targeting civilians and to respect international humanitarian law. According to their mandate, United Nations peacekeepers deployed in the country should protect civilians under imminent threat of violence. On Thursday, Ivorian government aircraft launched a series of bombing raids on the main rebel-held cities of Bouaké and Korhogo, signaling an end to the ceasefire declared in January 2003 and the peace process initiated at the same time. Several civilians were reported killed and many wounded when a checkpoint manned by New Forces (Forces Nouvelles) troops came under aerial attack. Meanwhile in Abidjan, the commercial capital held by government forces, militant youth from a pro-government group known as the Young Patriots (Jeunes Patriotes) attacked unarmed U.N. personnel and burned two of their vehicles, attacked the hotel where government ministers representing the New Forces lived, and ransacked and burned the offices of at least two opposition newspapers. "Côte d'Ivoire's civil war and its ongoing political crisis have been characterized by shocking brutality. Civilians have often been attacked solely on the basis of their ethnicity, religion or nationality," said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Africa Division. "If the government and rebels resume fighting, they must take all steps possible to limit harm to the civilian population." Human Rights Watch urged all parties to the Ivorian conflict - including the Ivorian military, gendarmes, police forces, pro-government militias and combatants from several rebel factions making up the New Forces - to distinguish at all times between combatants and the civilian population. They must not attack civilians including aid workers, medical personnel, U.N. personnel and members of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Captured combatants and civilians who find themselves under the authority of an adverse party must at all times be treated humanely, irrespective of their ethnicity, religion or nationality. Under international humanitarian law, all parties to the conflict in Côte d'Ivoire are prohibited from launching indiscriminate attacks. Armed forces must take precautions to limit the danger of attacks to civilian populations. Military actions - including the use of helicopter gunships, mortars or artillery - should be guided by the principle of proportionality in that the attacker should refrain from launching an attack if the expected civilian casualties would outweigh the importance of the military target. Moreover, the Ivorian government must ensure that militias used for military purposes are instructed in their obligations under the laws of war, or international humanitarian law. Since 2000, the government has increasingly relied on pro-government militias for both law enforcement and, since 2002, to combat the rebellion. In recent months, pro-government militia members have reportedly been undergoing military training in Abidjan. Drawn mainly from youth supporters of the ruling party, the Ivorian Popular Front (Front Populaire Ivorien, or FPI), the militias have served as a lightly veiled mechanism to intimidate and abuse members of the political opposition and those suspected of opposing the government by virtue of their religion, ethnicity or nationality. Most notably, the latter has included Muslims, northerners and West African immigrants mostly from Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali and Guinea. "Pro-government militias have been responsible for serious human rights abuses in Côte d'Ivoire's conflict," said Takirambudde. "The Ivorian government's failure to hold the militias accountable for these abuses has only strengthened the impunity of these groups in Abidjan and the rural areas." During the internal conflict from September 2002 through January 2003, and during the political impasse that has followed, Ivorian state security forces and other pro-government forces frequently and sometimes systematically executed, detained and attacked civilians from northern ethnic groups, Muslims and West African immigrants. Militia groups, tolerated if not encouraged by state security forces, have engaged in widespread targeting of the immigrant community, particularly agricultural workers from Burkina Faso living in villages in western Côte d'Ivoire. On their part, the New Forces have also attacked and killed civilians suspected of supporting the government or ruling political party. Neither the Ivorian government nor the rebel leadership has taken concrete steps to investigate and hold accountable those most responsible for these crimes. Perpetrators have been emboldened by the current climate of impunity that allows grave abuses to go unpunished. Background Since the military coup of 1999, Côte d'Ivoire has descended from its position as a beacon of socioeconomic stability in Africa to being one of the continent's most intransigent crises. The political and social climate is dangerously polarized and characterized by intolerance, xenophobia and suspicion. The 1999-2000 military junta, 2002-2003 civil war between the government and northern based rebels, and the political unrest and impasse that followed have been accompanied by a persistent, pernicious, and deadly disintegration of the rule of law. The issues at the heart of the Ivorian conflict - the exploitation of ethnicity for political gain, competition over land and natural resources, and corruption - continue unabated. While the bombing raids on Thursday marked the first relapse into full-scale war since 2003, the country remains divided. The north and most of the west of the country remain under the control of the rebel forces while the government retains control of the south. Some 4,000 French troops monitor the ceasefire line. The internal armed conflict officially ended in January 2003, after the signing of the French-brokered Linas-Marcoussis Agreement. The agreement provided for the formation of a Government of National Reconciliation, which was to oversee disarmament, transparent elections, and the implementation of political reforms such as changes to citizenship and land tenure laws. During 2003 the country made only limited progress towards implementing the provisions of the agreement. Despite the inclusion of both sides in the new government of reconciliation, representatives of the New Forces withdrew in September 2003 citing, among other reasons, President Gbagbo's lack of good faith in implementing the agreement. Fears that the impasse would lead to a fresh outbreak of violence led the United Nations, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to organize a summit to jumpstart the peace process, which was held in July in Accra, Ghana. The summit resulted in the signing of the Accra III agreement which committed the government to adopt several key legal reforms by the end of August, including one on citizenship for West African immigrants, one which would define eligibility to contest presidential elections, and another which would change rights to land tenure. The agreement also set October 15 as the starting date for disarmament, and agreed that the process should include all paramilitary and militia groups. However, none of the key reforms had been passed by the Ivorian government, and the rebels refused to begin disarming by the agreed-upon date of October 15.

ICRC 5 Nov 2004 Press Release 04/60 Côte d’Ivoire: ICRC calls on armed forces to respect international humanitarian law Geneva (ICRC) – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is concerned about the resumption of hostilities in Côte d’Ivoire and their dramatic consequences for the people of that country. In its capacity as guardian of international humanitarian law, the ICRC reminds members of the armed forces of their obligation to respect and ensure respect for the basic rules of this branch of the law. International humanitarian law requires that civilians be kept away from hostilities and that all necessary measures be taken to ensure that they are not harmed. People must have access to the objects and services that are indispensable to their survival, especially water, food and medical care. The lives of people arrested for reasons of security must be protected. International humanitarian law prohibits summary execution, torture and other types of cruel or inhuman treatment at all times. Members of the armed forces must respect the emblem of the Red Cross. Personnel of the ICRC and of the Red Cross Society of Côte d'Ivoire must be protected, and their humanitarian work must be facilitated. On 4 November, first-aiders from the Red Cross Society of Côte d'Ivoire, supported by the ICRC, evacuated people injured by shelling in Bouaké.

BBC 6 Nov 2004, 14:39 AU condemns Ivory Coast air raids There are fears the latest violence could reignite the civil war The African Union has condemned the government of Ivory Coast for mounting air strikes on rebel areas in the north and urged both sides to cease firing. Olusegun Obasanjo, the Nigerian leader who chairs the AU, voiced deep concern at the bombing, saying it contravened accords on ending the civil war. A rebel town came under attack for the third day running as Mr Obasanjo held talks in Otta, south-west Nigeria. The violence marks the first major unrest since last year's peace deal. Two planes dropped bombs on the rebel stronghold of Bouake at about 1300 GMT on Saturday, a UN official in the town told Reuters news agency by telephone. Reports also spoke of machine-gun fire and mortar bombardment around the town, but it is unclear where the fire has been coming from. The BBC's Anna Borzello reports from Nigeria that it was originally thought the Ivorian government and rebels might attend the talks in Otta, hastily convened by Mr Obasanjo. In the event, it turned out to be a brief consultation between high-level officials from the AU and the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). Stronger mandate President Obasanjo called on the UN to strengthen its mandate in the country, so that its troops could better deal with truce violations. In Pictures: Showing anger Peace process in tatters? Only the UN's Security Council has the authority to increase the powers of the peacekeepers. The new violence went against "the process of national reconciliation", the Nigerian leader added in a press statement, issued after talks with colleagues including AU head Alpha Oumar Konare. Both the AU and Ecowas urged all parties in the conflict to halt all hostilities and promised to set up a "high-powered committee to address the political issues involved in the conflict". UN officials in Ivory Coast said earlier that 18 people, most of them civilians, had been killed in the bombing attacks. UN peacekeepers intervened on Friday to stop two convoys of government troops moving north. There are fears that the air strikes may be preparation for a government ground attack. BBC world affairs correspondent Paul Welsh says stopping government aircraft attacks is difficult, because even if the peacekeepers had the authority to shoot them out of the sky, it would be likely to cause violent demonstrations by those fiercely loyal to the president. The country has been split in two since last year's peace deal, with 10,000 French and UN troops deployed to monitor the ceasefire. Last week, the rebels, known as the New Forces, withdrew their ministers from the unity government, accusing the army of preparing to return to war. Street protests Government aircraft bombed Bouake three times on Thursday alone and also attacked Korhogo, 225km (140 miles) to the north. Fresh strikes followed on Friday. Demonstrators took to the streets of the economic capital, Abidjan, setting fire to buildings housing opposition parties and newspapers accused of colluding with the rebels. Much of the violence in the city has been blamed on the Young Patriots, a group which supports President Laurent Gbagbo. Ground battles also took place between government and former rebel forces in the central town of Raviar, in the UN-patrolled buffer zone which splits the country, the UN said. The New Forces rebels have said they will act if government forces cross the UN buffer zone. Government officials have not confirmed the air strikes.

BBC 7 Nov 2004, 08:16 Anti-French uproar in Ivory Coast French property in Abidjan was targeted by protesters Angry anti-French demonstrators have marched on the airport in Ivory Coast's main city,Abidjan, after French troops seized control of it. French helicopters fired warning shots to try to stop the tens of thousands of government loyalists moving forward. The furious reaction was sparked by the destruction of five Ivorian armed forces aircraft by the French military. France had responded to an earlier Ivorian air attack on a rebel town that left nine French peacekeepers dead. Paris has said it is sending more troops and aircraft to the region to stop the escalating violence. The UN Security Council moved swiftly to back the French action, and called on all sides to stop the fighting. Looting Correspondents in Abidjan - Ivory Coast's economic capital in the south of the country - spoke of hearing loud explosions and heavy gunfire. Red tracer bullets streaked across the night sky, Reuters news agency reported. What is happening now is very serious in Ivory Coast and I hope that the council in the coming days will be able to adopt a resolution Jean-Marc de la Sabliere French ambassador to UN UN condemns attacks The BBC's James Copnall said a helicopter flew low over a bridge that splits the city, and fired warning shots as thousands of young men were trying to cross over. The protesters were responding to a call by groups loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo to retake the airport, which had been in French hands for some hours. They are reported to have turned back at about 0400 (0400 GMT). Some ransacked homes of Europeans in the Bietry district of the city as they dispersed, French news agency AFP said. Earlier, at least two French schools and a library were set alight and French property looted. Rioters were seen brandishing axes, machetes and clubs as they roamed the streets shouting "French go home!" and "Everybody get your Frenchman!" Explosions and heavy gunfire were also reportedly heard in the capital Yamoussoukro on Saturday evening. President Gbagbo has appealed through a spokesman for an end to attacks on French interests pending an investigation into Saturday's events. A government spokesman called the air raid in which the French soldiers died a mistake. Meanwhile, Paris has dispatched an extra two companies of troops to beef up a force of 4,000 already deployed since the end of the civil war last year. It has also redeployed three jet fighters to the region. President Jacques Chirac ordered the "immediate destruction of Ivorian military aircraft used in recent days in violation of the ceasefire". French forces earlier destroyed two Ivorian bombers at an airbase in Yamoussoukro, along with two Russian-built Sukhoi 25 and three Mi-24 helicopters. In a telephone call to President Laurent Gbagbo, France's Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said a political solution must be found, and stressed that "violence leads to nothing," a ministry statement said. 'Legitimate defence' The BBC's world affairs correspondent, Mark Doyle, says this is the most serious crisis between France and its former colony since independence in 1960. Ivory Coast was for many years a tolerant melting pot of religions and ethnic groups, but a coup in 1999 followed by civil war ended all of that with a vengeance, our correspondent says. IVORY COAST'S PEACE UNRAVELS 29 Sept: Ivorian parliament fails to agree citizenship laws, which were a key requirement of the January 2003 peace deal 13 Oct: Ivorian rebels say they will not disarm, as planned, until immigration laws are changed 28 Oct: Vendors selling newspapers accused of supporting the opposition are attacked by pro-government militants in Abidjan and southern towns The New Forces order eight rebel ministers to return to the rebel-held north, saying it had discovered the government smuggling arms across its territory 4 Nov: Government launches air strikes on rebel-held territory in north 5 Nov: More government air strikes and clashes on the ground in north, as unrest erupts in Abidjan 6 Nov: French forces destroy two government warplanes after an air strike leaves French soldiers dead At least one Ivorian Sukhoi 25 bomber attacked a position of France's Unicorn peacekeeping force in the rebel stronghold of Bouake on Saturday. Eight French soldiers were killed immediately along with an American, believed to have been a missionary, while 23 soldiers were injured and evacuated to Abidjan. A ninth soldier later died of his wounds. Just over an hour later, French forces launched an attack on the aircraft on the ground at Yamoussoukro. Without giving details of the airport attack, the defence ministry said the army had "responded in a situation of legitimate defence" and was seeking "the immediate end of combat". Three days of air raids by government planes on rebel areas in the north of the country have broken a truce that had held since July last year. Tensions reached boiling point after deadlines for reforms and disarmament designed to lead to peace were missed. The African Union has urged both the government and rebels to refrain from any further violations of the truce they signed.

NYT 7 Nov 2004 Ivory Coast Violence Flares; 9 French and 1 U.S. Death By SOMINI SENGUPTA DAKAR, Senegal, Nov. 6 - In a swift and alarming deepening of the war in Ivory Coast, airstrikes by two government attack jets killed nine French peacekeepers and an American civilian on Saturday afternoon near the northern Ivoirian town of Bouaké. The French retaliated within minutes by shooting down the jets, Russian-made Su-25 fighter-bombers, apparently under direct order from President Jacques Chirac of France. [Loud explosions were heard early Sunday in Abidjan, the Ivory Coast's main city, and heavy gunfire could be heard as thousands of anti-French demonstrators marched toward a French military base, Reuters reported. A witness said a French military helicopter fired warning shots into a lagoon crossed by two bridges that lead from the city center toward the French base and the airport.] Col. Henri Aussavy, the spokesman for the 4,500-member French peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast, said in a telephone interview that 23 French soldiers had also been wounded in the raid. He said it was unclear whether his forces had been intentionally hit. "We don't know if it is a deliberate attack or an error," Colonel Aussavy said. On state-run television Saturday evening, Désiré Tagro, a spokesman for the Ivoirian president, said the raid was aimed instead at a rebel base near Bouaké. Mr. Tagro said the attacks on Bouaké had been designed to "reunify the country." He issued no apology. The Associated Press quoted an Ivoirian government minister as saying it was "a mistake" but then questioning whether Ivoirian warplanes were responsible. "It was a mistake. We didn't aim to hit them," said Sebastien Dano Djeje, a cabinet member. The latest development plunges Ivory Coast, the world's largest cocoa-producer, into fresh chaos and threatens to take French-Ivoirian tensions to a new high. Since civil war erupted in 2002, the French, who exercise significant economic influence in their former colony, have been accused of aiding rebels and have repeatedly come under attack by supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo. At an emergency session convened Saturday afternoon, the United Nations Security Council condemned Saturday's air raid, backed the French response and signaled that it would consider "individual measures" in the near future - in other words, possible penalties for individuals who violate international agreements. France also sent three Mirage fighter jets to Gabon in Central Africa, and deployed additional troops to protect its citizens in Ivory Coast. Late Saturday, Reuters said the French Defense Ministry and a United Nations spokesman in Ivory Coast had confirmed that French troops had destroyed three Ivoirian attack helicopters in Yamoussoukro. In Abidjan, French and Ivoirian soldiers traded gunfire at the airport, and government loyalists took to the streets, wielding machetes and axes, according to wire service reports. A French school was set on fire. Gunfire could be heard in the capital, Yamoussoukro, on Saturday night. The spokeswoman for the United States Embassy in Abidjan, Ergibe Boyd, said it had received a report from the French that an unidentified American citizen was also killed in the airstrike by the Ivoirian military. The embassy had not yet confirmed the report, she said. "We have been told an American citizen has been killed," Ms. Boyd said. "We're trying to find out who he is." The war has partitioned Ivory Coast between the rebel-held north and the government-held south, despite a tenuous cease-fire signed in May 2003 and monitored by the French forces and 5,240 United Nations peacekeeping troops. The bombings on Saturday followed two days of air attacks by the government on rebel-held positions in the north of the country. On Thursday, two northern towns were bombed by the same two warplanes. On Friday, the government bombed three other rebel-held towns, according to a spokesman for the United Nations mission in Ivory Coast, and on Saturday, struck three towns with MIG-24 helicopter gunships. A United Nations spokesman, Jean-Victor Nkolo, said in a telephone interview that over the past two days, government troops had tried to bypass peacekeepers patrolling the buffer zone between government and rebel-held territory. Ivoirian soldiers on Thursday and Friday crossed into rebel territory, Mr. Nkolo said, but were chased away by United Nations troops. The United Nations also reported skirmishes between government and rebel forces near Bouaké on Saturday afternoon. Reuters reported from Paris that Mr. Chirac had given the orders to strike back at the Ivoirian airplanes that killed the French soldiers. Ivoirian forces later opened fire on French troops at the airport in Abidjan, the news agency reported, citing a French military spokesman in Abidjan. Machete-wielding pro-government supporters rampaged through Abidjan, the agency said, and plumes of smoke rose from the plush Cocody suburb, where a school had apparently been set on fire. The French foreign minister, Michel Barnier, said in a statement, "The Ivoirian head of state should clearly assume his responsibilities and the role that is his to restore calm to his country, in particular to Abidjan." Konate Siratigui contributed reporting from Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast, for this article.

BBC 9 Nov 2004 Mbeki seeks to calm Ivorian storm Anti-French feeling is still running high in the capital South African President Thabo Mbeki is in Ivory Coast to try to restore calm after two days of violence. Foreigners have been targeted amid confrontations involving thousands of supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo. Joint patrols have begun in the commercial centre Abidjan with Ivorian and French troops and peacekeepers from other countries within the UN force. Meanwhile France has denied it wants to overthrow Mr Gbagbo, and that its troops shot dead 15 demonstrators. If I get the French, I can eat them Gbagbo supporter Q&A: Renewed crisis In pictures: Violence erupts On Saturday, French troops destroyed the small Ivorian air force in retaliation for a government air strike that killed nine French soldiers. The incidents sparked a wave of anti-French violence that continued into Monday. The Red Cross said more than 600 people were hurt. In other developments: French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie says an attack which killed nine French troops was deliberate and carried out by Belarusian mercenaries The UN Security Council considers a French-backed draft resolution for an arms embargo, travel ban and asset freeze against those violating human rights and obstructing peace and disarmament France says it has no plans to evacuate its 14,000 nationals currently in the country Aid agencies appeal to the government to restore electricity and water supplies to rebel-held areas Cocoa exports are halted from Ivory Coast, which is the world's largest producer More than 1,000 Ivorians flee to Liberia as a result of the violence, the UNHCR says. Stand-off Mr Mbeki arrived from Pretoria shortly after 1000 GMT on Tuesday with Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota and Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad. He is expected to meet Mr Gbagbo, though it is not clear whether he will meet other political leaders or how long he will stay. He has been asked by the African Union to search for a political solution to the crisis, and held talks with African leaders on Monday. Joint patrols started in Abidjan at 2000 on Monday in an attempt to re-assure and control the population. Reuters news agency reported that city residents have been venturing into the streets to see whether the calm would hold. PEACE UNRAVELS 29 Sept: Parliament fails to meet deadline for political reforms promised to rebels 15 Oct: Rebels ignore deadline for disarmament 28 Oct: Rebels withdraw ministers from unity government 4 Nov: Government aircraft begin daily air strikes on rebel-held territory in north 6 Nov: An air strike leaves nine French soldiers dead; France responds by destroying Ivorian planes 7 Nov: Thousands of Gbagbo supporters demonstrate against the French in Abidjan; UN condemns Ivorian attacks Was French response right? Eyewitness: Mobs on rampage Large crowds of President Gbagbo's supporters have gathered near the presidential residence to provide what national radio has called a "human shield" for their leader. They are currently involved in a stand-off with French troops and foreign residents in the nearby Hotel Ivoire. The BBC's James Copnall in Abidjan describes seeing people dressed in the colours of the Ivorian flag singing and chanting in front of barbed wire erected by peacekeepers around the hotel. "We are not going to leave," one Gbagbo supporter told the Associated Press news agency. "If I get the French, I can eat them." At the weekend, tens of thousands of President Gbagbo's supporters marched on the French-held main airport in Abidjan. They also went on the rampage across the city attacking French targets. France sent 600 more troops to back up the 4,000 soldiers it already has in Ivory Coast as part of a UN force of 10,000.

Reporters sans Frontières (Paris) 10 Nov 2004 PRESS RELEASE Abidjan State Media Mix Propaganda, Disinformation and Incitement to Riot The following is a 10 November 2004 RSF press release: The state media in Ivory Coast have become the exclusive mouthpiece of the government and its allies and are being used to promote street demonstrations, Reporters Without Borders said today after monitoring many state radio and TV broadcasts. The organisation said the broadcasting of hate messages and countless unverified news reports has aggravated the ongoing violence in the Abidjan area and it urged the state media to act responsibly. After the ransacking of opposition newspapers last week, the state-owned radio and TV stations have become the most important source of news and information for residents of Abidjan, the country's economic capital. "In times of crisis like this, journalists must take extra care and make a special effort to be professional in their work," Reporters Without Borders said. "It is unfortunately clear that this has not been the case with the Ivorian state media during last weekend's violence in Abidjan. We must point out, in particular, that the state media are continuing to broadcast biased reports and appeals for riots, despite calls for a return to normality by the authorities." Reporters Without Borders added: "If President Laurent Gbagbo does not want to be accused of saying one thing and doing another, he must ensure that the official media are no longer used as tools for organising and mobilising the pro-governmental 'Young Patriots'." Religious imprecations and hate messages With few exceptions, the reports carried on Radio Côte d'Ivoire (RCI) and RadioTélévision Ivoirienne (RTI) have strayed completely from journalism into propaganda. Interspersed with nationalistic songs, phone-in contributions and interviews, RCI presenters flatter the "patriotism" of their listeners. Yesterday, shortly after 10 a.m. (local time and GMT), a preacher from the Church of the Living Word went on the air with violent imprecations. "The country must be delivered from the evil ones," he said, claiming that French President Jacques Chirac is "inhabited by the spirt of Satan." Ivory Coast was "divided into two blocs, with the Devil's bloc on one side and God's bloc on the other," and it was up to the "patriots" to ensure that the second prevailed, he said. His monologue ended with a ringing "Amen, pastor" from the two RCI presenters. Throughout the 90 minutes of Reporters Without Borders's monitoring of RCI yesterday, the same two presenters regularly punctuated their live comments with such slogans as "Vigilance, patriots" and "Thanks be to the fatherland." This morning on RTI, Reporters Without Borders noted that President Chirac and the French soldiers of the Force Licorne were systematically referred to as "settlers" and "imperialists." In general, comments and reports tended to focus on the claim that France is in the process of carrying out a "coup d'etat" against Ivory Coast, despite the denials by both the French and Ivorian military. From political messages to organising in the field The Ivorian state media are also being used to organise street activity in Abidjan. More than 24 hours after President Gbagbo called on demonstrators to "return home," RCI's broadcasts yesterday were still referring only to the "mobilisation" call made by the Young Patriots, a pro-Gbagbo civilian militia, Reporters Without Borders found. Although leaders of the Young Patriots swear that a few "rebel infiltrators" are to blame for the violence and appeal for "discipline" and "non-violence" on the part of demonstrators, their messages have a double-edge when they are not openly insurrectionary. Yesterday on RCI, shortly after 9:30 a.m. (local time and GMT), a Young Patriots nurse called on supporters to give medicine to the treatment centre installed near the Hotel Ivoire and then made a "patriotic appeal" to Abidjan residents to "go out, go out." At the end of the afternoon, activists stationed outside the Hotel Ivoire appealed on RTI for "patriots" to join their "brothers" on the street, Reporters Without Borders noted. The presenter who welcomed them into the studio told them they had her "support." The RCI presenters meanwhile appealed to Abidjan residents to make donations to the Young Patriots. They thanked a woman who promised to make her car available to them and invited an elderly man who has donated money several times to speak on the air. Today at 11 a.m. (local time and GMT) Reporters Without Borders heard RTI presenter Francis Aka begin by "paying homage" to the "young people who say no to French imperialism," who "are blocking the conspiracy hatched by France against our country" and to whom Ivorians "owe their survival." He then gave over the microphone to the president of the United Youth for Laurent Gbagbo's Ideas (JUILG) and the secretary-general of the pro-Gbagbo Union for Democracy and Progress (UDP), who appealed to "young people (. . .) to mobilise against France, the unmasked aggressor." Ivorian youths were urged to "go to the headquarters of RTI, the presidential residence and the radio stations" and to thereby "continue the mobilisation until our country is completely liberated." Disinformation and incitement to riot The head of the Young Patriots, Charles Blé Goudé, gave the signal for the anti-French uprising on the evening of 6 November on the air on RTI, urging his supporters, "wherever they are," to "take to the streets." Pascal Affi Nguessan, the head of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) - the president's party - meanwhile went on television the same day to ask the Young Patriots to "massively" take over the streets of Abidjan in order to forestall any action by "foreign forces present on the national territory until total victory." During the ensuing rioting, the state media carried false information and rumours that triggered the street violence. On 8 November, for example, the national radio station, on several occasions, carried "reports" that French soldiers were conveying a "political leader" in one of their armoured vehicles and intended to take him to RTI headquarters so that he could publicly proclaim himself president. RCI presenters subsequently urged Abidjan residents to go out and place gas canisters in the streets to prevent the French troops from circulating. RCI also spread the rumour that the purpose of French troop movements was the removal of President Gbagbo and it urged "patriots" to form a "human shield" around the president's home. National Assembly president Mamadou Koulibaly went to RTI headquarters the same day to give a long televised speech claiming that the government had "won the war" because it had "proved that France is [the] adversary." "Rumours" that "bring down republics" After delivering inflammatory addresses live on state media, several Ivorian leaders seem to have realised the dangers of these media excesses. After meeting with the French commander, Gen. Henri Poncet, the chief of staff of the Ivorian Armed Forces, Gen. Mathias Doué, late on 8 November called on everyone to "pay no attention to rumours" that were the source of mistaken "interpretations." Such interpretations, he said, just "complicate a situation which we [the Ivorian armed forces] can resolve." Koulibaly, the National Assembly president, then warned that "the most foolish rumours are the ones that bring down republics the fastest." Despite these comments, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard deplored, on the evening of 8 November, that the Ivorian media were continuing to disseminate hate messages against at foreigners, and he reported that 800 residents of foreign origin had sought refuge and protection at the premises of the UN mission in Ivory Coast. Previous muzzling of opposition and independent press The Ivorian Armed Forces offensive against the positions of the ex-rebels in the north of the country was preceded by a crackdown on free expression. A significant part of the press was silenced after the ransacking of several opposition newspapers by pro-government militia, the sabotaging of the FM transmitters that relay the programming of Radio France Internationale (RFI), the BBC World Service and Africa N°1, and the abrupt removal of RTI's director-general and his replacement by a government supporter, Jean-Paul Dahily. http://www.rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=11824 www.rti.ci www.rtici.tv radioci.embaci.com www.africa1.com

Reporters sans frontières 12 Nov 2004 www.rsf.org Ivorian journalist killed during clashes with French troops at Duékoué A local correspondent for Le Courrier d'Abidjan, a daily that supports President Laurent Gbagbo, was killed on the morning of 7 November during clashes between the Ivorian army, demonstrators and members of the French peacekeeping "Force Licorne," Reporters Without Borders confirmed today. The newspaper reported that journalist Antoine Massé, who was also a literature teacher, was fatally shot as he was covering a demonstration aimed at blocking the eastward advance of the French troops from Man towards Abidjan. A communique released by the Ivorian Defence and Security Forces (FDS) said three soldiers, a policeman, a customs official and three civilians were killed on 7 November when French troops opened fired in the Duékoué "corridor" at Duékoué and Dibobly. An FDS spokesman, Lt. Col. Jules Yao Yao, confirmed to Reporters Without Borders that Massé was one of the civilian victims. A Force Licorne detachment that had left from Man found the road blocked on the morning of 7 November and opened fire in order to clear the way. "The death of a journalist is to be taken seriously," Reporters Without Borders said. "We call on the Force Licorne to conduct an enquiry and publicly explain the circumstances of Antoine Massé's death." The organisation also appealed to journalists to take extra care. "With this level of confusion, a journalist should in particular identify himself clearly." The staff of Le Courrier d'Abidjan said Massé was shot in the head and the heart. Deputy editor William Varlet Asia told Reporters Without Borders that he spoke to Massé by telephone a few hours before he was killed, and had reiterated to him the security precautions he should take. The day before Massé was killed, Lazare Ahua, a cameraman with RadioTélévision Ivoirienne (RTI), sustained bullet injuries to the feet as he was filming a counter-strike by French helicopter gun ships at Tiébissou, in the centre of the country, following an Ivorian air force attack on French positions in Bouaké in which nine French soldiers were killed.

Agence France-Presse 12 Nov 2004 Chronology of the recent unrest in Ivory Coast ABIDJAN, Nov 12 (AFP) - The political arm of Ivory Coast's rebel New Forces on Monday approved a march by northerners on the main city Abidjan to demand reconciliation of the divided country after a week of violence that has convulsed the peace process. The once-prosperous west African state, the world's leading producer of cocoa, has been locked in a simmering civil war since a failed rebel attempt to oust President Laurent Gbagbo in September 2002. Although the rebels took over the north, the government has remained firmly in control in the south. Peace talks in France in January 2003, the deployment of a French peace-keeping force of some 4,000 men and later a 6,000-strong United Nations force, as well as a summit in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, have failed to calm tensions and erase divisions. Violence saw a sharp upswing at the start of this month with Ivorian air force attacks on two northern towns. In the last of the attacks, nine French soldiers and a US aid worker were killed, sparking a sharp response from France that wiped out the Ivorian air force. Following is a chronology of the recent unrest: November 2004 - 4: Ivorian air force attacks rebel-held cities of Bouake and Korhogo, killing three and injuring 20. - 6: Nine French soldiers and one US aid worker killed, 38 wounded when Ivorian jets attack French peacekeepers' positions in Bouake. French officials say the attack was deliberate, and France's riposte destroys Ivory Coast's air force and the French military takes control of Abidjan airport. - 7: Thousands of Gbagbo supporters march on the airport and go on an anti-French rampage in Abidjan. - 8: French troops fire in the air to disperse thousands of anti-French protesters in Abidjan. Around 1,300 foreigners, mostly French, seek shelter at French base in Abidjan. - 9: International Committee of the Red Cross says around 600 wounded in clashes in Abidjan, and fears a high death toll. South African President Thabo Mbeki arrives in Abidjan on African Union mandated peace mission. UN refugee agency says 1,250 Ivorians have fled into Liberia. - 10: Thousands of anti-French protesters roam the streets of Abidjan as a first evacuation flight leaves Abidjan for Paris with 270 people on board. France denies its soldiers opened fire on demonstrators outside an Abidjan hotel Tuesday, killing at least seven people, saying the victims were caught in the crossfire between hardline backers of Gbagbo and Ivorian soldiers and police. Gbagbo denies he ordered the killing of nine French soldiers. British troops are placed on standby in case they might be needed to evacuate British nationals, while 120 Spaniards, 126 Canadians and a group of Portuguese are all airlifted out of the country. A presidential advisor puts the death toll of days of anti-French riots in Abidjan at 64 and "more than 1,000" wounded. Two French warships, Le Foudre and La Fayette, leave the Mediterranean port of Toulon with 350 marines and equipment on board en route for Ivory Coast. The ships are expected to arrive by November 20. The UN Security Council delays a vote on possible sanctions for five days after African calls to give mediators more time to ease the political crisis. - 11: Ivorian rebel and opposition leaders open talks in South Africa in an African Union bid to defuse the crisis. German, Italian and Dutch nationals are flown out of the country. Morocco announces plans to evacuate 250 of its citizens. African Union chairman, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, announces summit meeting on Nov 14 in Abuja, to be attended by Gbagbo and six other African leaders, including Libya's Moamer Kadhafi. 12: France announces that foreign residents in Abidjan were subjected to at least "37 serious atrocities including three or four confirmed rapes" since the start of the present crisis. Britain announces the start of the evacuation of some 400 of its citizens. Several thousand people are reported to have fled across the western border into Liberia while 3,000 foreign nationals have sought shelter at the permanent French military base near Abidjan.

IRIN 12 Nov 2004 Côte d'Ivoire: West African immigrants, northerners fear they may be next target [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] ABIDJAN, 12 November (IRIN) - As French and other foreigners continue to bail out of Cote d'Ivoire after days of mob violence, northern ethnic groups and West African immigrants fear that militants loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo might soon turn their wrath back on them. Forty-three-year-old Mamadou, an Ivorian whose parents hail from Mali, was keeping his head down in Abidjan's predominantly Muslim suburb of Koumassi. He said he had been staying home by day and occasionally venturing out at dusk to meet friends. "Nobody wants to be noticed much these days," he told IRIN. "Everybody keeps a low profile." "The Gbagbo people think they've kicked the French out. They say they've felled a big tree with a small axe. It's possible that sooner or later they'll come to attack us because they say we are with the rebels," he added. The north-south divide is the crux of Cote d'Ivoire's problems. The West African country has been split into a rebel-held north and a government-controlled south, with 10,000 French and UN peacekeepers in between, since September 2002, when an unsuccessful coup attempt against Gbagbo developed into an insurgency. Former prime minister Alassane Ouattara, who draws much of his support from the north, was barred from running in the 2000 presidential election on the grounds that his father was from Burkina Faso. The rebels demanded the constitution be changed to allow Ouattara to stand in the 2005 ballot before they disarmed, but Gbgabo said they had to lay down their weapons first. The political deadlock was broken in dramatic fashion last week, when the Ivorian army launched air and ground assaults on rebel strongholds, shattering an 18-month-old ceasefire. But two days into the campaign, former colonial power France became the number one enemy. Paris retaliated for a deadly bombing on one of its bases by destroying almost the entire Ivorian airforce. Irate Ivorians rampaged through the streets of Abidjan looting and burning French interests, beating up expatriates and, according to French Foreign Ministry sources, raping some women. Expatriates have been fleeing the former French colony by the planeload But now that more than 3,000 expatriates, mainly French, have fled the country, analysts fear a fresh backlash against more traditional foes. "Until they were evacuated, French citizens bore the brunt of the militias' xenophobic attacks," said Peter Takirambudde, the head of the Africa division at Human Rights Watch. "Now we are concerned that the militias will turn their rage on their more familiar targets -- Muslims, northerners and West African immigrants." Immigrants from Mali and Burkina Faso, who flocked into Cote d'Ivoire to work the cocoa and coffee fields, have long been a lightning rod. In the wake of the 2002 coup attempt, for example, at least 1 million immigrants living and working in the south fled the country. Some were forced from their homes and farms, while others were driven out by fear. Ivorian security forces and pro-government militia have continued to commit random acts of violence against immigrants from West Africa as well as people from northern Cote d'Ivoire, accusing them of being in cahoots with the rebels, according to human rights sources. Clashes in Gbagbo's home town Since the latest cycle of instability began, there have already been isolated cases of ethnic violence in the cocoa-rich west of Cote d'Ivoire, notably in Gbagbo's home town of Gagnoa, about 250 km northwest of Abidjan. Clashes erupted there on Monday and Tuesday, pitching the president's ethnic group, the Bete, against the Dioula population, who are mainly from the north, but who settled in the town decades ago. "We have counted six dead and 29 injured," Marc Gbaka, a town council official, told IRIN, saying youths had attacked with machetes, kitchen knives and sticks. UN peacekeepers are now patrolling the area around Gagnoa, often a flashpoint for ethnic strife. Before this week's attacks, more than 20 people had been killed in the last year and around 500 immigrant farmers driven off their cocoa farms. Residents in the town said the latest trouble began when word arrived from Abidjan that the French had decimated Cote d'Ivoire's airforce. Militant government supporters, seeing the move as help for the northern rebels, attacked clothing shops and rice stores belonging to Dioula merchants who then retaliated by trashing food shacks and restaurants owned by Betes. "It's the scenario that we've all been fearing since 2002. The ground is set for a clash of the communities," explained Francois Ruf, a cocoa specialist based in Accra, Ghana. "The worst thing that could happen is that those from northern Cote d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso start using hardcore weapons and the Bete get out their guns and then there's carnage." Further to the west, tensions are also running high in Guiglo, a town about 200 km from the border with Liberia, near the buffer zone which separates government territory from that of the rebels. In 2003, long after the fighting died down in the rest of Cote d'Ivoire, the area around the town remained plagued by ethnic conflicts, fuelled by the presence of militia groups, some of which recruited heavily among Liberian refugees. On Thursday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs rang the alarm bell once more. "In Guiglo and certain areas in the west, the restarting of inter-communal conflicts between the local and non-Ivorian populations poses a direct threat to social cohesion and means conditions are ripe for the humanitarian situation to deteriorate," it said in a statement. Fears already causing people to flee Almost 5,000 Ivorian refugees have already spilled over into Liberia, seeking refuge from the fresh bout of fighting in a country which itself is still recovering from 14 years of civil war. "Guiglo is the eye of the storm. It's a real ethnic mix. There are already warning signs," a senior UN diplomat told IRIN this week. "We are sensing a strong tension in the air, people feel threatened. If there are new problems in Abidjan, there will problems in the west and vice versa." Back in Abidjan, northerners have been preparing to defend themselves. Having seen the hate campaign waged against the French, one man in his thirties was taking no chances and was readying so-called Self Defence Committees with his friends. "These committees are against the advice of our political leaders," he told IRIN, explaining he was a supporter of the main opposition Democratic Party of Cote d'Ivoire (PDCI). "But we have pro-government militias in this neighbourhood that are armed and we want to be prepared." "They say we are rebels, they say we are pro-French, they threaten us," the man, who lives in the poor, mainly Muslim suburb of Abobo, said. "If somebody in our neighbourhood is attacked, we can come to the rescue." Across town, French businessman Patrick was packing up his affairs and preparing to leave. He was born in Abidjan but even that umbilical cord would not keep him in the city this time around. "The fuse is alight, but it hasn't quite reached the gunpowder barrel," he said gloomily. "The worst is yet to happen. We will see an ethnic settling of scores. There will be a massacre," he predicted. "The battle of Abidjan is still to come."

AFP 15 Nov 2004 Even Africans are fleeing troubled Ivory Coast for Europe by Aymeric Vincenot ABIDJAN, Nov 15 (AFP) - Ivorians and other Africans with dual nationality have joined the exodus of foreigners from Ivory coast, where hardline backers of President Laurent Gbagbo have been terrorising Westerners for the past week. "I have lost all hope for a normal family life in Ivory Coast," explained Franco-Ivorian dual national Parfait late Sunday as he waited for a bus to take him from a French military base near Abidjan to the city's international airport for an evacuation flight. The French base has been serving since last week as a registration point and holding station for anyone -- mostly French nationals -- wishing to leave Ivory Coast after the country's low-level civil war flared up suddenly last week. The Dutch and Swedish ambassadors to Ivory Coast were among those to seek shelter at the French base, which has so far organised the evacuation of more than 5,000 foreigners. What sparked the mass exodus was a series of attacks on positions in the north held by rebels who failed two years ago in an attempt to oust Gbagbo, plunging the country into civil war. "I don't feel threatened, but given that the French high school was completely burnt to the ground, my daughter has nowhere to go to school," said Noelie, an Ivorian woman married to a Frenchman, and mother of a 13-year-old. Florence, from Cameroon but married to a French national, said the destruction of the French schools by the rampaging pro-Gbagbo mobs was also forcing her to leave. "There's no more school, so we are obliged to leave to ensure our children's future," she said, adding that the schools were unlikely to reopen in the near future. In the past week of violence in Ivory Coast, having dark skin has not been a guarantee of immunity from the exactions of the rioting mobs. Sitting on a bench, a tall, slender, olive-skinned woman from Mauritius, who is married to a European, recalled how she was stricken with fear when, on November 6, the day the pogroms began, a group of marauding Ivorian youths tried to break into her home. "You need only to have skin that is lighter than usual and you're considered a white person" by the "Young Patriots", the extremist backers of Gbagbo who sowed terror among the expatriate community in Ivory Coast last week, said the Mauritian, who asked not to be named. "In the midst of the melee, no one looks for differences between blacks and people of mixed race," said a French-Ivorian who requested anonymity. "Under normal circumstances, my children are called Negroes, but today they're considered whites. 'To each his white'" -- the battlecry of the Young Patriots -- "is as valid for half-whites as it is for 100 percent whites," he said. Although he has chosen to stay in Ivory Coast, his mixed-race wife is leaving and taking the couple's children to safety in France. Parfait has chosen to have his wife and kids evacuated because "they start with whites, then it's people of mixed race, and after that it will be the turn of their friends and spouses." Being black does not guarantee immunity from the wave of hatred that is ripping out the heart of Ivory Coast, said Parfait. "I drove around in town where they (the Young Patriots) look for signs that you're French. At one roadblock, when they saw my French driving licence, they got very worked up," he said. Despite his sense of insecurity, Parfait has decided to stay behind for the time-being, but the self-employed businessman lamented the departure of more than a third of the French expatriate community in the last week. "Economically, it spells disaster for me," he said. "With the departure of the French, a huge consumer market is leaving. Restaurants, supermarkets, all that kind of thing, are going to be forced to close. "There's no future" in Ivory Coast, he said.

UN News Centre 15 Nov 2004 Security Council imposes immediate arms embargo against Côte d'Ivoire Security Council 15 November 2004 – Seeking to end the violence in Côte d'Ivoire, the United Nations Security Council today imposed an immediate, 13-month arms embargo against the country and gave the parties there one month to get the peace process back on track or face a travel ban and a freeze on their assets. Under a resolution adopted unanimously, the additional sanctions will go into effect on 15 December unless the Council determines before then that the signatories of two peace deals are working to implement them. Those measures would remain for one year. The 2003 Linas-Marcoussis accord halted fighting between the Government of President Laurent Gbagbo and rebels who control most of the north, and created a government of national reconciliation. The second pact, reached this summer in the Ghanaian capital and known as the Accra III Agreement, focused on those parts of the 2003 pact that were still in dispute. The latest unrest flared up on 4 November when the Government violated the ceasefire by launching an attack in the Zone of Confidence (ZOC) separating combatants. On 6 November, Government aircraft bombed French peacekeepers in the area, killing nine people and leading to French reprisals that destroyed the tiny Ivorian air force. This in turn led to anti-foreigner rioting in Abidjan, the country's largest city. The Council text condemned the Government air strikes and demanded that all Ivorian parties to the conflict fully comply with the ceasefire. It also reiterated the Council's full support for the action undertaken by the UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) and French forces. The 15-member body further demanded that the Ivorian authorities stop all radio and television broadcasts inciting hatred, intolerance and violence, and asked the UN peacekeeping mission to bolster its monitoring role in that regard. The arms sanctions require all countries to prevent the "direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer" to Côte d'Ivoire of arms or any related materiel. Pending progress, the Council will also ban anyone "who constitute a threat to the peace and national reconciliation process" from travelling abroad, and "freeze the funds, other financial assets and economic resources" of those designated by a Council committee set up to enforce the measures. The resolution provides for a number of humanitarian exemptions designed to allow UN peacekeepers and relief workers to carry out their operations on behalf of the Ivorian people.

UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights 15 Nov 2004 United Nations human rights experts express strong concern about new outbreak of violence in Côte d'Ivoire The following statement was issued today by the Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Ambeyi Ligabo; the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Yakin Erturk; and the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou Diene: "The Special Rapporteurs express their strong concern about the new outbreak of violence in Côte d'Ivoire since 4 November 2004 which had resulted in 3,800 persons fleeing the country. The Special Rapporteurs are especially worried about information which they received indicating that many persons had been killed and wounded in xenophobic demonstrations which had been carried out in recent days in Abidjan. There had also been cases of sexual violence against women and young girls in the capital. Jeunes Patriotes groups calling for the liberation of Côte d'Ivoire had burnt kiosks selling newspapers and press offices, destroyed copies of newspapers, intimidated and attacked newspaper sellers and ransacked offices belonging to opposition political parties. Certain newspapers, mainly opposition newspapers, had been prohibited, transmitters belonging to foreign radios had been closed down by the authorities, and programmes on Côte d'Ivoire's public television and radio were publicly instigating the population to racial hatred and were regularly showing inflammatory statements. Homes, schools and offices belonging to foreigners had been pillaged and burnt. In some cases, it was reported that members of the Ivorian armed forces were themselves instigating such acts. The Special Rapporteurs underlined that rape and other forms of sexual violence constituted wars crimes and crimes against humanity according to international law which should be punished in accordance with the gravity of the act. They recalled that all calls for national, racial or religious hatred constituted an instigation to discrimination and violence which was prohibited by the international instruments which Côte d'Ivoire was a party to, and which prohibited States parties from allowing public, national or local authorities or institutions to instigate or encourage racial discrimination. They also underlined that the free circulation of information, especially through the press, constituted a fundamental guarantee of implementing the right to liberty of opinion and expression. The Special Rapporteurs urged the Ivorian Government to take all the necessary measures to prevent all kinds of human rights or humanitarian violations, to eventually punish those who carried them out, and to ensure the protection and security of all persons present on its territory". www.ohchr.org

UN News Centre 15 Nov 2004 Special UN Adviser On Genocide Warns of Ethnic Hate Messages in Côte d'Ivoire UN News Service (New York) NEWS November 15, 2004 Posted to the web November 16, 2004 Voicing distress over reports of xenophobic hate speech in Côte d'Ivoire and ensuing action by armed groups, the United Nations adviser on the prevention of genocide called today for an end to impunity and warned that the situation could be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC). "The current crisis has deepened sentiments of xenophobia and could exacerbate already worrisome and widespread violations of human rights, which in the recent past have included extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary detention, disappearances and sexual violence," Juan E. Mendez said in a statement recommending possibly increasing the number of UN peacekeepers in Côte d'Ivoire to protect civilians. Mr. Mendez, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Adviser, said he had written to the UN chief to express his concern at the situation in the West African country, which has been engulfed by escalating violence since government forces attacked northern rebels earlier this month in violation of a nearly two-year-old ceasefire agreement. At least 10,000 Ivorians are estimated to have fled into neighbouring Liberia and thousands of expatriates have been evacuated, some with UN help, from Abidjan, the country's largest city, as anti-French rioting erupted after French troops destroyed the Government's air force in retaliation for the deadly bombing of French peacekeepers in the UN-patrolled Zone of Confidence (ZOC) separating the combatants. UN officials have repeatedly condemned the hate messages broadcast on television and radio, most recently last Thursday when Mr. Annan himself warned that they could lead to "the devastating resurgence of ethnic conflict." Mr. Mendez said today Ivorian authorities had an obligation to end impunity and curb public expressions of racial or religious hatred, warning that in the absence of effective action such incitement can be referred to the ICC. He recommended that national authorities put an immediate end to the propagation of hate speech and media-induced violence through official outlets, aggressively prosecute all acts of violence and incitement, and recommit themselves to the ceasefire accords that ended the fighting two years ago between the government in the south and rebels in the north. "If the xenophobic expressions persist and they cause further evacuation of essential humanitarian relief workers, the Special Adviser recommends that the UN and Licorne (French) troops already in the field should be expanded and instructed to deploy so as to afford direct protection to civilian population at risk of attack because of their ethnic, religious or citizenship status," the statement concluded. UN officials are concerned that the unrest in Côte d'Ivoire could spill over into neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone, both recovering from protracted civil wars, and Guinea where there has also been unrest.

BBC 16 Nov 2004 Analysis: Ivory Coast's hate media We take a look at the role of the media in the riots in Ivory Coast during the past 10 days. The protesters heeded televised calls to take to the streets It would be easy to think that the last few days of anti-white violence, and explosive protest throughout the streets of Abidjan, have been the product of chaos. Yet there is strong evidence to suggest that the supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo, who reacted so strongly to the French destruction of the Ivorian air force near the beginning of this latest crisis, have been receiving firm orders on how to behave. National television and radio has been broadcasting fervent, not to say feverish, messages calling on people to take to the streets. On occasions, the messages have strayed from the motivational to the incendiary. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanded what he called "hate media" be stopped immediately. Monday's UN Security Council decision to impose sanctions on Ivory Coast was even more explicit. It demanded "that the Ivorian authorities stop all radio and television broadcasting hatred, intolerance and violence". It also announced that anyone "who incites publicly hatred and violence" will have their bank accounts frozen and will be stopped from leaving the country. So just what has been flooding the airwaves and television screens of the country in the past few days? Protest radio President Laurent Gbagbo's opponents have frequently claimed that he has installed a system of parallel government in which the army is seconded and sometimes supplanted by militias, and in which the government of national reconciliation is bypassed by shadowy advisers. Gbagbo called for calm, but the media did not When the French peacekeepers destroyed the Ivorian air force, it was obvious that the Ivorian armed forces did not have the resources - nor perhaps the desire - to respond. Instead, a flurry of radio and television broadcasts called on ordinary Ivorians to take to the streets. Charles Ble Goude, the leader of the Young Patriots, whom the UN accuse of being a militia, sprang into action, making an impassioned broadcast calling on the Ivorian air force to "retake the airport", which had been seized by the French. Tens of thousands of young men and women surged towards the airport, only to be beaten back by French soldiers and helicopters, at the cost of several lives and hundreds of injuries. It was these people who then turned their attentions to French and other white citizens. Days of looting and occasional violence have forced thousands of Westerners to flee the country. Words of war President Laurent Gbagbo later made a televised speech calling for calm. But the television surrounded that appeal with repeated broadcasts by former Prime Minister Pascal Affi Nguessan, the head of President Gbagbo's FPI party, to stop the French military "using any means necessary". Another speech that was played and replayed was National Assembly speaker Mamadou Koulibaly. He said France's actions were equivalent to a declaration of war. When French tanks and armoured vehicles massed at the Hotel Ivoire, a luxury hotel not far from the state television and the presidential residence, state media implored Ivorians to form a human shield around the president. According to the radio, the French tanks were intending to oust President Gbagbo. Again, thousands of people responded to the call, and again, hundreds of people were injured and at least 10 died. State television showed report after report showing wounded men and women in graphic detail, accompanied by commentaries denouncing France. Other programmes invited pro-Gbagbo leaders to give their opinions - and exhortations. Religion Sometimes there was a religious dimension to the speeches - which is particularly significant in a country split in two by a war that many have portrayed as the largely Christian south against the largely Muslim north. State media urged Ivorians to protect the president One woman called on all Christians to mobilise, as "Satan has attacked the country". In the last few weeks, there has been no room for dissenting voices in the state media. All opposition newspapers have been either destroyed or banned in the government-held south. When the Ivorian armed forces launched air attacks on 4 November, the head of the television station, Kebe Yacouba, was sidelined in favour of a hardliner. Although officially he has not been replaced, Mr Yacouba was insistent he bore no responsibility for what would be broadcast in the days and weeks to come. Silver Nebout, one of President Gbagbo's communications advisers, was at the television station on the morning Jean-Paul Dahini was brought in to replace Kebe Yacouba. "In this time of crisis, it is important to manage information," he told the BBC. Over the last couple of weeks, information has been managed in one direction and often with very precise objectives in mind. For many in Ivory Coast, the "hate media" that Kofi Annan railed against are reminiscent of Radio Mille Collines in Rwanda, which in 1994 called for - and got - genocide. In Abidjan, some people are already calling the state radio "Radio Mille Lagoons", after the lagoons that dot the southern, government-held half of the country. Ivory Coast is still a long way removed from what happened in Rwanda. Nevertheless, state radio and television are unquestionably a powerful weapon in a crisis which is frequently being fought through decidedly unconventional means.

AFP 17 Nov 2004 Ivory Coast president hit with lawsuit, vows no obstacles to peace by Christophe Koffi ABIDJAN, Nov 17 (AFP) - Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo was hit Wednesday with a lawsuit for the deaths of nine French troops in an air strike that sparked violence and prompted the exodus of thousands from the divided state. His main ideological and political rival Alassane Ouattara, meanwhile, ramped up the rhetoric against the embattled Ivorian leader, accusing him of "perverting democracy" and allowing the former regional beacon of stability and prosperity to "drift into fascism." A soldiers' advocacy group in France filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Gbagbo and his armed forces chief of staff Colonel Philippe Mangou for the November 6 air strike, which led French peacekeeping troops to retaliate by wiping out the Ivorian air force. The group aimed to bring charges of "premeditated voluntary homicide" against the Ivorian leader, the group's lawyer said, a day after Gbagbo said he would not hinder the peace process in his west African country. Ouattara said that a UN arms embargo imposed against Ivory Coast was a step in the right direction, the exiled former prime minister added, and could help with the "indispensable and necessary" reconciliation of the country split since September 2002 between rebel north and government south. Gbagbo partisans have protested at the embargo imposed Monday in an unanimous vote on a resolution pushed by France against its former star west African colony. Targeted travel bans and the freezing of assets could follow December 15 if no progress is made towards implementing a January 2003 peace pact. "I am disappointed by the abuse that Ivory Coast has suffered at the hands of the international community that manifests itself in this embargo," firebrand parliamentary speaker Mamadou Koulibaly told AFP. "It is clear that the moral compass within this international community favors those countries that are strong and rich." The president himself vowed Tuesday that he will not hinder the peace process, but called on the United Nations to apply all resolutions "with the same rigor to the rebels and immediately begin disarmament" of some 25,000 rebel soldiers. The latest turmoil to convulse Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, began on November 4 with a string of government raids on key positions in the north, violating an 18-month-old ceasefire and killing at least 85 civilians, according to rebel leader Guillaume Soro. The strike on a French military base in the central town of Bouake, which France has called "deliberate" killed nine French troops and a US aid worker, prompting an immediate riposte by the French military. The lawyer for the French soldiers' group, Eric Dupont-Moretti, said the suit will show that Gbagbo "supervised" the bombardments that were part of what the Ivorian leader has called an operation to "liberate and reunify" the country. The French retaliation triggered a riot of anti-French violence that seeped from the commercial capital Abidjan to the port city of San Pedro, leaving dozens of people wounded and hundreds of homes and businesses destroyed and prompting an exodus of some 4,500 French nationals over the last week. Flights chartered by various European governments have also evacuated more than 1,000 foreign nationals, among them personnel from UN and other humanitarian agencies as well as conglomerates including Nestle and the French-owned Bollore group. More than 10,000 Ivorians have flooded into northeastern Liberia, fearful of a reprise of fighting between rebel and government troops. "The main problem facing both refugees and the local community (in Liberia) is a food shortage," said UN refugee agency UNHCR spokeswoman Francesca Fontanini. "Water and sanitation are also critical problems needing to be tackled rapidly." Abidjan, once one of Africa's most modern and sophisticated cities, was calm Wednesday with businesses open and schools back in session. Power was restored across the rebel-held north after 11 days of cuts that sparked fears of a health crisis. Glaringly absent from racks of newspaperse again on the street, however, were those whose positions do not mirror the government. Opposition dailies have not been published since November 4 because, according to an Ivorian military source, they were banned for being "apologists for the rebellion."

The New York Times 22 Nov 2004 France is newly cast as villain in Ivory Coast By Lydia PolgreenABIDJAN, Ivory Coast When the chanting mob descended on the strip mall that Jean Bobue Nguessam is paid to guard, he stood his ground, though not out of courage. "If the French all leave, I will have no job," Nguessam said as he stood a lonely watch over the pillaged remains the week before last, after riots that followed an airstrike on French peacekeepers and brought the country to the brink of war. Nightstick in hand, he had tried to reason with the crowd. The mob had made its way down the row of shops, stripping the shelves of a liquor store, then a video rental shop, then a cellphone store and finally a hair salon. "People can shout about the French," said Nguessam, 29, who works for the French owner of the strip mall. "But many people are unemployed, and it will only be worse when they go." For decades Ivory Coast was a sturdy patch on the fraying postcolonial quilt of West Africa, its peace and prosperity woven by the laissez-faire economic and immigration policies of its longtime dictator, Felix Houphouet-Boigny. These policies attracted heavy investment from France, its former colonizer, with whom Ivory Coast maintained a friendly relationship. They also attracted millions of migrants from nearby countries to fill menial jobs unwanted by prosperous, educated Ivorians. But in the past two years the ties have frayed as the country's fortunes have faded. Many Ivorians have turned on French businessmen, immigrant workers and one another with a vengeance. The latest wave of violence began Nov. 5 when the government strafed a French military camp, killing nine peacekeepers and an American aid worker. The French retaliated by destroying much of the tiny Ivorian air force. The events seemed destined to deepen a crisis that had already pitted Muslim against Christian, northerner against southerner and Ivorians with deep roots in the country against those whose parents and grandparents had immigrated, seeking work. But France is being made into the bogeyman. Speaking to more than a thousand young men on Nov. 15, Charles Blé Goudé, the leader of the Young Patriots, a nationalist group whose members were blamed for much of the looting the week before last, pumped his fist, whipping the crowd into a frenzy as photographs of a headless corpse and bloodied gunshot victims flashed on two huge screens. These were victims of French aggression, he said. "At the beginning we said this was an Ivorian-versus-Ivorian crisis," he said. "But this week, the mask has fallen and we see who is the godfather of this rebellion. It is France." His supporters, mostly unemployed young men, roared their approval. Thousands of French people and other Westerners have fled Ivory Coast, leaving shuttered businesses that once fueled the sputtering economy and thousands of workers with no paychecks. On Friday, the French Foreign Ministry said that 8,300 French citizens had fled Ivory Coast in one week, more than half the French passport holders living in the country, Agence France-Presse reported. Even more troublesome, Africans from neighboring countries, some of whom have lived in the country for generations, are trying to leave too. "If the family I am working for leaves, then I will leave too," said Mamoutou Goumre, who immigrated from Burkina Faso in 1982, in search of work and a better life, and who lives in a grim shantytown beside Cocody, an affluent suburb where he is a guard. "I already sent my wife and children away, for safety." With as many as one-third of the 17 million residents having roots in nearby countries, the greatest threat to the region is the prospect of their flooding into those countries. Thousands have fled west to Liberia, UN officials said, a country still reeling from its own 15-year civil war. With no air power to fight the rebels in the north, and with French and UN peacekeepers enforcing the buffer zone between the rebel-held north and government-held south, President Laurent Gbagbo's supporters have transferred their rage to the French, whom they accuse of trying to overthrow him to impose a neo-colonial government. The rebels and the government had observed a cease-fire for 18 months, and a deal under which the government was supposed to enact political changes that would end some anti-immigrant policies, and the rebels and pro-government militants would disarm. But the legislature never passed the changes, the disarmament never took place and the government attacked the rebels in air raids early this month. Outside the president's sprawling official residence, a makeshift shantytown sprang up last week, with hundreds of young men from the Young Patriot movement standing a rowdy vigil to protect the man they say can bring good fortune to a generation of Ivorian youths. Abenin Blaise, 24, an unemployed mechanic, offered himself to a visitor as a sort of mayor of a small encampment he named Resistance Village. About a dozen young men took turns sleeping on sackcloth and cardboard. The young men's spirits have remained high, despite more than a week of standing watch. "We are the young jobless, and need to have the policies of Gbagbo to help us have some money," Blaise said. "This is not a real village," he said, of the enclosure ringed with palm fronds. "But we will live here, under the rain and the sun, until the French leave here." That anti-French sentiment was bolstered by what government supporters say was the excessive force used by French troops during a demonstration the week before last outside the Hotel Ivoire, once a shining symbol of this country's affluence and sophistication. The Ivorian government said French troops had fired into the crowd, killing more than 60 people. The French defense minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, said that any deaths had resulted from firefights between the Ivory Coast military and armed gangs loyal to Gbagbo, Agence France-Presse reported. In a daily affront to Ivorian pride, French soldiers patrol the streets and protect the airport, checking car trunks and patting down passengers, which many Young Patriots say smacks of a smug, neocolonial attitude. The anger has been stoked by government policies restricting the citizenship and economic rights of foreigners, whom governments in the last decade vilified. These young men see outsiders as the main cause of their troubles. Once this meant the rebel New Forces, which control the immigrant-dominated and largely Muslim north. But no more. "We are no longer talking about the rebels," Blaise said. "The real rebels are France."

Agence France-Presse 27 Nov 2004 UN aid plane shot at, crew threatened in west Ivory Coast ABIDJAN, Nov 27 (AFP) - A UN World Food Programme (WFP) plane was met with gunfire and threats when it arrived in Man, western Ivory Coast, the UN said in a statement Saturday. After landing Thursday at Man's small airport, "a WFP aircraft was welcomed by gunfire into the air and threats and slogans against United Nations personnel," said a statement form the UN Mission in Ivory Coast (ONUCI). The mission gave no other details about the incident, but a spokesman for the French military operation in the west African country, Colonel Henry Aussavy, confirmed to AFP that the information was correct. Ivory Coast has been cut in two since a civil war began in 2002 leaving the south, controlled by supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo, separated from the rebel-held north and west by a buffer zone patrolled by French troops and UN peacekeepers. Man is currently under rebel control. The WFP has since the incident decided to suspend all flights to the western town until further order. ONUCI said the incident risked compromising efforts to supply humanitarian aid to the region and warned the rebels "that they must respect the rights of UN personnel in their zone and watch over their personal safety." The UN food agency launched in May an emergency programme to feed half-a-million people in Ivory Coast until the end of the year, including people resettling in their homes and Liberian refugees. Violence surged in Ivory Coast early this month, when Gbagbo's troops bombed key rebel positions in the north, killing nine French soldiers and a US aid worker during one of the raids.

DR Congo

Reuters 11 Nov 2004 U.N. Peacekeepers Join Patrols in Congo By REUTERS INSHASA, Congo, Nov. 10 - United Nations peacekeepers have joined thousands of government soldiers on joint patrols in eastern Congo to protect civilians and pressure Rwandan rebels to lay down their arms, United Nations officials said Wednesday. The first joint patrols are seen as a dress rehearsal for larger operations aimed at restoring order in the east, where thousands of Hutu fighters from neighboring Rwanda have ignored calls for them to disarm and return home. An estimated 10,000 Rwandan Hutu rebels remain in eastern Congo, where they have been based since fleeing Rwanda after the 1994 genocide, in which Hutus killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The rebels have warned that they will defend themselves and fellow Hutu refugees against any attack or attempt by the Congolese Army or United Nations peacekeepers to repatriate them by force. Congo is struggling to restore peace after a five-year war that sucked in six neighboring countries and killed three million people, mostly from hunger and disease.

AFP 13 Nov 2004- UN probes claims of weapons distribution to DRCongo civilians KIGALI, Nov 13 (AFP) - United Nations staff are investigating reports that civilians are being armed in a province in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a source at the UN mission in DRC (MONUC) said Saturday. "MONUC has information about a distribution of weapons in the Masisi (district of the Nord Kivu region) but is still trying to confirm it," the source said. "This information has to be treated with great care because it could have been deliberately spread around as part of the conflict between the DRC parties," he said. "Many sources agree that there was a distribution of arms to civilians in the Masisi in mid-October organised by the local governor's office," an observer from a human rights organisation who did not wish to be named told AFP. "It is a very worrying development which needs to be watched closely." Eugene Serufuli, governor of Nord Kivu, has denied the allegations. "I have never heard any talk of of these weapons distributions," he told AFP Saturday. "It is just gossip. I don't see how or why we would organise that. We have an army here, the eighth military region command, and that is charged with guaranteeing the safety of people and property. "We are in the process of fighting to give it the (necessary) means. I really do not see the interest in organising a parallel force," he said. "There used to be an armed militia, organised by the local governor, which was officially dissolved under pressure in February 2004 because it was an llegal armed group," the human rights observer said. "We do not want to see this same militia recreate itself in another guise." Goma, capital of Nord-Kivu, is a stronghold of the former rebels of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD). Relations between former rebel groups and the central government in Kinshasa remain very strained, in spite of the process of transition to democracy and the situation in eastern DRC is unstable. On July 28, 2003 the UN Security Council voted to impose an embargo on the supply of arms and military assistance to all armed groups operating in eastern DRC. It is MONUC's job to collect information on whether the ban is being respected. DRC is emerging from five years of war (1998-2003) estimated to have cost the lives, directly or indirectly, of three million people.

BBC 23 Nov 2004 Dangerous new phase for DR Congo peace In the third of a four-part series on the Democratic Republic of Congo, the BBC world affairs correspondent Mark Doyle continues his journey in the east of the country. When I arrived at the marketplace in this small mountainside town, there seemed to be more than the usual number of armed men and boys milling around. UN and Congolese soldiers have allowed two months to disarm Dressed in an array of uniforms and civilian clothes, the men and child soldiers had the usual collection of AK-47 assault rifles, rocket launchers and mortar tubes slung over their shoulders. After travelling in the DR Congo for several days I had become used to seeing armed men on the streets. But here were hundreds in a single place - something was up. QUICK GUIDE The war in DR Congo I soon learned that the motley soldiers in Walungu marketplace were Mai Mai militiamen - a nationalist Congolese government reserve created to face rebellions and occupations by foreign armies far too widespread and numerous for the army-proper to handle. 'Magic water' The Mai Mai are fiercely nationalistic and implacably anti-Rwanda. They see Rwanda as the root of Congo's problems because of its direct interventions and support for proxy anti-Kinshasa militias. Many households in eastern Congo have given one of their children to the Mai Mai, seeing this as a patriotic duty. "Mai-Mai" means water - magic water, as one of their number explained to me, which, when applied, can protect a soldier from bullets. The troop concentration in the marketplace was a symptom of a dangerous new phase in DR Congo, a country teetering between war and peace. This group were being rotated out of the region to be replaced by soldiers of the Forces Armees de la Republique Democratique du Congo, or FARDC. United Nations military sources said the troop rotation, ordered by the transitional government in Kinshasa, had been encouraged by the UN because the Mai Mai in this part of Congo were causing serious security problems. Rebel hideout These problems came to the fore recently when DR Congo and neighbouring Rwanda signed a new peace deal under which the two countries agreed to disarm militias hostile to the other. Under the deal Rwanda would disarm some anti-Congolese government groups which it has backed, and DR Congo would disarm Rwandan rebels with bases inside DR Congo. There have been mass militia killings on both sides of the Rwandan border The Rwandan rebels concerned are the Forces Democratique pour la Liberation du Rwanda or FDLR. This group was originally formed from the remnants of the defeated ethnic Hutu Rwandan army which orchestrated the genocide of Tutsis and Hutu government opponents in Rwanda in 1994. On a military map in a UN command tent in Walungu, FDLR territory is marked out in neat red lines - a large swathe of territory south-west of here. But the neat military map is more hopeful than realistic; no-one really knows where all the FDLR forces are, and the breathtakingly beautiful mountains of this region are perfect guerrilla country. If insurgents want to hide here, they can with ease. Under a new, tougher mandate from the UN Security Council, the UN forces in DR Congo are now supposed to help the nascent government army - the FARDC, which is made up of elements from all the former warring factions - to disarm the Rwandan Hutu rebels of the FDLR. The Mai Mai are being moved from Walungu because they are suspected of collaborating with the FDLR. This is hardly surprising. Disarm voluntarily now, or the new Congolese government army, with logistical backing from the UN, is coming to get you UN official The Congolese government used the Rwandan Hutus on many occasions during the war to oppose Tutsi-dominated Rwandan government army units which attacked DR Congo. Many Mai Mai therefore see the FDLR as their allies. Under the new deal between Rwanda and DR Congo - which if it works will be a major step forward in the peace process for the whole of central Africa - the UN has decided to help DR Congo fulfil its part of the bargain. The Rwandan army, UN officials argue, is well-enough organised to keep its side of the pact; the shattered Congolese forces, on the other hand, need help. This is why, when I travelled through the dramatic landscape outside Walungu - with its majestic mountains and rugged passes - I saw patrols of Uruguayan UN peacekeepers with Congolese government soldiers prominently there beside them. A UN official described the message being sent by these mixed patrols: "The signal to the Hutus is this", the official said bluntly, "disarm voluntarily now, or the new Congolese government army, with logistical backing from the UN, is coming to get you." "The first phase of the exercise", said a Congolese FARDC officer known in Walungu as le Capitaine Jean-Paul, "is the voluntary phase". "It will last for two months. If the FDLR don't cooperate, we will then proceed to the next phase, which is the use of force." The development of the mixed UN-Congo government army patrols is highly dangerous, and for several reasons. 'Effective army' The main one is that the FDLR has said it will not disarm. According to a well-informed military analyst in this region, the Hutu FDLR, far from being the ragtag marauding militia they are sometimes portrayed as, are in fact a well-organised unit with impressive military command and control. "They're one of the most effective armies in this region" said the military analyst, who asked not to be named. "They are well armed and their communications are also good. At the level of their political leaders they have satellite phones. At the brigade [large army unit] level they have working high frequency radios." DR Congo's majestic mountains are ideal hide-outs The FDLR also has strong political motivation - they want to return home to Rwanda to operate as a political party. For the Tutsi survivors of the genocide, this is, of course, out of the question. For Hutus who say the Tutsis now operate a fascist state, their return is just a dream. The FDLR claims that 10 years after the genocide, many of their number in fact had nothing to do with the pogroms - that they should be given political space in Rwanda. One UN official argued that most of the FDLR are in fact the descendants or relatives of Hutus who fled the advancing Tutsi army in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide and then took refuge in DR Congo. Although some of them may well have been involved in the 1994 genocide, he said, their more recent memory was of the mass killings of Hutus by the Rwandan army and their proxies during the 1996-2000 war inside DR Congo. Will the UN fight? However, these realities are sometimes difficult for the international community to deal with politically, because it is still reeling from the guilt of having failed to stop the genocide - despite ample knowledge, at the time, of what was going on. This guilt translates into far less pressure on the Rwandan government to share power than there is, for example, on DR Congo. For these reasons, disarming the Hutu in DR Congo is a political obstacle course as well as militarily difficult. The military analyst with knowledge of the FDLR said he assessed them, on their terrain, as more effective than most of the current Congolese government army. In addition, there is always a political question mark over whether UN soldiers - however good they may be technically - will fight. So it may also be that the FDLR are more effective, in their own military terms, than the UN. The next two months may see dangerous days.

Reuters 26 Nov 2004 Congo army tells UN it clashed with Rwandan troops By David Lewis KINSHASA, Nov 26 (Reuters) - The Congolese army has told the United Nations that its soldiers clashed on Thursday with Rwandan troops inside Congo but peacekeepers have found no signs of any fighting, U.N. sources said on Friday. Congolese military sources said that clashes had also taken place in the eastern province of North Kivu earlier in the week. The Rwandan army has denied that any clash occurred. Tension between the neighbouring countries escalated this week after Rwanda repeatedly threatened to send its soldiers into Congo to attack Hutu rebels based in the east of the country. "The U.N. was told by the Congolese army this morning that there had been skirmishes between the FARDC (Armed Forces for Democratic Republic of Congo) and the Rwandan army in three different locations yesterday," a U.N. official told Reuters. Congo's chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Sungilanga Lombe Kisempia, had been due to address reporters in Kinshasa on Friday, but he cancelled the press conference at the last minute. Sources in Maj. Gen. Kisempia's office told Reuters that there had been skirmishes between the Rwandan and Congolese armies inside Congo on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the U.N. mission said that peacekeepers had investigated the claims and found no evidence of any clashes. FIVE-YEAR WAR "We have had some incidents reported to us and we have intensified our foot and air patrols, covering the area between Lake Edward and Goma, but we have not seen anything yet," Patricia Tome said. Analysts said Congolese hardliners may try to take advantage of the escalating tensions to delay the country's fragile transition to elections slated for June next year. Rwanda has twice invaded Congo to hunt down Hutu extremists that took part in the 1994 genocide, killing some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and then fled into eastern Congo once they were defeated. The second Rwandan incursion in 1998 was one of the triggers for Congo's five-year war, which sucked in five other neighbouring countries and killed some three million people, mostly from hunger and disease. Rwanda withdrew its army from Congo in 2002, but it accuses the U.N. and the government in Kinshasa of failing to disarm and repatriate the rebels and says its soldiers are ready to return. "Our forces have not yet moved a single inch into DRC territory. But we reserve the right to move in when need calls," Richard Sezibera, the Rwandan President Paul Kagame's adviser on Congo, told Reuters. (With additional reporting by Arthur Asiimwe in Kigali)

UN Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo 26 Nov 2004 -MONUC strongly reacts to Rwanda's threat to attack FDLR in DRC Yulu Kabamba The head of MONUC Public Information, Ms. Patricia Tome, told the news conference on Wednesday that Rwanda disclosed to MONUC last night its intention to attack the "Democratic Forces of the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR)" inside the DRC territory. Addressing the Mission's weekly news conference, Ms. Tome referred to the statement as a ''serious threat against the DRC Transition's process, not to say a dangerous escalation for the whole region''. She recalled the ongoing diplomatic activities, alluding to the current UN Security Council visit to the region, the reinforcement of MONUC mandate and the forthcoming deployment of an additional brigade to North Kivu to secure the zone and ''prevent spoilers, whether in DRC or elsewhere, to undermine the transition and the region's pacification''. Ms. Tomé further recalled that the Heads of States of the region have just signed a statement in Dar es-Salaam, Tanzania, vowing to ensure peace, security and development in the Great Lakes region. '' These declarations are not to remain a dead letter'', she said. Earlier, MONUC Spokesman, Mamadou Bah, briefed the press on the UN Security Council's mission to Central Africa. Led by the French Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Mr. Jean-Marc de la Sablière, the delegation is proceeding with its mission in the region, he indicated, adding it was in Bukavu yesterday and is due to arrive in Burundi today and travel to Uganda tomorrow. He recalled that in Kinshasa, the Security Council expressed their solidarity with the Congolese people and pledged to continue supporting the transition process. The Security Council Mission insisted on the need to accelerate the process due to lead to the elections on the set dates. In Bukavu, the Security Council expressed sympathy with the population affected by the last June events. They also called for the reconciliation of all the Congolese people, Mr. Bah said. The Spokesman further updated the press on the Disarmament and Community Reintegration (DCR) programme in Ituri, indicating that as of 23 November 2004, 691 ex-combatants have adhered to DCR process and 3567 weapons including ammunitions were collected. Mr. Bah however indicated that the programme unfortunately was hampered by armed militias, notably the Nizi-based Congolese Patriots (UPC-L) led by Thomas Lubanga who attacked Monuc troops several times. ''MONUC condemns, in strongest terms, the attacks aimed at MONUC, more particularly from UPC-L militias which it terms as a gross violation of the Act of Engagement signed on 14 May in Kinshasa by Thomas Lubanga personally'', the Spokesman said, denouncing the fact that the militias systematically use civilians as human shields; they hide in houses or house roofs whilst attacking. MONUC recalls that the use of human beings as human shields is a war crime. Also attending the news conference was MONUC army chief of staff, Colonel Patrick Colas des Francs who explained how the additional 5900 troops would be deployed. He highlighted that MONUC presence would noticeably be reinforced in Kivus with the deployment of one Indian and one Pakistani brigades comprised each of 3 battalions. Colonel Des Francs further announced the creation of a rapid intervention brigade as a task force to swiftly handle erupting crisis with adequate means. The brigades will be equipped with combat helicopters, surveillance helicopters, and mobile gendarme station. Colonel Des Francs said the deployment would be achieved by late February 2005. The new deployment would mainly increase MONUC presence along the most sensitive borders, ensure surveillance as well as motorised and non-motorised patrols, back disarmament programmes of Congolese and Foreign armed groups etc. Updating on the DRC mining situation, as a prelude to the World Summit on the Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines, the Head of the Coordination Centre for Anti-mines Struggle, Marcel Quirion, announced that the Democratic Republic of Congo has made important achievements with respect to the implementation of the Treaty. He rejoices that the treaty is taken into consideration at the highest level of the State, notably the Head of State, Joseph Kabila, and his Vice-presidents. The presidential circle is determined to implement the Treaty, he said. In this respect, Mr. Quirion said, the DRC has submitted the official list of mined sites to the international community as well as the list of military victims of mine accidents. The DRC is finalising its declaration about mines stocks, he said. The UN expert considers that the world summit due to be held in Nairobi, Kenya, will be a good opportunity for the DRC to submit its national plan of action in the fight against antipersonnel mines. The head of MONUC Public Information, Ms. Patricia Tome, told the news conference on Wednesday that Rwanda disclosed to MONUC last night its intention to attack the "Democratic Forces of the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR)" inside the DRC territory. Addressing the Mission's weekly news conference, Ms. Tome referred to the statement as a ''serious threat against the DRC Transition's process, not to say a dangerous escalation for the whole region''. She recalled the ongoing diplomatic activities, alluding to the current UN Security Council visit to the region, the reinforcement of MONUC mandate and the forthcoming deployment of an additional brigade to North Kivu to secure the zone and ''prevent spoilers, whether in DRC or elsewhere, to undermine the transition and the region's pacification''. Ms. Tomé further recalled that the Heads of States of the region have just signed a statement in Dar es-Salaam, Tanzania, vowing to ensure peace, security and development in the Great Lakes region. '' These declarations are not to remain a dead letter'', she said. Earlier, MONUC Spokesman, Mamadou Bah, briefed the press on the UN Security Council's mission to Central Africa. Led by the French Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Mr. Jean-Marc de la Sablière, the delegation is proceeding with its mission in the region, he indicated, adding it was in Bukavu yesterday and is due to arrive in Burundi today and travel to Uganda tomorrow. He recalled that in Kinshasa, the Security Council expressed their solidarity with the Congolese people and pledged to continue supporting the transition process. The Security Council Mission insisted on the need to accelerate the process due to lead to the elections on the set dates. In Bukavu, the Security Council expressed sympathy with the population affected by the last June events. They also called for the reconciliation of all the Congolese people, Mr. Bah said. The Spokesman further updated the press on the Disarmament and Community Reintegration (DCR) programme in Ituri, indicating that as of 23 November 2004, 691 ex-combatants have adhered to DCR process and 3567 weapons including ammunitions were collected. Mr. Bah however indicated that the programme unfortunately was hampered by armed militias, notably the Nizi-based Congolese Patriots (UPC-L) led by Thomas Lubanga who attacked Monuc troops several times. ''MONUC condemns, in strongest terms, the attacks aimed at MONUC, more particularly from UPC-L militias which it terms as a gross violation of the Act of Engagement signed on 14 May in Kinshasa by Thomas Lubanga personally'', the Spokesman said, denouncing the fact that the militias systematically use civilians as human shields; they hide in houses or house roofs whilst attacking. MONUC recalls that the use of human beings as human shields is a war crime. Also attending the news conference was MONUC army chief of staff, Colonel Patrick Colas des Francs who explained how the additional 5900 troops would be deployed. He highlighted that MONUC presence would noticeably be reinforced in Kivus with the deployment of one Indian and one Pakistani brigades comprised each of 3 battalions. Colonel Des Francs further announced the creation of a rapid intervention brigade as a task force to swiftly handle erupting crisis with adequate means. The brigades will be equipped with combat helicopters, surveillance helicopters, and mobile gendarme station. Colonel Des Francs said the deployment would be achieved by late February 2005. The new deployment would mainly increase MONUC presence along the most sensitive borders, ensure surveillance as well as motorised and non-motorised patrols, back disarmament programmes of Congolese and Foreign armed groups etc. Updating on the DRC mining situation, as a prelude to the World Summit on the Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines, the Head of the Coordination Centre for Anti-mines Struggle, Marcel Quirion, announced that the Democratic Republic of Congo has made important achievements with respect to the implementation of the Treaty. He rejoices that the treaty is taken into consideration at the highest level of the State, notably the Head of State, Joseph Kabila, and his Vice-presidents. The presidential circle is determined to implement the Treaty, he said. In this respect, Mr. Quirion said, the DRC has submitted the official list of mined sites to the international community as well as the list of military victims of mine accidents. The DRC is finalising its declaration about mines stocks, he said. The UN expert considers that the world summit due to be held in Nairobi, Kenya, will be a good opportunity for the DRC to submit its national plan of action in the fight against antipersonnel mines.

Egypt

Reuters 1 Nov 2004 Egypt finds no al Qaeda link to Red Sea bombers Mon 1 November, 2004 14:03 CAIRO (Reuters) - An inquiry into the Red Sea resort attacks targeting Israeli tourists does not indicate the bombers were linked to al Qaeda or part of a wider organised militant network, Egypt says. However, authorities said the blasts, in which 33 people were killed, were part of the wider cycle of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli and U.S. officials had both said Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda was probably to blame for the October 7 bombs, which struck the Taba Hilton and two beach camps further south in the Sinai peninsula. But Interior Minister Habib el-Adli told reporters on Monday the inquiry "did not indicate the linking of the group which carried out the attacks with (wider) organisational activity at home or abroad or with cells of the al Qaeda organisation". Egypt, whose tourist industry is an important engine of the economy, has blamed the bombs on a Palestinian and three Sinai Bedouin. The Palestinian and one of the Bedouin died in the Taba bomb and the authorities said last week they were hunting the other two Bedouin. Adli said the attacks were one of "the most important repercussions of the circle of ongoing violence in the occupied (Palestinian) territories and the accompanying violence and feeling of desperation". He said Egypt would not allow itself to become an extension of the violence, in which Palestinians have been waging an uprising against Israeli occupation. The Egyptian authorities say they have arrested five other Sinai men accused of helping the bombers by providing vehicles, explosives or information. The Red Sea bombs were the first attack on tourists in Egypt since 1997, when Islamic militants killed 58 tourists at the Deir al-Bahari temple in Luxor. Foreign tourists had been a target of Islamic militants who had waged an insurgency against the government during the 1990s.

Al-Ahram Weekly 25 November - 1 December 2004 Issue No. 718 Tackling thorny issues At Egypt's behest, the world's largest security organisation has decided to monitor escalating global discrimination against Islam. Magda El-Ghitany reports from Sharm El-Sheikh At a meeting that took place in Sharm El-Sheikh last week, Egypt managed to convince a European body concerned with security to expand its focus to include the monitoring of both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had originally planned to appoint just one representative to monitor anti-Semitism. An intense diplomatic campaign involved lobbying OSCE member states as well as its current chairman, Bulgaria, to establish a committee, or appoint representatives, to observe all types of worldwide discrimination instead of just monitoring anti-Semitism. The campaign was crucial, Mohamed Shaaban, the adviser to Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul- Gheit told Al-Ahram Weekly, "so that one religion [would not be favoured] over the others". The diplomatic victory took place at the 10th OSCE Mediterranean Seminar that was held in Sharm El-Sheikh, on 18 and 19 November. The world's largest security organisation, OSCE includes 55 nations, mainly from Europe, but also includes the US and Canada, and, since the mid- 1990s, six Mediterranean partners -- Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. Egypt has hosted three of the 10 seminars that have been held to discuss security concerns in the region. Last week's seminar sessions focussed on terrorism, intolerance and discrimination, and migration, with participants attempting to find solutions that serve their common interests in minimising these threats. Shaaban, who was the moderator of the seminar's first session, said that fighting anti-Semitism "tops the international agenda", while other forms of discrimination are not given the same attention. The problem, he said, is that by considering criticism of Israeli politics anti-Semitic, the international community is mixing up the cards. Egypt's concern -- as articulated in the seminar's opening speech (delivered on Abul-Gheit's behalf by Assistant Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri) -- was for "all forms of [discrimination] and intolerance" and "ensuring the protection and respect for all religions", as well as stepping up joint efforts to end "Islamophobia", which was rapidly becoming a global phenomenon. Fighting anti-Semitism is not a new idea for the OSCE. It dates back two years, when the organisation decided to consider "anti-Semitism" a "threat to the stability of societies that may give rise to violence". Although the organisation has also referred to discrimination against Muslims, it was only at this most recent meeting that the scope of its plan to monitor the phenomenon took shape. According to Peter Boden, Germany's permanent representative to the OSCE, this happened after "a long internal debate". The organisation is now planning to appoint three special representatives: one to monitor the escalating Islamophobia phenomenon; another for anti-Semitism; and a third for other types of discrimination, intolerance and xenophobia. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one of the seminar's organisers said that the OSCE's decision to appoint an envoy -- who will most likely be from Turkey -- to monitor Islamophobia was a solid victory for Egypt's efforts, considering that the phenomenon has noticeably increased in the West, especially in the aftermath of 9/11. In fact, the decision reflected a blunt international confession regarding escalating discrimination against Muslims around the world. Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy, OSCE's chairman- in-office, told the Weekly that, "we [OSCE] cannot limit our fight against intolerance to one group. Fighting intolerance should extend [to help] all minorities and groups suffering from discrimination, including Muslims and Arabs." At the meeting, Egypt was also keen to rule out any premise that the Middle East was the root of terrorism. Shaaban said that, "the root cause of terrorism is non-compliance with international law and the unresolved territorial disputes" that lack collective, effective efforts to solve them. Abul- Gheit's speech ironed out the fact that terrorism was "a direct result of the injustice and double standards" that the international community applies in dealing with various issues. The solution, therefore, was to put forth "just solutions for major issues that have existed for decades". Egypt highlighted three such issues that threaten the region's security, and require much more international cooperation to resolve: the Palestinian- Israeli conflict and the upcoming Palestinian elections; the current situation in Iraq, and the possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by some states in the Mediterranean. The Egyptian foreign minister's opening speech said international cooperation was needed to: help attain a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip so that not a "single Israeli soldier" would be left there; conduct smooth, "fair Palestinian elections"; ensure a better situation in Iraq; and guarantee a Middle East that is "free of WMD". Otherwise, there would be much remaining that threatens "the security of Europe and the Mediterranean". The seminar eventually managed to come to common ground on some of these issues. During the concluding session, there was a consensus that the OSCE should send envoys to observe the upcoming 9 January Palestinian elections. M Haluk Ilicak, Turkey's minister plenipotentiary, told the Weekly that the OSCE was willing to send such observers because the organisation "supports any form of democratisation". At the same time, the Turkish official said, getting involved in the Iraqi matter was debatable. The WMD issue, meanwhile, seemed to remain unsolvable. While Abul-Gheit's speech called on the "whole" international community to stop lending a "blind eye" to the "persistence of some states in the Middle East to acquire WMD", since this would "weaken the impact of international treaties of non proliferation", Passy said that WMD was a "broad [issue] that cannot be solved by the OSCE alone. It [requires] very strong participation from the UN and the Quartet." Egyptian officials are banking on the premise that the seminar was a good, albeit slow, start for Mediterranean states to attain some of their goals. The future, they hoped, could begin similar interactions that, in the long term, could pave the way for solving other vital issues. "Knowing and accepting the other is the key" to all our goals, Shaaban said.weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/718/eg8.htm

Equatorial Guinea

BBC 16 Nov 2004 Thatcher to be tried in absentia Sir Mark faces a trial in his absence Sir Mark Thatcher is to be tried in his absence by a court in Equatorial Guinea over an alleged plot to overthrow its president, a defence lawyer said. Defence lawyer Fabian Nsue Nguema said eight new names, including Sir Mark's, have been added to the list of accused. Last month Sir Mark appeared in court in Cape Town as his lawyers argued against an order forcing him to answer questions about a suspected coup plot. Lady Thatcher's son denies knowledge of, or involvement in, the plot. The announcement came on Tuesday as the trial of 19 defendants accused of seeking to overthrow the president of the small, oil-rich West African nation, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, resumed after a two-month recess. Map of South Africa "Eight new names have been added to the list of accused, including Britain's Mark Thatcher who will be tried in absentia," said Mr Nsue, who is representing South African Nick du Toit, who is accused of being in charge of logistics for an attempted coup against the president. In Equatorial Guinea the state prosecutors have already charged 19 people, including eight South Africans - one of whom is du Toit - a six-man Armenian air crew and five Equatorial Guineans, one of whom is a former deputy government minister. They were alleged to be a reception committee for a group of mercenaries supposed to fly in from Zimbabwe and guide them to their targets in Equatorial Guinea. The Zimbabweans accused of being involved were arrested in Harare on 7 March. Sir Mark, the son of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was arrested in August by South African police and released after posting bail of £167,000, reportedly paid by his 78-year-old mother. He is accused of helping to fund the purchase of a helicopter, breaching laws banning South African residents from taking part in foreign military action. His lawyers maintain the funds were an investment in an air ambulance venture for west Africa. Sir Mark could face 15 years in jail if convicted. In September former British SAS officer Simon Mann, suspected of leading the alleged mercenaries, was jailed for seven years in Zimbabwe for illegally trying to buy weapons. Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony, has been ruled by President Obiang since he seized power from his uncle in a coup in 1979.

Liberia

BBC 1 Nov 2004 Mass arrests after Liberia riots Liberia hosts the world's largest peacekeeping operation United Nations peacekeepers in the Liberian capital have arrested up to 250 people following days of unrest in which at least 14 people died. UN envoy Jacques Klein said the deaths and injuries, which left more than 200 people in hospital, were caused by clubbing, beatings and machete wounds. Monrovia is now calm with UN helicopters hovering overhead. The violence is the worst seen in the city since former president Charles Taylor was forced into exile. Following the passing of a disarmament deadline on Sunday, UN peacekeepers are conducting door-to-door searches for weapons, and attempting to reimpose their authority. Some 95,000 fighters have handed over weapons in the UN programme. Blame Mr Klein said there were several flash points which were used by former combatants, especially those linked to Mr Taylor, to try to destabilise the country. The violence is a reminder of how volatile Liberia remains "What we are seeing are the death throes of the [old] regime," he told the BBC. Areas on the outskirts of Monrovia remain tense. Several churches and mosques were attacked during the clashes which began last Thursday, and a curfew was put in place. "In the old days they used tribal differences which don't seem to be working now so now they've hit on religious differences," he told the BBC's Network Africa. The violence was sparked, Mr Klein says, by competition between vendors for space in a market and further exacerbated by an internal leadership election among former Lurd rebels and then former Taylor fighters, criminals and thugs joined in, he said. However he said there was no serious threat to peace in the country. "This is what we call a bump in the road," he said Problems Last week, parts of city suburbs were sealed off as gangs fought running battles. The violence also forced the UN to postpone repatriation of refugees from neighbouring Guinea. Liberia's interim leader Gyude Bryant - who heads a transitional power-sharing government set up to organise elections - blamed hooligans. The unrest was one of the most serious outbreaks of violence in Liberia since the full deployment of some 15,000 UN peacekeepers in Liberia as part of a peace deal to end 14 years of civil war. The chief Liberian peace negotiator for the West African community, Abdusalami Abubuakar, has now arrived in Monrovia to try to bring rival rebel faction leaders back within the peace process. Fighters from the largest rebel movement known as Lurd are drawn from the mainly-Muslim Mandingo ethnic group. And they have clashed with fighters which draw their support from Christian communities. But the BBC's Dan Isaacs says that tensions and mistrust are complex and run very deep.

Deutsche Presse Agentur Date: 1 Nov 2004 14 killed in weekend Christian-Moslem riots in Monrovia Monrovia (dpa)- More than 14 people were confirmed dead, 205 injured and 250 arrested during week-end riots between Moslems and Christians in Monrovia, Information Minister William Allen said Monday. Allen said the material damage could not yet be estimated, but five churches and two mosques had been burnt to the ground. "We can evaluate losses in terms of the peace dividend and destruction of businesses,'' Allen told journalists. Former Nigerian head of state Abdul Salami Abubakar, who is the main negotiator in the peace process, said the riots were regrettable. He spoke on his arrival Sunday in Monrovia to monitor progress in the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA). About 250 people have been displaced as a result of the riots, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Abubakar said it was an "unacceptable diversion which will erode the confidence of the international community''. Meanwhile, calm has returned to Monrovia following the overnight arrests of about 100 armed former fighters of the rebel movement Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). They were detained in the home of former LURD General Phillip Kamara in a suburb of Jacob Town, which is considered a stronghold of the ethnic Mandingo group. Kamara is still at large, but his bodyguards are said to have committed atrocities in the region where at least two Christians were killed Sunday on their way to Church. A huge cache of arms belonging to Mandingoes was found Sunday evening in the northeastern suburb of Sinkor Airfield. Details of the cache have not been disclosed. Most businesses in the capital have reopened, traffic has returned to the streets, but schools and most offices are still closed. dpa tr pb .

IRIN 11 Jan 2004 Liberia: Riots kill 16, delay repatriation of refugees [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] MONROVIA, 1 November (IRIN) - Aid workers have been forced to suspend plans to bring Liberian refugees back home after riots in the capital Monrovia killed at least 16 people in the worst outbreak of violence the West African country has witnessed since its civil war ended a year ago. The trouble first erupted on Thursday evening, triggered by a land dispute in the eastern suburb of Paynesville that quickly escalated into mob violence, with youths wielding sticks, knives and broken bottles and setting fire to cars and buildings. Liberia's transitional government imposed a curfew, but the running battles resumed on Sunday, a day peace was supposed to dominate the headlines as former fighters handed in their weapons on the final day of the country's disarmament programme. The UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) said on Monday that 16 people had died during the riots. Another 208 people had been injured, 47 of them seriously. "Most major hospitals... are filled with wounded people," one medic at Monrovia's main hospital told IRIN, adding that the majority had been injured by sharp metal objects and stones. UNMIL said 250 people had been arrested, some for murder, some for arson and some for breaking the curfew. With the capital unstable, the United Nations temporarily halted plans to begin repatriating the first batch of Liberian refugees from Guinea and to start resettling those that had been displaced around Liberia. "We are suspending our entire planned repatriation programme for both refugees and internally displaced people because of the prevailing security situation in Monrovia," Francesca Fontanini, the spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in Liberia, told IRIN. Some 300,000 Liberians, who fled their homes during the 14-year civil war, have been living in a ring of camps around the capital. Starting on Monday, UNHCR had been hoping to help about a third of them back to their villages by the end of December but officials did not say whether that target was now threatened. Another 350,000 fled beyond Liberia's borders to seek safety. In Guinea, some 200 Liberian refugees who were looking forward to returning home this weekend were told they would have to wait a while longer. "Events in the country.... did not appear safe and it is against our policy to repatriate refugees to a country which is not considered safe," a UNCHR official in the Guinean capital, Conakry, told IRIN on Saturday. Guinea, itself teetering on the brink of instability, is host to the largest number of Liberian refugees. The UN says some 58,000 are currently living there. Liberia is struggling to rebuild after 14 years of civil war, which destroyed already creaky infrastructure across the heavily-forested nation and crippled its economy. The UN says some 95,000 ex-combatants have been disarmed under its programme, more than double the number expected. But critics point out that only one in three of those disarmed has actually handed in a weapon and officials have warned that there are insufficient funds to retrain those who have earned a living from violence for the last decade and a half. Warning given "The ex-combatants' overwhelming concentration in the over-congested capital, Monrovia, without job opportunities, poses a threat to national security," the UN and Liberia's transitional government said in a joint document submitted to international donors recently and seen by IRIN. Early reports portrayed last week's clashes in Monrovia as religious, but government officials, diplomats and residents cast doubt on that theory, with many saying the blame should be laid at the door of rogue ex-combatants. "We have found out that there are no Muslims burning churches and no Christians burning mosques," Gyude Bryant, the head of the transitional government, said in a radio address on Sunday. "We have already identified those behind it... and we will go after them," he said, without giving any more details. UN envoy Jacques Klein was more blunt. "What we're seeing is the death throes of the [old] regime," he told the BBC. "In the old days they used tribal differences which don't seem to be working now so now they've hit on religious differences." Stephen Lincoln, a resident in the battle-scarred suburb of the capital, agreed that religion was masking political troubles between the rebel group Liberians United Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), who come from the mainly Muslim Mandingo ethnic group and fighters loyal to former president Charles Taylor. "Some boys who are former fighters of LURD, mainly Mandingos, are attacking another tribe's members who they perceive as Christians and in particular former fighters of Taylor," he said. Witnesses told IRIN that UN peacekeepers had arrested some 80 people from the home of Philip Kamara, a former senior commander within LURD. Heavily-armed UN peacekeepers -- part of some 15,000 blue hatted troops in the country -- were still patrolling parts of Monrovia, and although shops and banks reopened on Monday, schools stayed closed and many residents remained wary UNMIL said relative calm had returned to the capital, but a curfew would remain in place from 4:00pm to 7:00am until further notice. Diplomats worry that Liberia's slide back to violence might scare off international donors, who have already not provided all the funds that aid workers say is necessary to rebuild the country. "Liberia cannot afford to revert back to those dark chapters of war and violence," Abdulsalami Abubakar, the Nigerian general who helped negotiate peace in Liberia, warned.

Concord Times (Freetown) 23 Nov 2004 Special Court Lobbies for Taylor's Extradition Freetown David Crane, Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations-backed Special Court has begun a tour of West African countries to mobilize support for the extradition of former Liberian president Charles Taylor to face trial in Freetown. "I'm touring the sub-region to solicit support from leaders on the possibility of handing over Charles Taylor," Crane told Gambian Television last Thursday, following a meeting with Gambia's Vice President, Isatou Njie Saidy. Taylor faces an 18-count indictment at the tribunal for arming and training rebels of the Revolutionary United Front in their decade-long battle in the country.

Namibia

The Namibian (Windhoek) 2 Nov 2004 Ovaherero Remember Genocide By Petros Kuteeue Windhoek ONE hundred years and a month since the 'Extermination Order", thousands of Ovaherero at the weekend returned to a remote spot in the Kalahari desert where German colonial military leader General Lothar von Trotha issued his infamous command to destroy the Ovaherero as a nation. The order, which led to the annihilation of about two-thirds of the Ovaherero at the beginning of the 20th century, was issued at a place known as the Ozombuzovindimba - modern-day Otjinene Constituency in the Omaheke Region. Led by their burly paramount chief, Kuaima Riruako, Ovaherero tribesmen marched through the thick sand and veld to lay wreaths at two graves marked by stones, and climbed a man-made sand hill on which Von Trotha stood when he read out the Extermination Order, before signing the so-called 'Ozombuzovindimba Declaration' to reaffirm their commitment to fight for reparations from Germany. "We, the Ovaherero, descendants of the survivors and victims of the Extermination Order ... solemnly declare to carry on the struggle for reparations for as long as it takes and if need be, pass the struggle on to future generations of the Ovaherero for decades to come until justice is done," the declaration reads in part. The tribe vowed to petition the international community, particularly the United Nations, African Union, human rights organisations and tribunals the world over, until Germany accedes to their demands. "[We solemnly declare] to take our justified demand for the court of public opinion in Germany, with a view to expose the naked racism perpetrated against the Ovaherero people by successive German governments, which refuse to entertain our demand whilst continuing to pay compensation to the Jews in Israel, simply because they are white and we are Africans," the Ovaherero charge. The African tribe also threatened unspecified action against "German interests" if the former colonial ruler continues to ignore their demands for reparations. "We reserve our right as a suffering people to resort to other legitimate means of struggle against German interests anywhere in the world, whether alone or in association with others who are in solidarity with us, until we achieve final victory." The mainly cattle-herding ethnic group has filed a N$20 billion lawsuit in a United States federal court against Germany and some German companies. Germany has reluctantly apologised for the slaughter of thousands of Ovaherero by its colonial forces, but continues to rule out paying reparations. Riruako opines that Germany's 'no-pay attitude' is being boosted by what he sees as "hypocrisy and double standards" on the part of the Namibian Government on the issue of Ovaherero reparations. He charged that all along Government has shunned commemorative activities for this year's centenary of the Ovaherero genocide, but now some leaders are coming up with "eleventh-hour pretensions" on the issue. "The response [by Government] has been a slap in our face. Rarely have we been afforded any apology or credible excuse for the government's absence from these historic commemorative activities... we reject this partisan approach to national events," Riruako said. "The very same Government that has been basking in the historic deeds of Kahimemua Nguvauva, Samuel Maharero and Hosea Kutako. Yet, activities to honour their deeds and those of other Namibian heroes and heroines are meaningless to the Government." Former Attorney General Advocate Vekuii Rukoro cautioned the Ovaherero to guard against manoeuvres that Germany might employ in a bid to divide the Ovaherero people over the issue of reparations. He charged that when the Germans first came to Namibia, they pretended to be the saviours but ended up being the killers. "This time they are coming in a different form through churches and their message is reconciliation. "Now they are approaching and inviting the Ovaherero leaders as individuals. Please, in the name of your forefathers' blood which was spilled right here [at Ozombuzovindimba], don't let the enemy divide you further," the lawyer pleaded.

New Era (Windhoek) 2 Nov 2004 Hundreds Mark Extermination Order By Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro Ozombu Zovindimba HUNDREDS of Red, White and Green Flag adherents, Ovaherero and Ovambanderu in general and one, two or three Germans, as well as a lonesome American anthropological researcher, on Saturday converged on the historic Ozombu Zovindimba to mark 100 years since the issue of the notorious Extermination Order by General Lothar von Trotha, then commander of the German Imperial Forces in the then German South West Africa. Ozombu Zovindimba is situated about 20 km north-east of the capital of the Otjinene Constituency in the Omaheke Region. Hundred years ago, on October 02, von Trotha issued his infamous order to wipe the Ovaherero off the face of the earth. Frustrated by the ever elusive Ovaherero he had been pursuing since they retreated at the Battle of Ohamakari a month earlier, von Trotha addressed his troops from a sand heap he had built here and which also served as an elevated platform from where he could communicate with his troops in adjacent areas with various devices like mirrors. Drilling regiments; cavalries; with the Aminuis Constituency cavalry from the Aminuis communal area led by Bob Vezera Kandetu once again not failing in its appearance; traditional dances, both male and female; an exhibition of wartime pictures, among others Ovaherero/Ovambanderu children in their traditional gear, all combined to add spectre to the day. These were crowned by speeches by the various invited speakers, among them one of the area's traditional leaders, Chief Maharero of the Royal House of Maharero/Tjamuaha and Chief Riruako. By Friday evening the area near this historic place on the Otjinene-Otjikorondo road in the main road to the Eiseb communal area was lined up with camping sites, some by vendors out to catch on the clientele the crowd pulled by the commemoration would offer, others of the participants in the commemoration either as regiments' members, Ovaherero and Ovambanderu culturalists, to witness this historical event and to listen to the historical speeches as well as those here out of mere curiosity. Also by Friday evening traditional dancers had taken their respective positions welcoming the guests with their dancing and singing. Traditional spiritual leader, Jatjaerua Kaurizirira, supported by Chief Maharero, on Saturday morning spiritually connected with the ancestors informing them that their descendants had come to visit them, as well as the reason for the visit. He also asked them to pave the way for them for the commemoration they were here to have and for them to bestow their blessings on their descendants. During this ceremony the spiritual leaders also welcomed the people to this sacred place. A pilgrim was made to the graves of the victims of poisoned waterholes as part of the Extermination Order, where Chief Maharero laid a wreath, and eventually the crowd ended up at the sand heap on which von Trotha addressed his troops and issued the Order. Riruako gave a brief historical background there, whereafter the commemorators returned to the assembly point for the speeches. Director of ceremonies Edwin Kanguatjivi would have made Pavarotti green with envy with his tenor when he led the commemorators in singing the national anthem. Councillor for the Aminuis Constituency Erwin Uanguta read the welcoming statement of the Governor of Omaheke Laura McLeod. He appealed for unity among the Ovaherero, adding that 2004 should also be a year of reconciliation. He said the dead should be honoured because those failing to remember the past become blind to the present. Namibia's independence grew out of the determination and courage of the Namibians who fought for freedom and justice 100 years ago, he said. Gaborone-based Kaveire Raurau from the Ovaherero Commemoration and Resistance Committee said although the Ovaherero will forgive the Germans for past atrocities against them, they will revenge not viciously and physically but by remaining true to the cause of reparation. He said no amount of money will compensate the Ovaherero for their losses as a result of the atrocities committed by the Germans, including the destruction of their culture. However, all the Ovaherero are asking is for the German government to work together with the Ovaherero towards reconciliation. Turning to his own people, Raurau cautioned those who put their economic and political interests before their community, advising that the pride of the Ovaherero as a community is noble and beyond political ideologies, and collective determination is imperative in maintaining its pride. He said only the Ovaherero must accept Germany's apology and see whether it is acceptable and viable to them and not the government. Raurau also took traditional leaders to task for selling the birthright of their people for bread and added that independence is not limited to self-determination but includes self-consciousness, economic advancement, personal identity and self-expression. Acknowledging once again the apology offered by the German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development at Ohamakari in August, Chief Riruako said as genuine as the apology might have been when offered, it has since been contradicted by subsequent utterances by German Ambassador Dr Wolfgang Massing and by revelations by the German opposition party that an agreement exists between the Namibian and German governments not to acknowledge that genocide was committed against the Ovaherero. "To date neither the Namibian nor the German ambassador has publicly denied the existence of such a treacherous agreement," said Riruako. On the contrary, he added, Massing has on more than one occasion been quoted as saying the Ovaherero must forget about reparations. Not only that, he seems to be making the withdrawal of the Ovaherero reparation court case a condition for dialogue with the Ovaherero. "I wish to make it absolutely clear to Dr Massing that my people shall not be held at ransom over their reparation demand. The Ovaherero quest for reparation is born out of their historic fate visited upon them by Germany's colonial quest and imperialist cravings, Riruako said. He said he accepted the German apology on face value and in good faith but judging from the attitude of the German ambassador in Namibia, the apology was a mere public relations exercise. He said the onus is now on the German government to engage the Ovaherero in a serious dialogue, thereby proving that the apology was not a public relations exercise. Riruako also noted what he referred to as "eleventh hour hypocritical pretensions by some quarters in the Namibian Government on the issue of our genocide and reparation". He said despite various invitations to commemorative activities "the response has been a slap in our face" and rarely have they been afforded any apology or credible excuse for the Government's absence from the 1904 historic commemorative activities. This is despite the Government's "basking in the historic deeds of Kahimemua Nguvauva, Samuel Maharero and Hosea Kutako". As the 1904 commemorative activities draw to a close, Riruko declared the beginning of the struggle for compensation and read a declaration to this effect. Speaking at the same occasion, Advocate Vekuii Rukoro cautioned the Ovaherero chief against division as they are now embarking on the second phase of their struggle, that of reparations. The first was to force an apology from the German government for the atrocities that they committed against the Ovaherero. However, now that they have offered an apology the German government is now trying to backtrack on that apology by separately luring Ovaherero chiefs to it in a divide-and-rule mode. In this, he said, the church seems to have reverted back to its colonial historical role of siding with its government, pretending to be working for reconciliation. However, when the Ovaherero have been struggling to force an apology from the German government they have been absent. The churches have not been only absent but have not been recognising leaders of the Ovaherero community. Rukoro questioned why the Ovaherero leaders are being invited one by one to Germany instead of as one delegation and pleaded with the Ovaherero leaders to fight their reparation case as one united people. "In the name of our ancestors please do not allow the enemy to divide you," Rukoro pleaded with the traditional leaders, adding that he has been looking up to them as their leaders and they thus cannot look up to other leaders. Bishop Zephania Kameeta and R. Keding have circulated a draft proposal suggesting the establishment of a Namibian-German Institute for Reconciliation and Development. The institute, they propose, will promote reconciliation among the citizens of Namibia and between Namibia and Germany.

New Era (Windhoek) 8 Nov 2004 Genocide Money Controversy By Catherine Sasman Windhoek THE aftermath of the Herero genocide commemoration held earlier in the year at Ohamakari is wrapped in controversy over allegations that money sourced from the German Embassy has been misspent, or cannot be accounted for. The Ovaherero Genocide Preparatory Committee at the helm of the organisation reportedly received N$70 000 from the Deutsche Entwikk-lungs Dienst (DED: German Development Service) through the German Embassy for the event. A portion of the money was to be used for accommodation and food. But, people who availed their houses at Okakarara now complain that they have never been paid for their houses' use. Communications officer for the committee, Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro, acknow-ledged that some complaints have been registered, but could not say why those who sublet their homes had not been paid. He however contended that the committee only received N$35'000 for the event and that all the money was accounted for. "But complaints have been there where houses were supposed to have been rented or were rented. We were not paying directly but paid through the local committee at Ohamakari," Matundu-Tjiparuro said. An agreement was reached with homeowners to send an investigation team to find out what had happened. Member of the committee, Rudolph Hongoze, was very reluctant to speak to New Era before a meeting which is scheduled for today.

The Namibian (Windhoek) 23 Nov 2004 Herero Reconciliation in the Spotlight At Bremen Summit By Edgar Haelbich Bremen Diplomatic relations between Herero-speaking Namibians and Germany took centre stage at the weekend when almost 100 academics, church leaders, diplomats and politicians gathered in Bremen, Germany, for an international symposium. The symposium discussed the way forward on the reconciliation process between the German government and descendants of the Herero who perished in the genocide 100 years ago. The conference ended yesterday. Present were Germany's Minister for Economic Development and Co-operation, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Namibia's Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Nangolo Mbumba, and Zephania Kameeta, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (Elcin). Members of the conference's steering committee were Manfred Hinz, Dean of Faculty of Law at the University of Namibia, and Gunther Hilliges from the Bremen State Office for Development Co-operation. The meeting, which took place in Bremen's historic town hall, was overshadowed by a verbal attack launched by Herero Paramount Chief Kuaima Riruako against forces that he claimed aimed to divide the Herero people. "The reconciliation is an official one between our people and the German government," Riruako said on Friday. "Such reconciliation cannot be the exercise of an academic conference, but should be the business of formal negotiations between us and the German government," Riruako emphasised. He criticised the fact that the Bremen symposium was dominated by academic presentations which aimed at making suggestions to the Namibian Government, its German counterpart and the Herero people on how the reconciliation process could be speeded up. The Herero leader, who claimed that his speech served as the voice of all Ovaherero people, said that other parties, such as the Namibian Government, the African Union or the United Nations "can only attend as observers to and/or facilitator of the dialogue". "Stop adding insult to injury by encouraging division amongst our people. Any continuation of such evil designs will be viewed by all Ovahereros as a second round genocide being perpetrated against our people. We shall resist that with all legitimate means at our disposal," said Riruako. A visibly upset Wieczorek-Zeul said:"I heard very well what the Chief said, and I think that some of his remarks are detrimental to the process of reconciliation. It is unacceptable to use the word 'genocide' in this context." Information Minister Nangolo Mbumba reminded Riruako that "we have learned from our struggle for freedom that if you have a friend, then keep him". Kameeta and Namibia's former ambassador to the EU and Benelux, Dr Zed Ngavirue, used their influence to push forward a solution acceptable to all sides. Ngavirue said the Herero leaders expected the academic presentations to "broaden the understanding of the colonial past and its dire consequences today". Moreover the Namibians hoped that the conference "will facilitate and contribute towards a meaningful dialogue between our leaders and the government of Germany leading to a mutually acceptable solution".

The Namibian (Windhoek) 23 Nov 2004 Negotiations On Herero-German Issue Should Be Handled By Govts: Mbumba By Edgar Haelbich Bremen A conference which dealt with finding ways to facilitate the reconciliation of Herero-speaking Namibians and Germany ended here yesterday. "The followers and participants in the struggle will appreciate the efforts made by the German government and the State of Bremen in this regard," said Namibia's Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Nangolo Mbumba. Mbumba argued that reconciliation negotiations should be a matter handled by the governments of both countries, and not between governments of one and the ethnic groups of another country. The readiness on the German side to enter into a meaningful dialogue was certainly there, he said. "One thing we have to learn is to see the limitations of others," said the Minister, expressing understanding for what the called "the constraints the German government is experiencing". "We have to decide which channels to choose to go ahead with the process." Mbumba added:"What this conference has taught us is the deep sense of loss the Herero people are still experiencing today." To ease this pain, a solution had certainly to be found. "All in all I am very optimistic that this will happen in due course," he said. Bishop Zephania Kameeta, head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (Elcin), said: "At the beginning (of the conference) I was not quite sure what the organisers wanted to achieve. It seemed a bit like many participants just had their own interests in mind, which made it very difficult to find a line." According to Kameeta, Saturday´s meeting between the Herero leadership was a very constructive one. "We had to decide:Do we want confrontation or dialogue?" Hans-Erik Staby, representative of the German-speaking Namibian community, saw a couple of structural weaknesses in the symposium. "They shouldn't have only invited the Herero as an ethnic group," the former opposition politician said. "If this reconciliation programme we are talking about is not broadened to include all population groups who have suffered under German colonial rule, then I see big problems coming."

New Era (Windhoek) 23 Nov 2004 Undoubtedly a Crime - Mbumba By Kae Matundu Tjiparuro Windhoek THE restoration of the dignity of the Ovaherero must be combined with the explicit acceptance that injustice was done, and practical gestures to show that this acceptance is not mere lip-service, says Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Nangolo Mbumba. Mbumba on Sunday addressed an international conference entitled: The German-Herero War- One Hundred Years After: 1904-2004: Realities, Traumas, Perspectives, which ended in the German city of Bremen the same day. The University of Bremen and the University of Namibia jointly hosted the conference. Mbumba said the 1904 war "was undoubtedly a crime against humanity" as 70 000 or more people "were murdered deliberately". He said when one visits some parts of Namibia today, one comes across many Namibian men and women bearing German second names and light in complexion. German colonial soldiers, traders and settlers who swarmed the country then left mothers to single-handedly bring up children they fathered. Ovaherero concentration camp internees mothered some of these children. Mbumba said the Ovaherero was one of the biggest cultural groups in the central part of then German South West Africa as Namibia was commonly known then, and their cattle matched their numbers. Hundred years after the 1904 war, the Ovaherero are today a "small group with few cattle compared to what their fathers and forefathers had". He said the burden of the memory of the war-time injustices inflicted on the Ovaherero, which burdened those who survived with traumatic recollection of bloodshed, starvation, death and deprivation, also affects present-day Ovaherero. Mbumba said while experts differ on whether wartime experiences and their consequences on the survivors should be seen as collective trauma, even on the Ovaherero, some experts also agree that the traumatic memory of the Ovaherero generations alive today cannot by any means be ignored. Neither can it be remedied by international law. "Remedies, we are told, have to be looked for in the space that we find between law and ethically guided political evaluation," he said, adding however that many authors accept that what happened to the "Ovaherero and Ovambanderu in 1904 was genocide". On what the Government of Namibia has been doing to restore the cultural heritage and human dignity "of all Namibians", Mbumba cited the Traditional Authorities Act, the Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act and the Agricultural (Communal) Land Reform Act as among the legal instruments the Government is employing to restore the cultural and human dignity of Namibians. German assistance to Namibia in many fields including land reform need also to be noted, Mbumba said, recalling in particular the N$2.7 million that Germany has provided to the Permanent Technical Team on land. The conference ended on Sunday and was attended, among others, by various Namibian traditional and religious leaders and academics. Discussion sessions went under various banners like: Recalling 1904; What happened at Ohamakari and afterwards; What Ohamakari 1904 means to us today; Healing, reconciliation, exoneration in the historical and political context. The conference was expected to come up with conclusions and recommendations to facilitate the Ovaherero-German reconciliation hundred years after 1904.

Rwanda (see DRCongo, France)

American Forces Press Service 2 Nov 2004 Defenselink.mil Airmen Visit Rwanda Genocide Memorial By Capt. Heather Healy, USAF Special to American Forces Press Service KIGALI, Rwanda, Nov. 2, 2004 -- On Oct. 30 a C-130 sat unceremoniously on the tarmac of Kigali International Airport here, waiting for the arrival of Rwandan troops. For the U.S. airmen here, the mission was clear: transport Rwandan troops and equipment to Al-Fashir, Sudan, where they will join other African Union troops in mitigating the humanitarian crisis in the country's Darfur region. The mission may have been clear and simple for the Americans involved, but as the airmen quickly realized, the Rwandans did not view the U.S. Air Force's airlift to Darfur as just another day at work. Marching to the music of their own formal military band, the Rwandan troops carried more than their rifles as they entered the belly of the C-130. Their faces seemed to carry with them the concerns of a country that only 10 years ago experienced the horror of genocide. In 1994, the Hutu-dominated regime of Rwanda launched a genocidal attack against the minority Tutsi people lasting 100 days and resulting in the brutal death of about 800,000 people. Most U.S. airmen, before arriving in Kigali, were only remotely aware of the genocide that forever changed the people of Rwanda. "We provided the folks deploying here an intelligence briefing before we arrived in an effort to provide them a basic understanding of what we're doing here," said Air Force Col. Robert Baine, 322nd Air Expeditionary Group commander. "We should understand the importance of this mission not only for the U.S. and the (African Union), but for the Rwandans and the people dying in Darfur." As the command-and-control element for airlift operations was set up in Kigali, Baine sought other ways for the deployed airmen to learn about the history of the country. The Rwandans arranged a free tour for the deployed airmen to view the Gisozi Genocide Memorial. "It's a very powerful reminder as to why we're here," said Baine. "The Rwandans understand that people can do pretty inhumane things, and when the world has the opportunity to step in, it should." At the genocide memorial, the sight of bones and skulls preserved on shelves told haunting stories of Rwanda's darkest hour. "That humans could do that to other humans," said Master Sgt. Kelly Burkhard, 322nd AEG superintendent of communications and information. "I just can't imagine the horror of the genocide that happened here." While the airmen toured the multi-story memorial building full of Rwanda 's tragic history, on the other side of town Rwandan soldiers prepared to deploy to Darfur, where United Nations officials say the worse humanitarian crisis in the world today continues. "The Rwandans experienced genocide firsthand," said Burkhard. "I think they're passionate about stopping the brutality." Americans are also passionate about saving lives. The U.S. government has donated more than $300 million dollars in humanitarian aid for Darfur, of which, $75 million has gone to support the 200,000 refugees who have fled Darfur into eastern Chad. "The U.S. Air Force's contribution to ending this crisis is just one part of a larger U.S. and international effort," said Baine. "The world has not forgotten Darfur. Our president, our Congress and our State Department have been working for the last two years to resolve this crisis. American troops are not going on the ground. Our focus is providing airlift for African Union forces so they can save African lives." (Air Force Capt. Heather Healy is assigned to 322nd Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs. Courtesy of U.S. Air Forces in Europe.)

Hirondelle News Agency (Lausanne) 9 Nov 2004 Rwanda and UN Court on Edge of Confrontation Kigali The Rwandan authorities and the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) appear to be heading towards a stand-off as investigations into the recent murder of a former witness at the court get underway, Hirondelle News Agency has learnt. According to highly placed sources in the Rwandan capital Kigali, the ICTR has turned down a request from national prosecutors to interrogate some staff members of the court in connection with the murder. Rwandan investigators contend that ICTR staff visited the former ICTR witness a day before his murder. Bosco Nyemazi, a confessed genocide killer was murdered on October 12th, 2004, shortly after his return from testifying at the Tanzanian based court. Rwanda and the ICTR have been conducting parallel investigations into the killing. Nyemazi's wife, one of seven other suspects in custody in connection with the murder, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder and confessed that the motive for the killing was her husband's links with the ICTR. The Rwandan authorities are mainly focusing their investigation along these lines. On the other hand, the ICTR says that the murder could also have been connected to genocide trials pending in local courts or other domestic issues. "We are not going to accept this kind of behaviour from the court. I thought it was within the interests of everyone to know the cause of the murder," a senior Rwandan official told Hirondelle News Agency on condition of anonymity. He said that Rwandan investigators did not suspect the ICTR staff of personal involvement in the murder. But there is a connection, according to the official, "What we know for now is that the person that led them to Nyemazi's house that day is a suspect in connection with the murder". Some previous confrontations between the court and Rwanda have resulted into genocide survivor's organisations in Rwanda advising their members against testifying at the court. Such boycotts, at a court that predominantly depends on witnesses inside Rwanda, have on some occasions led to indefinite postponements of trials.

AFP 25 Nov 2004 Rwanda will act when time is right against Hutu rebels in DRC: Kagame DAKAR, Nov 25 (AFP) - Rwanda will act when the time is right against Hutu rebels based in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said on local radio during a visit to Senegal. "Since 1994 (the year of Rwanda's genocide), the Interhamwe (allied militia forces) have destabilised our country under the eyes of the international community and nothing has been done to solve this problem. "We have continuously appealed to the international community and the United Nations about it. We have also called on the government of the (DR) Congo but nothing has been done. On the contrary, we have been attacked on the 15th of this month of November." "If the international community cannot do it, who else is there to do it except us? We have no other choice but to pick off these targets. There are Interhamwe bases and ex-FAR (soldiers from the defunct Rwandan army) who we have clearly located, and when the time is right, we will deal with them. Kagame was due to leave for Ougadougou later Thursday for the summit of Francophone countries.

AP 25 Nov 2004 U.N. Envoys Urge Restraint by Rwanda DAKAR, Senegal, Nov. 25 -- U.N. Security Council diplomats appealed to Rwanda for restraint Thursday after Rwandan President Paul Kagame threatened to renew Central Africa's deadliest conflict, claiming his country was coming under attack from militias in neighboring Congo. In a statement from Burundi's capital, Bujumbura, where they were winding down a Central African mission launched to hold all concerned to peace deals, the diplomats urged Rwanda "to refrain from any action that would violate international law, undermine this region's fragile stability or jeopardize the transition process supported by the international community." Rwanda has invaded Congo twice since 1996 with the stated aim of hunting down Rwandan Hutu militias responsible for the 1994 genocide of about 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. In an interview Thursday, Kagame called a five-month-old U.N.-led campaign to disarm the Rwandan Hutus in Congo a failure and said: "At the appropriate moment, we certainly will take measures." The U.N. mission in Congo said later Thursday that no cross-border attacks from Congo had been verified.

washingtonpost.com 26 Nov 2004 Movie Honors Rwandan Hotelier 'Who Refused to Follow the Mob' By Nora Boustany Friday, November 26, 2004; Page A32 Blood flowed in the streets. Machine guns and machetes replaced courtesies and conversations among neighbors and colleagues from different ethnic groups. As Rwanda fell into the grip of genocide 10 years ago, what distinguished Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager in Kigali, the capital, from many of his countrymen was an unspoken passion to serve others and a knack for decorum. "I was not brave, but maybe I was someone who refused to follow the mob," Rusesabagina said in an interview in Washington before the screening last week of "Hotel Rwanda," a film based on heroic exploits by which Rusesabagina ultimately saved more than 1,200 people. The movie, shown at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, follows events beginning in April 1994, as Rusesabagina was transformed from a suave host into a heralded savior and turned his once-elegant establishment, Hotel Mille Collines, into a haven for the helpless. Using his standing and connections, he staved off tragedy, cajoling bloodthirsty soldiers and outsmarting their leaders to save not only his family and friends but also strangers who came seeking refuge. The slaughter began on April 6, 1994, when gunmen shot down the Rwandan president's plane, killing him and the president of neighboring Burundi. The incident quickly degenerated into genocide, a brutal door-to-door killing frenzy in which more than 800,000 people were massacred in just 100 days, as extremists from the majority Hutu population lashed out mercilessly against Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Amid the carnage, Rusesabagina remained the consummate professional, resorting to bartering luxury items hoarded in his hotel to ensure the safety of his patrons, keep food supplies coming in and thwart potential massacres. Rusesabagina rationed the water in the swimming pool, using trash cans to measure out portions for each room so that clients could cook, eat and wash. His first brush with calamity came when militiamen stopped him and a van filled with his neighbors and asked him to shoot the whole vanload because they were Tutsi. "I know you guys are hungry, tired, thirsty and stressed by the war," he told the militiamen. "Look at this old man here. Are you sure he is your enemy? Can you imagine killing him and moving through life with his blood, or this child's blood, on your hands? "There is a better solution. Escort us to the hotel, so I can get you something to drink. Also, I have money. I will pay for each of these people," he said to the militiamen. If they killed him, he pointed out, no one could lead them to the hotel safe and the money stashed there. Rusesabagina, the son of a farmer and one of nine children, studied theology and, later, hotel management. He remembers community elders visiting his father, a man with a strong sense of justice, to settle land disputes. As an adult, Rusesabagina shuttled easily between his family life, with his wife, Tatiana, and their children, and his demanding job -- until the killing started. The tools of his trade were nothing unusual: the keys to the hotel's storage rooms and cellars and a Rolodex of important people, including Rwandans, U.N. officials and employees at Sabena, the Belgian firm that owned the hotel. "I would go into my secretary's office at night to secretly use the phone, fax, wake people up at 4 a.m., just to keep buying time, begging people to intervene," he said. "Every day, every minute represented unspeakable danger." One morning, a phalanx of soldiers appeared at his door. "Are you the hotel manager?" one of them barked. "If so, tell all the cockroaches to leave in 30 minutes." Rusesabagina rushed to the roof and looked down on a sea of spears, guns and machetes. "This is the end, I told myself," he said. But then "I started calling. The director of Sabena in Brussels, he called the king of Belgium, the president of France, to weigh in." Rusesabagina said he then went to see the assistant general chief of staff for the police to get him to prevent the killing that might be coming. Rusesabagina "prodded him into coming with me to the hotel, telling him I had things he needed in the safe there." Rusesabagina had stockpiled everything he could: money, gold, Cohiba cigars, aged bottles of wine. When the official resisted the offer, Rusesabagina warned him that one day he would be held accountable and that the rest of the world would judge him as the man who ordered the killing but could have stopped it. At the hotel, men, women and children were kneeling next to the pool with their hands held up, waiting for death. Rusesabagina's wife and four children were hiding in the bathroom behind a shower curtain. The official rushed to the hotel and evicted his men from the grounds. Eventually, Rusesabagina, his family and two nieces whose parents had been killed were evacuated by the United Nations to a camp in Tanzania. Today, Rusesabagina lives in Brussels. The film is an homage to Rusesabagina's silent bravery and suppressed rage. "I hope this will be a wake-up call, not only for Rwanda but the whole international community," he said. "I acted with the hope that all my friends were doing the same instead of blindly falling into step with the rest of the mob."

Somalia

IRIN 1 Nov 2004 Over 100 killed in clashes between Somaliland and Puntland [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] NAIROBI, 1 November (IRIN) - Conflicting reports from the disputed region of Sool, northern Somalia, indicate that at least 100 people were killed on Friday when forces from the self-declared republic of Somaliland, and those of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, clashed, a local source told IRIN. Both sides are accusing the other of initiating the hostilities. The Somaliland Minister of Information, Abdillahi Du'ale, told IRIN on Monday: "The fact of the matter is that it was a premeditated aggression" by Puntland forces. He accused the current Puntland leader, Muhammad Abdi Hashi, of having "orchestrated" the clashes "in consultation with Abdullahi Yusuf [the newly-elected president of Somalia and former Puntland leader]". Du'ale claimed that Somaliland forces had killed more than 100 Puntland militiamen and destroyed an undetermined number of military hardware. He said their forces lost seven soldiers and nine were wounded. "We regret this unnecessary loss of life," he said. However, the Puntland Deputy Minister of Information Ibrahim Artan Isma'il dismissed reports that the Puntland attacked as "baseless". "Our forces defended their position when attacked by Somaliland forces," he said. "They did not attack Somaliland". Isma'il also denied Puntland forces lost over 100 men. "The information I am receiving from our forces is that we lost 12 men and four [were] wounded," he said. "It is Somaliland that lost close to 100 men." Reports indicate that the fighting between the two sides started on Friday at Ari Adey village [30 km north of the regional capital, Las Anod] and continued for most of the day, Muhammad Sa'id Kashwito, a journalist on the Bosaso-based Midnimo Radio, told IRIN. Kashawiito said that the fighting had subsided "due to heavy rains in the area". Although no fighting was reported in the area on Monday, it remains tense and both sides were said to have amassed troops on either side of the village of Ari Adey, Kashawito said. It was not immediately clear what triggered the fighting, but tension between the two sides had been simmering since Puntland troops took total control of Las Anod in December 2003. Before then, both sides had official representation in the town. Puntland leaders declared the region autonomous in 1998 with the aim of reconstituting Somalia as a federal republic. Somaliland declared its independence from the rest of the country following the overthrow of the regime of Muhammad Siyad Barre in 1991. The region has remained relatively peaceful even as the rest of Somalia descended into anarchy and violence. Meanwhile, the Chairman of the African Union, Alpha Oumar Konare, in a statement issued on Sunday, appealed to the two parties "to immediately cease all hostilities and desist from any action that would further exacerbate the situation." "These developments are all the more regrettable as they come at a time when the Somali National Reconciliation Conference has registered historic progress," Konare said.

Agence France-Presse 5 Nov 2004 Somalia's civil war claimed 300,000 lives: president KAMPALA, Nov 5 (AFP) - Somalia's new President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed said on Friday that 300,000 of his countrymen were thought to have died during 14 years of civil war and voiced hope for peace to return to the Horn of Africa state. "Up to 300,000 people were killed during the war, about two million others were displaced, some living here in Uganda, and national institutions... were destroyed," Yusuf told a joint press conference with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. "In order to undertake the huge task ahead ... disarmament, intergration and restoration of the rule of law, we need support from African brothers, as well as the international community, without which we cannot achieve much," Yusuf said. "We promise to accelerate the programmes in Somalia as much as we can. It is my belief that if we all work together, the timeframe of pacifying Somalia will be much shorter than anybody thought," he said, allaying fears that some warlords may restart fighting in Somalia. European Union officials recently estimated the death toll in the civil war at 500,000. Yusuf was speaking at the end of a two-day visit to Uganda to discuss challenges and security issues to be resolved before his government can relocate from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, to the Somali capital Mogadishu. A veteran Somali faction leader and soldier, Yusuf was sworn in as new president of Somalia on October 14 in Nairobi, in the first conclusive attempt to pacify the country, which plunged into turmoil immediately after the ouster of the dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in January 1991. Museveni said the Somali president had expressed a preference for any force sent to restore law and order in his country to be drawn from African countries. "The opinion of the Somali president is that the force that will help restore law and order, should be an African force, supported by the international community," Museveni told journalists. "Why they prefer the African force is that they could easily be compatible to the culture of Somalia. Uganda will be ready to offer any force the African Union would like to help our brothers to stand on their feet," Museveni said. Late last month Yusuf asked the African Union to send a force of between 15,000 and 20,000 to disarm militia groups that have been warring in Somalia since the 1991 overthrow of the dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. The Somali peace process has been driven by Africa's seven-nation Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), composed of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and nominally Somalia. Yusuf said he believed that an African force to be deployed in Somalia will be able to leave the country in about a year "with honours after accomplishing their mission." He also said his government will handle the recent disagreement that resulted in fighting between his own state of Puntland and the neighbouring self-declared Republic of Somaliland, formerly Somalia's northwest region. "I will not blame any side, because I am now the president of the whole of Somalia, but a new civil war in Somalia is totally unacceptable, we have advised them what to do and they should take that advice, otherwise if they refuse, the Somali people will take them on," Yusuf warned. The Kampala talks were also attended by Somali Transitional Federal Parliament Speaker Sharif Hassan Adrin, four other members of parliament from different factions and other officials from both Somali and Ugandan governments.

washingtonpost.com 12 Nov 2004 Lawsuits Filed Against Two Somalis in N.Va. Ex-Leaders Are Accused of Human Rights Violations in Homeland in 1980s By William Branigin Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, November 12, 2004; Page B03 A California-based human rights group has filed lawsuits in federal court in Alexandria alleging that two Somali residents of Northern Virginia ordered torture, killings, rapes and other acts of brutality against a rival clan during the 1980s when they held positions of power in their homeland. The two lawsuits claim that Mohamed Ali Samatar, a former defense minister and prime minister of Somalia, and Yusuf Abdi Ali, a former colonel who commanded a notorious Somali army battalion, bear responsibility for human rights violations committed during the military regime of the late Somali president Mohamed Siad Barre, who was deposed in 1991. The lawsuits were filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Wednesday on behalf of eight Somali plaintiffs. The lawsuits, filed by the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability and a Reston law firm, represent the latest effort by private groups to hold accountable alleged human rights violators who have found safe haven in the United States. Human rights groups say hundreds of war criminals from various countries have found refuge in the United States, living quiet lives in places such as the Washington suburbs. Although U.S. immigration law has provisions designed to keep them out and deport them if they are found, enforcement has often been lax, victims' advocates complain. Samatar, a resident of Fairfax County, came to the United States in the early 1990s after his wife was granted political asylum. Abdi Ali, known to Somalis by his nom de guerre, Tokeh ("the Crow"), received military training in the United States in 1986 and 1990 and sought refuge in Canada when the Siad Barre government collapsed. He landed in the United States after he was deported from Canada in 1992 because of his human rights record, and he eventually prevailed in a six-year legal battle with U.S. immigration. He now lives and works in Alexandria. Samatar and Abdi Ali could not be reached for comment yesterday. In an interview in Canada before being deported, Abdi Ali denied that he committed human rights abuses. In filing the lawsuits, the center hopes to build on previous successes in suing foreign human rights violators in the United States -- if not actually collecting judgments. In a case filed by the center last year, a federal judge ordered two former Salvadoran defense ministers living in Florida to pay damages to torture victims, including Juan Romagoza, who runs a clinic for the indigent in the District. Among the plaintiffs in the suit against Samatar is Bashe Abdi Yousuf, a former businessman in northwestern Somalia and an Isaaq clan member who now lives in Atlanta. He says he was arrested in November 1981 for participating in a group that sought to improve conditions at a hospital and was repeatedly tortured and held in solitary confinement in a small, windowless cell for more than six years. He fled Somalia after he was released from prison in 1989 and arrived in the United States in 1991. Five other plaintiffs in the suit -- four men and a woman -- are anonymous because they fear reprisals, said Sandra Coliver, executive director of the Center for Justice and Accountability. Four of the five still live in Somalia, and one is in Kuwait. They include a farmer who was arrested with his two brothers while tending the family's camels in northern Somalia in 1984, according to the complaint against Samatar. The brothers were among 45 prisoners who were summarily executed, the complaint says. The woman was allegedly tortured and raped repeatedly during more than four years of imprisonment. In addition, a former noncommissioned officer in the Somali army alleges that he survived a massacre of fellow Isaaq members of the military in June 1988. The other two plaintiffs against Samatar are a former college student who says he was shot and left for dead in a July 1989 mass execution at Jezira Beach south of the capital, Mogadishu, and a mechanic who says he lost four brothers in the same massacre. The lawsuit charges that Samatar, as defense minister from 1980 to 1987 and prime minister from 1987 to 1990, "exercised command and control over the Armed Forces of Somalia" and "conspired with or aided and abetted subordinates" in committing acts of torture, extrajudicial killing, rape, arbitrary detention, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The complaint against Abdi Ali was filed on behalf of two anonymous Somali farmers, also members of the Isaaq clan, who alleged they were tortured by soldiers under the colonel's command as well as by Abdi Ali himself.

Sudan

AFP 25 Oct 2004 Sudan refuses entry to AU soldiers on US planes for Darfur mission KHARTOUM, Oct 25 (AFP) -- Khartoum on Monday refused to allow African Union (AU) soldiers, due to monitor a ceasefire between government troops and rebel forces in the western region of Darfur, to fly in to Sudan on US planes. Troops from the U.S. Air Force's 86th Airlift Wing unload boxes of weapons upon arrival in the Rwandan capital Kigali October 23, 2004, aboard three U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo planes. The planes will transport Rwandan forces and equipment to Darfur over the next two weeks to assist an African Union peacekeeping effort in the violent region of western Sudan. It is the first U.S. military deployment in the Darfur conflict. "This is not a bilateral issue and the matter should be handled by the African Union in accordance with clear-cut guarantees and a certain time period," Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters. He said the Sudanese government had informed the AU of its position but had "not yet had any response". "We will never accept any US planes on Sudanese territory other than under an AU agreement that does not violate Sudanese national security ... and as long as the (planes) leave immediately after their mission" said Ismail. He accused the US administration of waging a "campaign of misinformation" on the humanitarian crisis in Darfur "to distract international attention away from events in Iraq and Palestine". Khartoum, however, would "cooperate closely with the African Union" so the organisation could transport its troops for of their mission in Darfur, Ismail added. The more than 3,000-strong AU force is to be made up of troops from the Gambia, Rwanda, Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Algeria and Tanzania, the foreign minister said. The first contingent had been expected to arrive Monday. Ismail said he would brief the Sudanese parliament on Tuesday on the expansion of the mandate and the length of the AU mission in western Sudan.

African Union 28 Oct 2004 The African Union deploys more troops in Darfur as part of its efforts to strengthen AMIS PRESS RELEASE N0 098/2004 As part of its efforts aimed at strengthening the African Union Mission in the Sudan (AMIS) and as a follow up to the decision of the 17th meeting of the Peace and Security Council of the AU held on 20 October 2004, the AU has deployed in the Darfur region of the Sudan, today, a group of 50 military personnel from Nigeria. This deployment of Nigerian troops will be followed by the deployment on 30 October of 237 troops from Rwanda. These new deployments, together with the 310 military personnel from Nigeria and Rwanda the AU has already sent to Darfur earlier in August, will bring the military component of the AMIS to 597 troops. This significant expansion of the military personnel of AMIS follows the 17th meeting of the Peace and Security Council of the AU, which decided that AMIS shall now consist of 3,320 personnel, including 2,341 military personnel, among them 450 observers, up to 815 civilian police personnel, as well as the appropriate civilian personnel. More troops from Nigeria and from other African countries are expected to be deployed in the following days. Addis Ababa, 28 October 2004

Stars and Stripes 30 Oct 2004 www.estripes.com Air Force C-130s shuttle troops, supplies to Darfur Stars and Stripes European edition, Saturday, October 30, 2004 John Beach / Courtesy of U.S. Air Force A group of Nigerian troops approaches a U.S. C-130 on Thursday for transportation into the Darfur region of Sudan. They are part of a load of approximately 40 Nigerian troops and 3,000 pounds of equipment bound for El-Fashir airstrip in Sudan’s Darfur region, marking the beginning of the airlift mission of African Union protection forces to the troubled area. The United States has committed two C-130s to assist the African Union’s mission in Darfur. U.S. Air Force cargo planes began shuttling peacekeeping troops and supplies to the troubled Darfur region of Sudan on Thursday, a news release said. A C-130 cargo plane from Ramstein Air Base, Germany, carried 40 Nigerian troops and 3,000 pounds of equipment bound for El-Fashir airstrip in Darfur, according to the release from the 435th Air Base Wing at Ramstein. More than 120 active-duty and reserve airmen and two C-130 Hercules deployed to Kigali, Rwanda, from Europe last week to set up operations in support of an expanded African Union mission. Additional African Union troops are being sent to Darfur to help quell a civil war and ease a humanitarian crisis there. At least 70,000 people have been killed and more than 1.5 million have lost their homes in the conflict. In all, members of Ramstein’s 86th Airlift Wing will help carry some 3,500 African Union troops to the region. The United States is working with other nations, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, along with the European Union, to expand the peacekeeping mission, the White House said in an earlier statement. The African Union mission’s immediate goal is to “intensify monitoring of the cease-fire and help create conditions to increase the free flow of humanitarian assistance to the people of Darfur,” the statement said.

Reuters 31 Oct 2004 Darfur rebels split over secular state demands ABUJA, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Darfur's main rebel group insisted on Sunday religion and state should be separated in Sudan, a demand rejected by Khartoum and which has divided the two rebel groups at peace talks in Nigeria. The rebel movements negotiating with Sudan's Islamist government to try to end the 20-month-old conflict in Darfur have been unable to come up with a common political framework, presenting separate documents to mediators instead. The United Nations says 70,000 people have died of disease and malnutrition in Darfur since March. There are no reliable figures for those killed by the fighting, which Washington calls genocide and the U.N. says has displaced 1.6 million people. Talks in Nigeria's capital Abuja to end the fighting have stalled, mainly on security and disarmament issues, while parallel negotiations on Sudan's future political system have also failed to make much progress. The main rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), wants a clear separation between political and religious affairs in Sudan -- a demand rejected by the government and unlikely to find support with the second, more Islamist-oriented, rebel group at the talks, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). POLITICS AND RELIGION "This is a very important issue for us. I am a Muslim, but religion in our country is being used to kill and marginalise people," said SLA spokesman Mahgoub Hussain. But JEM spokesman Ahmed Hussain said: "I think this is something we should leave for the people of Sudan to decide in wider consultations. "We didn't take up arms to fight for the separation of politics and religion. We took up arms to fight against marginalisation." Government negotiators said Sudan's mainly Muslim north, including Darfur, should continue to be governed by the principles of Islamic law. "Sharia is the law and should be the law. The concept of separation between state and religion does not exist in the Islamic world. It's all politics, it's all religion," said Abdul Zuma, media adviser to the government delegation. While the government has agreed in separate peace talks with mainly Christian and animist rebels in southern Sudan not to apply Sharia law there, Zuma said that deal did not include the western region of Darfur. The SLA and the JEM took up arms in February last year, accusing Khartoum of neglecting Darfur and arming Arab militias to kill African villagers. Most of Darfur's ethnically Arab and African tribes are devout Muslims, but the non-Arabic speaking tribes see themselves as culturally distinct from the Arab tribes dominating politics in Khartoum. The leadership of the two rebel groups have very different backgrounds. JEM's leaders are widely believed to have retained prior links with Sudan's opposition leader and Islamic ideologist Hassan al-Turabi, an advocate of Sharia law.

BBC 2 Nov 2004 Push for no-fly zone in Darfur A small number of the promised AU peacekeepers are in Darfur African Union mediators have presented the Sudanese government and rebel groups with a new security deal, in an attempt to end the conflict in Darfur. The draft includes a proposal to make Darfur a no-fly zone - a key demand of the rebels. Spokesmen for each side said the new draft was better than a previous one. More than 1.5 million people have fled their homes in Darfur and some 70,000 have been killed in the conflict. More fighting is being reported near Nyala. "There is a very remarkable improvement on the document," State Minister for Foreign Affairs Najeeb al-Kheir Abdul Wahab told Reuters news agency. Violence More fighting was reported on Tuesday in the Darfur region of western Sudan between the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) rebels and government forces. The BBC's Alexei Masciarelli in Nyala in south Darfur says the latest reported fighting took place only 20km north of Nyala. Travellers arriving in Nyala on Tuesday afternoon said that they have spotted several bodies lying on the road. Some were wearing uniforms, others the traditional jalabia robe. As a precautionary measure, United Nation agencies have banned their staff from travelling on that road on Tuesday. Further on, road blocks set up by Arab militiamen are preventing commercial and humanitarian vehicles from travelling. The senior AU officer in Nyala, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mejabi, told the BBC that the ceasefire was being violated every day by the government and both rebel sides in Darfur. Acts of banditry are also on the rise. Civilians have been attacked at roadblocks in the villages and even inside displaced camps. Meanwhile, the head of the AU's peacekeeping operation in Sudan, Said Djinnit, has said the organisation now has nearly 250 troops in Darfur. The SLM have threatened to quit the peace talks in Nigeria, if government attacks against villages are not halted.

2 Nov 2004 Security problems worsen in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur: UN GENEVA, Nov 2 (AFP) - Humanitarian organisations expressed alarm Tuesday over worsening security in Sudan's conflict-wracked Darfur region, where the UN refugee agency has been forced to cancel several missions. The spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ron Redmond, said trips had been planned by UNHCR staff to Djebel Moon in west Darfur, north of El Geneina, and Masteri, 50 kilometres (30 miles) to the south of El Geneina, but were not currently possible. "Recently there were more reports on rebel activity, and that is a concern to us because of the possibility of retaliatory action. ... We are concerned about the risk of further displacement towards Chad," Redmond said. Since February last year, the three western Darfur provinces of Sudan have been embroiled in a conflict pitting two rebel movements against government forces and Khartoum's proxy Arab militias. The two sides are currently in talks in Nigeria trying to thrash out a political settlement to the brutal conflict, which has driven 1.5 million people from their homes and left tens of thousands dead. Relief agencies had to stop some aid work after 18 Sudanese of Arab origin were kidnapped last Thursday from a bus between Zalinge and Nyala in West Darfur. Khartoum has blamed the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), but Redmond said humanitarian workers fear violent reprisals for the abduction. A UNHCR region which went to Masteri on October 26 had been due to return there for several days from Sunday to monitor the movement to neighbouring Chad of refugees, but this mission was cancelled. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced that displaced persons' camps close to Nyala were on Tuesday morning surrounded by soldiers and police who prevented access there by relief workers. "The WFP fears that an operation to resettle these people is beginning," WFP spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume said in Geneva. "The increase in insecurity" has also prevented aid workers from travelling by road to several centres for 160,000 displaced people at Zalingie, Nerpetie and Golo in west Darfur, Berthiaume said. About 100 humanitarian workers, notably employees of the charity Care, were airlifted out of the area by helicopter on Monday, she said. The Arab militia force, known as the Janjaweed, has been accused by aid agencies, refugees and the US government of carrying out genocide against Darfur's population of black African origin.

LA Times 28 Oct 2004 How a crisis catches world's attention Aid workers try to figure out why some human rights calamities are allowed to fester. The Sudanese disaster was once just that sort. By Maggie Farley LA Times Staff Writer. UNITED NATIONS — The conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region is a horror: The government, trying to put down a rebellion, has sent aircraft to bomb its own people, then militiamen have swooped in to rape, kill and pillage. At least 50,000 people have died and 1.6 million have fled in the last 18 months. Meanwhile, just south of Sudan's border in Uganda, another catastrophe simmers: 10,000 children have been kidnapped by militiamen, thousands of women have been raped and 2 million people have been displaced in the fallout from civil war. Tens of thousands have died. Each night, parents send their children by the thousands to sleep in guarded compounds so they won't be abducted by rebels and turned into soldiers or sex slaves. One of these situations — Sudan — has been labeled by the U.N. as the "world's worst humanitarian crisis." The U.S. Congress and the State Department have called it genocide. Aid workers and journalists are pouring in to help the needy and chronicle the tragedy. Western political leaders are speaking out. And in Uganda, the misery continues, virtually unnoticed by the outside world. How does a crisis become a crisis? Or rather, how does the world single out one disaster from hundreds for its attention and support? The question beleaguers humanitarian officials such as Jan Egeland every day as he calls capitals from his U.N. office, begging for money, visas for aid workers and news coverage for the latest tragedy. After more than a quarter of a century in human rights and relief work — he became head of Amnesty International in Norway at 23 — the U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, now 47, has the trajectory of a disaster down to a science. He can read the warning signs of a crisis the way a mariner knows that a ring around the moon presages a storm. And he's learning to predict which situation will spark an international response. Only three causes a year rise to the forefront of international consciousness, he figures, and then only after nine dire warnings have been largely ignored. The 10th one, it seems, is the charm. But even then, to the frustration of aid officials, the severity of a crisis — the number of dead or injured or starving — is no guarantee that it will win the attention lottery. According to a wide range of humanitarian officials, a complex set of circumstances will determine whether the world will care — and act — to stave off disaster. The first critical factor is the geopolitical importance of the individuals or place involved. Kosovo, because it was in Europe, received quick attention. So did Afghanistan — after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. But if disaster happens someplace where no countries have a strategic stake, Egeland's experience has shown that few will care. The second variable is the ability of U.N. workers and other advocates to lobby and act on behalf of the forgotten. "Most people can't find Central African Republic or Guinea on a map," Egeland said. "That leaves us." Finally, a select group of Western political and media leaders plays a key role. Once the crisis gets on American television news and the politicians start to visit, money and aid start rolling in. "There are problems all around Africa, all around the world," said Noelle LuSane, foreign policy advisor for Rep. Donald M. Payne (D-N.J.), ranking member of the Committee on International Relations' subcommittee on Africa. LuSane said Sudan already had attracted attention from conservative Christians, who had become concerned in the mid-1990s about Muslims enslaving Christians in the country's south, and black Americans. With the 10-year anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda adding resonance, people were ready to coalesce around Darfur. "There's no constituency like that for Uganda and Cote D'Ivoire," LuSane said. Egeland says he can't get people to notice what is happening just across Sudan's border in the Central African Republic, or in Ivory Coast or eastern Congo, where populations have been uprooted by civil wars and left without access to aid. And then there is northern Uganda, now in its 18th year of conflict, where a messianic leader's militia has abducted nearly 20,000 boys and girls to serve his cause. To escape the Lord's Resistance Army, thousands of fearful children are herded each day to havens before the sun sets, creating a ghostly twilight march of "night commuters." The lack of interest in Uganda is particularly distressing for Egeland, because the crisis has been so prolonged and so cruel. "I have learned that for a crisis to be newsworthy, it must be dramatic, and visual, so that people can understand what is at stake," he said. "But everyone has children. Everyone has a mother. How else can 10,000 children kidnapped and women raped be easier to understand?" Sudan's case has been unusual in both the way it escaped international attention at first, and the way it then gained it. Humanitarian aid officials and human rights activists are trying to analyze why the disaster in Darfur took so long to register, so that they may better prevent the next crisis. Egeland said he had never come across the combination of geographical isolation, political manipulation and government obstruction that enabled the problems in the western Darfur region to escalate from a manageable emergency into a humanitarian catastrophe. In fact, violence has raged in Sudan for more than 20 years as the government has fought a rebellion in the south. An estimated 2 million people have died with little international notice. The country's remoteness and anarchy made it an attractive base for Osama bin Laden until the U.S. forced the government in Khartoum to expel him in the mid-1990s. Scrutiny of Sudan decreased after the United States withdrew its diplomats from the capital in 1996, citing terrorist threats. For years thereafter, Khartoum allowed only a few aid groups to work in the country, and almost no foreign reporters. So, few outsiders noticed when a government effort to put down an uprising by black rebels in the western part of Sudan in early 2003 escalated into widespread violence against civilians. The predominantly Arab government enjoined Arab tribes who had long-held territorial rivalries with black farmers to help remove the rebels and their kin from their land. Often the government and tribal militias worked together, with military aircraft strafing black villages, then tribesmen on horseback killing men, raping women, poisoning wells and burning homes to ensure no one would come back. Instead of calling for help — as many governments would do when faced with tens of thousands of their own people dying — Khartoum kept mum and blocked outside aid to conceal its collaboration with the militias. "It was clear that the leaders in Khartoum did not regard the black Africans as 'their people,' " said USAID official Roger Winter, one of the first to recognize the severity of the situation. "They were considered 'other.' The government did not want this population assisted." When USAID workers sounded the alarm in the fall of 2003 about the scorched-earth tactics, top officials at the U.N. and in the Bush administration kept quiet. Part of the reason for their silence was their fear that a demand for action in the western region of Darfur would derail the final stage of peace talks to end the 20-year civil war in the south, U.S. and U.N. officials said. Khartoum, calculating that the U.S. wouldn't turn its attention to Darfur until the negotiations to end the north-south conflict were over, strung out the negotiations, hoping to wipe out the rebellion in the west. "It was an extraordinary diplomatic blunder" on the part of the U.S. and U.N., said John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank. "Sudan learned very quickly that we would not turn to the humanitarian crisis until we got the peace talks wrapped. So why would they ever react to our demands?" By February 2004, the United States was growing more concerned. Although President Bush had not yet spoken out about the situation, Washington began exerting pressure behind the scenes on Khartoum to grant visas to aid groups and journalists, who began their own reports on atrocities and refugees. But when the few aid groups working in Sudan — Doctors Without Borders and CARE International — reported on the dire conditions, they did not convey the ethnic dimension of the violence. "They pulled their punches in order to maintain access," said Eric Reeves, a Sudan watcher at Smith College who believes he was the first to publicly label the situation in Darfur genocide in late 2003. "It's difficult to criticize them. They were the only ones there and it was important for them to stay there." Despite persistent urging by their top humanitarian officials, including Egeland and USAID administrator Andrew Natsios, it wasn't until April that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Bush publicly addressed the catastrophic violence in Darfur. What triggered the shift? Guilt, said U.S. and U.N. officials. A month before the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, they said, the leaders realized that they could not in good conscience say "Never again" when a similar situation might be occurring in Sudan. On April 7, both leaders invoked the need to help Darfur in their speeches about Rwanda — a moment that shattered the official silence, but only hinted at action. Yet once that silence broke, an unusual constellation of interests aligned to pressure the Bush administration to do something. Human rights organizations, among the first to sound the alarm in early 2004, pushed harder for intervention. Conservative Christian groups working to free Christian slaves refocused on Darfur. The Congressional Black Caucus sponsored a congressional resolution that termed the situation "genocide" in July. Those charges of genocide, with their echoes of the Holocaust, brought in Jewish American groups. For Bush, it became clear that embracing the issue would win points on all sides, U.S. officials said. In late June, in what turned out to be the tipping point for international attention, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Annan made overlapping visits to Khartoum and secured an agreement from the government to halt the violence. While they were there, the U.S. introduced a U.N. Security Council resolution that, although watered down during negotiations, put pressure on Sudan to act. On Sept. 9, Powell announced that a State Department investigation had found that the systematic killing in Darfur constituted genocide. Nine days later, the Security Council approved an international inquiry to determine whether genocide had occurred, and authorized up to 3,000 African Union troops to protect civilians and monitor militias' disarmament. Now help is finally on the way, more than a year after the crisis began. Given the amount of attention that has been devoted to the situation in Darfur, aid officials expected to have sufficient pledges. But funds are falling short. "Since April 2004 — over one year after war broke out — Sudan has had more [foreign] ministers and senators visit per week than most [African nations] get per year," Egeland said. "And still, we have only half of what we need this year." Donors have given almost $355 million through the U.N. for Sudan — less than half of the $722 million the U.N. asked for. The donations for Sudan are less than 5% of what was pledged in one day last year at a Madrid conference for reconstruction in Iraq. The U.S. has given 48% of the $355 million, and Europe has provided about 35%. Humanitarian officials such as Egeland and Natsios know with grim certainty that the dying is far from over. Even with 1,000 international aid workers headed for the country, the World Health Organization predicts as many as 10,000 deaths a month indefinitely. Nearly 1.4 million people are clustered in temporary camps in Darfur and 200,000 more are across the border in Chad, living in tent cities stalked by disease and starvation, as well as lingering militias. The violence makes aid delivery in some areas difficult, and severely malnourished people may hit the point of no return — where no amount of food can save them because their bodies can no longer process it. The attacks prevented spring and fall planting, so there will be no harvest for seasons to come. So, Sudan is both the winner and the loser of the cruel lottery for the world's attention. Even as the world homes in on that crisis, other dire situations nearby remain largely forgotten. The lesson for the international community, Egeland says, is clear: "Never accept strategic arguments to make progress on one humanitarian crisis and shut your eyes to another."

UN News Service 2 Nov 2004 Security breaches rise in Darfur camps housing Sudanese who have fled violence – UN Security breaches have been increasing in the camps housing Sudan's Darfur refugees and internally displaced people on both sides of the Sudanese-Chadian border, the United Nations said today. In the middle of the night, Sudanese army and police surrounded Al Geer camp in Nyala town, South Darfur, and forcibly removed some of internally displaced persons (IDPs) to another location which is ill-equipped to care for them, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters in New York. "The site is currently not able to cater for any additional influx and as such is not suitable for any relocation." He said roughly 15 trucks were used to relocate the IDPs. "The remainder of the population was dispersed into the surrounding area of Nyala town as a direct result of this action." In another incident today, units of the Sudanese army and police undertook crowd control measures at a camp known as El Chareia, according to George Somerwell, a spokesman for UN Special Envoy Jan Pronk. "They fired tear gas and they fired shots in the air to try to calm the IDPs who are inside this camp," Mr. Somerwell told UN Radio. Two weeks ago the population of El Chareia numbered 40,000, he said, and the IDPs feared that the Sudanese Government would remove them to an unknown location. The UN Advance Mission in Sudan (UNAMIS) has contacted the Khartoum Government, which is "making every effort that it can to try to calm the situation," Mr. Somerwell said. At the UN complex in Geneva, Switzerland, the spokesman for the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ron Redmond, said his agency, along with other international organizations, has been forced to cancel missions to Darfur this week because of security problems, including the kidnapping of 18 Sudanese from a commercial bus on the road between Zalinge and Nyala last Thursday. The local authorities had blamed the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement and Sudan Liberation Army (SLM/SLA) for the abductions, he said. In the Djabel Moon and Masteri areas, near El Geneina, tensions were high and travel restrictions, lifted two weeks ago, have been re-instated. A few dozen people were reported to be leaving each night to join the refugees in Chad, but others were afraid of the dangers on the road, Mr. Redmond said. In Chad, meanwhile, "instigators" have been holding night meetings that led to unruly incidents by day, he said. Aid workers from two international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) left Breidjing Camp after some refugees brought out knives during a discussion of how to prevent the spread of hepatitis-E and demanded to know why eight of the people causing trouble had been arrested. "At the heart of the problem lies the fear among many refugees that the creation of associations to set up income-generating activities will 'normalize' their situation, give the impression that they are well implanted in Chad and hamper their chances of returning to their homes," Mr. Redmond said. Given this reluctance to create associations on the basis of working trades, no such groups were established, except for the water and sanitation committee, he said. UNHCR has received $83 million of the $114.8 million sought by the agency for refugees and IDPs in eastern Chad and Darfur through the end of the year.

UPI 3 Nov 2004 Sudan prayed for Bush victory By KHALED TIJANI KHARTOUM, Sudan, Nov 03, 2004 (UPI) -- Sudan's government was praying for the re-election of U.S. President George. W. Bush and the return of his Republican administration, dreading the idea of having to deal again with the Democrats. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir who lived through four American administrations, two Republican and two Democrat, knows very well where his preference goes, since his experience with the Democratic administrations of former President Bill Clinton was not a happy one. Bashir who came to power in a coup d'etat in 1989 had to deal first with the administration of George Bush Sr. who then stopped humanitarian assistance to Sudan upon a congressional decision to ban dealings with military governments. But Bush Sr. refrained from treating Sudan harshly even when the latter sided with former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein when his troops invaded neighboring Kuwait and were later evicted by a U.S.-led coalition. Bashir started to have serious troubles with Washington only when Clinton's Democrat administration arrived in the White House in 1993. A few months later, notably in August, Sudan was included in the U.S. list of seven rogue states which comprised Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Libya and Iraq. The gap with Washington further widened as a result of the civil war in southern Sudan which the United States tried to portray as a sectarian and ethnic struggle between the government-held Muslim Arab north and the rebel-held mainly Christian and Animist south. But a breaking point in Sudanese-U.S. relations occurred in 1995 when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak survived an assassination attempt in Addis Ababa for which Sudan was blamed. Clinton's administration was quick to use the incident for increasing pressures on Khartoum. The U.N. Security Council passed at U.S. behest a resolution providing for imposing sanctions on the Sudanese government unless it handed over the perpetrators of the aborted attempt against Mubarak. Khartoum, which denied any involvement in the attempt, could not escape the international sanctions under which it reeled for a long time. Washington took further escalatory moves when it closed its embassy in Khartoum and moved it to Nairobi citing security reasons. At this point, Khartoum became aware of the dangerous fallout of its enmity with Washington and started taking reconciliatory moves by reducing its support for anti-U.S. activists, including al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden whom it evicted after giving him shelter for several years. But Khartoum's overtures failed to convince Clinton's administration to cooperate with Bashir's government. In fact, Washington opted for the policy of containment and isolation against Sudan and at the same time increased its support to the Sudanese armed resistance seeking to oust Bahsir's regime. Washington also backed a three-way attack against Sudan in 1997 by Eritrea, Ethiopia and Uganda. In November 1997, Clinton's administration imposed economic sanctions on Sudan while the Sudanese government was holding peace negotiations with southern rebels led by John Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Army. But the confrontation reached its climax during Clinton's second mandate when U.S. warships in the Red Sea attacked with Cruz missiles al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in the heart of Khartoum in August 1998, under the pretext that it was owned by bin Laden and produced chemical weapons. The attack on Kartoum was also in retaliation to the twin bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salam which occurred earlier in the same month. Until the end of his second mandate in 2000, Clinton not only remained adamantly opposed to any kind of rapprochement with Sudan, but spared no effort to further isolate the African-Arab country at both regional and international levels. Khartoum was relieved with the arrival of a new Republican administration to the White House led by President George W. Bush in 2001. Only a few weeks later, the Center of Political and Strategic Studies in Washington recommended a change in U.S. policy towards Sudan based on interaction rather than containment and isolation. Khartoum quickly responded to the new U.S. approach and intelligence cooperation started between the two sides in May 2001 under which Sudan provided Washington with important information on groups it accuses of terrorism. Cooperation was not limited to combating terrorism, as Washington revived its diplomatic presence in Khartoum and enrolled in international efforts to achieve a peaceful settlement of the Sudanese civil war. Former Sen. John Davenforth was appointed by Bush as special peace envoy to Sudan. Within two years of Sudanese peace negotiations, U.S. sponsorship proved to be decisive in helping the two warring sides to reach a framework agreement for peace. A final peace accord is yet to be signed, tentatively by the end of December. Bush rewarded Sudan for its cooperation by approving the cancellation of U.N. sanctions imposed since 1996, though he maintained unilateral U.S. sanctions. But the Sudanese government was disappointed by Washington's reluctance to re-establish normal bilateral relations. Sudan was stunned later when Washington took a heavy-handed stance on crisis in Darfur in Western Sudan, where pro-government Arab militias are accused of committing ethnic genocide against African tribes. In fact, Sudan did not expect the tough U.S. position which linked improving relations to a quick settlement of the Darfur crisis and placed it once again under the threat of U.N. Security Council sanctions. A recent U.N. resolution threatened sanctions against Sudan if it failed to settle the Darfur crisis within a short deadline. Despite that, the ruling elite in Khartoum prefers a Republicans in the White House because it is seen as not as harsh as the Democrats.

AP 4 Nov 2004 War crimes on "large and systemic scale" in Darfur: Annan United Nations — Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Wednesday there are strong indications of war crimes "on a large and systematic scale" in Sudan's Darfur region, where the violence has now affected two million people. In a report to the UN Security Council, he said the Sudanese government has failed to bring the perpetrators of widespread killings, rapes, looting and village burnings to justice. Jan Pronk, the top UN envoy to Sudan who wrote the report, will present it to the council on Thursday. He will recommend that members take "prompt action" to get the government and rebels to comply with UN resolutions demanding an end to the violence, disarmament of combatants, and punishment of those responsible. Until the government starts taking more than "pinprick" action against the perpetrators, the report warned, no displaced person will dare return home and no group will agree to disarm. "Without an end to impunity . . . banditry goes from strength to strength, menacing the population and obstructing the delivery of aid to desperate people in isolated areas," it said. The violence in Darfur began in January 2003 when two black African rebel groups took up arms over alleged unjust treatment by the Sudanese government and ethnic Arab countrymen. Pro-government militias called Janjaweed reacted by unleashing attacks on villages. The conflict, which has killed at least 70,000 people, has created what UN officials say is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. Meanwhile, African Union mediators in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, appealed to Sudanese rebel and government delegations to sign a draft accord aimed at stopping ground and air attacks in Darfur. The head mediator, Chadian diplomat Allan-Mi Ahmed, said the current draft was the best the two sides could hope for at present. The two sides "are so far apart that we couldn't make any fresh proposals," he said, adding that mediators were afraid to tinker with the draft any more, in case "the whole edifice crumbles." Mr. Ahmed said he hoped the accord would be signed by week's end. Also Wednesday, the Sudan Liberation Army accused the Janjaweed of having torched at least five villages in southern Darfur, killing at least 150 people. Sudanese government officials denied any knowledge of the alleged attacks. Despite the charges, Justice and Equality Movement spokesman Ahmed Hussain Adam said he was confident an accord would be signed. "It will be good news for our people, even if it won't be perfect," he said. An international commission appointed by Mr. Annan began work on Oct. 25 and has three months to study human rights violations and determine whether or not a genocide occurred in Darfur. "There are strong indications that war crimes and crimes against humanity have occurred in Darfur on a large and systematic scale," the report said. "This has been confirmed by a number of senior UN human rights experts who have visited the region." There have been reports that armed men dug up a grave containing 40 bodies in Souba, North Darfur and have been seen working on another site in an apparent attempt to hide evidence of mass killings, it said. During October, security conditions in Darfur deteriorated, ceasefire violations increased on both sides, violence escalated and towards the end of the month, the threat of large scale attacks increased considerably, it said. The estimate of those affected by the conflict rose from 1.8 million on Sept. one to two million on Oct. 1, an upward trend expected to continue until year's end, he said. The increase stems mainly from the growing number of internally displaced people, now 1.6 million, reflecting "the severity of the protection and security situation in Darfur," Mr. Pronk said, adding that 400,000 more need humanitarian aid. Mr. Pronk said the two million figure is a 100 per cent increase in the number of people needing humanitarian assistance since April. Donors have funded 75 per cent of the money needed for Darfur this year — $397-million (U.S.) of $534-million. He appealed for the rest. The Security Council will be holding a rare meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, where talks to end the civil war are taking place, on Nov. 18-19. U.S. Ambassador John Danforth, the Security Council president, said Wednesday the council trip's aim is to show the Sudanese what the country would look life if there were peace — including international guarantees of a peace agreement, international monitoring to development assistance. But he warned that this "carrot" — the offer of international help — won't "be there forever" and "if we are pushed away by either side" then the international community will turn to other pressing global issues.

washingtonpost.com 4 Nov 2004 Sudanese Troops Attack and Destroy Camp in Darfur Refugees Fear Relocation Campaign By Emily Wax Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, November 4, 2004; Page A06 AL-JEER SUREAF, Sudan, Nov. 3 -- Gripping a pair of pliers, a doctor pried a bullet from Amina Kharim's swollen and bleeding left arm. Eight hours earlier, at dawn Tuesday, she had been asleep in a shelter of grass and sticks when government soldiers and police stormed into this camp of 5,000 in South Darfur. Residents and relief workers said the troops burned shelters, smashed water pipes, fired tear gas and beat people as they fled half-asleep from their huts. Within five hours, they said, the camp was reduced to ashes and about 100 residents were crammed into the makeshift clinic, seeking first aid for gunshot wounds, burns and bruises. "I saw the military coming and heard some shots. Then I felt pain and saw my arm bleeding. Now, my heart is burning with anger," said Kharim, 26, gripping her arm to steady it while the doctor worked in the shade of the mud-and-straw clinic. "There was a lot of blood, and then they started burning my hut. The world is not doing enough to protect us. We are so tired. Can someone please come help us?" With violence still raging in Darfur's 20-month conflict between African rebels and pro-government forces, aid workers and camp residents said they feared Tuesday's pre-dawn assault was the beginning of a campaign to force displaced people back to villages where they could be vulnerable to further attack by Arab militias known as the Janjaweed. Within a few hours of the attack, camp residents said, 250 families were placed in government trucks and moved under armed guard to an area 25 miles south. And at a nearby camp, Otash, officials removed an unknown number of residents and blocked access to aid workers. "This was not supposed to have happened. This is forced relocation," complained Brig. Gen. Festus Okonkwo, a Nigerian officer from the African Union mission in Darfur. Okonkwo's team of 19 civilian monitors and 56 protective troops is based just eight miles from here, but he said news of the attack took him completely by surprise. "They tried to remove them and they didn't want to go, so still they bulldoze the houses. No one was aware this was happening," he said. At the United Nations, Jan Pronk, the U.N. envoy to Sudan, said there were "strong indications that war crimes and crimes against humanity have occurred in Darfur on a large and systematic scale," according to the Associated Press." In a report to the U.N. Security Council, he accused Sudan's government of failing to "end impunity" and bring to justice the perpetrators of widespread killings, rapes, looting and village burnings. In Washington, the State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the Bush administration "stands with the international community in holding the government of the Sudan responsible for the violations and requests immediate return" of the camp residents who were moved Tuesday. Local officials defended the assault on al-Jeer Sureaf, saying they had been asked by the Sudanese government to remove people from the camps who had been stealing food from nearby communities. Some relief workers acknowledged that outsiders had been entering the camps to receive food and medical aid intended for residents displaced by war. "The African leaders asked us to remove these people," said Mohammed Abdel Osman, an assistant to the governor of South Darfur in the nearby city of Nyala. "We did that service for them." But officials in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, said they knew nothing about the incident and were investigating it. Aid officials said they were puzzled by the officials' explanation, because the pre-dawn attack appeared aimed not at outside visitors but at the huts of camp residents who have fled war in other parts of Darfur. Some of those whose huts were torched Tuesday said they had escaped from villages that were attacked and burned by the Janjaweed. As security conditions worsened, the United Nations halted food delivery operations in parts of South Darfur on Tuesday, cutting off aid to about 160,000 refugees in western Darfur. The United Nations also airlifted 88 aid workers out of South Darfur on Monday as a safety precaution. "The space that we have for humanitarian activity is shrinking. It's a general trend downward, and it's very disturbing," said Barry Came, a spokesman for the World Food Program, a U.N. agency. "The security situation just continues to deteriorate." The residents of al-Jeer Sureaf are among about 1.5 million Africans who live in squalid tent cities across Darfur after being driven from their farms by the fighting, which broke out in February 2003 when African tribes rebelled against the Arab-led government. In retaliation, the United Nations says, the government has bombed villages and armed the Janjaweed militias. Tens of thousands of people have died from hunger, disease and violence; the Bush administration has described the crisis as genocide. Worries over security have increased significantly since last month, when two aid workers from Save the Children were killed by a land mine. U.N. officials have blamed one of several African rebel groups for the attack. Tensions also increased when African Union monitors reported that 18 Sudanese of Arab origin were taken hostage while traveling on a bus last week. Rebel groups deny setting the mines; they have also accused the Janjaweed of forcing 30 ethnic Africans from a bus on Sunday and shooting them. The African Union said it was investigating. Pronk, of the United Nations, blamed rebels for stepping up attacks, harassing aid workers and stealing food from convoys. Some refugees said they believed the government assault here might be retaliation for stepped-up rebel actions. "The incident of the mine is a very big concern. People who lay mines are cowards," Pronk said. "This kind of behavior has to stop because insecurity and violence [are] escalating. We are in a dilemma of increasing difficulties on the ground, increasing fighting, increasing number of people fleeing. But it's more difficult to help them because of the violence." As camp residents here tended to their wounds and salvaged their belongings from smoldering huts, they described the ordeal that began at 3 a.m. when the troops entered their sleeping settlement. A midwife at the clinic said she had tied the beds of the maternity ward together and armed herself with knife. Lying on a metal cot with several broken ribs, Taja Ibrahim, 28, writhed in pain and took gulps of air, her whole body heaving as she struggled to breathe. She said that the government troops had beaten her with sticks and guns but that she was too afraid of the Janjaweed to return home. Nearby, Halima Hassan Adam, 21, cradled her newborn baby in her arms as she sat disconsolately outside their former home, now just a pile of singed straw. Her 3-year-old son's eyes still stung from the tear gas. The young mother bent down and searched the ground, hoping to save a few beans that had been crushed in the attack. "I delivered my baby here 22 days ago," she said. "This was the only home we had. Now since yesterday, we have had no food or water. I am so scared. I am just holding my children tight and praying." In the scorched camp, lizards scurried over charred blankets and donkeys nosed through the remains of shelters. But by dusk, women were starting to rebuild their homes, knotting vines of grass to long tree branches to make circular shelters. Meanwhile, aid workers filtered back into the community, surveying the ruins with horror. "It makes you so angry you want to cry," said one worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's like the government wants to get rid of people in the town and send them to the desert where they are closer to death." Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Reuters 5 Nov 2004 Khartoum refuses to sign Darfur deal By Dino Mahtani ABUJA (Reuters) - Sudan's government has refused to sign a security deal with rebels designed to end violence in the western Darfur region, saying the document drafted by African Union mediators is too one sided. But the mediators said the talks in Nigeria's capital Abuja were set to resume at 2 p.m. on Friday and that they hoped for agreement by the weekend. Rebels said they were willing to sign the plan. The slow-moving talks on ending the Darfur conflict, which the United Nations says has triggered the world's worst humanitarian crisis, have been plagued by accusations of ceasefire violations between the two sides. A revolt began in the arid Darfur region in February 2003 after years of low-level fighting between mainly African farmers and Arab nomads over scarce resources. The rebels accuse Khartoum of neglecting Darfur and using so-called Janjaweed Arab militias to loot and burn African villages. Khartoum denies the charges. There are no reliable estimates of how many have been killed in the violence, which the United States has called genocide. More than 1.5 million people have been driven from their homes. The U.N. has said 70,000 people have died from disease and malnutrition since March, a figure disputed by Khartoum. "BEST POSSIBLE COMPROMISE" The African Union mediators have called the security plan the "best possible compromise" in the latest round of talks that have now gone on for nearly two weeks. It calls for a military no-fly zone over Darfur and the disarmament of the pro-Khartoum Arab militias. The plan does not contain Khartoum's demand that the rebels must move their forces into barracks. Instead it asks the rebels to hand over information on the whereabouts of their forces. "This is not a final document, as a final document is prepared by both sides," Sudanese government delegation leader Majzoub al-Khalifa said after the talks were adjourned shortly after midnight. "The no-fly zone is unacceptable to us (and) there is no mention of the assembling of the (rebel) forces," he said. Rebel leaders say they are still unwilling to sign a humanitarian deal forged in a previous round of talks unless the government ends "hostile military flights", which they say are bombing villages in the region, and disarms the Arab militias. The U.N. envoy for Darfur, Jan Pronk, said the region could fall into anarchy unless the Security Council took bold action and thousands of African Union peacekeeping troops arrived quickly. "Darfur may easily enter a state of anarchy -- a total collapse of law and order," Pronk told the Security Council. Previous Security Council resolutions have threatened sanctions, including possible measures targeting Sudan's oil exports, if the government failed to meet commitments to end attacks on civilians and rein in the Arab militias.

Agence France-Presse 5 Nov 2004 Darfur rebels kill mayor, kidnap 10 children: Khartoum KHARTOUM, Nov 5 (AFP) - Darfur rebels killed a mayor, abducted 10 children and injured four policemen, in fresh unrest in the troubled western region of Sudan, news reports and police said Friday. Haj Aseel Yassin, mayor of a town some 30 kilometers (18 miles) from El-Feshir, the capital of North Darfur state, was shot dead in a rebel raid on his house early Thursday, Akhbar Al-Youm daily said, quoting witnesses. Akhbar Al-Youm said Yassin's wife was injured in the attack, while locals said the mayor may have been targeted due to his stance against the rebels. Local authorities have reported the incident to the African Union ceasefire commission charged with monitoring a fragile truce between government forces and the two main rebel groups in Darfur, it said. Rebels of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) are locked in a 21-month conflict with the government, which they accuse of marginalizing their region. Tens of thousands of people have died, some 1.4 million displaced from their homes and a further 200,000 forced into refuge in neighboring Chad, creating what the United Nations says is the world's worst ongoing humanitarian crisis. In a separate incident in the same region, rebels raided a Khalwa, an institution where pupils learn to recite the Koran holy book, and abducted 10 children, according to the government-affiliated Sudanese Media Center. Meanwhile, rebels ambushed policemen traveling between the Zamzam and Ndjamena camps for internally displaced persons outside Al-Feshir, police said. Four policemen were wounded in the ensuing gunfight.

washingtonpost.com 7 Nov 2004 Editorial Darfur Slides Page B06 AT DAWN ON Tuesday, a few hours before Americans began voting, Sudanese police and soldiers arrived at a camp for displaced people in South Darfur. They set fire to huts, beat people with truncheons and shot an unknown number; then, as The Post's Emily Wax reported, they loaded 250 families into trucks and drove them away. They did all this, moreover, at a camp just eight miles from a contingent of Nigerian cease-fire monitors, whose job is supposedly to deter such war crimes. Meanwhile the United States is leading an international response to Darfur's crisis. Its principal goal is to deploy more African Union monitors of the sort that failed Tuesday. For a while over the summer, the world's response to Darfur seemed to be gathering momentum. A series of high-level visits to the region, including stops by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, put pressure on Sudan's government to stop murdering civilians; the U.N. Security Council passed two resolutions condemning the abuses; Congress and then the Bush administration determined that the systematic killing of ethnic Africans met the definition of genocide. Sudan's government responded by allowing relief workers to bring food and medicine to displaced people and by agreeing to the presence of African Union troops. All this progress was unforgivably slow, and tens of thousands of people died waiting for it. But it was still progress. Now the momentum has fizzled. Preparations for an African Union force continue, but the violence in Darfur has flared to the point that it's not clear what 3,500 outsiders can accomplish in an area the size of France. Tuesday's attack on civilians was just one of many, and anti-government rebel groups are growing more violent and numerous. From Bosnia to Sierra Leone, the world has a painful history of putting peacekeepers into situations where there is no peace to be kept. Darfur may be one more. The world faces a choice now, and its nature must not be obscured by more weeks of U.N.-speak about being preoccupied with the problem. Having recognized weeks ago that the killings in Darfur represent genocide and having correctly projected that the death toll will amount to at least 300,000, the Bush administration and its allies must decide how much they care. They can choose to think beyond their flimsy African Union deployment. Or they can choose to accept genocide.

Reuters 8 Nov 2004 U.N. team in Sudan to investigate genocide reports EL FASHER, Sudan, Nov 8 (Reuters) - A U.N. team has arrived in Sudan to investigate whether genocide has occurred in the country's Darfur region where more than 1.5 million people have been made homeless by conflict, a U.N. spokesman said on Monday. The United States has accused the Sudanese government and Arab Janjaweed militias, which Washington says Khartoum backs, of genocide in the arid area where conflict broke out in 2003 after years of clashes between African farmers and Arab nomads. Khartoum dismisses the charge of genocide and describes the Janjaweed as outlaws. George Somerwill, a U.N. spokesman in Sudan, told Reuters the international commission of inquiry arrived late on Sunday and would travel to Darfur in the west of Sudan on Wednesday. He said they were due to return to the capital Khartoum on Nov. 20. "It is to begin its investigation of reports of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law in Darfur by all parties, including to determine whether or not acts of genocide have occurred and to identify the perpetrators of such violations," he said of the team's mandate. Somerwill did not give details of the make-up of the team. In October U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan named a five-member panel led by Italian judge Antonio Cassese to investigate whether genocide has taken place in Darfur. The panel was created at the request of the U.N. Security Council. Cassese was the first president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a court based in The Hague that is looking into suspected war crimes in the Balkans including during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war. Darfur rebels launched their revolt against the government in February 2003, accusing Khartoum of neglecting their region. They also accuse Khartoum of arming the Janjaweed to loot and burn African villages and kill the inhabitants. Two U.N. human rights watchdogs told the U.N. Security Council in September that war crimes had probably occurred on a "large and systematic scale" in Darfur. There are no reliable figures for how many people have died as a direct result of the fighting, but the United Nations said last month that 70,000 people have died from disease and malnutrition since March. The United Nations has said the conflict has created the world's worst humanitarian disaster.

AFP 9 Nov 2004 UN begins Darfur genocide probe amid charges of tampering KHARTOUM : A UN team began work investigating allegations of genocide against the Sudanese government as ethnic minority rebels accused the army and its militia allies of destroying the evidence of mass graves in Darfur. The five-member panel, which arrived here Sunday evening, held separate meetings with Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail and Justice Minister Ali Mohamed Yassin. Ismail said he had promised his government's full cooperation with the team set up by UN chief Kofi Annan to investigate charges that Khartoum's bloody 21-month-old clampdown against the Darfur rebels amounts to genocide. "The commission is supposed to be a neutral body and will therefore be offered an opportunity to obtain all the information it needs to make its decision," he said. "The government welcomes the commission because it has nothing to hide and, instead, concedes that there is a problem in Darfur and, if it is offered a chance, any unbiased body can reach the truth, a matter which will help refute the tremendous allegations about Darfur." But as the team began work, one of the two Darfur rebel factions accused Khartoum-sponsored Arab militias of destroying the evidence of their abuses in the restive western region where the United Nations says some 50,000 people have died and 1.4 million more been driven from their homes. Sudan Liberation Movement spokesman Mahmud Hussein said militiamen had been seen emptying a mass grave in Kabkabiya, west of the North Darfur state capital of El-Fasher. "They were removing corpses," he told AFP by telephone from the Nigerian capital Abuja. "It's a plan to obliterate the truth." The German and US governments have both backed accusations by human rights watchdogs that the scorched earth policy adopted against minority villagers suspected of supporting the Darfur rebels amounts to genocide by the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum. The UN team is headed by Antonio Cassesse of Italy. Its other members are Mohamed Fayek of Egypt, Diego Garcia-Sayan of Peru, Hina Gilani of Pakistan and Therese Striggner-Scott of Ghana.

Yemen Times, Yemen 9 Nov 2004 State sovereignty needs limits Getting away with murder in Darfur By Richard N. Haass Darfur is shorthand for the latest example of a recurring international problem, one that gained headlines a decade ago in Rwanda. What should the world do when a large number of people are the victims of violence originating from within their own country? Darfur itself is a region of Western Sudan comprised of Arab and African Muslims. Conflict erupted in early 2003 when rebels of the Sudan Liberation Movement attacked government troops in an effort to gain greater autonomy and resources for their region. Sudan government aircraft and government-supported troops (known as jangaweed) retaliated against not only armed rebels but also against civilians deemed to be supporting them. Villages have been emptied, women raped, non-Arab men killed. The origins of the current crisis may be in some dispute, but the costs are not. More than 50,000 men, women and children have lost their lives; more than 1.5 million have been made homeless. This is arguably genocide, a word used by the U.S. government but by few others to describe what is going on in Darfur. Meanwhile, world leaders are debating what if anything should be done. UN Security Council Resolution 1564, passed on 18 September 2004, reserves the bulk of its criticism for the government of Sudan. But the UN is not yet prepared to go beyond words. The resolution threatens that the Security Council will consider imposing sanctions against Sudanese leaders or against the country’s important oil sector, but introduces no penalties at this time. Why the hesitation? More than anything else it stems from international reluctance to challenge any government over what it is doing within its own territory. This reflects a widely-held view of sovereignty, one that allows governments to do essentially what they want within their own borders. Such thinking is inadequate and outmoded. To begin with, there is a moral element. There is something wrong in looking the other way when one’s fellow human being is being slaughtered. We all have some basic obligation to one another. There are as well pragmatic considerations. In a global world, what happens within one country can all too easily affect others. For example, refugees leaving Sudan can strain the stability of neighboring Chad. Opposition to genocide and other large-scale acts of violence against a population also reflects the established principle that citizens as well as governments have rights. This principle is enshrined in various international documents, beginning with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Governments ought not to be allowed to massacre their own people. And weak governments should not be allowed to permit massacres to take place on their own territory even if they are not themselves carrying out the massacre. What all this adds up to is a requirement for a concept of state sovereignty that is less than absolute. To be precise, we need to embrace a contractual approach to sovereignty, one that recognizes the obligations and responsibilities as well as the rights of those who enjoy it. Such an approach to sovereignty would essentially communicate to governments and their leaders that the rights and protections they associate with statehood are in fact conditional, and that governments and leaders would forfeit some or, in extreme cases, all of these rights and protections if they failed to meet their obligations. This idea will only have an impact if the international community is prepared to go beyond voicing this principle and accept the necessary consequence: that other states and the world at large have a right and a duty to act to protect innocent life when it is jeopardized on a large scale. Some movement in just this direction was suggested by widespread international support for the humanitarian interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor. Another sign of change is the basic document (“Constitutive Act”) of the African Union, the regional organization launched in July 2000 to replace the ineffective Organization of African Unity. After citing the principle of non-interference by one member state in the internal affairs of another, the document goes on to declare “the right of the Union to intervene in a member state pursuant to a decision of the assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.” Intervention in such circumstances can take any number of forms, from public rhetoric and private diplomacy to economic and political sanctions to armed intervention. All of which brings us back to Darfur. What needs doing? There is a need for massive assistance to the displaced people of Darfur. Those who have survived conflict require help if they are not to succumb to disease and starvation. There is also every reason to renew diplomatic efforts to bring about a lasting cease-fire and, following that, a settlement that addresses the grievances that helped bring about this crisis in the first place. Two other points require highlighting, though. First, and consistent with UN Security Council Resolution 1564, countries should provide the African Union with the logistical, material, and financial help it has asked for. With such support, AU-authorized troops could guard the refugee camps and, over time, protect villages so that men, women and children could return home in safety. Second, the UN ought to make good on its threat and impose sanctions against the Sudanese government unless it stops using its aircraft to destroy villages and unless it stops supporting the jangaweed. Criminal indictments for war crimes ought to be issued against specific officials who do not comply. It is important that the world act, not simply to save the people of Darfur, but to prevent future Darfurs. A great deal of innocent human life depends on it. Richard N. Haass, a former Director of Policy Planning in the US State Department, is President of The Council on Foreign Relations.

washingtonpost.com 11 Nov 2004 After Accord, Sudan Camp Raided Shelters Reportedly Destroyed and Residents Beaten By Emily Wax Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A01 OLD AL-JEER SUREAF, Sudan, Nov. 10 -- Just hours after the government agreed to a peace deal Tuesday aimed at ending violence in Darfur, Sudanese police arrived at this battered camp in the middle of the night, beating residents with wooden poles, bulldozing and burning shelters and firing tear gas into a health clinic, residents and aid workers reported. The assault capped a series of often violent government raids over the past week, aimed at relocating residents to new camps. It also came despite international condemnation of the raids and requests from the United Nations and the Bush administration that displaced families not be forcibly moved to new locations. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Wednesday in Washington that he had spoken with Sudan's vice president over the weekend and "specifically said that this kind of behavior was unacceptable, we couldn't understand it and it was not helping us reach a solution." The U.N. Security Council is due to hold a meeting in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, next week to discuss the crisis in Sudan, where tens of thousands have died and about 1.5 million people have been displaced during 20 months of fighting between African rebels and government troops and their Arab militia allies. The panel could impose sanctions on the Khartoum government if it finds that serious abuses of civilians have taken place. A U.N. report last week said there was evidence of war crimes and mass abuses by all parties to the conflict. By midmorning Wednesday, the charred, tattered remains of burned huts at Old al-Jeer Sureaf dotted the once-crammed tent city of about 5,000 people. Fifteen people had been seriously injured, 10 community leaders were under arrest and several mothers said they had lost their children in the chaos. One local sheik, Taher Hasaballeh, was beaten by 10 police officers and taken to jail, witnesses said. He had refused to leave the camp on Saturday and led a community sit-in at a straw-roofed mosque. Jan Pronk, the U.N. envoy to Sudan, visited the half-destroyed camp Wednesday afternoon, wading through a jumble of singed blankets, jerrycans, bowls and plastic sandals. Sudan's foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, and other officials from Khartoum accompanied him. Pronk made no public comment during his visit. The group toured the health clinic, speaking to women who said they had been raped during the raids and inspecting burn marks on the building from tear gas canisters. One Sudanese official expressed frank skepticism about the accounts of rape, calling the women "very good actresses." Afterward, Pronk and the officials attended a tense meeting with humanitarian workers in the area. Government representatives said that the land was private property and that residents were being moved to a better location. Last week, officials said the camp was being cleared because people were posing as refugees so they could collect food and blankets. "They have been taken to a better place," said Ahmed Ali Abdallah, a government employee who runs a new camp 17 miles south of the old camp. "The conditions of life were not suitable for them." The violence began Nov. 1 when camp residents were told to move to the new al-Jeer Sureaf location but refused to go. Government police and soldiers swept through the old camp twice last week, on Tuesday and Saturday, burning huts and swinging sticks, residents said. Several hundred families were forcibly relocated, and some aid workers and U.N. officials said they believed the government was moving camp occupants in an effort to root out rebel forces. At the new camp, large white tents donated by the Saudi Red Crescent Society have been set up in neat rows. But the camp is isolated in an area surrounded by sorghum fields where pro-government militiamen known as the Janjaweed reportedly have set up a base. "We were so afraid of being moved there. I have been beaten twice for refusing to leave," Zenab Abdulla Rahaman, 26, said as she sat staring numbly at the floor inside the clinic run by the International Medical Corps, an American aid group. Rahaman said that she was beaten by police during the two previous raids and that early Wednesday she was sleeping in the camp mosque with nearly a hundred other people when she was dragged away by a police officer and raped in a nearby field. A nurse at the clinic taped bandages over cuts around her thighs. A stream of other patients arrived to seek treatment for spinal injuries, cuts and bruises from beatings. Several mothers said their children had become lost in the violence and confusion. One woman, Khadija Dahiwa Tagal, said two of her six children had run away to hide and had not returned. Witnesses said the police arrived about midnight but caused little trouble until dawn, when they started moving aggressively through the camp. Some residents said the police were accompanied by Janjaweed militiamen, but it was not clear what role, if any, the fighters played in the events. On Wednesday morning, aid workers entered the camp in U.N. trucks and kept vigil all day, saying they were there to ensure that more residents would not be attacked. One nurse said she would sleep in the clinic overnight. All day, groups of police roamed the fields and gathered inside the mosque. They also kept guard over the water supply in case residents tried to rebuild their shelters. Some gestured angrily with their sticks at stragglers who tried to salvage belongings from their crushed shelters. The residents of al-Jeer Sureaf are among about 1.5 million Africans who live in squalid tent cities across Darfur after being driven from their farms by the fighting, which broke out in February 2003 when African tribes rebelled against the Arab-led government. In retaliation, the United Nations has said, the government has bombed villages and armed the Janjaweed militias, while tens of thousands of people have died from hunger, disease and violence; the Bush administration has described the crisis as genocide. Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.

washingtonpost.com 15 Nov 2004 U.S. Urges Aid to Spur Peace in Sudan By Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, November 15, 2004; Page A21 UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 14 -- The Bush administration is pressing the United Nations to reward Sudan with a major package of international debt relief and reconstruction funds if the Islamic state signs a peace deal ending a brutal, 20-year civil war with the Christian-backed Sudan People's Liberation Army in southern Sudan by the end of the year. Sudan has not complied with Security Council demands over three months to disarm, arrest and prosecute Arab militia responsible for the mass murder of black Africans in the eastern province of Darfur, according to U.S. and U.N. officials. The United States has described the campaign as genocide. The offer of financial aid marks a strategy shift by the United States, which had sought international support for two U.N. resolutions threatening to sanction Sudan if it failed to crack down on the militia, known as the Janjaweed. John C. Danforth, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that although the threat of sanctions stands, a Security Council meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday and Friday will focus more on the "carrot" than the "stick." The United States changed course on Sudan after facing stiff opposition to sanctions, including a Chinese threat to block the United States from adopting a U.N. resolution punishing Khartoum over Darfur, according to a senior U.S. official involved in the discussions. "Are we leaning on a rubber stick? Sure," Danforth acknowledged in an interview. "It would clearly be extremely difficult to get a resolution that actually imposes sanctions in the Security Council adopted. We're doing the best we can with that particular tool." Danforth is calculating that ending Africa's longest-running war would lead to peace in Darfur, where Sudanese-backed militia have killed tens of thousands of people and driven more than 1.8 million from their homes. In the meantime, Danforth said, a force of 3,300 African peacekeepers being deployed in Darfur offers the best hope for stemming the violence. Danforth is pressing the 15-nation council to adopt a resolution in Nairobi that urges international financial agencies, including the World Bank, to devise a plan to grant debt relief, reconstruction aid and development assistance to Sudan if an agreement is signed. One council diplomat said the relief package could amount to more than $100 million. "We are absolutely not letting up one iota on the pressure with respect to Darfur," Danforth said. "But it is widely recognized that the future of Darfur is also connected to the overall peace process, which would provide the basis for a political settlement for the entire country, including Darfur." The toughest critics of the United States in the council, including Algeria, China and Pakistan, have welcomed the new American approach. "We believe that this is the right path," said Abdallah Baali, Algeria's U.N. ambassador. "What we should try to do in Nairobi is, by our presence, to encourage them to come up with an agreement hopefully before the end of the year." The diplomatic shift comes as Sudan launched a series of violent raids on camps for displaced Darfurians, part of a campaign to forcibly relocate thousands of distressed civilians. Jan Pronk, the U.N.'s envoy to Sudan, said in a recent interview that armed forces linked to the Sudanese government have been unearthing mass-grave sites to cover up evidence of war crimes. Pronk has expressed alarm that renewed fighting between Sudanese forces and the rebel Sudan Liberation Army threatens to plunge Darfur into anarchy. He told the council on Nov. 5 that rebel Arab militia are undertaking a recruitment drive in preparation for a new offensive. He also faulted the rebels for stepping up attacks in a bid to claim more territory. The violence in Darfur began in February 2003, when the rebel Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement took up arms against the government, citing discrimination against the region's black tribes. The Sudanese government responded by recruiting, equipping and training Arab militias and sponsoring reprisal raids against the rebels and their supporters. Last week, Sudan agreed in talks in Abuja, Nigeria, to halt military flights over Darfur and to increase access for humanitarian relief workers. But hours later, it launched a fresh raid on a camp for displaced civilians, beating residents and burning their shelters. Critics voiced concern that Sudan's government may be holding out the prospect of a peace deal as a way to distract international attention from atrocities in Darfur. John Prendergast, a Washington-based expert on Sudan at the International Crisis Group, said U.S. policymakers failed to expend sufficient political capital to halt the violence in Darfur a year ago because they feared it would undercut their efforts to promote peace between Khartoum and the country's Christian-backed rebels. "This is an eerie repetition of the mistakes that were made late last year, when President Bush sent Danforth to Khartoum as special envoy to offer [Sudanese President Omar Hassan] Bashir the carrot of coming to the State of the Union address if he would only sign on the dotted line," he said. "If we take our eye off a deteriorating situation in Darfur, we will be reinforcing this same policy mistake of thinking that we can incentivize the path to peace. That is exactly the wrong message to send to Khartoum."

BBC 14 Nov 2004 Janjaweed 'leader' denies genocide The rebels started the war - Musa Hilal A man suspected of ordering atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan has claimed that accusations of genocide have been "exaggerated". Musa Hilal, who is suspected by the US state department of being a leader of the Arab Janjaweed militia, also told the BBC's Panorama programme that deaths in the region were simply 'repercussions' of war. Mr Hilal, a tribal leader from northern Darfur who lives in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, is thought to be running one of 16 known Janjaweed bases. However, when confronted by the BBC, he said he was simply a mayoral figure with no links with the military Answering claims of genocide against the black Africans in the region, he accused the media and the west of making the situation seem worse. Agenda The rebels started this war - they started destroying our villages first Musa Hilal Suspected Janjaweed leader "Where are the graves and the bodies?," he said. "Yes there is death in this war. It is not as they exaggerate." The Sudanese foreign minister Dr Mustafa Osman Ismail, went further, he said: "Our position is clear, that what has been going on is not a genocide, this is an American attempt to use a humanitarian situation for a political agenda." The United States has gone as far as saying that the situation in Sudan is genocide. It is estimated that tens of thousands of people have been killed in Darfur in the past two years. The vast majority are black Africans. Summary executions of African men in groups of 60 to 70, rape and the looting and burning of villages have all been documented. But 43-year-old Mr Hilal also told Panorama that the blame for any deaths in Darfur should be laid at the feet of the Sudan Liberation Army, whom he accused of starting the conflict. Unmarked uniforms Mr Hilal, said: "My words are very clear in this regard. The war has its repercussions. "The rebels started this war. They started burning and destroying many of the villages. They started destroying our villages first." Panorama has also spoken to members of the Janjaweed in northern Darfur. They also appear to substantiate the often denied claim that Arab soldiers - who are accused of rape and murder in Darfur - are armed by the Sudanese government. Panorama spoke to one commander in the Janjaweed heartland of Mustariha. He was in charge of a group of heavily armed men wearing unmarked government uniforms. Burning villages He (Musa Hilal) saw that his soldiers were looting and burning villages. He never questioned them. Anonymous Janjaweed recruit The man - Abdel Wahed - denied he was Janjaweed. He claimed that he was in the Sudanese army but confirmed that he was armed by the government. However the base in Mustariha is well known to the African Union soldiers in the area as being a Janjaweed camp. A former Janjaweed recruit - who spoke to the programme anonymously - also confirmed that Musa Hilal was in charge of the Janjaweed in Mustariha. The recruit was called up to join the Janjaweed in 2003. He says he was offered £60 a month and a gun. Dismissed He claimed that Abdel Wahed ran the base for Musa Hilal. He also claimed he had been told to burn rebel villages to the ground. "They said that if you come across any villages with rebels in burn them down. Straight away." And he confirmed that Musa Hilal knew exactly what his men were doing, adding: "He knew everything his soldiers had done. He saw it with his own eyes. "He saw that his soldiers were looting and burning villages. He never questioned them." But the Sudanese foreign minister again dismissed suggestions that there was a link between the government and Arab groups in the region. When asked about the link, Dr Ismail simply said: "You have no credible evidence." Panorama: The new killing fields will be broadcast at 22:15GMT on Sunday, November 14 on BBC One

Human Rights Watch 15 Nov 2004 "If we return, we will be killed" - Consolidation of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan Summary Since February 2003, in the context of a military counter-insurgency campaign against two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) Sudanese government forces and government-backed ethnic militias known as "Janjaweed" have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and "ethnic cleansing" in the Darfur region of Sudan. Government forces and militias have systematically targeted civilian communities that share the same ethnicity as the rebel groups, killing, looting, raping, forcibly displacing and destroying hundreds of villages. For their part, the rebel groups have abducted civilians, attacked police stations and other government institutions, and raided and looted substantial numbers of livestock and commercial goods from trucks and vehicles traveling on roads in Darfur. The rebels have also been responsible for some direct and indiscriminate attacks that have resulted in deaths and injuries to civilians and for the use of child soldiers. To date, all parties continue to violate the April 8, 2004 humanitarian ceasefire agreement. The government in particular has continued to use helicopter gunships in bombing attacks on civilian objects. Fighting and displacement continue, particularly in South Darfur. The large-scale ground and air attacks on civilian villages by Sudan government forces and militias that marked the early phases of the conflict have diminished. It does not mean that security and protection for civilians has improved-it is a sign that ethnic cleansing has largely been completed in Darfur. Protection for the civilian population in rural areas and outside the displaced camps remains almost non-existent due to the continuing presence of the government-backed Janjaweed militias. Many people who try to return to their homes have been attacked again, often several times, by these militias who continue to operate with full impunity in spite of government pledges to bring to justice all those responsible for atrocities. The increased police presence has not resulted in an increase in civilian protection. The police are too poorly armed, trained, and equipped to defend from Janjaweed or other military attacks, too few to protect farmlands or more than isolated clusters of homes, and in some cases are hostile to returnees. Neither the government nor the international community has an adequate plan to reverse the ethnic cleansing or to assist those few who have voluntarily returned home. Unless and until displaced persons can voluntarily return in safety to their farms and plant crops, particularly by spring 2005, the economy of Darfur and the region will continue in a downward spiral. This could result in food shortages on a much greater scale than yet seen in Darfur, and international agencies are already forecasting greatly increased need for food in 2005. The United Nations Security Council has passed two resolutions on Darfur, threatening sanctions against Sudan's government if it does not disarm and prosecute the militias and others responsible for abuses in Darfur. But these resolutions have had little effect in either restraining the Sudanese government, its allied militias or in improving security and protection for civilians. Unless the Security Council backs up its ultimatums with meaningful and strong action, abuses against civilians will continue and ethnic cleansing in Darfur will be consolidated in full view of the international community, and with hundreds of U.N. and other international personnel present on the ground while it happens. A key element to reversing ethnic cleansing is removing the threat of violence posed to internally displaced persons by the Janjaweed militias. The Sudanese government itself has demonstrated that it is unwilling or unable to control the militias, maintain law and order, and protect civilians. The increased African Union mission, even with the agreed-upon additional troops and slightly more robust mandate to protect civilians under "imminent threat." cannot by itself do all that is necessary to create the conditions for voluntary safe return and reversal of ethnic cleansing. It must have a clear mandate, under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter and the African Union Charter, to protect civilians; the United Nations must take the lead in developing and implementing a suitable plan to ensure return and reverse the ethnic cleansing in Darfur. Another key step is prosecution of Sudanese government military and civilian leaders and Janjaweed leaders alleged to be involved in the commission of war crimes and other criminal acts. It is unlikely the Sudanese government will prosecute Janjaweed or government leaders---the Janjaweed represent the only political allies the government has in Darfur, and prosecuting them would raise the possibility that they would provide evidence against higher-level government officials responsible for atrocities. Government efforts to end impunity, such as the creation of a committee to address rape, have been wholly inadequate. The international commission of inquiry established by Security Council Resolution 1564 is a belated but welcome step. However, a Security Council referral of Darfur to the International Criminal Court will be essential to ensure prosecution of those top-level officials responsible for atrocities. This report documents and analyzes the continuing violence by all parties to the conflict, obstacles to return and to the reversal of ethnic cleansing, the government's efforts to end impunity and the international community's response so far to the ongoing human rights crisis in Darfur. This report is based on two Human Rights Watch research missions: one to North Darfur in July-August 2004, and another to Khartoum and Darfur in September-October 2004. In some cases, the precise locations of incidents and other identifying details have been withheld to protect the security of the victims and witnesses.

BBC 15 Nov 2004 Darfur attacks fuel genocide fear By Hilary Andersson BBC Africa correspondent Janjaweed have been accused of torching villages The BBC's Panorama programme has revealed new evidence of mass ethnic killings and rape in Darfur, adding to fears of genocide in the region. In one town the BBC team visited, at least 80 children had been killed as well as many adults. Janjaweed militias and government troops attacked Kidinyir throughout the past year, killing huge numbers. It is now estimated that more than 70,000 people have died in Darfur and massacres are still going on. Mass graves In the remote reaches of Darfur, the town of Kidinyir has been utterly devastated. DARFUR VIOLENCE An Arab looking man, in a uniform with military insignia, stopped his car next to me. He grabbed my son from me and threw him into a fire. Kalima, Kidinyir villager Rape survivor's account Janjaweed tactics Survivors told the BBC one by one about which family members they had lost. At least 80 children had been killed. There were four mass grave sites on the town's fringes. The attacks on Kidinyir are very similar to other attacks in Darfur, where massacres are still going on. Government planes bomb whilst the Janjaweed militia move in to kill on the ground. Almost 400 non-Arab villages in Darfur have either been burnt down or attacked, indicating a systematic and organised attempt to kill non-Arabs. Brutality In Kidinyir, survivors told the BBC stories of Janjaweed violence. One woman, called Hawa, said: "Five of them surrounded me. I couldn't move, I was paralysed. They raped me, one after the other." Another woman, called Kalima, spoke of the brutality used in the attacks. She said: "My son was clinging to my dress. An Arab looking man, in a uniform with military insignia, stopped his car next to me. He grabbed my son from me and threw him into a fire." A third villager Hikma, claimed the Janjaweed hurled racist insults as they carried out their attacks. She said: "They were saying 'the blacks are slaves, the blacks are stupid. Catch them alive, catch them alive, take them away with you, tie them up'." Government accused Sudan's government insists that the killings are the result of tribal chaos in the region. However, African Union observers in Darfur say the government has been arming and directing the Janjaweed militia. The BBC travelled to a key Janjaweed base and discovered the fighters were carrying government military identity cards. America has called the killings in Darfur genocide because of their ethnic nature. Britain and many other nations are waiting for the outcome of a lengthy UN investigation into the subject.

BBC 16 Nov 2004 Amnesty calls for Sudan arms ban The government are failing to rein in the Janjaweed men in Darfur Uncontrolled arms exports are fuelling abuses in Sudan's Darfur region, warns Amnesty International. The human rights group calls on the United Nations Security Council to impose a strict arms embargo on Sudan to try to end the conflict in Darfur. The UNSC, which meets this week in Nairobi, has threatened sanctions if security in the region did not improve. The BBC has broadcast evidence of mass killings in Darfur, where more than 1.5 million people have been displaced. New York-based Human Rights Watch has also called for an arms embargo. 'Suspend deliveries' "Amnesty specifically requests the UN Security Council to impose a mandatory arms embargo on Sudan to stop supplies of those arms reaching all the parties to the conflict in Darfur," Amnesty says. The London-based group says the embargo should only be lifted when measures "are in place to protect civilians from grave human rights abuses". Belarus, Russia, China, Poland, France, Iran and Saudi Arabia have supplied Sudan with arms, Amnesty says. The organisation says these countries should suspend deliveries of arms, if they thought it was likely they would be used "for grave human rights violations". A group of six aid agencies have also called for action, saying that previous UN resolutions "mounted to little more than empty threats, with minimal impact on the levels of violence". HRW on Monday accused the rebels in Darfur of violating the agreed ceasefire, saying they had "abducted civilians, attacked police stations and other government institutions and raided and looted substantial numbers of livestock and commercial goods". Attack On Sunday, the BBC's Panorama programme revealed new evidence of mass ethnic killings and rape in Darfur, adding to fears of genocide in the region. In one town that the BBC team visited, at least 80 children had been killed, as well as many adults. DARFUR VIOLENCE An Arab-looking man, in a uniform with military insignia, stopped his car next to me. He grabbed my son from me and threw him into a fire Kalima, Kidinyir villager Rape survivor's account Janjaweed tactics Janjaweed militias and government troops attacked Kidinyir throughout the past year, killing huge numbers, reported the BBC's Hilary Andersson. It is now estimated that more than 70,000 people have died in Darfur and massacres are still going on. Survivors told the BBC one by one about which family members they had lost. At least 80 children had been killed. There were four mass grave sites on the town's fringes. Sudan's government insists that the killings are the result of tribal chaos in the region. However, African Union observers in Darfur say the government has been arming and directing the Janjaweed militia. America has called the killings in Darfur genocide because of their ethnic nature. Britain and many other nations are waiting for the outcome of a lengthy UN investigation into the subject.

Xinhua 17 Nov 2004 African Union's efforts to end Darfur crisis NAIROBI, Nov 17, 2004 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- The United National Security Council will begin a two-day extraordinary session here on Thursday to push Sudan's north-south peace negotiations to a conclusion and to stop a separate bloody conflict in western Darfur region. As Africa's biggest country, Sudan was annoyed by Darfur crisis in recent two years. The restive region has plunged into conflict since February 2003, when two rebel forces took up arms against the Khartoum government, accusing the authorities of not protecting them from the attacks of "Janjaweed" militia and demanding autonomy. The Darfur crisis has been termed by the United Nations as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, in which thousands were killed and one million displaced. The crisis is considered as a test for the African Union's commitment to security and peace, an issue which bugs the impoverished continent for decades. The African Union has spearheaded international attempts to resolve the crisis, under whose auspices, the Sudanese government and two rebel groups held several rounds of peace talks in Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and Nigerian capital Abuja. On April 8, under intensive international mediation efforts, mainly AU efforts, the Sudanese government reached a ceasefire agreement with two rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM). And the AU also deployed 123 military observers to oversee the ceasefire. However, the accord has not been implemented in earnest, with more civilians killed. On July 5, the AU Peace and Security Council, the regional bloc 's security body similar to the UN Security Council, decided to send 300 armed soldiers in the name of "protection forces" to guard the AU observers already on ground in Darfur. On July 15, the Sudanese government, JEM and SLM began a round of political talks in Addis Ababa, which was chaired by the AU, the United Nations and Chad, with the United States and European Union attending as observers. The AU sent its Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare to Chad in a sit down with the Sudanese sides just before early July's Addis Ababa summit, which booked the talks. Unfortunately, the talks concluded without breakthrough on July 17 after the two rebel groups refused direct political negotiations with Khartoum unless their demands are met. The rebel groups laid down six conditions in the talks, of which, the "removal of government troops and Janjaweed militia from Darfur, including those who are integrated into the police or other government offices" was the top priority to be addressed in the meeting. The other conditions are access for an international inquiry into genocide charges, bringing criminals who committed genocide or ethnic cleansing to justice, creating unimpeded humanitarian access for delivery of food aid, release of prisoners of war and detainees and agreement on a neutral venue for future talks. However, Khartoum said the conditions are "unpractical," especially disarming of militias, because some militia groups are illegal and underground and the government needs time to address the issue. On Aug. 1, AU Chairman Olusegun Obasanjo said the security and humanitarian crisis in Darfur should be resolved within African framework. Obasanjo, also the president of Nigeria, told reporters in Khartoum that the Darfur crisis is a domestic issue of an AU member state. Compared with other international organizations, the AU is in a better position to find out situation there accurately and objectively. It also knows the way to an objective solution to the problem. Obasanjo's remarks came barely two days after the UN Security Council adopted a resolution, threatening sanctions against Sudan if it fails to disarm the marauding militia in the Darfur region and to prosecute its leaders. Political dialogue on the Darfur crisis resumed on Aug. 23 in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, which is another effort by the African Union to help bring about a political solution to the region's conflict. The Abuja meeting comes a week before the UN Security Council deadline. However, hopes of ending the Darfur crisis went aground on Sept. 15 as one of the two rebel groups announced the collapse of the talks. The JEM said they failed to reach any consensus with Khartoum over security issues and the talks could be held off for a month. Libyan leader Muammar Ghaddafi, Sudanese President Hassan Ahmed Al-Bashir, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Chadian President Idriss Deby held an African mini-summit on the Darfur issue on Oct. 17 in Libyan capital Tripoli. The summit, held under the auspices of the African Union, was aimed at finding humanitarian and political solutions to the Darfur crisis within the AU framework. The five leaders rejected any foreign intervention in the Darfur issue. On Oct. 20, the AU Peace and Security Council approved the increase in the size of its force in Darfur from 390 to 3,320 troops and civilian police. On Oct. 26, the African Union relaunched peace talks between Khartoum and rebel groups in Abuja, which is another effort by the AU to solve African problems by Africans. The hope for peace in Sudan's troubled Darfur region brightened on Nov. 9 as the parties in the 21-month-old crisis signed humanitarian and security protocols together, three weeks into the African Union-sponsored peace talks in Nigeria. The talks were adjourned on Nov. 10.

washingtonpost.com 17 Nov 2004 Diplomacy and Darfur Wednesday, November 17, 2004; Page A26 AFULL ARSENAL of diplomatic tricks has been tried on behalf of Darfur, the western province of Sudan where the government is orchestrating genocide. A number of A-list statesmen -- Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan -- have journeyed to Sudan to demand an end to the killing; still the genocide continues. Cease-fires, undertakings and protocols have been negotiated and signed; still the genocide continues. Two U.N. Security Council resolutions have condemned the government's behavior; still the genocide continues. Tomorrow and Friday, in a triumph of hope over experience, the Security Council will convene an extraordinary session in Kenya, hoping to shine the spotlight on Sudan's suffering. But unless the council members stiffen their rhetoric with sanctions, they will spotlight their own impotence. Sudan's pragmatic dictatorship has bowed in the past to determined external pressure. It expelled Osama bin Laden and negotiated an end to its long-running war with rebels in the south, both thanks to the threat of sanctions. But Sudan's rulers do not make concessions if they don't have to do so, and they believe they can exterminate tens of thousands of people in Darfur and get away with it. When outsiders wax especially indignant, the junta signs another protocol and makes a tactical concession. But its strategy remains unchanged: to cement control over Darfur by decimating the tribes that back various local rebels. The first phony concession came in April. Sudan's government signed on to a cease-fire, promising to "refrain from any act of violence or any other abuse on civilian populations." Since then the government has participated in unprovoked assaults on villages, murdering men, raping women and tossing children into flames that consume their huts. In July Sudan's rulers signed a communique with Mr. Annan, promising to "ensure that no militias are present in all areas surrounding Internally Displaced Persons camps." Since then militias have continued to encircle the camps, raping women and girls who venture out in search of firewood. In August Sudan's government promised Jan Pronk, Mr. Annan's envoy, to provide a list of militia leaders. No list has been forthcoming. Last week, in a concession that perhaps reflected nervousness about the approaching Security Council meeting in Kenya, the government signed two new protocols, committing itself among other things to "protect the rights of Internally Displaced Persons." A few hours later, government forces stormed a camp for displaced people. In sum, the considered judgment of Sudan's rulers is that they can flout international commitments with impunity. Unless that judgment can be changed, the Security Council session in Kenya will not achieve anything. Sudan's dictatorship must be credibly threatened with sanctions that target officials responsible for war crimes, and these officials must also be made to face the possibility of prosecution. Beyond that, outsiders need to recognize that there is little prospect of security for Darfur's people -- and therefore little prospect of a return to destroyed villages, a resumption of agricultural production and an escape from starvation -- without a serious peacekeeping force. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the U.N. commander in Rwanda during the genocide a decade ago, has suggested that a force of 44,000 is needed. Charles R. Snyder, the senior State Department official on Sudan, has estimated that securing Darfur would take 60 to 70 battalions. More than a year and a half into Darfur's genocide, the United States and its allies have proved unwilling to consider that kind of commitment. They have moved at a snail's pace to support a 3,500-strong African Union force, which in any case would be inadequate; the record of deploying underpowered peacekeepers in war zones is that the peacekeepers get humiliated. The allies are starting to discuss another U.N. resolution, but this seems likely yet again to lack a real threat of sanctions. Up to a point, this is understandable: Security Council members such as China are opposed to strong action, and the United States is conserving limited military and diplomatic resources for Iraq and the war on terrorism. But Darfur's crisis is so awful that the usual balancing of national priorities is immoral. Some 300,000 people may have died in Darfur so far, and the dying is not yet finished.

The Independent UK 19 Nov 2004 How the world's biggest corporations are fuelling genocide in Sudan By JOHANN HARI,LONDON, Nov 19, 2004 -- The dazzlingly efficient herding of Jews, gay people and Gypsies into concentration camps by the Nazis was only made possible by the technological expertise of IBM. The corporation provided the Nazis with punch-card technology - revolutionary in the 1930s - that made it possible to classify the entire German population according to "race" and send them to their deaths. The IBM subsidiary Hollerith had two people stationed in every camp. The numbers tattooed on to the arms of prisoners were five-digit codes for IBM machines. As Edwin Black - the award-winning historian who spent five years exposing this fetid story - explains: "Without IBM's machinery, continuing upkeep and service, as well as the supply of punch cards, Hitler's camps could never have managed the numbers they did." This isn't an arid history lesson. IBM has apologised and moved on, but another group of multinational corporations is making a holocaust possible today in Darfur. This western region of Sudan has dropped down the news agenda. But remember: one person dies every five minutes, 2 million people have been driven from their homes, and the UN describes the situation as "the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world today". But the Arab majority is continuing to rape and slaughter the black African minority with near-impunity. One journalist offers a typical scene from the province: "I found a man groaning under a tree. He had been shot in the neck and jaw and left for dead in a pile of corpses. Under the next tree I found a four-year-old orphan girl caring for her starving one-year old brother. And under the tree next to that was a woman whose husband had been killed, along with her seven- and four-year old sons, before she was gang-raped and mutilated." The unelected Arab supremacist government in Khartoum raises virtually nothing in taxation. Sudan has an annual per capita income of just pounds 220. So how have they managed to afford to fight a war and launch a genocide? In the south, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, they waged a vast war against the Christian population, killing 2 million of them and ethnically cleansing a further 4 million. In Darfur today, Khartoum is arming and whipping up the genocidal Janjaweed militias. They have enough cash to buy Mig- 29s, one of the most swish and deadly fighter aircrafts in the world. How can they afford all this? Because multinational corporations have ignored the pleas of human rights groups and handed money to the Khartoum serial killers in exchange for Sudan's oil. The roll-call of companies who chose to do this is long and distinguished: Siemens AG from Germany, Alcatel SA from France, ABB Ltd from Switzerland, Tatneft from Russia and PetroChina. Human Rights Watch states unequivocally: "Oil revenues have been used by the [Sudanese] government to obtain weapons and ammunition that have enabled it to intensify the war." The money paid by multinationals is not the cause of these programmes of mass slaughter, but it is an essential ingredient. Just as Hitler could not have operated such efficient gas chambers without IBM's technology, Khartoum could not be waging such effective and large-scale genocides without oil money. Of course, these corporations do not actively seek genocide, just as IBM did not actively seek the murder of Jews. They simply have a morally neutral stance towards it. They clearly see the murder of human beings as irrelevant; the profit margin is all. This tells us something about the nature of corporations - now the dominant cultural and economic institution of our times. Private business is an essential component of a free society because it generates wealth and enables individuals to be independent from the state. But its desire for profit must be kept in careful balance with other human necessities; too often, it is not. Even within broadly democratic countries like the US, we can see how corporations try to buy up the institutions of a free society - politicians and the press - and encourage them to turn a blind eye to (or even deny) life-and-death issues such as man-made climate change. But democratic citizens can, if they have the will, restrain them. When corporations operate outside democracies, they will acknowledge no moral limits, and nobody can make them. They will pursue profit at any price. Some will even enslave people in sweat-shops and effectively - as in the Holocaust and in Darfur - aid and abet murder. Only one group has opposed the corporations facilitating the murder in Sudan with any success, at least when it comes to brokering a fragile peace in the south. This is difficult for me to write, because they have not been the forces I like - human rights groups and the internationalist left. No; the only group that has effectively lobbied against the genocidal regime in Khartoum has been the red-state Christian evangelicals in the US. They lobbied hard for an oil embargo against Sudan, so US dollars were not used to slaughter their fellow Christians. Uber-moralistic religion clashed with raw amoral markets, and - incredibly - the Bush administration sided with the evangelicals against the oil companies. As a result, since 2000, no US oil company has been allowed to operate within Sudan, to their fury. Peace has finally prevailed. This shows what can happen when the Sudanese government is subject to serious economic penalties for its crimes. The US is lobbying hard for the UN to impose similar international oil sanctions to stop the genocide in Darfur. (The evangelicals are much less worried about slaughtered Muslims, but they believe the chaos might spill over into the south). This is being flatly opposed by China - which receives a quarter of its oil supplies from Sudan - and Russia. These two authoritarian governments are vandalising any attempt to deal with this genocide through the United Nations. It seems nobody is prepared to choke off the corporate fuel for the holocaust in Darfur. The UN is rendered useless by its arcane structures, the African Union is too poor and disorganised to act, and an Anglo-US intervention is extremely unlikely in the wake of Iraq. So what do we do - lie back and watch the first genocide of the 21st century scythe through Darfur unhindered? There is an alternative. Professor Eric Reeves is an expert on the murder of black Darfurians. He explains: "The only way to stop this genocide now is for a mass campaign to force multinationals to disinvest from Sudan. During the apartheid era in South Africa, the divestment movement was an immensely powerful force in breaking down this system of racial discrimination. We can do the same today." Through our pensions plans, our universities and our stock portfolios, we in Europe own most of the companies providing the hard cash for this genocide. If our governments fail to act to end genocide, the responsibility falls to us. Go to www.divestsudan.org to find out how, practically, we can act to deprive the Janjaweed militias of money and arms, just as we throttled apartheid. If you don't bother - if you're just too busy, or you think corporations will behave responsibly without your pressure - please, don't lower your head or indulge in a moment's pained silence on Holocaust Day next year. You will have learnt nothing and remembered nothing.

washingtonpost.com 21 Nov 2004 Mr. Bush's Better World Sunday, November 21, 2004; Page B06 THE BUSH administration shrugged its shoulders last week at the genocide in Sudan's western province of Darfur. At an extraordinary meeting of the U.N. Security Council in Kenya, it sponsored a resolution that not only failed to advance those that passed in July and September but actually stepped back. The veiled threat of sanctions on Sudan's government was dropped. So was the demand that Sudan's government disarm and prosecute its allies in the Janjaweed death squads, which have burned villages, raped and murdered their inhabitants, and left nearly 2 million people homeless and at risk of starvation. The Bush administration presents this abdication as a triumph. It argues that, by tolerating a weak U.N. resolution on Darfur, it was able to secure a unanimous 15-0 Security Council vote and that this may bring about peace in the separate conflict between Sudan's Muslim-led northern government and the Christian and animist southern rebels. The north-south civil war has been running for two decades and has led directly or indirectly to the deaths of an estimated 2 million people: Ending it would indeed be a victory. The two sides have already agreed to a cease-fire and to a complex power-sharing arrangement that guarantees rights and representation for southerners. Only details remain to be worked out, and Friday's resolution sets a deadline of Dec. 31 for their resolution. This isn't the first such deadline in negotiations over the north-south conflict. Last year Sudan's government promised Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that it would conclude negotiations soon -- by Dec. 31, 2003 -- and the White House hoped that the two sides would mark their reconciliation by attending the president's State of the Union address. The Bush administration hopes that the new deadline will prove more meaningful because it has the imprimatur of a U.N. resolution. With luck it will be proved right, but the power of such resolutions has been compromised by Friday's failure to sanction Sudan's government for its flouting of past resolutions on Darfur. The Bush administration also argues that a north-south deal will improve Darfur's prospects: The power-sharing formula will be extended to all parts of the country, assuaging the grievances of rebels in Darfur whose violence provoked the government's genocidal response. Again, this may prove true, but probably not in the short term: Power-sharing will take months or years to implement. Darfur's people cannot wait that long; their catastrophe is immediate. The families that have been driven from their villages have no means to plant crops or raise animals; they depend on food aid that is hostage to the budgetary whims of Western governments and Sudan's murderous tendency to restrict aid workers' access. The death toll is already enormous. The commonly cited number of 70,000 victims is a monstrous sugarcoating of reality: It leaves out deaths in areas not visited by aid workers, nearly all deaths from violence as opposed to malnutrition and all deaths before March. The Bush administration itself has described the killing there as genocide. How can it regard an uncertain and only loosely related advance in the north-south conflict as a substitute for punishing the perpetrators? How can it recognize genocide, shrug its shoulders and then carry on claiming that its vigorous foreign policy is about creating a better world?

Reuters 21 Nov 2004 Darfur Fighting, Troops Block Food Delivery By REUTERS Filed at 5:44 a.m. ET EL FASHER, Sudan (Reuters) - Tribal clashes, banditry and troop movements are blocking crucial deliveries of food aid in North Darfur state despite recent peace agreements, African Union and United Nations officials said Sunday. The African Union (AU) said it was investigating reports that 14 people had been killed in two separate incidents since Thursday near the town of Tawilla, about 40 miles west of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state. Peace deals signed in early November aimed at ending 22 months of fighting and increasing humanitarian access have done little to improve security in western Sudan's Darfur region, where hundreds of thousands of people rely on food aid. ``We are investigating a series of retaliatory tribal attacks that allegedly took place over the last four days,'' George Learned, a United States officer attached to the AU mission, said at a weekly security briefing in El Fasher. ``Seven people were reportedly killed on two occasions during clashes involving substantial attacking forces of 20 or more armed men,'' Learned said, adding there was also ``a massing of troops of some sort'' north of Tawilla, near the town of Korma. Rampant insecurity caused by Darfur's war between African rebels and the government has created one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, according to the United Nations. More than 1.5 million people have been driven from their homes and the U.N. says 70,000 people have been killed by violence, hunger and disease since March. FOOD AID BLOCKED Tawilla sits along the main transit corridor westwards from El Fasher, but two weeks of escalating banditry and fighting in the area has turned the route into a ``no-go zone'' on U.N. maps, blocking access to some 150,000 displaced people. ``It's a disaster to close that road because it prevents distribution of food to Tawilla and Kebkabiya, which are the main distribution areas for North Darfur,'' said Janse Sorman, an official with the U.N. World Food Program in El Fasher. ``We have the food and the trucks and the people, but when there's no peace, we can't deliver it,'' Sorman told Reuters. A WFP convoy of 25 trucks carrying 250 tons of food was due to leave El Fasher Monday, but was on hold until the situation improved, leaving many without their monthly rations of cereal, salt and other foodstuffs, Sorman added. The AU has a small force in Darfur to monitor an April cease-fire repeatedly broken by all sides in the war, but can only report violations and conduct ``confidence patrols'' in an area the size of France. The African Union said its troops were due to increase from about 700 to more than 3,000 in the coming months, but 196 Gabonese troops who were due to reach El Fasher Saturday have been delayed because of conflict in Ivory Coast. Darfur's Arab nomads and African farmers have fought over scarce resources in the deserts of Africa's largest country for decades, but war broke out in early 2003 when African rebels launched a revolt against the government. The rebels accuse Khartoum of neglect and of backing Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, who have conducted a campaign of killing, raping and looting against African villagers in what the United States has called genocide. Khartoum denies the accusations, calling the militiamen bandits. The AU said both rebels and Janjaweed were accused of carrying out recent attacks around Tawilla. ``It's easy to confirm that an attack took place, but not who did it,'' Learned said.

ICRC 25 Nov 2004 Press Release 04/69 Respect for international humanitarian law: ICRC president visits Sudan Geneva (ICRC) – The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Jakob Kellenberger, arrives in Khartoum this evening for what will be his second visit to Sudan this year. He will be assessing the current humanitarian situation in Darfur and talking to senior Sudanese government officials about how to improve protection of the civilian population. Mr Kellenberger will be in Darfur from 26 to 28 November to see the situation on the ground for himself and will be meeting government officials in Al Fashir, Kutum and Zalingy. Since the President's first visit in March, humanitarian access to Darfur has improved considerably. As a result, the ICRC has been able to carry out a major humanitarian operation, together with the Sudanese Red Crescent and its other partners in the international Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. With a budget of Sfr 131 million for 2005 and nearly 2,000 staff, Sudan is the ICRC’s biggest operation worldwide.

UNWatch.org 24 Nov 2004 The Wednesday Watch Analysis and Commentary from UN Watch in Geneva Wednesday, 24 November 2004 Issue 125 News: The UN Security Council meeting in Nairobi last week — the first such gathering outside New York in almost two decades — adopted a resolution holding out the carrot of significant aid for both sides of Sudan’s North-South civil war, if they put an end to the fighting that, since 1983, has killed more than 2 million people. The Council also urged an end to the catastrophe in Sudan’s western Darfur region — yet notably abandoned its previous threat of sanctions meant to persuade Khartoum to rein in Arab militia groups perpetrating abuses against the black Africans of Darfur. Meanwhile, at the General Assembly today, a resolution to condemn Sudan for grave human rights violations was voted down by a “no action” motion introduced by South Africa on behalf of the UN’s African Group. Analysis: Though Sudan’s civil wars continue to dominate the international agenda, leading the Security Council to extraordinarily convene in Kenya, robust action is markedly absent. The events of the past week show conflicting signs as to whether any optimism is in order. Due in large part to the efforts of John Danforth — formerly President Bush’s special envoy for peace in Sudan, now the U.S. Ambassador to the UN — chances for peace in the South have never been greater. The Security Council decision to meet in Africa, to witness an agreement between the Islamic government from the North and John Garang’s Christian rebels from the South, was a welcome show of support for that process. Amb. Danforth hopes that the conclusion of war in the South might become “a springboard to end the suffering in Darfur.” Sudan’s Ambassador to the U.S., Khidir Haroun Ahmed, agrees: “It will serve as a model to tackle and to redress grievances in other parts of the country.” Looking at today’s news, however, gives little ground for optimism. A government warplane bombed a rebel camp near the North Darfur capital of El Fasher, a violation of the security protocol agreed to by Khartoum barely two weeks ago. Official UN confirmation of the violation could generate international pressure for sanctions. Which brings us to the issue that many consider determinative. Sudan will continue to ignore international declarations on Darfur that lack the stick of either sanctions or an arms embargo. Regrettably, due to their respective special interests, Russia, China, Algeria and Pakistan expressed opposition to sanctions and abstained on the previous Council resolution. This time, in order to win symbolic unity for the Nairobi text, the U.S. and Europe removed the threat of sanctions. The dilemma faced by Washington and Brussels is not new. In April, at the UN’s Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Europe justified watering down its resolution on Sudanese violations by pointing to the powerful resistance led by Africa, saying it was better to have some text, and to establish an independent expert, than none at all. In a dramatic debate, the U.S. decried Europe’s compromise, insisting that the truth about Sudanese crimes needed to be stated loud and clear, regardless of whether such a draft would be voted down. Looking back seven months later, the watered-down declaration, negotiated between Africa and Europe, seems to have achieved little other than sparing Sudan a measure of shame and international accountability. As for the expert, Emmanuel Akwei Addo — his record is mixed. In his October 29 statement before the General Assembly’s human rights organ (known as the Third Committee), Mr. Addo found strong indications of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murders, rapes, acts of torture and forcible displacement of civilians. Other than this welcome testimony, however, the expert — like his fellow Ghanaian, Secretary General Kofi Annan — has hardly been speaking out as loudly, or as frequently, as the dire situation requires. At the General Assembly this week, it was déjà vu all over again. When pro-democracy states introduced a resolution calling upon Sudan to end crimes such as sexual violence against women and girls, the representative of South Africa — as it happens, the man charged with human rights at the foreign ministry — rose to demand a “no action” motion. (To watch a webcast of the debate, click here and fast-forward 22 minutes.) Together with the Islamic countries and the voting bloc of Third World countries, known as the Group of 77, the resolution was defeated 91 to 74, with 11 abstaining. Among those voting to shield Sudan from scrutiny: China, Cuba, North Korea, Egypt, Iran and Syria. (The full list is available here.) South Africa explained that the African Group was “unwavering in its total rejection of country-specific resolutions.” Unwavering? Well, not when it comes to country-specific resolutions that target a certain state in the Middle East. In that case, South Africa actually supports every single country-specific resolution. Algeria’s ambassador, Abdallah Baali, voted no-action because “human rights is used for political reasons against some particular countries in a selective way, where there are countries where human rights are clearly abused” and are not condemned. Malaysia, on behalf of the non-aligned movement, argued that the draft resolution on Sudan was a case of “exploitation of human rights for political purposes.” We would like to see the ambassadors try convincing Darfur’s thousands of raped women and girls that their suffering is “merely political.” A high-level panel on reform of the UN is set to deliver its proposals to Kofi Annan next week. Tragically, not even the most sophisticated tinkering will change the fact that the world body cannot muster a majority today to condemn ethnic cleansing.

Reuters 27 Nov 2004 Sudan lifts state of emergency in North Darfur BC-SUDAN-DARFUR Sudan lifts state of emergency in North Darfur By Opheera McDoom EL FASHER, Sudan, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Sudan said it had lifted all restrictions on aid workers and revoked a state of emergency in the troubled North Darfur state on Saturday, after rebels pulled out from a town they occupied last week. The United Nations condemned the attacks on Tawilla town last week, where rebels took control and killed dozens of policemen, in a move the international community said violated security protocols signed earlier this month between the warring parties in the Nigerian capital Abuja. Following the attack, the World Food Programme said it had withdrawn all its staff to the North Darfur capital of El Fasher and frozen all operations, leaving 300,000 refugees out of reach. The United Nations says the rebellion has triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises with more than 1.6 million forced from their homes in Darfur. The Governor of North Darfur state, Osman Kebir, told visiting European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel, that all restrictions on aid work due to this emergency had been lifted. "The situation is very normal now," Kebir said, "We are removing all the restrictions on humanitarian aid that were imposed because of the attacks on Tawilla," he said. Michel said the tense security situation in Darfur had improved: "The security situation is of course very sensitive but I think there's a very slow improvement." He declined to say whether the government had done enough to rein in mounted Arab militia, known locally as Janjaweed, in accordance with U.N. Security Council resolutions. "I don't know if there are links between the government and these peoplebut I have no evidence about that," he told reporters during a one-day visit to remote Darfur, his first trip abroad since taking office. After years of skirmishes between Arab nomads and mostly non-Arab farmers over scarce resources in arid Darfur, rebels took up arms early last year accusing Khartoum of neglect and of arming the Janjaweed to loot and burn non-Arab villages. While the government admits arming some militias to fight the rebels, it denies any link to the Janjaweed, calling them outlaws. The United Nations has threatened Sudan with possible sanctions if it fails to stop the violence, which the United States calls genocide. The World Health Organisation estimates more than 70,000 have died in Darfur since March from malnutrition and disease. Michel will now travel to the Kenyan capital Nairobi, the scene of talks to settle a separate, bloodier conflict in Sudan's south. He said a southern peace deal, due by the end of the year, would be key for solving the problems in the rest of Africa's Tlargest country. "If there is an agreement, we have to take this agreement as a momentum in order to resolve the global package of problems which is existing in Darfur," he said, adding he saw goodwill and a willingness on the part of the government to take action.

NYT 29 Nov 2004 African Union Strives to End Deadly Cycle in Darfur By SOMINI SENGUPTA AWILA, Sudan, Nov. 28 - The African Union came here this weekend to investigate the kind of incident it had hoped would no longer happen under its watch. For a week, tensions in this strategic town in North Darfur had boiled over, pitting ethnic Africans and Arabs against each other in mob violence. Then, just after dawn prayers on Nov. 22, rebels attacked the town, killing nearly 30 government police officers and pocking the garrison with bullet holes. The government retaliated with airstrikes. People ran any way they could. Like so many other towns in Darfur, Tawila virtually emptied. The African Union has struggled to make that familiar trajectory - a rebel attack, a government airstrike, the flight of civilians, another ghost town - a thing of the past in Darfur, the vast region of western Sudan ravaged by nearly 22 months of war. Under heavy pressure, the government has allowed more than 3,000 African Union troops to enter. Although those troops are authorized only to monitor the country's tenuous cease-fire and not to intervene in fighting, their aim is to help prevent further violence just by being here. But even that goal has proved elusive for a force hamstrung from the start by its small size, lack of expertise and most of all by its strict rules of engagement. The challenge it faces was perfectly illustrated by the mission in Tawila this weekend. On Sunday morning, a team of nine African Union military observers, trailed by the first journalists to visit this town since the attack last week, stared at the shallow crater that a government bomb had left in this now charred group of huts. One of the huts was no more than a circle of black ash, with an earthen water jug lying on its edge. A woman had lived here with her five children. The African Union monitors snapped pictures of the bomb site. They interviewed local people who had stayed and many more who had returned because they had heard that the African Union had come. The monitors, who are unarmed, risked spending Saturday night in the frigid desert on the edge of town - mainly, they said, to show people that they were there. Lacking tents for all nine men, they slept in vehicles or on cots in the cold open air. During the day, they handed out their uneaten military rations to women who straggled up the sand streets. By midafternoon on Sunday, they prepared to leave. As they did, a group of men rushed up and said they feared that the police would harass people who had spoken to the monitors. The leader of the team, Lt. Col. Ahmed Fouad of Egypt, listened and nodded. Later, when asked what he would do about the men's plea, he said he would report it to headquarters. Until there are enough monitors to keep a vigil in Tawila, there is nothing more he could do, he said. And then the monitors left - headed back to their base in the state capital, El Fasher, in a long white ribbon of four-wheel-drive vehicles and armored personnel carriers. For the African Union, a nascent organization representing African governments and struggling to shake off the mantle of its largely ineffectual predecessor, the Organization of African Unity, Darfur represents a crucial test. If the union's mission succeeds in Darfur, it will score a major credibility victory. If it fails, the price will be dear. "We will take a long time to recover our credibility toward our people and our partners," Jean-Baptiste Natama, a senior political officer in the African Union, said this week. The African Union's success or failure will be measured, in part, by how it responds to incidents like the one in Tawila and whether it can prevent others like it. For now, its troop strength in Sudan, which may take until February or later to reach its full level of 3,400 peacekeepers, is grossly insufficient to deploy full-time to every fractious, violence-prone town like Tawila. Privately, diplomats in Sudan have long worried that deploying so few troops would be a recipe for failure. Since the violence in Tawila, Jan Pronk, the top United Nations envoy for Sudan, suggested expanding the African Union force to more than twice the number. Mr. Natama floated the idea of strengthening the African Union's mandate to peace enforcement. "If the situation is getting worse, we are not going to pack our luggage and leave Darfur," he said. "We are going to have to have a robust mandate to make sure we are not here for nothing. We should be able to bring peace, or impose peace." Few people in North Darfur were surprised by the violence in Tawila on Nov. 22. Tensions between the townspeople, largely members of African tribes, and Arabs from nearby villages had been building. The pivotal event, townspeople said, was a brawl on market day, Nov. 16. A group of Arabs had come to the market, as they normally did. This time, they picked out a pile of women's clothes, stuffed them in their sacks and refused to pay. Instead, they brandished guns. Frustration was running high from similar incidents in the past, and the town was still recovering from an attack by government forces and allied Arab militias earlier this year. Donkeys and goats had been taken. Homes had been looted. People had sought refuge in the displaced people's camps in El Fasher. So this time, when the Arabs refused to pay, the Africans retaliated. The entire market took part. People grabbed sticks and stones from the market stalls and began pummeling the Arabs, killing four of them on the spot and injuring as many as seven. By the time the police arrived, the Arab bodies lay bashed and disfigured in the market. "All of us here participated," a man named Ibrahim Ahmed, 32, said, signaling with his chin the dozens of people who had gathered at the market on Sunday to tell the story to the African Union monitors. "I felt happy," Mr. Ahmed confessed. "What they did to us was more than what we did to them." Revenge begot revenge. That night, Arabs returned, firing randomly at the houses and looting from the market. On Nov. 22, the African Union said, the Sudan Liberation Army, a rebel outfit led by ethnic Africans, stormed Tawila as the dawn prayer ended, taking aim at the police station. Atima Dahab lay in her hut, trying to calm her screaming children as gunfire rattled around her compound and a warplane circled overhead. When the bomb fell on a neighbor's house, her own shook. Dust and smoke darkened the sky. Hawa Thom watched from a field as the plane approached, a cloud of dust rose, an explosion rang in her ears, and flames flared from the straw roof of a neighbor's house. Five homes nearby were destroyed. Early that morning, Mrs. Thom said she had dreamed of a camel in front of her house. She read it as an evil sign. She said that in the dream, she told her husband something bad would happen. "Don't go away," she said she told him. She woke up to the sound of gunfire. The bad dream that Darfur had come to signify was unfolding again. The people of Tawila said they would sleep here on Sunday evening only if the African Union monitors slept here, too. They said the attacks by Arab militias based nearby would stop only if the monitors were in town. They said they did not trust the police and soldiers. "They must stay," Mrs. Thom said, speaking of the monitors. "Otherwise we can't stay." As if on cue, just as the monitors prepared to leave the town market Sunday afternoon, a group of soldiers gathered around the crowd they had been speaking to. "You don't get smoke without fire," whispered a monitor who did not want to be identified. "The population is afraid."

Tanzania

Hirondelle News Agency (Lausanne) 5 Nov 2004 Prosecutor Closes His Case in 'Butare' Trial Arusha The Prosecutor has announced that he has finally finished presenting evidence in one of the biggest trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Popularly known as the "Butare" trial, it groups six people accused of genocide and crimes against humanity committed in the southern Rwanda province of Butare in 1994. The last prosecution witness was Kenyan handwriting expert, Antipas Nyanjwa, who the prosecutor wanted to add to his list of witnesses in order to authenticate a diary purportedly belonging to the main suspect in this case, former Minister of Gender, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko. Even though he had initially announced October 18 that he had exhausted all his witnesses, the prosecutor wanted Nyanjwa to testify "in the interest of justice". Nyiramasuhuko is the first woman to be indicted by the ICTR and the first to be accused of rape as a crime against humanity. Many witnesses came forward to testify that Nyiramasuhuko had exhorted Hutu militia to rape Tutsi women during the genocide. The prosecutor called 58 witnesses in total since the trial opened June 12, 2001. The defence is expected to begin presenting its case January 31, 2005. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko is being tried jointly with her son, Shalom Arsene Ntahobali, two former prefects (Governors) of Butare, Sylvain Nsabimana and Alphonse Nteziryayo, and two former mayors: Joseph Kanyabashi and Elie Ndayambaje of Ngoma and Muganza respectively. When the trial resumes, the chamber will first hear the testimony of Nyiramasuhuko's defence witnesses. William Hussein Sekule of Tanzania presides over the proceedings.

BBC 25 November, 2004 War justice at 'turning point' By Ishbel Matheson BBC News in Arusha, Tanzania Ex-Rwandan leader Jean Kambanda was jailed for life for genocide The international justice system is at a turning point, top war crimes prosecutors have heard at a conference in Tanzania. Furthermore, a global system of justice is necessary if peace is to be maintained, the prosecutor for the Rwandan war crimes tribunal said. The Challenges of International Criminal Justice conference focused on obstacles facing crimes courts. But it also was a chance for delegates to take stock of accomplishments. Ten years ago, international justice was in its infancy. The Rwandan and Yugoslav tribunals had just been set up amid a great deal of scepticism. Some saw them simply as a means for the international community to salve its conscience after the terrible atrocities of the 1990s. A decade on, lawyers gathered at the three-day conference at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, examined their achievements. Benchmarks On one hand, important legal benchmarks have been set. The Rwandan tribunal, for example, was the first to try and convict a head of state of genocide. Some say the fear of prosecution may now be a real deterrent. "We have done something to deter not only top leaders but perhaps those at more of the nasty level of command where people might be expected to have blood on their hands," says Gavin Rukston of the Yugoslav tribunal. But it is also clear the challenges of operating an international war crimes court are formidable. Many felt the treatment of witnesses - some of whom are in fear for their lives - has been less than perfect. The prosecutor of the special court for Sierra Leone also spoke of the danger of indifference and of how a war-wearied international community was increasingly reluctant to participate in the quest for justice. Nevertheless, the feeling among these lawyers was a global criminal justice system was slowly being built and war criminals wherever they are in the world could no longer be sure of escaping justice.

Uganda

www.newvision.co.ug 3 Nov 2004 ICC to issue Kony warrant of arrest By Anne Mugisa and agencies The International Criminal Court (ICC) is planning to issue warrants of arrest against Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony and seven of his commanders. Sources said the Minister of Defence, Amama Mbabazi, was at the ICC in The Hague over the matter. The sources said the warrants were are expected any time following a decision by the ICC to indict the eight top rebels. ICC has said it would not prosecute child soldiers. “We will investigate all allegations in an independent and impartial way,” said ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo at a swearing-in ceremony for The Hague-based court deputy prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda on Monday. He said they would focus on the rebel leaders who bore the greatest responsibility in the war. Ocampo said the ICC would work with local leaders to end the 18-year long northern war. The rebels have mutilated people and kidnapped at least 25,000 children, who are forced to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves. At least 1.6 million people have fled their homes and aid workers have declared the region the world’s biggest neglected emergency. In July, the LRA became one of the first groups investigated for alleged atrocities by the new world court. The Government has praised the ICC probe but some northern religious leaders have criticised it, saying it will create a crisis of confidence and stop rebels from surrendering. Scores of the LRA commanders have given up rebellion amid an intensified military campaign by the UPDF against the rebel bases in northern Uganda and neighbouring southern Sudan. “We know the local community, who have suffered greatly, are working very hard to establish peace, which includes initiatives to establish justice through traditions based on truth, reconciliation and compensation,” Ocampo said. He hoped that arresting or isolating the top leaders would help them to make peace with others.

Reuters 14 Nov 2004 Uganda declares ceasefire with LRA rebels By Frank Nyakairu KAMPALA Nov 14 (Reuters) - Uganda's government declared a temporary truce on Sunday to allow rebels in the north of the country to meet to discuss plans for talks to end an 18-year civil war that has forced 1.6 million people from their homes. President Yoweri Museveni, responding to an offer of peace talks from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), said in a statement he had ordered the truce in part of the north to allow a group of LRA rebels to meet government representatives. "President Yoweri Museveni has ordered a seven-day suspension of UPDF operations in a limited area of Acholi to allow the leadership of (LRA leader Joseph) Kony's group to meet and confirm that they accept his offer to come out of the bush," a statement from State House said, referring to the Uganda People's Defence Force. The LRA, based in lawless areas of southern Sudan, has terrorised remote northern districts of Uganda, massacring civilians, mutilating victims and kidnapping tens of thousands of children to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves. Last week an LRA spokesman telephoned a radio station and called for talks -- and for Museveni's government to show its commitment to peace -- in a rare statement by the rebels. Aid workers say northern Uganda is the world's biggest neglected crisis, worsened by a military campaign targeting a force estimated to be 80 percent abducted children. Previous attempts to end the war through talks have stalled over allegations of bad faith on both sides. It was not possible to contact the LRA or its leader, self-proclaimed mystic Joseph Kony, who has not given a clear statement of his political objectives beyond wanting to rule the country by the Biblical Ten Commandments. "In the last three weeks, Ms Betty Bigombe has had clear indications from Kony's group that they want to end the conflict," the statement said, referring to the government's chief mediator. "But UPDF pressure makes impossible for the Kony leadership to get together to discuss this offer. Ms Betty Bigombe has therefore proposed a seven-day suspension to allow the leadership to meet," the statement adds. The statement said a group of LRA rebels had been provided with a detailed map of the ceasefire area for the purposes of arranging the meeting. "If after the meeting the Kony groups make a clear recorded statement that they accept the president's offer then a 10-day cessation of UPDF operations will be ordered," the statement said. But the army said it would continue operations against remnants of Kony's group in all other areas of northern Uganda and southern Sudan "until the government get an irreversible commitment indicating their intention to end ... once and for all the terror campaign." Although the statement described Sunday's initiative as a seven-day truce, it detailed a nine-day period, saying hostilities would be suspended between Sunday Nov. 14 at 1500 GMT and Tuesday Nov. 23 at 0400 GMT. Bigombe, a former Minister for Pacification of the North, currently works with the World Bank in the United States, but continues to lead Ugandan peace efforts. Bigombe held talks with Kony in 1993 but the negotiations collapsed after Museveni accused the rebels of using the ceasefire to plan more attacks.

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe Standard (Harare) NEWS October 31, 2004 Posted to the web November 1, 2004 Ex Chimoio Supremo Says He Would Kill All MDC Supporters By Emmanuel Mungoshi Harare A former top liberation war commander says if he had his way, he would kill supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Major Midson Mupasu, who says he was the camp commander at Chimoio when the Rhodesian army swooped on refugee bases and massacred civilians in the late 1970s, claimed the MDC was there to negate the gains of the liberation struggle. Speaking recently on a ZTV programme Face the Nation, Mupasu who says he was also responsible for 12 Zanla bases in the area from 1976 to 1977 said: "If it were up to me, I would kill them (MDC supporters). What MDC is doing hudzvanyiriri, husveta simba (repression, exploitation). They want to bring back the colonial system, that will never happen." Mupasu said: "MDC should be thankful that Zanu PF is a people's party and a very fair organisation. In my opinion MDC is not supposed to operate in Zimbabwe. They should all be arrested." Mupasu, who is now attached to the Zimbabwe Military Academy, also said he despised white Zimbabweans. "Even today when I see whites I spit on the ground. I don't want to see whites. I don't even want to talk to them, I don't want to see them on the farms that we have occupied," declared Mupasu. The programme, presented by Masimba Musarira, began with a video clip showing decapitated bodies, burning houses and the freedom fighters in action. This was then followed by a group of war veterans who recently visited the shrine erected in honour of the war heroes who died at Chimoio. Mupasu addressed the group and gave a description of the pre-independence massacres that were perpetrated by the Rhodesian forces. Mupasu said he survived the raid although he sustained some injuries. Several Zimbabweans have complained about the "hate language" that is increasingly gaining currency at the national public broadcaster's, ZBC radio and television. They point out that in Rwanda by mid-April 1994, Radio Television Libres des Mille Collines RTLM had effectively become the genocide's coordinating body, broadcasting lists of "death-worthy" Tutsis. It also broadcast names of other "enemies of the (Hutu) republic," urged militiamen and citizens to seek them out, and congratulated lynch mobs for "a job well done." In December, 2003 the Rwanda Tribunal in Arusha sentenced RTLM director Ferdinand Nahimana to life imprisonment, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza to 35 years, reduced to 27 years, and a third for 35 years, for fanning the flames of the 1994 genocide, in which an estimated 800 000 people were killed. On June 1, the Tribunal sentenced Belgian-born Georges Ruggiu to two concurrent 12-year prison terms for broadcasts that fanned the 1994 genocide. Survivors remember RTLM, the rabidly nationalist Hutu radio station, as "Radio Tele La Mort (Radio Death). At the end of last year, a radio station calling itself Voice of the Patriot was heard broadcasting in the Bukavu region, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, near the borders with Rwanda and Burundi station. The radio, thought to be using a mobile transmitter in the mountains above Bukavu town, issued warnings that Tutsi soldiers from Rwanda and Burundi were coming to massacre local residents.

IRIN 2 Nov 2004 Food aid not being used as a political tool - govt [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] JOHANNESBURG, 2 November (IRIN) - Concerns that food aid could be used as a political tool in Zimbabwe's upcoming parliamentary elections have been rejected as "baseless" by the government. Spokesman Steyn Berejena on Tuesday dismissed a recent Amnesty International (AI) report claiming that the government's forecast of a bumper harvest had been "widely discredited", and warning of "further violations of the right to adequate food and the right to freedom from discrimination in the run-up to the 2005 parliamentary elections". The AI report, 'Zimbabwe: Power and Hunger - Violations of the Right to Food', states that despite an earlier government forecast of a bumper maize harvest of 2.4 million mt, "stories of hunger and food insecurity in Zimbabwe emerge almost daily", and that "rather than fulfil its obligation to ensure the right to food for everyone under its jurisdiction, the government of Zimbabwe is manipulating the country's food shortages for political purposes and to punish political opponents". International food aid was halted in mid-2004 when the government said the country would produce enough crops for domestic consumption. "The cessation of most international food aid distribution has left millions of people dependent on grain distributed by the government-controlled Grain Marketing Board (GMB), which has a near monopoly on the trade in and distribution of maize - the staple food in Zimbabwe. But it is unclear whether the GMB has sufficient stocks to meet the country's grain needs. The GMB also has a history of discriminatory distribution of the grain it controls. Those who do not support the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), have regularly been denied access to GMB grain," AI alleged. However, Berejena said that under the government's food aid programme "people are not required to produce [ZANU-PF] party cards - that's not a requirement. When the needs assessment is done it is not a requirement that one has to produce party cards". Food aid distributions were not conducted by politicians: "They are done through the civil servants and social welfare departments; through the traditional leaders, who identify the vulnerable within their communities." If politics did play a role in food aid distributions, he said, "you would rather give it to the opposition to win their support". As to the accusations that the government's predicted bumper crop had failed to materialise, Berejena said it was impossible to expect the GMB to have the entire 2.4 million mt grain harvest in its depots. "We don't expect the GMB to have 2.4 million mt - it's not possible to have it stored in the various depots because, since the forecast, people have been consuming [harvested crops] and not all the food is going to be housed in the depots. For example, farmers, after harvesting, say 10 mt, will sell whatever is surplus and keep some for domestic consumption, animal feed, etc. There is inter- and intra-community trading as well," Berejena explained.

BBC 13 Nov 2004 Zimbabwe plans more youth camps By Grant Ferrett BBC Africa editor Some girls say they were raped in the camps The Zimbabwean government has announced that it plans to set up more of its controversial youth camps in the run-up to elections scheduled for next March. The youth minister said the number of camps would rise from six to 10. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says the camps are used to indoctrinate young people to intimidate and attack government opponents. The announcement of new training camps makes the prospect of free and fair elections in Zimbabwe even more remote. Youth Minister Ambrose Mutinhiri, a retired army brigadier, told the state-run media that the government's youth training scheme was close to completing a major expansion. He said three of the six centres established over the last few years would re-open later this month following renovations, with four more opening by early next year. The opposition says its no coincidence that the youth programme is being expanded shortly before Zimbabwe is due to hold parliamentary elections. "These new camps are simply meant to ensure the further militarisation of elections in Zimbabwe," said Tendai Biti, an opposition member of parliament. "They are meant to ensure that the opposition, the MDC, does not have access to those provinces where the new bases will be set up," Mr Biti said. Murder and torture The youth training camps were first set up in ahead of the presidential election of 2002, which saw Robert Mugabe returned to power after a campaign punctuated by violence. The government said the scheme was intended to instil a sense of national pride, as well as providing vocational skills. But the human rights group Amnesty International said youth trainees were involved in various crimes directed against the opposition, including murder, torture and arson. Former trainees have talked of widespread sexual abuse within the camps. The MDC has yet to make clear whether it will contest the general election due to be held in March. The expansion of the youth training programme makes it more likely that the party will refuse to take part.

Americas

Brazil

AP 19 Nov 2004 Police appeal conviction in massacre of farmers Defense lawyers: Officers not responsible for others' actions RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- Defense lawyers appealed on Friday the convictions of two police officers charged in the massacre of 19 farmworkers in the Amazon rain forest in 1996. Defense lawyers requested a new trial for Col. Mario Colares Pantoja and Capt. Jose Maria Oliveira, arguing they could not be held responsible for the actions of other officers. The two were overseeing the more than 100 other officers there, and no one knows for sure who fired the fatal shots. A ruling was expected by Saturday. Pantoja and Oliveira were found guilty of killing the protesting farmworkers during a march in Eldorado dos Carajas, 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) northeast of Rio de Janeiro. Pantoja was sentenced to 228 years in prison and Oliveira to 158 years. The two were released pending appeal, and more than 125 other police officers were acquitted in the case. The massacre began as police clashed with nearly 2,000 farmworkers at a roadblock set up by the radical Landless Rural Workers' Movement. Police opened fire, killing 19 protesters and wounding at least 65 others. One police officer was killed in the incident and six were injured. In 1999, a court acquitted officers charged in the massacre. The decision sparked protests and was thrown out in 2000, leading to a new trial in 2002. The London, England-based rights group Amnesty International sent three observers to Friday's proceedings in Para state, notorious for land-related violence. "It's time for the state justice system to show it can [ensure] equal justice for all, and for state authorities to end the killings and the corruption that continue to stain the name of the state of Para," Amnesty International said in a statement.

BBC 21 Nov 2004 Five killed in Brazil land clash By Steve Kingstone BBC News, Sao Paulo Landless workers occupation of land has caused conflict Five rural workers have been shot dead and 14 others injured in Brazil as part of a dispute over land. They were members of a landless workers group that occupies agricultural land it says is not being used. The Brazilian government has called Saturday's attack, in the state of Minas Gerais, a barbarity. Conflict over land is nothing new but this is the most violent incident since President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took power nearly two years ago. It seems that on Saturday afternoon a mini bus pulled up at the settlement near the town of Felizburgo. Hooded gunmen got out and opened fire on men, women and children. Five people died and, of the others taken to hospital, two are said to be seriously injured. 'Massacre' The victims were part of Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement (MST). In what has become a familiar pattern, they occupied the 2,500-hectare site in 2002. They say the land belongs to the state government and had fallen into disuse. But inevitably such occupations create tensions with farmers, who often have rival claims to the land and occasionally hire gunmen to clear occupied areas. In this case the MST has already accused a landowner in a neighbouring state of ordering the attack. The government agency responsible for land rights has called the killings a massacre and has promised a speedy investigation. Brazil's minister for agricultural development was to visit the scene on Sunday.

www.survival-international.org 24 Nov 2004 BRAZIL: Farmers attack Indians’ houses as violence escalates A long-running battle between 16,000 Indians and the farmers and cattle ranchers who occupy much of their land flared into violence this week. Settlers attacked several Indian villages, burning houses and shooting indiscriminately. One Indian has since disappeared. The Supreme Court recently announced that it, rather than a lower court, will adjudicate on whether the Indians’ land should be properly protected. The region, known as Raposa-Serra do Sol, is a spectacular area of savannas, mountains and rainforest and home to the Makuxi, Wapixana, Ingarikó, Taurepang and Patamona tribes. In the struggle for land rights many Indians have been killed, and hundreds have suffered violence and harassment at thehands of the invading colonists and ranchers, who are supported by powerful state politicians. The Indigenous Council of Roraima is urging supporters to write to President Lula asking him to sign a decree ‘ratifying’ Raposa-Serra do Sol as Indian territory as a matter of urgency.

Canada

London Free Press 1 Nov 2004 www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/LondonFreePress/ Genocide: A crime against humanity Millions have died in unchecked crimes around the world MICHAEL LAWSON, CP 2004-11-01 02:47:07 Several thousand people died Sept. 11, 2001, in terrorist attacks on the United States that instantly became global news. Shocking as it was, that day of horror pales in comparison to what was then -- and is now -- occurring regularly, occasionally beyond the scope of the media's eye. It's something that has come to be known as genocide. Since the beginnings of recorded history, entire peoples have been wiped into oblivion in a concerted effort at ethnic, religious or political cleansing. Millions upon millions have perished in the 20th century alone. Yet the international community has often been slow to react -- sometimes not reacting at all -- and the atrocities persist. Just as the Sept. 11 attacks gave rise to a new and now globally recognized term, 9/11, the term genocide is relatively is relatively recent, formulated by a Polish expert in international law, Raphael Lemkin, in 1944 during the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany. Derived from Greek and Latin roots, the word means the eradication of a race. The United Nations has since expanded the definition to include the destruction of any national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The most extreme example in modern times, if only in terms of sheer numbers, was the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were gassed, shot, worked to death as slave labourers or subjected to inhumane surgical and other so-called medical experimentation, often fatal. Tens of thousands of Roma -- or Gypsies -- as well as homosexuals and other "undesirables" were also victimized. Most recently and still ongoing is the carnage in Darfur, the westernmost region of the African country Sudan. An estimated one million blacks have been uprooted from their land, whole masses raped and massacred, their villages razed and their crops and livestock plundered. As many as 200,000 have sought refuge in neighbouring Chad, itself pressed for resources; many more Sudanese face death by starvation or disease. The Darfur crisis did not develop overnight. In a country impoverished and drought-stricken, Arab herdsmen from the north moved into the western region to reap what they could from the meagre natural resources of Darfur -- water and scrubby grasslands. In the face of uprisings from the desperate locals, mounted Arab militias known as Janjaweed moved in to conduct a campaign of slaughter and forced relocation, the latter a virtual death sentence for many. Humanitarian groups such as Medecins sans frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), the United Nations children's organization UNICEF and some western governments have said the Sudanese government supports the Janjaweed. The government denies it. The Bush administration in Washington has, as of last month, declared the Darfur situation a genocide. Again in recent memory is the politically charged genocide in Rwanda, also in Africa, in which opposing Hutu and minority Tutsi peoples clashed at the cost of an estimated 500,000 lives, with many more displaced. Most of those killed were Tutsis. The year was 1994; the initial carnage occurred over mere months and then continued. It wasn't until 1996 that a Canadian-led international force moved in to try to stem the bloody unrest. This August, in a small-scale mirror image of the Rwandan infamy, 200 Tutsi men, women and children were shot or hacked to death in a UN refugee camp in neighbouring Burundi. Hutu rebels justified the action as a weeding-out of the opposing Burundi army and Congolese militia. The grim reality of genocide has been most apparent since the advent of modern media technology, which brings the horrors of the Third World into western homes nightly. World leaders tune in to the same thing. So why does it continue? Politics and semantics are two factors. When the United Nations was formed with scores of countries in 1945 after the horrors of the Second World War, the multinational grouping combined diverse mind-sets in the quest for peace, security and international co-operation. The UN did adopt a covenant on genocide, but the term itself became a focus of debate. Should, for instance, the extermination of a political group be counted as genocide? Some UN members argued against it. Then there was the matter of sovereignty. One state's right to govern within its borders became -- and remains -- an issue. As recently as August, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, on the question of military intervention into the Darfur crisis, said: "This is not a simple military solution. This is a matter for the Sudanese government to handle." Political solutions take time, but time is a luxury the victims of mass oppression can't afford. EXAMPLES OF GENOCIDE FROM THE LAST 100 YEARS The stain on humanity that has come to be known as genocide has a long history. Here are a few events from the last 100 years that have been labelled genocides: Ottoman Empire (1915) More than one million Christian Armenians were forced from their homes into the Syrian desert by the Muslim government of the then-Ottoman empire, along the way to face slaughter and starvation. Decades later, Third Reich dictator Adolf Hitler is said to have been inspired by the events. He was quoted as saying: "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" Russian Revolution (1917-21) Amid political upheaval that saw the fall of the czarist regime and the rise of communism, organized mobs waged pogroms against Jewish communities at the cost of more than 60,000 lives. Stalinist Soviet Union (1931-33) Under the banner of communism, lands and crops of prosperous Ukrainian farmers were seized. Up to 10 million in Ukraine were driven out to starve to death. Nazi Germany (1939-45) Hitler's "Final Solution" in the quest for a pure Aryan nation accounted for the deaths of six million Jews and tens of thousands of other "undesirables." Many were gassed and then incinerated in death camp furnaces. Cambodia (1975-79) The Khmer Rouge Communist party was responsible for the deaths of more than 1.5 million Cambodians through execution, slave labour and starvation. The country recently agreed to a UN-supported plan to bring surviving leaders to trial. Bosnia (1992-95) Attempts by Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to gain independence from Yugoslavia brought the wrath of the Serbian government, leading to widespread exterminations. About 18,000 victims have been found in mass graves. Former Serb president Slobodan Milosevic is before an international war-crimes tribunal on charges including genocide. Other military aides have been indicted. Rwanda (1994) About 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu extremists in political strife. More Tutsis were massacred this summer in a UN refugee camp in neighbouring Burundi. Sudan (current) An estimated 300,000 people will die by year's end as residents of western Darfur region are forced from their lands. Many have been slaughtered; many more face starvation and disease. The Arab-led central government has been blamed for supporting the genocide.

NYT 6 Nov. 2004 Chile's Army Accepts Blame for Rights Abuses in the Pinochet Era By LARRY ROHTER RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 5 - After years of characterizing the human rights violations that occurred in Chile under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet as "excesses" by individual officers rather than a deliberate government policy, the Chilean Army reversed course on Friday and acknowledged that it must bear collective "institutional" blame for such abuses. "The Army of Chile has taken the difficult but irreversible decision to assume the responsibility for all punishable and morally unacceptable acts in the past that fall on it as an institution," the current army commander, Gen. Juan Emilio Cheyre Espinosa, wrote in an essay published by La Tercera, a daily newspaper in Santiago, the capital. "Never and for no one can there be any ethical justification for human rights violations," he said. An official commission is readying a comprehensive report, expected to be made public this month, on torture and other systematic human rights abuses by state security and intelligence agents during the Pinochet dictatorship. Human rights groups estimate that about 4,000 people were killed after General Pinochet took power on Sept. 11, 1973, in the American-supported coup that overthrew Chile's elected left-wing civilian president, Salvador Allende. Thousands were tortured, jailed, forced to leave the country, stripped of their jobs or sent into internal exile. The "new vision" that General Cheyre announced Friday clashes directly with the views General Pinochet has always expressed. Now 88, ailing and under almost permanent investigation in connection with human rights abuses that occurred during his 17 years in power, General Pinochet maintains that he and other members of the military high command never issued orders to eliminate opponents of their dictatorship and that any abuses were the work of a few rogue officers. He and his lawyers had no immediate response to General Cheyre's statement, which could encourage the filing of new legal charges against him. Though General Pinochet has been stripped of his immunity from prosecution in two major investigations, he has avoided a trial so far because doctors found him to be suffering from senile dementia. "It's going to be hard for Pinochet to keep arguing that he had no clue, no sense, of what was going on, and that all the atrocities were due to a few bad apples," said José Miguel Vivanco, a Chilean who is director of Human Rights Watch Americas. Two former navy commanders close to General Pinochet criticized General Cheyre's declaration. "It seems to make no sense to me," Adm. Jorge Arancibia said. The other former navy chief, Adm. Jorge Martínez Busch, said he was "not in agreement with this vision, because simply put, that's not how it was." He added: "I categorically reject there was any such policy of state, as some maintain. Responsibility is always individual." Human rights groups generally expressed skepticism of General Cheyre's timing and motives. They said that while any admission of guilt was welcome and overdue, they would only be satisfied if the army provided names of all in its chain of command who had participated in rights abuses, so that prosecutors could act on the information. "We worry that this might be just another trick to assure impunity for human rights violators," Lorena Pizarro, president of the Group of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared, said in a telephone interview. "Some defense lawyers are already arguing that since the violations were committed by the state, you cannot hold individuals responsible for that policy."

www.theglobeandmail.com 22 Nov 2004 PM pushes world responsibility Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP Prime Minister Paul Martin says his farewells Sunday to other leaders at the conclusion of APEC meetings in Santiago, Chile. By CAMPBELL CLARK Santiago — Prime Minister Paul Martin insisted yesterday he had gained ground with Asia-Pacific leaders for his push to have the world accept a doctrine that would lead to swifter international intervention to stop humanitarian crises. At the same time, he said there is now a recognition that it is "inevitable" that his proposal for a G20 group of world leaders will eventually be accepted. He suggested it might begin with a conference on counterterrorism and infectious diseases such as AIDS. Meanwhile, during a meeting Saturday, U.S. President George W. Bush yielded a move on the mad-cow dispute that could lead to U.S. borders being opened to Canadian beef as early as next spring. Yesterday, at the close of the APEC summit of 21 Asia-Pacific leaders, Chilean President Ricardo Lagos noted that Mr. Martin had opened a discussion on the doctrine of "responsibility to protect," which would lower the bar for international intervention in disastrous global conflicts. Mr. Martin told reporters later: "After I finished — I don't think I'm telling tales out of school — Helen Clark of New Zealand immediately stepped in and said that a lot more work has to be done at the official level so that in fact these discussions are held." "And a number of other countries, I'd say four or five countries, immediately stepped up and said 'absolutely,' including Ricardo Lagos himself," he said. The "responsibility to protect" doctrine would allow the United Nations Security Council to authorize intervening in a country with military action or peacekeepers when there is a humanitarian crisis, rather than a full-fledged genocide. Mr. Martin said the UN has to be reformed to act more decisively, noting that after the United States declared the violence in Sudan's Darfur region genocide, the UN conducted a lengthy debate. Mr. Martin said he also raised Darfur as an example in a head-to-head meeting with Mr. Bush. "I simply made the point that if there was ever a reason for the responsibility to protect it is the absolute nonsense of having to discuss, when people are losing their lives, to discuss legal terms. And I must say Mr. Bush was very sympathetic," Mr. Martin said. The Prime Minister acknowledged there was strong reluctance from some countries, however, that feel lowering the bar on international intervention could be used as a "pretext" to interfere in sovereign nations. China, a major APEC member, has stuck to the principle that other countries should not meddle in the affairs of sovereign countries, even in rebuffing criticism of its own human-rights record. Mr. Martin insisted that he had gained backing for his proposal to create a G20 meeting of world leaders that would expand the current Group of Eight of the world's largest economies to include rising economies and regional powers such as China, India, Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa. He suggested a first meeting could be aimed at dealing with infectious diseases such as AIDS, or at counterterrorism, so that leaders could prove its effectiveness by hammering out concrete steps to attack a major global issue. Mr. Martin has championed the G20 meetings of leaders after helping create the G20 finance ministers meetings that are now a regular institution. The idea would be to include increasingly important regional powers in a manageably small meeting of world leaders. It is also aimed in part at maintaining Canada's influence and participation in high-level leaders' meetings when the rising economic power of countries such as China, India and Brazil might make Canada's membership in the G8 seem outdated. Mr. Martin said that effort scored "a field goal rather than a touchdown" at APEC, meeting support from countries that would join the club, but a reticent stance from some G8 powers such as the U.S. and Japan.On Saturday, Canadian officials said Mr. Bush had promised Mr. Martin he would act as early as today to refer a new trade rule, which would in theory open the border to Canadian cattle, to the Office of Management and Budget, a move that Mr. Martin labelled a "significant step." The rule could still be derailed by an unusual vote against it by both houses of the U.S. Congress, but Canadian officials argued that such a block by American legislators would be "extraordinary." "I think this is a significant step forward," Mr. Martin told reporters at a press conference Saturday. Cattle farmers are hopeful that the ban will be lifted. Stan Eby, president of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, said yesterday he thinks the U.S. will "definitely" be taking live Canadian cattle next year, though he said more challenges could emerge.

Chile

washingtonpost.com 10 Nov 2004 Legal Woes Cut Into Bottom Line at Riggs Embassy Banking Proves Costly By Terence O'Hara Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, November 10, 2004; Page E01 Riggs National Corp. said yesterday that it lost $10 million in the third quarter, largely the result of $13 million in fees for a small army of lawyers and consultants to help it navigate a growing list of criminal, regulatory and civil matters related to its past dealings with former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, the government of Equatorial Guinea and Saudi Arabian diplomats. The company also disclosed that a Spanish judge, who has been seeking to prosecute Pinochet and extract reparations for the torture and death of Spanish citizens under his rule, has added Joe L. Allbritton, former chairman and chief executive of Riggs, to the complaint as well as his son, Robert, who replaced his father at chairman and chief executive in 2001. Also named are Riggs board member Steven B. Pfeiffer, managing partner with Fulbright & Jaworski and one of the architects of Riggs's international business, and Carol Thompson, a former account manager at Riggs who handled Pinochet's accounts. A Senate subcommittee in July said Riggs had handled a balance of between $4 million and $8 million for Pinochet over an eight-year period ending in 2002. According to Riggs's disclosure statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday, Judge Baltasar Garzon is seeking damages from the Riggs executives and directors for allegedly concealing Pinochet's assets. Garzon indicted Pinochet in 1996 for crimes against humanity, including genocide, torture and terrorism, and has been trying to seize his assets and bring him to trial ever since. In the fullest accounting yet of the legal entanglements that could complicate its pending merger with PNC Financial Services Group, Riggs also acknowledged that it is the subject of a criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia and the Department of Justice. Riggs said Justice subpoenaed information about Riggs Bank's dealings with Pinochet, the government of Equatorial Guinea and its overall compliance with money-laundering laws. Justice has also asked for information about "the actions of various current and former employees of the company." "Riggs is actively engaged with the appropriate regulatory and governmental authorities with respect to these matters," said Riggs spokesman Mark Hendrix. In addition to the Justice investigation, the company is a defendant in a number of lawsuits, including one filed by victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Also, a pair of Senate committees continue to investigate Riggs's dealings with Pinochet, Equatorial Guinea and officials of Saudi Arabia. In the meantime, the company's two main regulators, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve, continue to examine Riggs's dealings, including its compensation of executive officers and the possible misuse of corporate assets, including the use of the former company jet and a luxury London apartment, according to the SEC filing. The company allowed extensive personal use of a company-owned Gulfstream jet and the apartment to Joe Allbritton and his family until both were sold this summer. Analysts have said that Riggs's unfolding legal troubles might derail its pending merger with PNC Financial Services Group. PNC negotiated strict "material adverse change" clauses that would allow it to back out of the deal if Riggs's legal, regulatory or financial condition at the time of merger posed undue risk if it was assumed by PNC. Analysts, and executives at the company who spoke on the condition they remain anonymous because the merger agreement hasn't been renegotiated, expect PNC at least to negotiate a price below the more than $770 million it originally agreed to pay. Officially, both PNC and Riggs say the deal is on track to be consummated by the first quarter of next year. "Riggs is working vigorously with respect to the proposed transaction with the PNC Financial Services Group," Hendrix said. "Much of the media coverage recently has had a certain degree of speculative commentary. As a matter of policy, Riggs does not comment on speculation." Riggs was fined $25 million in May for failing to comply with money-laundering laws and for failing to report tens of millions of dollars of suspicious transactions involving Equatorial Guinea officials and diplomats with the Saudi Arabian embassy. In July the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released details of Riggs's handling of Pinochet's money, including transactions that appeared to be designed to conceal millions of dollars from regulators and from Spanish officials seeking to freeze his assets. A separate inquiry by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee is examining Riggs's handling of Saudi money. Riggs's cooperation with the investigations has been extremely costly. In reporting its third quarter earnings, Riggs noted that it incurred more than $13 million in legal expenses, compared with $1.2 million in the third quarter last year. The expenses were the main factor behind a $10 million (33 cents a share) loss in the quarter, compared with a $139,000 profit in the same quarter of 2003. So far in 2004, Riggs has lost $40.5 million ($1.37), and logged $18.1 million in legal fees.

BBC 12 Nov 2004 Daughter rues Pinochet-era abuses Lucia Pinochet has always been a staunch defender of her father The eldest daughter of Chile's former military ruler has said the use of torture during his 1973-90 regime was "barbaric and without justification". Lucia Pinochet Hiriart spoke after a report on torture and detention during the rule of Gen Augusto Pinochet was submitted to the president. The report has not yet been published, but it is said to detail horrific and degrading treatment of detainees. "I knew there were detentions... but nothing like this," said Ms Pinochet. Last year, Ms Pinochet complained that history had been distorted and her father was demonised while the man he overthrew, Salvador Allende, was depicted as a saint. But in an interview with Chilean TV station Chilevision, she said the revelations of the extent of the suffering endured by those detained under her father had left her shocked. "I knew there were detainees, that there were pressures, I even told [my father] that while he was in power, but nothing like this," she told the channel, according to La Tercera newspaper. "Really, it deeply affected me - it was a barbarism without justification." Parts of the report presented to President Ricardo Lagos on Wednesday have been leaked to the press. The extracts suggest prisoners were electrocuted, beaten, burned with cigarettes and forced to consume human excrement and urine, among other abuses, La Tercera says. Profile: Augusto Pinochet But Ms Pinochet insisted the responsibility for such abuses lay "with individuals - I don't believe... that it was at the level of government, something structural". She said her father, who is 89, was old and in bad health. "I don't think he gives this much thought," she said. "The ones who are really suffering are us," his family. The study by a government-sponsored commission is based on interviews with 35,000 former prisoners. It is the first-ever major investigation into torture during the 17-year regime. Previous reports have focused on those who were killed. Last week, the head of the Chilean army, Gen Juan Emilio Cheyre, accepted institutional responsibility for past abuses. The report is expected to be published around the end of this month.

BBC 18 Nov 2004 Pinochet spy chief denied amnesty Contreras was a confidant of Augusto Pinochet after the coup Chile's Supreme Court has upheld the jail sentence handed to Gen Augusto Pinochet's ex-chief of secret police, for the disappearance of a dissident. In a landmark ruling, it said abduction cases where the victim or remains are not found are not covered by an amnesty law issued by Gen Pinochet. The court also upheld the convictions of five former aides to Manuel Contreras over the 1975 disappearance. Human rights groups said the move was a "great victory" for accountability. "Today's ruling gives full backing to efforts by the lower courts to hold accountable those responsible for grave human rights violations under military rule," said Jose Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch. "It is a great victory for the victims' families and their lawyers, who have battled for years to bring this about." Previous conviction Miguel Angel Sandoval, a member of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left, vanished after he was arrested by secret police agents in January 1975. His body has never been found. However, the Supreme Court reduced Contreras' prison sentence from 15 to 12 years, for masterminding the disappearance. Human rights groups say Pinochet's regime killed thousands Correspondents say Wednesday's decision sets a precedent for many other unresolved disappearances that took place under Gen Pinochet's campaign against dissidents. Thousands of supporters of the previous government were killed, tortured or forced into exile during his 1973-1990 military rule. In 1978, Gen Pinochet issued an amnesty that covered human rights crimes committed during the first five years of his regime. Contreras' lawyer said he should have been granted amnesty. The founder of Gen Pinochet's much-feared secret police had already been convicted and served seven years for the killing of a former Chilean foreign minister. Contreras set up the unit that played a key role in the early years of repression of the military government.

NYT 28 Nov 2004 A Torture Report Compels Chile to Reassess Its Past By LARRY ROHTER ANTIAGO, Chile, Nov. 26 - The long-awaited report of an official commission investigating torture is finally in the hands of President Ricardo Lagos and is to be published any day now. But even before the findings are formally made public, the graphic, wrenching report is forcing Chileans to reassess their past and recalibrate their political attitudes. The 1,200-page document covers the period from the coup of Sept. 11, 1973, that installed Gen. Augusto Pinochet in power through 1989, when military rule was about to give way to a democratic civilian government. It concludes that during the dictatorship, especially in the first phase, "torture was a policy of the state, meant to repress and terrorize the population." Based on testimony from 35,000 victims, the commission, led by Msgr. Sergio Valech, the bishop emeritus of Santiago, identified 14 main forms of torture. They included physical abuse, like beatings, burns, submersion in water, electrical shock, the extraction of fingernails and sexual violations, and psychological methods, like mock executions, long periods of solitary confinement and compulsory attendance at sessions where others were tortured. Information about the report was provided by people with access to the findings. A report about the findings also has appeared in the daily newspaper La Tercera. Mr. Lagos said some of the case histories were so grotesque that "it has been difficult for me to read some passages." In an editorial that reflected the views expressed by many in the political and business establishment, La Tercera last week expressed concern that "the commission's document, conceived as a way to end an era, will end up prolonging the debate it was meant to conclude." An official study undertaken in 1991 identified about 300 locations, mostly military barracks and other government buildings, as places where kidnapped prisoners had been held or killed. The new report expands the number of sites to 1,200 and specifies which military, police and intelligence units inflicted the torture, though the names of individual officers are withheld. "One case is not enough to establish a pattern, but we have gathered enough to be able to say what went on in a particular place," said Elizabeth Lira, a psychologist who specializes in treating torture victims and who is a member of the commission. "The uniformity of torture the width and breadth of the country shows that in every regiment in Chile the policy was the same." On Nov. 5, anticipating those findings, the commander of the army, Gen. Juan Emilio Cheyre, acknowledged "institutional" responsibility for "punishable and morally unacceptable acts in the past." Though that gesture was widely praised in the news media and by human rights groups, it has won lukewarm support at best from the armed forces and among retired army officers. "For the other branches, their view seems to be that the less they say, the better," said Sebastian Brett, the Chile representative of Human Rights Watch. "They've been trying to melt into the furniture, and there has been a certain criticism of Cheyre for grandstanding." Though its role was smaller than the army's, the navy appears particularly resistant to admitting any role in institutionalized torture. The new report, however, confirms longstanding accusations that prisoners were tortured aboard the Esmeralda, the training ship that is an emblem of the Chilean Navy and has for years been the object of human rights protests in foreign ports where it docks. "There is no justification for the navy to keep sailing the Esmeralda around the world, because its image will never change," said Carlos Huneeus, a political analyst who is a former ambassador to Germany. "I hope that Lagos says it has to be sold, though what do you do with it? Turn it into a museum?" The armed forces face additional pressure as the result of a recent Supreme Court decision. For the first time, justices ruled that military officers involved in the forced disappearance of political prisoners could be denied amnesty and required to serve prison terms, a judgment that could affect hundreds of officials facing charges. Coinciding with the report, many former prisoners for the first time have been willing to acknowledge or discuss at length their experiences under torture. During the dictatorship, and even later, people who revealed that they had been tortured feared ostracism. The list includes not only ordinary citizens, but members of Congress and even Michelle Bachelet, the former minister of defense who is the front-runner in the race to succeed Mr. Lagos as president, according to opinion polls. As a result of General Cheyre's statement, there have also been mounting calls for other institutions, like the judiciary and the news media, to offer a mea culpa for not denouncing abuses and defending the constitutional order. "The Supreme Court could have saved lives, but was pusillanimous," said Ricardo Israel, director of the International Center for the Quality of Democracy, "and the press acts as if nothing happened and it had no responsibility." But the civilian right-wing parties and business groups that supported the Pinochet dictatorship and always denied that systematic torture took place are in an even more uncomfortable position. With the army having now undermined that position, they are scrambling awkwardly to adjust. "Chilean society as a whole failed, and all of us as members of that society have failed," said Mayor Joaquín Lavín of Santiago, the right's candidate for president in the 2000 election. Human rights groups and other parties immediately criticized Mr. Lavín's statement, saying it blurred the distinction between the authorities who killed and tortured and their opponents, who did not. Even the Socialist-led government in power here faces a quandary as a result of the report: how to compensate torture victims. Suggestions have included one small "austere" or "symbolic" payment to a lifetime pension, and Mr. Lagos acknowledges that the issue has slowed his deliberations. Initial estimates said 300,000 people had been tortured and might make presentations to the commission. But the much smaller number of people who came forward may have eased the government's fears of a financial drain on the budget if it were to offer a lifetime pension. "We're not sure what happens next," Dr. Lira said. "We can only demonstrate what the victims experienced in these sites of death and torture and show that the stories they have been guarding within themselves all these years are true."

Colombia

Agence France-Presse 25 Nov 2004 First 450 paramilitary fighters in Colombia turn in their weapons by Gerardo Gomez TURBO, Colombia, Nov 25 (AFP) - Some 450 Colombian paramilitaries handed over weapons Thursday, the first of at least 3,000 right-wing fighters due to surrender their arms as an initial gesture in a peace deal. The members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) turned in weapons in this remote northeastern town in a ceremony presided by the government's peace commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo and AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso. Some 3,000 fighters are to handover their weapons by December 31, as the first step in a peace deal that aims to have all 20,000 AUC members return to civilian life by the end of 2006. President Alvaro Uribe believes the deal will help bring peace to Colombia, even though larger and stronger leftist guerrilla groups are still battling the government in a four-decade civil war. "What good are guns, if these areas are living in peace, growing economically," Mancuso said during the ceremony. The handover came one day after Colombia's Supreme Court cleared Mancuso for extradition to the United States to face drugs charges. Mancuso, who has been granted a temporary stay from arrest while he negotiates with the government, ignored questions about the ruling. So far he has given no indication that he will end his fight against his extradition. Besides Mancuso, the ruling also extends to AUC founding leader Carlos Castano -- who mysteriously disappeared in April -- as well as rebel chief "Simon Trinidad" of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Both are also wanted on US drug trafficking charges. Trinidad is in a maximum-security prison. The surrender of weapons, overseen by the Organization of American States (OAS), Restrepo and Mancuso, holds special significance for the people of Uraba who have seen some of the worst violence in Colombia. Uraba is a strategic corridor used by drug traffickers and arms smugglers and has been the scene of bloody fighting between the paramilitaries, leftist rebel groups and government forces. With the disappearance of the paramilitary forces in the region, however, some local inhabitants fear the return in force of FARC rebels, who were routed from the area in the 1990s by the paramilitaries. "What we're after is the Armed Forces taking over all territories vacated by the AUC, and we have a contingency plan that will go into effect immediately," said Uraba's peace commissioner Jaime Fajardo. The military threw a double ring of security around the region for the handover ceremony. The paramilitaries taking part have been gathering since the weekend at a ranch in Turbo. They are scheduled to officially return to civilian life on December 10, except for those charged with major crimes. Under the terms of the agreement, criminal AUC members will be placed in a special holding area until a law is enacted that will establish their punishment. The government said it will soon present such a bill to Congress. The 450 fighters disarming Thursday belong to an AUC unit called the "Banana Bloc." Their leader Hernan Hernandez in an interview published Wednesday revealed that a number of his men are former rebels of the FARC and the National Liberation Army. Paramilitary groups began operating in the 1980s to combat leftist guerrillas, some of which have been battling the government in a 40-year civil war, which has claimed more than 200,000 lives. Analysts said the demobilization of paramilitary fighters is a positive step in the country's war.

Haiti

news.scotsman.com UK 7 Nov 2004 Massacre of Aristide supporters brings back memories of Papa Doc REED LINDSAY IN PORT-AU-PRINCE THE bodies had been whisked away, but a pool of dried blood covering a dirt-floored dead end of a twisting alleyway was a chilling sign that a massacre might have taken place. Residents in the Fort National neighbourhood, which like most of Port-au-Prince’s slums is a bastion of support for former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, gathered around the darkening blood the following day. Some of them say police officers wearing black hooded masks shot and killed 12 people, and then dragged their bodies away. Eliphete Joseph, a young man wearing a blue basketball jersey who claims to be a friend of several of the men who were killed last week, his eyes red with tears, said: "The police officers will say that this was an operation against gangs. But we are all innocent. The worst thing is that Aristide is now in exile in South Africa, but we are in Haiti, and they are persecuting us only because we live in a poor neighbourhood." Two days later, in a nearby slum area known for its pro-Aristide militancy, residents said armed men dressed in police uniforms and black hooded masks executed four young men. The next day, their rotting bodies lay face down in the street covered in flies. Their wrists had been tied by shoelaces, and at least two had charred fingers, an indication they might have been tortured. The killings appear to be the latest example of what human rights groups describe as a campaign of repression against supporters of Aristide, who was escorted out of the country on February 29 by US marines. The US government says he resigned, while Aristide says he was forced out against his will in a coup d’état. Some Haitian and international human rights observers are beginning to make comparisons with the darkest days of the 1991 to 1994 military regime, and with the 1957 to 1986 dictatorship of François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’. One difference, they say, is that the current government has received the blessing of the international community. Neither the US nor the United Nations, which has a peacekeeping force of more than 3,000 troops in Haiti, have censured abuses committed under the government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, who took power in March. Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, said: "When 20 to 30 people were getting killed a year [under Aristide] there was a cascade of condemnation pouring down on the Aristide government. Now that as many as 20 to 30 are getting killed in a day, there is silence. It is an obvious double standard." UN and Haitian officials deny government security forces are murdering opponents. Justice minister Bernard Gousse said: "The government is not violating people’s rights. We’ve made it clear to the police. We have to fight terrorists, but also protect the civilian population." Gousse added that the government was investigating one case of an alleged human rights abuse committed by police. Human rights observers in Haiti concede that it is difficult to document exactly how many people have been killed and by whom. There are myriad armed groups in the country, including some gangs that support Aristide and others that have shifting political allegiances. However, according to Gerardo Ducos, who is leading an observation mission for Amnesty International in Haiti, Aristide’s backers have suffered the brunt of human rights violations since the change in government. Renan Hedouville, head of the Lawyers’ Committee for the Respect of Individual Liberties, a group that was a loud critic of Aristide’s government for rights abuses, said: "A lot of us were hoping the human rights situation would improve after Aristide left. Now it is worse. The international community needs to condemn these abuses. If they don’t, they will be complicit." Brazilian Juan Gabriel Valdes, who heads the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti, said: "What we have seen in this country during the last month or two has been a resurgence of brutal violence organised probably in order to provoke a process of political destabilisation. Any state has the right to defend itself."

Newsday 7 Nov 2004 www.newsday.com BLOODSHED IN HAITI Violent tide vs. Aristide supporters BY REED LINDSAY SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT November 7, 2004 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The bodies had been whisked away, but dried blood covering the dirt at the end of an alleyway was a chilling sign that a massacre might have taken place. Residents in the Fort National neighborhood - like most of this capital's slums, a bastion of support for former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide - gathered in the alley the following day two weeks ago. Some who were afraid to give their names said police officers in black hooded masks shot and killed 12 people and dragged away their bodies. At least three families have identified bodies at the morgue; others have not seen missing loved ones and fear the worst. Tales of repression These killings and others appear to be the latest example of what human rights groups describe as a campaign of repression against Aristide supporters. "The police officers will say that this was an operation against gangs. But we are all innocent," said Eliphete Joseph, a young man who said he was a friend of several victims. "The worst thing is that Aristide is now in exile far from here in South Africa, but we are in Haiti, and they are persecuting us only because we live in a poor neighborhood." Two days later, in a nearby slum known for its pro-Aristide militancy, residents say armed men dressed in police uniforms and black hooded masks executed four young men. The next day, their rotting bodies lay facedown in the street. Their wrists had been tied with shoelaces and at least two had charred fingers, an indication they might have been tortured. Aristide was escorted from Haiti on Feb. 29 by U.S. Marines after armed groups led by former soldiers took control of most of the country and threatened to attack Port-au-Prince. The U.S. government says Aristide resigned; he says he was forced out in a coup d'etat. "A lot of us were hoping the human rights situation would improve after Aristide left. Now it is worse," said Renan Hedouville, head of the Lawyers' Committee for the Respect of Individual Liberties, a group that loudly criticized Aristide's government for rights abuses. "People are being arrested without warrants and for political reasons, and being put in jail without seeing a judge. Women are being raped by police and ex-military, and Lavalas members in poor neighborhoods are being killed," said Hedouville, who said he has received death threats. Lavalas was Aristide's party. "The international community needs to condemn these abuses." Neither the United States nor United Nations, which has a peacekeeping force of more than 3,000 troops in Haiti, has publicly censured abuses committed under the government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, installed in March. UN and Haitian government officials deny Haitian security forces are murdering his opponents. "The government is not violating people's rights," Justice Minister Bernard Gousse said in an interview last week. "We've made it very clear to the police: We have to fight terrorists, but also protect the civilian population. We will not accept human rights abuses." He said the government was investigating one case of an alleged human rights abuse committed by police. Rights observers concede it is difficult to document exactly how many people have been killed and by whom. There are myriad armed groups, including some gangs that support Aristide and others that have shifting political allegiances. Meanwhile, armed former members of Haiti's defunct military, a notoriously corrupt and abusive force disbanded by Aristide in 1995, swagger through the capital and control much of the countryside. While the government has established an office to help meet the demands of the former soldiers, it has gone on the offensive against Lavalas members in Port-au-Prince, searching homes and arresting dozens of people at a time. Catholic priest arrested The most publicized case is that of Gerard Jean-Juste, a Catholic priest who was arrested without a warrant Oct. 13 at a soup kitchen he runs for 600 children. Gousse said on Thursday that Jean-Juste, a friend of Aristide and critic of the current government, is suspected of harboring "organizers of violence." "People say I was arrested because I could be a potential [presidential] candidate," said Jean-Juste as he stood outside his cell in the national penitentiary. "Nobody is following the constitution now. We need to return to democracy ... I lived many years under [former dictator Jean-Claude] Duvalier. He killed so many people, but he never kept a priest in jail." Analysts say the government repression represents an attempt to silence Lavalas leaders before next year's elections. Lavalas maintains strong support among Haiti's majority poor. Other Aristide supporters have been arrested, but Hedouville says most prisoners are men from Port-au-Prince's slums who are not necessarily politically active but fit the description of armed pro-Aristide militants. Human rights observers say the former soldiers who control cities such as Petit-Goave in western Haiti - where they have chased out the police and appointed themselves as the government - are arresting and persecuting Lavalas supporters in a similar fashion to what the government is doing in Port-au-Prince. Government and UN officials have defended the crackdown as an attempt to put an end to violence that has left dozens dead in the past month. They blame Aristide supporters for killing police officers and trying to destabilize the Latortue administration. "What we have seen in this country during the last month or two has been a resurgence of brutal violence organized probably in order to provoke a process of political destabilization," said Chilean Juan Gabriel Valdes, who heads the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti. Evidence of destabilization has been scant. Gunfire and robberies are common in Port-au-Prince, but it is not always clear if they are politically motivated. Media attention has focused recently on the decapitations of two policemen in what has been described as part of "Operation Baghdad." But the government has presented no evidence that the Iraq-style decapitations were carried out by Aristide supporters - or that any such operation exists. Gerardo Ducos, who is leading an Amnesty International observation mission, says Aristide's backers have suffered the brunt of human rights violations since the change in government. "They are persecuting the Aristide people because they are afraid of them," said lawyer Reynold Georges, who leads a political party that opposes Aristide but is representing Jean-Juste and several other incarcerated Lavalas party members. "A lot of people have stayed loyal to Lavalas. ... The poor people, the masses, still believe in Aristide."

Peru

BBC 6 Nov 2004 The day the Maoists went to court By Elliott Gotkine BBC News, Lima Guzman faces a civilian trial for the first time The retrial of Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman has been suspended until next Friday after chaotic scenes in the Peruvian courthouse. Mr Guzman faces terrorism charges for masterminding a leftwing insurgency which led to the deaths of almost 70,000 people and cost Peru billions of dollars in damage. The date of the retrial had been set weeks ago. The special, bullet-proof protected courtroom had been completed with time to spare, and the world's media had descended on the Callao naval base, just west of Lima, for what could prove one of the most important trials in the country's history. But one should never overestimate the abilities of Peru's judiciary. For an hour hordes of local and foreign cameramen, photographers and newspaper journalists stood outside the grim, grey building. One by one we were finally allowed through the steel doors. There would just be a few minutes for filming and photographs. People with any sort of recording equipment would then be asked to leave, for security reasons. Maoist reunion But things didn't quite go according to plan. For a start, the trial didn't get going until almost 1025, almost a full hour after it was supposed to. Transporting some of Mr Guzman's followers from their provincial prisons had apparently proved tricky. ABIMAEL GUZMAN Formed Shining Path movement in the 1970s Launched insurgency in rural areas in 1980 70,000 killed in terror and counter-terror campaigns Arrested and judged by military panel in 1992 Life sentence overturned by constitutional court in 2003 When they did finally enter the courtroom, they shuffled in one by one. The last of the 16 to arrive was Abimael Guzman, known to his supporters as "President Gonzalo". With his grey hair neatly cut and combed backwards and wearing tinted, thick-rimmed glasses, Mr Guzman looked like the philosophy professor he once was. After embracing one of his comrades, the 69-year-old rebel leader shook his right fist briefly, yet defiantly, and took his seat alongside his longtime lover and co-accused, Elena Iparraguirre. Mr Guzman sat in the first of two rows now occupied by more than a dozen Maoist guerrillas. It looked like a class reunion photograph. Ban defied The scene was in marked contrast to the caged, wild-haired and wild-eyed individual paraded before the world's media 12 years ago, soon after Mr Guzman's sensational capture. The government of the day reportedly considered shooting him. But in the end Mr Guzman was tried behind closed doors by a panel of hooded military judges. He was found guilty of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment, without parole. Guzman recently went on hunger strike in prison But last year, Peru's highest court declared the country's anti-terror laws illegal, paving the way for the retrial of the Shining Path leader. Ironically, this time the media were the caged ones. We were crammed into an airless room behind the bullet-proof glass. Almost all of us had to stand. After establishing who was to be defended by whom, the presiding judge caved in to media pressure, and said he would allow the cameras to remain "so that people could see justice in action". Unfortunately many Peruvian journalists are about as respectful as a bunch of hungry hyenas who have just stumbled upon a dead zebra. Some were broadcasting the proceedings live on radio, despite mobile phones supposedly being banned. Farcical end Before long, the judge decided to kick out the cameras. Taking his cue, Mr Guzman rose to his feet. With his right fist clenched and raised high in the air, he began to rant. "Long live Peru's Communist Party!" he shouted, as his followers joined in. "Glory to Marxism, Leninism and Maoism! Long live the heroes of the people! Long live the Peruvian people!" Guzman and Iparraguirre chanted pro-Communist slogans in the courtroom The media erupted into a frenzy of flashbulbs. The judge, clearly unimpressed, suspended the hearing. And all of the accused were led back to their cells. It was a farcical end to the first day of what will be several trials for Abimael Guzman. The proceedings are expected to drag on for months (without cameras present, one can only assume). According to his lawyer, Mr Guzman is unlikely to co-operate with the hearings, in protest at what he sees as their illegality. Either way, no-one in Peru - not even the ageing rebel leader himself - expects the country's courts to free him. But there are fears that the Peruvian state is unprepared to go up against the Shining Path leader in court. Fears also abound that Mr Guzman could appeal against any eventual guilty verdict to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the hope of winning his liberty by arguing that Peru's definition of terrorism is flawed. An uncomfortable prospect for those who lost loved ones in the brutal insurgency begun by the Shining Path, or those who can remember how close it came to tearing Peru apart.

United States

Japan Times 27 Oct 2004 www.japantimes.co.jp PARTICIPATION NEEDED U.S. has no reason to fear that ICC will abuse rights By CESAR CHELALA and ALBERTO ZUPPI Special to The Japan Times NEW YORK -- After the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1998, laying out the foundations for the International Criminal Court, many believed that this organ of justice would never materialize. There were already indications that the United States would not support such a court in all its aspects. Rejection of the ICC became evident during the Bush administration, which repudiated the U.S. signature of the treaty. Yet, in spite of the U.S. opposition, the Rome Statute has now been ratified by 97 countries, and the ICC has been in official existence since July 1, 2002. During the first and second presidential debates, President George W. Bush referred to the ICC and his refusal to ratify that treaty. He called the ICC "a body based in The Hague where unaccountable judges and prosecutors can pull our troops or diplomats up for trial." That was an unfortunate and misleading statement. The ICC exercises only complementary jurisdiction -- and only over member states. This is the main difference from other international courts, such as the ones concerning ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which have primacy over national tribunals. This means that the ICC will act only when the related member state is unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute the case itself. Additionally, the case is accepted, it should first be regarded as admissible by the prosecutor and by the so-called "pretrial chamber." If a U.S. citizen is accused of a crime, the court's judges are obliged to defer to the U.S. justice system, standing down for at least six months while the U.S. conducts its own investigation. The ICC judges would be able to authorize investigations only if they decided that the U.S. judicial system was deliberately obstructing justice. Such a premise establishes, in practice, a very high threshold of protection from politically motivated prosecutions. ICC jurisdiction will be limited to the most serious crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression (in cases of the latter, only if a definition of such crimes is obtained in 2009). As for the judges and the prosecutor, they will be accountable to an assembly of member states that may remove them in case of serious misconduct or breach of their duties. The U.S. is a country were freedom and democracy are paramount and where everybody is supposedly equal before the law and where impunity is not tolerated. So it is hard to believe that the American public, if it knew that a hideous crime had been perpetrated by an American citizen, would prefer that no investigation be carried out followed by a prosecution if needed. The Abu Ghraib case is paradigmatic in this regard. When the facts were known, a prosecution began and nobody seriously could sustain the view that nothing would be done about it. Soldiers who participated in torture have already been prosecuted, indicted and convicted. Why should we presume that something different would happen if the U.S. became a member of the ICC? According to Human Rights Watch, the ICC will provide defendants more rights and protections than many countries to which the U.S. extradites its own citizens. The White House has recently endorsed a proposed bill that would make it legal for U.S. intelligence officials to deport individuals to countries known to use torture to obtain information. Monroe Leigh, a former U.S. State Department legal adviser has stated, "The list of due process rights guaranteed by the Rome Statute are, if anything, more detailed and comprehensive than those in the American Bill of Rights . . . I can think of no right guaranteed to military personnel by the U.S. Constitution that is not also guaranteed in the Treaty of Rome." Being part of the U.N. and then being criticized by rogue nations is indeed undesirable. But that is the same forum that gave the U.S. several occasions to affirm a position, to criticize an opponent and to lead the world. Not ratifying the Rome Treaty puts the U.S. in the same unenviable company as Cuba, Pakistan, North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Syria and Myanmar, which have refused to sign the ICC treaty while all major and emerging democracies have decided to do so. It is true that from a realistic point of view no government is inclined to accept the prosecution of its own leaders by an international organ. But it is not a question of popularity to abide by the law. The U.S. should take its irreplaceable and unchallenged role in the ICC, and thus strengthen its role in today's complex world. More than any other country's participation, U.S. support for the ICC could help establish the rule of law and convince tyrants and despots worldwide that they cannot act with impunity anymore. Cesar Chelala is an award-winning writer on human rights issues. Alberto Zuppi is a professor of international law at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.

Independent News Desk 28 Oct 2004 newsdesk.org U.S. Presidency Shapes War Crime Tribunals International Criminal Court faces treaty doubts By Jennifer Hamm THE HAGUE -- Luis Moreno-Ocampo has diamonds on his mind. As chief prosecutor of the new International Criminal Court, he's been investigating the use of "blood diamonds" to help fund civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The conflict there claimed three million lives from 1998 to 2002. A professorial Argentinean with a trim beard, Moreno-Ocampo made his courtroom reputation in the 1980s as a prosecutor in the trial of the military junta leaders that ruled his home country in the prior decade. Today, he considers the mass killings in the DRC to be the "most important case since World War II" and is aiming to make it the ICC's inaugural trial. Hearings are tentatively scheduled for early 2005, but funding troubles and legal questions from some of the world's most powerful nations -- including Japan, Russia and the United States -- mean that the court is facing a trial of its own. U.S. opposition Based in The Hague, the ICC is intended to serve as the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal, and handles cases against individuals. A sister organization, the International Court of Justice, addresses disputes between nations. The ICC has jurisdiction in nations that are referred to it by the United Nations Security Council, or that have ratified the 1998 Rome Statute that called for the court's creation. As of this fall, more than half the world's nations are members of the court, and President Bill Clinton endorsed it just before leaving office in 2001 -- though not without citing "significant flaws" in the Rome Statute. Among his concerns were the court's presumption of jurisdiction over nations that haven't signed on with it, and the potential for U.S. personnel facing "unfounded charges." In his endorsement, Clinton said that signing would put the U.S. "in a position to influence the evolution of the Court," but told his "successor" to not send the treaty to the Senate "until our fundamental concerns are satisfied." Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry supports the court, but he also wants to ensure protection for Americans from "politically motivated prosecutions." Those same concerns were cited by President George W. Bush when he withdrew Clinton's signature in May 2002. "I understand that in certain capitals around the world that that wasn't a popular move," said Bush in his first debate against Kerry. "But it's the right move not to join a foreign court that could -- where our people could be prosecuted." President Bush also signed into law the American Servicemembers' Protection Act, which grants citizens immunity from prosecution in any international criminal court which the United States is not a party to. Through what Human Rights Watch called the "Hague invasion clause," the law authorizes the U.S. to use "all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release" of its citizens or allies held by the court. The U.S. has also set about establishing "bilateral immunity agreements" with other nations to prevent the extradition of nationals from the U.S. and co-signing countries to the ICC. Nations that refuse to sign BIAs have seen cuts in military and other financial support from the U.S., totaling $47 million last year, while many of the more than 80 countries that have entered into such agreements have enjoyed "some kind of quid pro quo," said William Pace of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. "Discredit and destroy" U.S. officials say that the authority to create the agreements derives from Article 98 of the Rome Statute, although proponents of the court say it is a misreading of the law. The legal disagreements run deeper still: Jack Spencer at the Heritage Foundation considers several aspects of the ICC undemocratic and counter to American jurisprudence. For example, he said, the court does not provide certain rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, such as due process and trial by a jury of peers. "That's not acceptable to me as an American," said Spencer, a senior analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank. He also said the U.S. "spills more blood and expends more treasure than any other nation" in support of international peacekeeping and emergency operations, and that a lack of protection for its citizens would be a disincentive for sending troops on such missions. In fact, since the Rome Statue went into effect, the U.S. has withdrawn from peacekeeping operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Johan D. van der Vyver, a professor of international human rights law at Emory University and a self-described "party to the Rome conference," said that it would be extremely unusual for an American soldier or citizen to be prosecuted in the ICC without the consent of the U.S. government. "The U.S. in a sense does have a veto, because the jurisdiction of the ICC is excluded," he said, if the federal government were to conduct its own "bonafide inquiry into wrongdoing." He described the U.S. attitude "really inexplicable, except as a matter of American exceptionalism, Americans are above international law." Van der Vyver said the court's due process statute is a "model for the world," and that for previous international war-crimes tribunals, such as those held in Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II, the U.S. did not use juries. He said that deep-rooted anger over the 1986 judgment by the International Court of Justice against American support of the Contras in Nicaragua has led the U.S. to undertake a "malicious campaign" to "discredit and eventually destroy" the ICC. Victim needs The court's financial future remains uncertain without the support of heavyweight nations such as Russia, Japan and the United States, but in September the court's assembly of participating nations approved a 2005 budget of nearly 67 million euros ($82 million). The funding will support general operations, at least one trial and two more investigations. Chief Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo is investigating another six situations on four continents, and in 2005 is prioritizing what he described in a September speech as "the massive crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Northern Uganda." The Heritage Foundation's Spencer expressed doubts that "bloated, inefficient bureaucracies" could solve the worst of the world's problems. Even ICC proponents admit concerns over bureaucratic procedure. Pace said he feared the court might repeat the mistakes of previous tribunals in nations such as Rwanda, where justice may have been carried out, but victims were not adequately informed. He said his doubts were allayed after the court's new budget provided funding to set up more field offices for victims. J. Coll Metcalfe, a journalist who covered the Rwanda tribunal and is currently making a documentary about victims there, recalled 300-page decisions that would be "difficult for even a lawyer to make sense of." "And you can imagine what a genocide survivor in a remote Rwanda village understands of it," he wrote in an email to Newsdesk.org. If the ICC does not learn from these mistakes, Metcalfe noted, "it runs the risk of being viewed by the people victimized by crime as being a total farce." See www.heritage.org/Research/InternationalOrganizations

newstandardnews.net 29 Oct 2004 Bush, Kerry Differ Slightly on Foreign Policy, Scholars Say by Jeff Shaw (bio) Small but significant differences between the major candidates emerge on issues of international relations, interventionism and military spending, but progressive critics are hesitant to give Kerry high marks. Oct 29 - While John Kerry might not represent a 180-degree turn from George W. Bush on foreign policy issues, scholars say, he would bring certain elements to the table that Bush has lacked -- including, some contend, greater competence and a willingness to use non-military tools in the foreign policy toolbox. Though both candidates are avowed interventionists, the way they approach the use of American power is likely to differ in certain ways. Kerry is "more knowledgeable, more experienced and less ideological than the incumbent president," said Stephen Zunes of the progressive think tank Foreign Policy in Focus. But people expecting a major realignment of international relations thinking if Kerry is elected, Zunes added, may well be disappointed. "On some of these [foreign policy] issues ... there's not that big a difference," said Zunes, also a professor at San Francisco State University. "There are very clear differences on domestic policy -- the environment, civil liberties, women's rights -- but on foreign policy, the differences aren't as great as a lot of progressives would like to hope." Besides the Israel-Palestine conflict, Zunes said the candidates have a similar attitude toward American power projection, one that countermands international norms. He pointed to Kerry's vote in support of a resolution giving President Bush the authority to invade Iraq. "Granting Bush this unprecedented power to invade Iraq, as Kerry and Edwards did in 2002, wasn't just a matter of political judgment -- it was, in effect, a negation of the UN charter," Zunes said. That document permits the use of force only in self-defense or when explicitly authorized by the UN Security Council. Neither condition applied to the war in Iraq, according to most international interpretations, including that of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Kerry's speeches on the stump have shown a "rhetorical strategy [designed] to match Bush bomb-for-bomb," said Stephen Shalom, professor of political science at William Paterson University. "The question is: is that the foreign policy he's going to carry out?" Though the answer is unclear, Shalom estimates that Kerry's eye to international relationships might make him less likely to intervene in other nations and conflicts. "My guess is that Kerry would be less inclined to rush to war like the Bush administration did," Shalom said. "When Kerry says he wants to be multilateral, sure, he wants that to be a US-dominated multilateralism -- but that does put some check on the likelihood of his starting a war. Multilateralism matters not because Kerry offers a principled criticism of US foreign policy, but because it would put a check on Kerry's interventionist tendencies." An explanation for the similar rhetoric and substantive differences between the two candidates, analysts suggest, can be found in their respective party bureaucracies. "The problem with Kerry is that he still takes advice from the wing of the Democratic Party that has a record of favoring foreign intervention," says David Hendrickson, Robert J. Fox Distinguished Service Professor at Colorado College, noting that current speculation holds that Kerry would name Richard Holbrooke secretary of state if elected. Holbrooke was a key figure in the US military campaign in the Balkans in the 1990s. William Hartung, president's fellow at the World Policy Institute, an internationalist think tank, says that campaign rhetoric often does not reflect how a president will react once the rubber meets the road. Besides their parties, presidential decisions often depend on answering to constituencies and the unpredictable variability of international events. "On paper, it looks like Bush is a neoconservative and Kerry is a liberal internationalist. When it comes to having to apply their policies, it gets a little messier," Hartung commented. In Iraq, for instance, Bush eschewed multilateral measures -- but he had to go back to the UN for assistance with elections. On North Korea, Bush had to think twice about saber rattling because of regional complexities and military realities. Similarly, Kerry talks about working closer with allies, but "there may be circumstances where that won't be possible," said Hartung, including an increasingly dangerous and unstable Iraq. Shalom says that though there is only "a marginal difference" between the two on the theoretical question of when the US should intervene in foreign affairs, "the anti-war movement would be more likely to influence a Kerry administration than a Bush administration." There are, however, several clear policy distinctions to be made between the two candidates, Hartung said. First, Kerry has said he won't go full-speed ahead with deployment of missile defense, one of Bush's pet projects. Instead, Kerry would redirect the funds toward increasing US special operations troops by 40,000. Out of approximately $10 billion budgeted for missile defense each year, Kerry plans to shift $2-3 billion toward his plan for the military. Kerry also opposes research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons. Opponents say that developing a new generation of bombs could result in a new arms race, but the Bush administration plans to move forward with research. Additionally, Kerry favors working through treaties and other international agreements more than Bush does. While Kerry has indicated that there are problems with the Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming, he has criticized the president for entirely withdrawing from the negotiation process. "[Kerry] would have the United States be more constructively engaged than this administration has been on many issues - be it arms control, the environment or what have you," said Hartung. "I think [Kerry] would find a way for the United States to participate." Kerry has been critical of the Bush administration's refusal to sign onto the International Criminal Court and has spoken well of the Court, but Kerry has fallen short of commitment to signing it in any form. He has, however, been an outspoken supporter of the international ban on landmines. The candidates also differ on nuclear proliferation, which both President Bush and Senator Kerry named as a top-tier threat during the presidential debates. Observers agree that Kerry is more likely to adopt a cooperative approach to anti-proliferation efforts. The democratic candidate has repeatedly criticized what he calls Bush's inattention to the Nunn-Lugar program, a project that attempts to collect and dispose of nuclear material in the former Soviet Union. Kerry's plan to ramp up the Nunn-Lugar efforts "is one of the more powerful arguments [Kerry] has made," said Zunes. The spread of loose nuclear weapons, which the program aims to prevent, represent "a far more likely scenario of the ultimate horror -- a nuclear terrorist attack on America -- than Iraq ever did." "It's very difficult to understand why there's been such a lack of progress on Nunn-Lugar, on locking up access to Russian nuclear material," agreed Hendrickson. "That's a serious problem, and the Bush administration has not shown enough attention to it." Hendrickson said he believes Kerry would provide a different approach. One area where there is "almost no difference" between the two candidates is policy toward Latin America, said Shalom. Both candidates want to bring down Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba, and both intend to maintain the longstanding trade embargo. Bush has taken a slightly harder line, says Shalom, recently tightening the embargo by placing further restrictions on American families who wish to visit or send money to relatives in Cuba. Kerry has said he opposes these measures, Shalom notes, but considers this one of several "slight differences in tone and emphasis -- certainly nothing that talks about a different kind of foreign policy." If Kerry is elected, though, Shalom does expect certain differences in American covert action toward Latin America. "I think that some of the actions under the Bush administration that were so crude and stupid -- like backing the Chavez coup when they could have waited a day to see what happened, and not made themselves look like thugs -- I assume Kerry would be more professional about that," he says. "They're still going to have the same basic orientation toward Colombia, the intention to destabilize Venezuela, and the intention to fit the entire continent into the neoliberal mold." Another longstanding principle of American foreign policy has been support for authoritarian allies. This, according to Shalom, is unlikely to change regardless of how the November 2 vote shapes up. "The US continues to support, as it has always supported, reactionary and authoritarian regimes that support US interests," he said, citing Persian Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and nations such as Uzbekistan in the former Soviet Union. "That's been a long-term pattern, and I don't see any difference between Bush and Kerry on that." To Hal Harvey, environmental program director at the Hewlett Foundation and co-author of the book "Security Without War," this highlights a need for America to look more critically at alliances. "The question we should be asking is, what's the best way to build an American foreign policy that reflects our true values … [such as] democracy, human rights and environmental sustainability?" asks Harvey. "You can't, on the one hand, support dictators running oppressive regimes because they're friendly [to the US] and on the other hand call yourselves the beacon of freedom. This does not go unnoticed around the world." Alliances aren't valuable in and of themselves, Harvey contends, and basing foreign policy on respect for human rights is a better strategy than simply backing any ally -- purportedly democratic nation or otherwise -- that professes allegiance to the United States. In the future, Harvey expects ecological crises to cause military crises, events that require substantial planning and "aggressive diplomacy" to solve. Kerry, he says, is the more forward-thinking of the two candidates on these matters. "When you look at the long-term trends that are going to drive security, you have to look at this gross disparity of income and at environmental destruction," said Harvey, arguing that the AIDS crisis and potential food shortages in Africa could create harrowing future conflicts. "We're going to see environmental refugees in the tens of millions in the not-too-distant future. Kerry's been in touch with those long-term trends, and he's been a terrific leader, especially on environmental issues." During the first presidential debate, Kerry appeared more willing than Bush to consider some type of intervention in the Sudan, where even the US State Department says genocide is in progress. At least one scholar has more faith in Kerry than Bush to handle this crisis wisely. "If an intervention could prevent genocide, I think he'd be more willing to [engage in it] than Bush," Zunes said. "At the same time, I think he'd be less likely to use humanitarian intervention as an excuse for an intervention that actually has ulterior motives." Shalom, whose 1993 book Imperial Alibis is a comprehensive analysis of US interventionism, does not believe that the US should send troops to Darfur. The African Union, he says, would be in a better position to offer assistance, since the US has a track record of intervention for dubious purposes. "The US's dirty hands don't lead me to oppose all intervention -- but they lead me to be very careful about it," Shalom says. One thing that surprises Hartung is the hawkish way in which the foreign policy debate has been framed, especially in terms of the defense budget. "Not only is there no talk of cutting military spending, but there's no talk of even holding the line," said Hartung. Both candidates are talking about increasing military spending, though Kerry's planned cuts in missile defense could offset his other defense spending plans. This has inflamed some progressives and fiscal conservatives, but Zunes says that with many segments of the country united in opposition to Bush, little is being said on the matter. "Against almost any other Republican incumbent in history, I think there'd be much more public stress at Kerry's positions," Zunes said. "But given what's at stake here, and given that Kerry is more thoughtful and pragmatic, I think most progressives are content to keep their mouths shut until he's in office."

Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau, CA Nov. 03, 2004 Rest in peace Archer Blood, American hero BY JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY Knight Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON - (KRT) - When Archer K. Blood died last month, in retirement in Colorado, there was family, a few old friends and an entire nation to mourn his passing, but the nation that grieved for him was not his own. It was Bangladesh. Arch Blood was 81 years old and a retired diplomat. He might have had an unremarkable if satisfying career, moving from Greece to Germany to Afghanistan to New Delhi, but in the bloody year of 1971 he found himself consul-general in Dhaka, East Pakistan. There Blood witnessed the beginning of a massacre that would take hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. The Pakistan army, faced with an incipient rebellion among the Bengalis, slaughtered thousands in a pre-emptive attack on the University of Dacca and the barracks of Bengali police. Columns of troops followed the roads throughout the country, burning and killing. Blood in his first cable described what he termed a "selective genocide," alerted President Richard Nixon and national security adviser Henry Kissinger to what was happening and urged them to pressure Gen. Yahya Khan, the Pakistani dictator, to stop the killing. His cable, dated March 28, 1971, was declassified last year. In it Blood wrote: "Here in Dacca we are mute and horrified witnesses to a reign of terror of the Pak military ..." The trouble was that Nixon and Kissinger had tilted toward Pakistan as a counter to Soviet influence in the subcontinent. The administration didn't want to hear what Blood was reporting. That cable was followed by another, signed by 20 Americans stationed in East Pakistan with various U.S. government agencies, decrying the official American silence as serving "neither our moral interests broadly defined nor our national interests narrowly defined ..." Blood did not sign that cable, but he added a footnote subscribing fully to the views it expressed and then wrote prophetically: "I believe the most likely eventual outcome of the struggle under way in East Pakistan is a Bengali victory and the consequent establishment of an independent Bangladesh." He argued strongly against "pursuing a rigid policy of one-sided support to the likely loser." Nixon chose an option of trying to help Khan negotiate a settlement with the Bengalis, but added, in his own handwriting, "To all hands: DON'T squeeze Yahya at this time." So nobody in authority squeezed Yahya Khan, the killings continued and 20 million Bengali refugees poured into India. To counter reports of the army's massacre, the Pakistanis brought in a few foreign journalists for a tightly controlled tour that it said would prove that it was actually Bengali Hindus slaughtering non-Bengali Muslims. At the end of the tour the reporters would be packed off without hearing any other stories. I was on that trip. At the end of the tour, on ancient crop-duster planes literally coated with DDT, I simply declared myself deathly ill and refused to leave. Security was heavy when I left the hotel and so it was too dangerous to interview on the streets, but they couldn't follow me into the American consulate. There I met Arch Blood, who told me that he had been officially "silenced" by Washington, but that my suspicions of a continuing slaughter of Bengalis by the Pakistan army were quite correct. Blood said he couldn't speak, but he had scores of Bengalis on the consulate staff. He pointed to an office across the hall and said: "It's yours for as long as you need it. Those staffers who want to tell you their stories will come visit you there." For the better part of a day I listened to men and women who wept as they told how parents, siblings, even children had died in Dhaka and in towns from Chittagong to Naryanganj to the hill country tea plantations. When my plane lifted off from Dhaka I began banging out a lead I still remember: "Fear, fire and the sword are the only things holding East and West Pakistan together ... " I never saw Arch Blood again, but I never met a more upright and courageous diplomat. Not long after that he was called back to Washington and put in the doghouse, for as long as Nixon was in the White House. In 1971 his colleagues in the American Foreign Service voted Arch K. Blood the recipient of the Christian A. Herter Award for "initiative, integrity, intellectual courage and creative dissent." His death made headlines in Bangladesh, the nation that emerged in 1971 as Blood predicted. A delegation of Bengalis attended his memorial service in Fort Collins, Colo. His wife, Margaret, has been swamped with mail from Bangladesh. Arch Blood spread the news of a new nation being born amid calamity. He ought to be remembered as an American hero as well. --- ABOUT THE WRITER Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young." Readers may write to him at: Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 700 12th St. N.W., Suite 1000, Washington, D.C. 20005-3994.

Randolph Reporter, NJ 3 Nov 2004 ‘Night of broken glass’ recalled as start of Holocaust PHIL GARBER, Managing Editor 11/03/2004 Email to a friend Voice your opinion Printer-friendly John Baruch stood on the balcony of the top floor of his parents’ Berlin home and watched the flames rise higher as synagogues throughout the city were destroyed. Baruch, who now lives on Davenport Place in Morristown, was 12 when he witnessed what has become generally considered as the opening round of the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews. The night of Nov. 10, 1938 was termed “Krystallnacht” by the Nazis and literally means “crystal night,” but for Jews around the world it has come to mean the “night of broken glass,” a night that resulted in the deaths and internment of many Jews, destruction of numerous Jewish businesses and the beginning of a terror campaign that ultimately resulted in the murder of 6 million Jews during World War II. Baruch spoke of his memories of the dark nights of 1938 as the Drew University Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study will plans to host its 12th annual conference commemorating Kristallnacht, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., tonight, Thursday, Nov. 11. Central Berlin The Baruch home was at 11 Nymphenburger in the heart of Berlin. It was a typical German neighborhood, mixed with Jewish and non-Jewish homeowners. The young Baruch lived there with his older sister and his parents and their cook and maid. His father, Bernhart Baruch, was a World War I veteran, having served in the German cavalry. An upper middle class lawyer and businessman, the elder Baruch owned a string of clothing stores. One of his stores was right next to theChancellory, Hitler’s headquarters, and among his customers were Nazi officials. By 1938, Jewish children were barred from attending German public schools and John was a student in an American school that largely served Americans and members of the diplomatic corps. Nuremberg Laws By early 1938, ominous restrictions, known as the Nuremberg Laws, had been lodged against German Jews. Among other things, Jews could no longer have driver’s licenses or guns and their citizenship was revoked. Jewish businessmen were required to paint a large star of David on their front windows, to alert other Germans not to shop there. Hitler came to power in 1933 and over the next five years, many Jews fled their homeland but many did not. Despite the growing repression, many Jewish people, like the Baruch family, stayed and believed they were loyal Germans. “People felt this could not possibly last and that the rest of the world wouldn’t tolerate it,” Baruch said. “They stayed and in retrospect, it looks insane. My father made an enormous mistake not getting out when he could have.” The atmosphere in Germany took a sudden turn from legal restrictions to violence after the events of Nov. 7, 1938 in Paris. Two weeks earlier, the Germans had ordered the deportation of 17,000 Jews of Polish citizenship. But the Polish government refused to admit them and many were interned in “relocation camps” on the Polish frontier. Among the deportees was Zindel Grynszpan, whose 17-year-old son, Herschel, was living in Paris. When the young man learned of the forced deportation, he became enraged and went to the Germany embassy in Paris where he assassinated a Nazi official, Third Secretary Ernst von Rath. ‘Huge Crime’ “It was immediately blown up to a huge crime by world Jews against Germans,” Baruch said. “I remember my father saying this was going to be a real problem.” Three days later, the Baruch family was awakened by a phone call from the agency that insured the family stores. An alarm had sounded at the store next to the Chancellory. Baruch’s mother drove her husband to the shop, while the children were left in the care of the family cook. “By this time, you could see fires burning from our balcony,” Baruch said. His mother returned and told the children that the store had been destroyed and thoroughly looted. The next day’s newspapers said the German public had “risen against the Jews in righteous indignation for the heinous crimes in Paris.” “The story put out was one of a spontaneous eruption of feelings,” Baruch said. By the end of the night and the next night, rampaging mobs had killed at least 96 Jews and injured hundreds more, more than 1,000 synagogues were burned and almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed, cemeteries and schools were vandalized, and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps After Krystallnacht, Jews were ordered to sell their stores within 60 days to non-Jews. Baruch said his father received far less than market value for his property. After the sales, his bank accounts were blocked and he was allotted a monthly allowance. In a moment of existential, absurdism, Baruch remembered an event one Saturday morning in January 1939. The doorbell rang and two German police officers arrested Baruch’s father for failing to pay the prior year’s income tax. His father couldn’t prove he had paid and he was hauled off to jail while the police applied swastikas to everything from furniture to silverware, as the home would be sold as punishment. At the jail, Baruch’s father wrote a check for back income taxes but he remained held. However, that day, the family accountant was able to prove the taxes had been paid. The Germans refunded the check to Baruch’s father and allowed him to retain his home. “The Germans do everything legally,” said Baruch. “They found a mistake had been made, they admitted the mistake and they refunded the money.” And while the family was able to live on their monthly allowance, Baruch said his father turned to the task of finding a way out of Germany. Baruch was able to escape in March 1939 aboard one of the so-called “kindertransport” ships that brought an estimated 10,000 mostly, Jewish children to England. The Jews of Great Britain had organized the rescue operation shortly after Krystallnacht and with the permission of the German government, transported the unaccompanied children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to safety in Britain. Baruch’s parents and sister fled to France in June 1939 and after a difficult and often dangerous journey, all were able to find their way to the United States. The family settled in Queens, N.Y., when Baruch was 17. He subsequently served in the Army and later attended Harvard University in preparation for a 40-year career in the pharmaceutical industry. Baruch retired in 1990 and enrolled in Drew University, Madison, where he earned a doctorate degree in history and literature. He has been a Morristown resident since 1956. Holocaust Conference The morning portion of the Nov. 11 Kristallnacht conference will take place in the Baldwin Gymnasium on the Drew University campus in Madison. The afternoon performance will begin at 12:45 p.m. in room 107 of the University Center, also on the Drew campus. Free shuttle transportation between the two locations will be provided. The conference entitled “The Diary as Witness: Victor Klemperer’s Unique Chronicle of the Decline and Ultimate Destruction of Jewish Life in Nazi Germany” will explore the importance of Klemperer’s observations for understanding how the Holocaust unfolded in Germany. The program will feature archival film excerpts of Kristallnacht in Dresden, Germany, site of Klemperer’s observations. Morning program speakers will include Marion Kaplan, Skirball professor of modern Jewish history, New York University, who will speak on the plight of mixed marriages in Nazi Germany, and Alexandra Garbarini, Boskey Visiting professor of history at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., who will speak on “What Makes Victor Klemperer’s Diary so Unique?” The afternoon session will consist of a two-and-one-half-hour dramatic performance of Klemperer’s diaries, “I Will Bear Witness,Volume II,” by the actor George Bartenieff, graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Bartenieff has staged the performance at numerous colleges and universities, Jewish centers, Holocaust museums, and theaters throughout the United States and Europe to critical acclaim. A post performance discussion will be moderated by Marion Kaplan. The registration fee is $40 per person, which includes educational materials, continental breakfast, lunch, and the afternoon performance. To make a reservation for the conference or for more information about the center, call (973) 408-3600 or e-mail ctrholst@drew.edu.

www.playbill.com 3 Nov 2004 Award-Winning Drama Beast on the Moon Aiming for Broadway with Zorich and Metwally By Kenneth Jones November 3, 2004 Producers of the developing New York production of Richard Kalinoski's Beast on the Moon are now aiming the work — a sensation in resident theatres around the world — at Broadway in 2005 rather than the previously-announced Off-Broadway.The American play, about Armenian immigrants still dealing with the shadows of the 1915 Armenian genocide — even as they face hope and opportunity in their new home in Milwaukee — "is an absolutely universal tale of love as a healing tool in the aftermath of wartime loss," according to producer David Grillo of Stillwater Productions. The producer and partners are working toward a Broadway production in 2005, with Tony Award nominee Louis Zorich (Hadrian VII, Agamemnon, 45 Seconds From Broadway, Follies, She Loves Me) and Tony Award nominee Omar Metwally (Sixteen Wounded) attached. Larry Moss (The Syringa Tree) directs. Three workshop presentations will be heard Nov. 11-12 in Manhattan. The play — honored by the American Theatre Critics Association in 1996 — has been performed in 16 nations, translated into 11 languages, and won more than 40 awards around the world. The work is billed as "a love story, and an American immigrant story, whose two central characters are survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915." Members of the theatre industry can get more information about Beast on the Moon by calling Stillwater Productions at (212) 541-4502. * Kalinoski's play debuted in 1995 at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. The intimate four-actor show later blossomed in American regional theatres, from Los Angeles to Boston, and then around the world. The play received the 1996 Osborn Award from the American Theatre Critics Association, recognizing an emerging playwright. Playwright Kalinoski is a college professor at the University of Wisconsin, Osh Kosh, where he teaches in the Theatre Arts department. David Grillo, an actor who appeared in a 1999 Boston production of the play, is to be lead producer for the commercial Off-Broadway stand. The title, Beast on the Moon, refers to an ominous lunar eclipse. "So much appeals to me about Beast that it is hard to find a place to begin," producer Grillo previously told Playbill On-Line. "It is an extraordinarily challenging drama with a surprising number of well-earned laughs. The play takes its audiences through an emotional cataclysm and delivers them, at its finish, to joyful redemption. I don't like plays that ask me to jump through emotional hoops and then leave me beaten up by the side of the road. Beast is redemptive. The journey is hard, but one for which the audience is enormously grateful. Also very important for me right now is that Beast on the Moon is a play about Muslim/Christian relations that stresses healing." Beast on the Moon is a four-actor romance about two survivors — Aram and Seta, a young man and his mail order bride — who settle in Milwaukee between the World Wars (spanning 12 years) and seek to start a family in the wake of the genocide of their past. They end up taking an orphan under their wing. A aged narrator provides context. Producer Grillo has two degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, in Economics and Dramatic Arts, plus a masters in fine arts in acting from the Yale School of Drama. In 2003, Grillo acquired the rights to produce the play in New York, after 10 months of negotiations. This is the first time the playwright has granted the New York rights.

AP 4 Nov 2004 www.rockdalecitizen.net Leon Lim looks at names of people who died under the Khmer Rouge regime that are etched on glass panels of the Killing Fields Memorial at Chicago’s Cambodian American Heritage Museum. Museum remembers victims of Cambodia’s Killing Fields By Melanie Coffee CHICAGO — For years, Leon Lim didn’t want to talk about what he saw in the Killing Fields of Cambodia. He wanted to focus on his new life in America, not the torture endured under the Khmer Rouge and the loved ones lost. Now, Lim and fellow survivors have a forum for helping heal their emotional scars, for preserving their past, for educating others of the atrocities that can be perpetrated by an unbridled communist regime. That place is Chicago’s new Cambodian American Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, which the project’s organizers say is the only public memorial in the United States that honors victims of the Khmer Rouge. ‘‘About 2 million people died — and it’s just too much,’’ said Lim, a former refugee camp medic. Dary Mien’s starkest memory is being 6 years old and walking through rice fields littered with bodies. ‘‘The Cambodian community has just been so silent about its pain. But when it comes to this museum, that reminds them of their sense of culture, identity — and perhaps there’s a way for us to connect better with each other,’’ said Mien, associate director of the Cambodian Association of Illinois. The association developed the museum and memorial, which opened last month, as a healing mechanism. The museum is filled with items donated by survivors of the Killing Fields — everything from shackles used by the Khmer Rouge to Lim’s medical equipment to decades-old books of Buddhist teachings made with pressed palm leaves. The glass memorial consists of 80 panes, each at least six feet tall, that represent those who died when the Khmer Rouge ruled in the late 1970s. Names of the dead are etched into the panes in the Khmer language. A lotus flower is carved into the memorial’s center wall along with the words: ‘‘We continue our journey with compassion, understanding and wisdom.’’ The names of nearly two dozen of Lim’s family and friends are among those engraved in the glass. ‘‘When you have the name of a loved one etched on the glass panel, it makes you feel like they’re with you,’’ Lim said. ‘‘It helps you to heal your wounds from the past. It becomes a place for the community to come together to unify and say let’s move on.’’ Many in the Cambodian community, though, didn’t want the memorial built at first, organizers said. ‘‘We are trying to bring up the past that speaks about a genocide that some feel should be forgotten,’’ Mien said. ‘‘Their concern was that, ‘I don’t want to hear about it because it brings up such pain, and it’ll cause the community to be chaotic again.’’’ It took patience and persistence, but Cambodian Americans began to support the museum, said Kompha Seth, the association’s founder. ‘‘You can see the healing of the project, but the process to get here was painful,’’ Seth said. He believes building the museum has pushed more people to talk about the Khmer Rouge. The Cambodian communist group began a large-scale insurgency in 1970 and overthrew the Cambodian government five years later. It evacuated cities, closed schools and factories, and forced the population into labor camps, where hundreds of thousands died from starvation, disease, overwork and execution. Lim was a medical student in the capital of Phnom Penh at the time. On April 17, 1975, he was forced from his home and into a labor camp, where he stayed until 1979. Then the Vietnamese invaded, essentially ending Khmer Rouge rule. Lim, his wife and her family walked for six weeks to the border of Thailand, and Lim spent the next three years in refugee camps working as a medic. The family moved to the United States in 1981, and Lim now teaches at Northside College Preparatory High School. ‘‘I just want people to be aware of our history and our story — that there were other genocides other than the Holocaust and Rwanda,’’ said Lim’s 23-year-old daughter, Thea, who helped do research for the memorial. ‘‘I want them to know how much they struggled in the Killing Fields — and here they are, standing tall and together again. ‘‘And they survived.’’ ——— On the Net: Cambodian Association of Illinois: http://www.cambodian-association.org/ See also www.killingfieldsmuseum.com ( Killing Field Memorial and Cultural Museum in the State of Washington)

www.indiawest.com 5 Nov 2004 "North America's Most Honored Weekly Indian Newspaper" 20th Anniversary of Sikh Riots Observed Across U.S. By SARMISHTA RAMESH Special to India-West Thousands of people from across different cities in North America gathered Oct. 30 for candlelight vigils to observe the 20th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of innocent Sikhs in India following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984. From San Jose, California, to New York City and Toronto in Canada, members of the Sikh community came together to talk about their personal experiences and tragedies in the aftermath of Gandhi's assassination and the lack of justice for the victims of the carnage. Gandhi was shot dead by two of her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation to Operation Blue Star, which she had ordered in June 1984. Operation Blue Star authorized the Indian Army to enter the holiest shrine for the Sikhs, the Golden Temple at Amritsar, to flush out the terrorists who were holed up there.

NYT 7 Nov 2004 [5 Film Reviews] ONES TO WATCH The Class Acts By KAREN DURBIN [Excerpt] The Oskar Schindler of The Tutsi Massacre Over 100 days in 1994, in what has been called the fastest genocide in modern history, more than 800,000 Rwandans, mainly Tutsis, were murdered by roving Hutu death squads, while Europe, America and the United Nations did almost nothing. This is the backdrop for Terry George''s often terrifying, fact-based "Hotel Rwanda" (Dec. 22), in which the prodigiously gifted Don Cheadle finally gets the kind of leading role that should have been his years ago. He plays a real-life hero: Paul Rusesabagina, the Hutu house manager of a luxury hotel in the capital city, Kigali. Under constant siege, he turned the newly emptied hotel into a refuge for almost 1,300 of his fellow Rwandans, including his children and Tutsi wife. The little guy made great by crisis is a Hollywood staple that never goes out of style. But Mr. Cheadle is too good for telephone-booth heroics. His Paul is a dapper, hardworking man who's also a bit of a ladder-climbing smoothie, pleasantly efficient with everyone but assiduous in his attentions to the most powerful guests. Once the slaughter begins, he doesn't undergo any sudden transformations. On the contrary, what Mr. Cheadle shows us is an imperfect human being who manages to be heroic. His core decency makes him both brave and generous in the face of unspeakable brutality. At the same time, he's slow to accept another sort of brutal behavior: the way his carefully cultivated contacts - men he was once invited to drink with - have turned their backs on him. His world has been upended, but so has his sense of self, and he only reluctantly lets it go. Mr. Cheadle conveys this in the formal way Paul holds himself long after that seems useful, and in the softness of his speech. Even when he says of the powerful, white world's refusal to intervene, "We're dirt to them," it's in a tone less of outrage than stunned recognition. He's a man twice shocked - a suggestion of disbelief never entirely leaves his eyes - who rises by unsteady increments to extraordinary heights. The insightful realism of Mr. Cheadle's performance doesn't permit the viewer any easy identifying ego trips. On the contrary, you're left searching your soul to see if you could possibly do what Paul Rusesabagina did, and the best honest answer is, "Probably not."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 7 Nov 2004 post-gazette.com 1864 massacre victims' bodies to return home Sunday, November 07, 2004 By Lillian Thomas In 1864, 163 Cheyenne and Arapaho -- mostly women and children -- were massacred at Sand Creek, Colo., by U.S. troops. They were shot even as they tried to surrender, hacked apart as they attempted to escape. Their remains were treated as trophies by soldiers who paraded through Denver before cheering crowds after the massacre. David Halaas, museum division director at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, learned of it as a boy of 10 growing up in Denver. It made a deep impression on him, and he ended up returning to it as an adult when, as Colorado state historian, he became involved in efforts to find the exact location of the massacre, commemorate the site and return the dead to be buried. Steve Brady heard the stories of the massacre growing up as well -- from his grandfather, the son of two survivors. Brady, of Lame Deer, Mont., is president of the Northern Cheyenne Sand Creek Massacre Descendants. He has worked alongside members of the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho to locate and gain custody of the remains of those killed -- held in the collections of museums from Washington, D.C., to Colorado -- and mark the site of the terrible moment in U.S. history. Those efforts have led to plans for Sand Creek to become a National Historic Site. "We'll have for the first time place of dishonor as a national historic site," Halaas said. "It's historic and unprecedented. Sand Creek is a symbol for all of Indian-white conflict; it was an act of genocide on the part of U.S. government." The attack occurred Nov. 29, 1864, when Col. John M. Chivington led 700 U.S. volunteer soldiers to a village of about 500 Cheyenne and Arapaho camped along Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. Although the tribes believed they were under the protection of the U.S. Army, and witnesses later testified that an American flag and white surrender flag were flown, Chivington's troops attacked and killed 163 people, mainly women, children, and the elderly. Eventually the massacre was condemned following three federal investigations. Some of the most wrenching accounts came from John Smith, an interpreter who witnessed the massacre and the killing of his half-Indian son that day. He testified in a congressional hearing in 1865. "They were terribly mutilated, lying there in the water and the sand; most of them in the bed of the creek, dead and dying and making many struggles. They were so badly mutilated and covered with sand and water that it was very hard for me to tell one from another," he said. Asked if he had actually witnessed "acts of barbarity" by the troops, he said, "Yes, sir; I saw the bodies of those lying there cut all to pieces, worse mutilated than any I ever saw before; the women all cut to pieces." The massacre set off an explosion of warfare, Halaas said, with a coalition of tribes that formed in the wake of the massacre. "This kind of defined the relationship between the U.S. government and Indian people -- not just Cheyennes. If the people of Black Kettle, a known peace chief, could be slaughtered this way -- after that, Indian people knew their only hope was to fight." The Indians shut down major routes in the West and crushed a U.S. force sent to fight them the next year. "For the next 10 years, the Plains were just aflame in war," said Halaas. "It was a war to annihilate native people, it really was. The climax was at Little Big Horn" in 1876. After that, the tide turned and the Indians were defeated See Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site www.nps.gov/sand/ | Northern Cheyenne Sand Creek Massacre Site Project www.sandcreek.org | Northern Cheyenne Net Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center www.pghhistory.org

www.dailybruin.ucla.edu 9 Nov 2004 Hero from Rwandan genocide speaks after screening of new film Movie based on hotel owner who provided refuge for over 1,200 people MGM Studios Don Cheadle (right) in MGM’s upcoming movie “Hotel Rwanda.” Cheadle plays Paul Rusesabagina, who protected people in his hotel during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. By Jed Levine DAILY BRUIN CONTRIBUTOR jlevine@media.ucla.edu Ten years after genocide in Rwanda left 800,000 dead, a new film about one of the heroes who rose from the tragic event was screened at the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills in conjunction with the UCLA African Studies Center. Several special guests were brought in to speak after the film, including lead actor Don Cheadle, director Terry George and the real Paul Rusesabagina, upon whom the film "Hotel Rwanda" was based. Rusesabagina, who was able to save more than 1,200 people by protecting them in his hotel during the massacre, was greeted with a standing ovation for several minutes. He recalled the genocide as a time when "the whole world closed its eyes and ears." "I said to myself, 'Now Paul, this is the end of it,'" he said of the chaos that descended upon his country. Allen Roberts, the director of the African studies center, completed his doctoral research near where the genocides actually took place. For Roberts, the people portrayed in the film were all too familiar. "It's a hard film to watch, but it makes you feel there's something good about humanity after all," Roberts said. The Rwandan genocide unfolded in spring of 1994 when a plane carrying the Rwandan president, an ethnic Hutu, was shot down. This event escalated already tense racial relations between the Hutus and Tutsis – two Rwandan racial groups with a history of violence – resulting in the genocide. Over the course of 100 days, the Hutu extremist-led backlash resulted in the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus. Rusesabagina offered his four-star hotel as a refuge for Tutsis to protect them from the machete-yielding extremists. George said large studios were hesitant to support the film, forcing him to seek private funding and making it a more personal project. "When writing scripts I have always tried to find an ordinary man who is able to confront evils," George said. "You can be moved and enraged and have hope." The making of the film brought Rusesabagina, who lives in Belgium, back to Rwanda after not having visited for seven years. He has since traveled around the globe promoting the film, which is being distributed by United Artists and MGM. "Paul was instrumental to getting this film made. He was on the set at all times to make sure that it was true to his story, so it seemed natural to bring him here to speak," said Craig Greiwe, spokesperson for MGM. The screening was attended by UCLA students and faculty as well a community members. "It was inspiring. I was completely in awe because he's a person who has done things that people should do and don't," said Lynn Fine, a fourth-year international development studies student. Seeing the real Rusesabagina was the highlight for some students. "It put a real human face on it," said Matthew Sablove, a fourth-year international development studies student. "It's not just Hollywood." The idea to screen the film for an academic audience was brought forth by MGM. "They were interested in bringing the film to other audiences, specifically to an academic audience or those interested in Africa or African diasporas," Roberts said. The film is being promoted in conjunction with Amnesty International and the United Nations, and producers hope to develop materials to complement the film, such as a study guide for use in an academic setting. "It's great when the business community brings something to UCLA. It's a nice collaboration," Roberts said. www.mgm.com/ua/hotelrwanda

Iris Chang 1968-2004

San Francisco Chronicle 11 Nov 2004 Chinese American writer found dead in South Bay Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer Iris Chang, the prominent Chinese American author and journalist who fueled an international protest movement against Japan with her incendiary best-selling book, "The Rape of Nanking," was found dead from an apparent self- inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said Wednesday. Chang, 36, of San Jose was found in her car by a commuter about 9 a.m. Tuesday on a rural road south of Los Gatos, according to the Santa Clara County sheriff's office. "I'm just shocked," said retired San Francisco Superior Court Judge Lillian Sing, who was helping Chang with a documentary on aging U.S. military veterans who had suffered as POWs in Japanese captivity during World War II. "She was a real woman warrior trying to fight injustice." Stunned friends and colleagues sought to understand what might have led to the suicide of an energetic and passionate young woman who channeled her outrage over Japanese war atrocities into a busy career of writing and lecturing. Chang also wrote a history of China's missile program and chronicled the Chinese experience in America. Ignatius Ding, an activist who worked with Chang for several years in seeking to have Japan acknowledge and apology for atrocities it committed during World War II, said Chang's current project videotaping the former U.S. prisoners of war had been emotionally taxing for her. "She was doing research recently in Kentucky and ran into some problem," he said. "She got really upset, and she flew home." Chang lived in San Jose with her husband, Brett Douglas. Ding, who heads the Cupertino-based Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia, said he did not know what kind of problem Chang might have encountered or whether it was a factor in her death. He noted that she "took things to heart" and usually became emotionally involved in the tragic stories she wrote about. Chang's white 1999 Oldsmobile sedan was found on an isolated private road west of Highway 17 near the Cats Restaurant. She apparently had died from a single shot from a handgun. "There was evidence that was recovered that corroborated and was consistent with a suicide,'' said sheriff's spokesman Terrance Helm, who wouldn't disclose the nature of the evidence or if there was a suicide note. An autopsy is scheduled for today. Her husband had filed a missing person's report with police at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, saying he rose early to find his wife missing and that she had been despondent, said San Jose police Sgt. Steve Dixon. Her husband told police he had last seen Chang at 2 a.m. "She was passionate and articulate," said Ling-Chi Wang, a faculty member in Asian American studies at UC Berkeley. "It's shocking to lose such a young and talented person." "It's a tragic loss," said Chronicle book editor Oscar Villalon. "She was one of the most visible Chinese American authors, who wrote a landmark book that brought to the attention, at least among her American audience, what was nonexistent as an issue." Author of three books and many articles and columns, Chang's most famous work was her controversial 1997 book, "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II," which described one of the war's worst atrocities. Japanese army troops massacred many Chinese in Nanjing (then called Nanking) in late 1937 and early 1938, and Chang not only believed that the horrible event was in danger of being forgotten but also accused Japanese society of collective denial about it. Translated into many languages, her book galvanized a redress movement in the United States. It was lauded in the U.S. media, drew criticism from several U.S. scholars on Japan and was vilified by right-wing publications in Japan. The book also propelled Chang into an international spotlight. The year after it appeared, the Organization of Chinese American Women named her National Woman of the Year. She received honorary degrees and lectured widely at universities, bookstores and conferences. She delivered the commencement address at Cal State Hayward in June. "She has been a real role model for young Chinese Americans," Ding said, adding that Chang inspired many to consider being authors and journalists. "She was also well-respected in China," he said. Wang said she was an important interpreter of the Chinese American experience to the general public, adding that in her book on Nanjing, "she has done more than anybody to call attention to the outrage that took place." Helen Zia, Bay Area author of "Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People," said Chang "wanted to bring voices to the fore, the stories shunted aside and ignored in history. This is a huge loss." Andrew Horvat, Tokyo representative of the San Francisco-based Asia Foundation, said that "there will always be controversy over the accuracy and balance of her writings" but that she "did raise a level of consciousness that wasn't there before. ... In that sense, I think her contribution was very positive." Chang's most recent book, "The Chinese in America," was named one of the best books of the year by The Chronicle. Her first book, "Thread of the Silkworm," told the story of the Chinese scientist who guided the developmen