• France ‘helped’ Syrian defector

    Sep 10

    A former General in the Syrian Republican Guard, who defected to Turkey in July, has claimed that French secret agents helped him escape.

    "The French [intelligence] services helped me get out of Syria and I thank them for that," said General Manaf Tlass to French TV Channel BFM.

    "For me the situation in Libya is nothing like Syria, it is much more complicated. I don't see any foreign intervention being able to reach a solution," Tlass added.

    The General was criticised by rebels even after his defection, as he was in President Assad’s inner circle, but he said he has been on the rebel side ‘since March’.

    "Since the start of the revolution I had meetings with the revolutionaries ... and I had the feeling from the first days, the first months that the regime was lying to everybody. That is why I at first defected while staying in my office," he said.

    "My role is to unify and bring together our people. There are many groups working in our society whether the army, internally or externally,

    "We need to create a compact chain to bring this regime down."

  • China deploys warships after Japan announces purchase of disputed islands
    China has reportedly deployed two navy boats and lashed out at Japan, after Tokyo announced that it would purchase a number of disputed islands claimed by the two nations.

    The Japanese government has stated that they will pay a total of 2.05 billion yen (around £16.4 million) for the islands, from a private Japanese family whom they recognise as the current owners. The transfer is set to go through at the end of this month.

    The news sparked a furios reaction from China who reportedly deployed two navy vessels in the area. Furthermore, China’s foreign ministry warned Japan that it would have to “bear all serious consequences”. It went on to say,
    “Long gone are the days when the Chinese nation was subject to bullying and humiliation from others. The Chinese government will not sit idly by watching its territorial sovereignty being infringed upon.”
    Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao also commented on the issue, stating,
    "The Diaoyu Islands are an inalienable part of China's territory, and the Chinese government and its people will absolutely make no concession on issues concerning its sovereignty and territorial integrity."
    Meanwhile Japan’s Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba stated that the purchase was for "peaceful and stable maintenance of the islands", telling reporters,
    "We cannot damage the stable development of the Japan-China relationship because of that issue. Both nations need to act calmly and from a broad perspective.”

  • Rwanda faces fresh accusations of ‘supporting’ Congo rebels

    A human rights report published today by the US rights group, Human Rights Watch, accused M23 rebels of carrying out war crimes that included summary executions, rape and forced recruitment of child soldiers, since breaking away from Congo’s army.

    In the report, Human rights Watch argued the UN Security Council should already be considering sanctions on high ranking officials that were allegedly responsible for violations of an arms embargo as well as international criminal law.

    Highlighting the Rwandan authorities’ potential liability for war crimes, Anneke van Woudenberg, senior Africa Researcher at Human Rights Watch said,

    “From a legal perspective because Rwanda is directly involved in the conflict both in providing recruits and fighting, it could be made accountable for war crimes.”

    Rwandan officials continued to deny accusations of spurring on the conflict in Congo, blaming “western diplomatic blundering and Congolese incompetence, for causing the crisis.”

    Despite Rwanda’s continued defiance, the sustained allegations against the nation suggests that Rwanda will have to the consequences of it’s actions.

    Britain Germany Holland and the African Development Bank have all delayed direct monetary aid to President Kigali in response to the allegations, although Britain reinstated half the aid it was due to deliver this year.

  • Hashemi rejects death court verdict

    Tariq al-Hashemi, the fugitive Iraqi vice-president has rejected the verdict and death sentence of a court in Baghdad, claiming it was politically motivated.

    Talking at a press conference in Turkey, Hashemi said he was innocent and that the charges were ‘politically motivated’ against him.

    "The verdict is unjust, politicised, illegitimate and I will not recognise it,

    "But I put it as a medal of honour on my chest because it was al-Maliki, not anyone else, behind it. I'm proud that it is al-Maliki, and not anyone else, to target me.

    "I reiterate that I'm innocent, and am ready to stand before a fair judicial system and not a corrupt one that is under al-Maliki's influence."

  • Saif trial pushed back after al-Senussi arrest

    The trial of Saif al-Islam, the son of Colonel Gaddafi, has been pushed back after Libyan authorities announced they would be seeking new information for his prosecution, following the arrest of Gaddafi's former spy chief.

    The trial was scheduled to take place in the Libyan city of Zultan after the International Criminal Court's request to try Saif at the Hague for war crimes was rejected. Following al-Senussi's extradition from Mauritania earlier this year, Libyan prosecutors now state that they need more time to collect evidence against Saif with prosecutor Milad al-Zintani saying,

    “We were ready to try Saif al-Islam this month but after bringing back Senussi to Libya, new information will come to light which will delay the trial for at least five months,”

    The announcement comes as the ICC and Libyan Council on Freedom and Human Rights continued to raise concerns that Saif al-Islam may not receive a fair trial, stating that steps to ensure fair treatment has been bypassed.

    The former spy chief Buzeid Dorda has already appeared on trial with former foreign minister Abdel-Ati al-Obeidi and former secretary general of the General People’s Congress Mohammed Zwai due to also appear in court Monday.

  • Syrian rebels accused of executing soldiers
    Rebels from the Free Syrian Army have been accused of executing government soldiers, after a video emerged showing what appeared to be at least 20 dead bodies, blindfolded and handcuffed.

    The amateur videos posted online showed men who identified themselves as from the rebel Salman al-Farisi battalion in Aleppo, standing over the bound uniformed bodies on a pavement.

    The execution allegations were reiterated by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights who stated that the incident had occurred sometime over the weekend.

    See video from Russia Today below (graphic images).

    Meanwhile, Navi Pillay, the UN human rights commissioner, said on Monday,
    “The use of heavy weapons by the government and the shelling of populated areas have resulted in high numbers of civilian casualties, mass displacement of civilians inside and outside the country and a devastating humanitarian crisis.”
    “I am concerned that they may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity”
    “I am equally concerned about violations by anti-government forces, including murder, extra-judicial execution and torture, as well as the recently increased use of improvised explosive devices.”

  • European human rights body urge Ukraine to hold a fair and free parliamentary vote
    One of Europe’s top human rights watch dog urged Ukrainian authorities to ensure that the conduct of the parliamentary election, due to take place next month,  was free and fair. The human rights body warned that the continuing imprisonment of Ukraine’s main opposition leader did not bode well for the country.

    The Council of Europe Secretary-General, Thorbjorn Jagland, condemned the imprisonment of opposition leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, stating that it was still “ very important that the elections are being held and that they be free and fair.”

    The rights groups accuse the current president, Viktor Yanukovych, of concentrating too much power in his own hands, and regressing from the democratic achievements of the Orange Revolution, which was spear headed by Tymoshenko.

    Responding to criticism, President Yanukovych told Jagland that Ukraine was consistently implementing democratic reforms.
  • Clinton dismisses Russian plan for Syria

    A Russian proposal for a new Security Council resolution on Syria has been dismissed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

    Mrs Clinton said that it was pointless to pass a resolution with ‘no teeth’, whilst talking to reporters after holding talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Putin at the end of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit.

    "We have to be realistic. We haven't seen eye-to-eye... that may continue,"

    "There is no point to passing a resolution with no teeth because we've seen time and time again that Assad will ignore it and keep attacking his own people.

    "I will continue to work with Foreign Minister Lavrov to see if we can revisit the idea of putting the Syrian transition plan that we agreed to in Geneva earlier this summer into a Security Council resolution.

    "But as I underscored yesterday... that will only be effective if it includes consequences for non-compliance."

    She also said that if the differences between Russia and the US continued, they would "work with like-minded states to support a Syrian opposition to hasten the day when Assad falls, and to help prepare Syria for a democratic future and help it get back on its feet".

  • Iraq’s fugitive VP sentenced to death

    Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi has been sentenced to death in absentia for running death squads targeting the country’s Shia majority.

    The fugitive vice president was the most senior Sunni Muslim in the Iraqi government, dominated by Shias.

    He went on the run after he was charged last December, when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a warrant for al-Hasjemi’s arrest, sparking a major political crisis and accusations by Sunni politicians that he was provoking sectarian conflict.

    Tensions have been running high since December, with a sharp increase in sectarian violence in recent months.

    Hashemi is now in Turkey, where he has been holding talks with Iraqi Kurdish and Turkish politicians.

  • Kosovan rebel alleges organs sold on black market
    A former Kosovan Albanian rebel has testified “in detail” on how Serb prisoners had organs removed for sale in the black market during the Kosovan war, according to Serb psoecutors.

    Serbia's War Crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic stated that,
    "We have a witness who testified about a medical procedure, done in northern Albania, that consisted of harvesting organs from Serbs kidnapped during the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo"
    "He described a surgery harvesting a heart from a Serb prisoner at a location near (the northern Albanian town of) Kukes in the late 1990s."
    The witness then further alleged that the organ was transported to Rinas airport near the capital of Tirana.

    The European Union launched an investigation into organ harvesting in the Kosovan war, led by American prosecutor John Clint Williamson, after a 2010 Council of Europe report.

    Vukcevic said he expected "that the witness' testimony will help prosecutor Williamson's probe."

    See report from AFP here.
  • Hopes for UN backed ‘Neutral International Force’ to ensure peace in Congo

    The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), hosted by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, to address the conflict in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, ended without the creation of a concrete plan to establish peace in the area.

    However, the ICGLR did make some progress on working towards the implementation of a ‘Neutral International Force’.

    The idea was agreed upon by several regional leaders to combat the rebels in the provinces. The conference decided that regional defence ministers should meet immediately to work towards “operationalisation of the Neutral International Force within three months.”

    The Great Lakes leaders of the conference also concluded in a statement that the neutral international force would be “deployed under the mandate of the African Union and the United Nations.”

    Rwandan president Paul Kagame, who faces UN accusations of propping up the Congolese rebels, did not attend the conference, but sent his Defence Secretary to represent him.

    A new summit has been scheduled for next month.

  • Haqqani network designated as ‘terrorist organisation’ by USA
    The US has decided to designate the Pakistan-based Haqqani network as a terrorist organisation on Friday, in a move that will be seen as a test to US-Pakistan relations.

    The decision will mean that the now blacklisted group will now be subject to sanctions, a freezing of assets and will prevent any US individuals or companies from having ties to the group.

    The move, announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, comes after the US Congress set a deadline for the Obama administration to make a decision on the group in July.

    She stated that whilst classifying the group as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation,
    "We also continue our robust campaign of diplomatic, military and intelligence pressure on the network, demonstrating the United States's resolve to degrade the organisation's ability to execute violent attacks."
    However, the decision may harm US-Pakistan relations and peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan, both of whom the Haqqani network is thought to have close links with.

    Former head of the US military, Admiral Mike Mullen stated last year that the network was a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, making the relationship a point of contention between the two nations.

    Earlier reports of a deal thought to have been struck by the US with the Haqqani group was strenuosly denied by US officials.
  • Burma heading towards 'xenophobic' Sri Lanka warns HRW
    This week saw the second largest City in Burma, Mandalay, experience Buddhist monk-led demonstrations against the Muslim Rohingya, receiving criticism from many observers.

    Commenting on the situation, Phil Robertson, the Deputy Director for Asia Human Rights Watch said,
    “If more people fail to speak up, Burma could be headed towards Buddhist xenophobia similar to the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka.

    And that’s the concern that we see today in Burma that if this continues, if the Burmese monkhood continues to come out and press against the Rohingya in this way, we will be on the road to a kind of Sri Lanka situation with the Rohingya, where you have the Buddhists across Burma raising their hands against Rohingya.

    Juliane Schover, a scholar studying Burma’s Buddhist traditions, outlined how Buddhism had been strongly infused with what constitutes to Burmese identity, saying,
    “the saying you know, ‘to be Burmese is to be Buddhist’ is one that was first articulated in the early 1910s when the initial struggles for independence became and it was a way of asserting Burmese identity”
    Rachel Fleming, the Advocacy Director for the Chin Human Rights Organization, noted that the, predominantly Christian, western Chin state were viewed as such a threat to national identity that monks were dispatched to try to convert them to Buddhism.
    She stated,
    “Those monks were primarily loyal to military rule and Burma army soldiers exacted forced labour from Chin Christians to build Pagodas and monasteries for those monks”
    The Vahu Development Institute said that authorities have long sought to impose the Burman majority views on the population by keeping the minorities out of power.
    Responding to the concerns, the Burmese authorities said that, although the discriminatory Buddhist monk demonstrations were allowed to take place, they tried to discourage it.

    See here for full report from VoA here.     Burma’s monks have, at times, taken lead roles in times of popular unrest, earning them the reputation of being champions of democracy and freedom.

    However, though some of the struggles may have been seen as noble, analysts have noted that “historically Burma’s Buddhism has been influenced by racist nationalism that occasionally resurfaces”.

  • EU ministers threaten Iran with more sanctions

    Members of the European Union have warned Iran of fresh sanctions over its controversial nuclear programme.

    British Foreign Secretary William Hague said sanctions are already impacting Iran, but that it was "necessary to increase the pressure on Iran, to intensify sanctions, to add further to the EU sanctions," he said to reporters after informal talks with other EU foreign ministers.

    German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle expressed frustration over the lack of progress and said Iran has made no “substantial offer" to make clear the intentions of its nuclear programme.

    Russian Minister Sergei Lavrov criticised the sanctions on Iran, saying it harmed their economic interests as they were "increasingly becoming extra-territorial in nature."

    But other EU ministers criticised Russia’s position.

    "If Mr Lavrov wants to avoid sanctions it would be simpler to take part in a political consensus at the Security Council," said Belgium's Foreign Minister Didier Reynders.

    "If he criticizes the sanctions because they affect the economy, we should also, we Italians, and we Europeans, be the first to criticise the sanctions," said Giulio Terzi, Italy's foreign minister.

    "The question is not economic interest, the question is the security of our citizens, not only in the neighbouring countries, but the security of all Europe in the face of a potential threat from a nuclear armed Iran."

  • Russia rejects US pressure on Syria

    Russia has rebuffed calls by the US to increase pressure on Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step down.

    Secretayr of State Hillary Clinton urged Russia to support the UN in taking action to end the conflict, saying that Congress may abolish trade restrictions still in place since the Cold War.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told journalists that the Kremlin is against sanctions against Syria and Iran, after talks with Clinton on Saturday.

    "Our American partners have a prevailing tendency to threaten and increase pressure, adopt ever more sanctions against Syria and against Iran," Lavrov said, according to AFP.

    "Russia is fundamentally against this, since for resolving problems you have to engage the countries you are having issues with and not isolate them.

    "Unilateral U.S. sanctions against Syria and Iran increasingly take on an extraterritorial character, directly affecting the interests of Russian business, in particular banks.

    "We clearly stated that this was unacceptable, and they listened to us. What the result will be, I don't know."

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