‘Amnesty International, war propaganda, and human rights terrorism’

by Gearóid Ó Colmáin, source

In Jaramana on the outskirts of Damascus on 7 August, 18 civilians were blown to bits. Among the dead were children. The Russian government condemned the crime against humanity. The crime was hardly even reported in the Western press, not to mention the silence of Western governments who are supplying the terrorists with arms. Perhaps the babies murdered in the attack were supporters of Bashar al-Assad and were therefore guilty.

Meanwhile in the “land of human rights”, Parisians sipped coffee reading France’s “journal sérieux” Le monde. The French daily published a story from an organization internationally recognized for its role in defending ‘human rights’: Amnesty International.

Amnesty International was outraged at the violence against civilians in Syria. But there was no mention of the Jaramana massacre. Strangely, they had not heard the news. They were unaware that terrorists had planted a bomb in a crowded civilian area in Jaramana murdering civilians. Instead, the Le Monde article quoted statements made by Donatela Rovera, an Amnesty activist who had spent some time with similar groups to those who had planted the Jaramana bomb.

Rovera was outraged at the Syrian army’s determination to defeat the terrorists. “The regime is using banned weapons” she said. In Rovera’s twisted view, banned weapons would not include car bombs planted in crowded market squares. Banned weapons are the weapons that all national armies fighting to defend their nations use, such as ballistic missiles.

Rovera, our “human rights” activist was forced to admit that some crimes may have been committed by her beloved “rebels” but she, like a true professional, took great care to spin their crimes as collateral damage:

“The war crimes which they commit essentially target members of the government forces and their militia whom the rebels capture, but these groups have also become more visible among the civilian population, upon whom they force their viewpoint.”

Amnesty’s human rights militant doesn’t elaborate on just what that viewpoint is. She makes no mention that her beloved rebels are forcing women in occupied Aleppo to wear the burka, nor does she mention the fact that they are using food as a weapon against the people in an attempt to starve them into submission. No, the message is clear, the rebels are the good guys, although there are some rogues among them.

Is it not astonishing that a government that AIMS to kill as many as possible of its own people, a tyrannical monster that sadistically massacres scores of its own citizens day after day, could manage to stay in power, in spite of the fact that so many of those citizens support the heroic car bombers attacking that government, support the head-hackers opposing that government, cheer on the child soldiers wielding guns they can barely lift against that government, and that such a “popular uprising” could have the full logistical, propaganda, and military support of the most powerful nation the world has ever known, and still after two-and-a-half years of head hacking, cannibalism, and murdering mayhem, the Al-Qaeda “rebels” still can’t bring the “revolution” to a close?

For Amnesty International, the small babies in the Jaramana rubble are obviously “government forces”. If the opinion of Amnesty International were to the contrary, they would have published condemnations of such crimes. They didn’t and are therefore complicit in these crimes. This is what Amnesty International has been doing now for many years and since the start of this war against the Syrian people, Amnesty has been unwaveringly on the side of the aggressors. Their reports of the war have all been based on “activists say” and “according to activists”, “human rights militants” and yet they have condemned the Syrian government on the basis of all these wholly unsubstantiated claims by their so-called “reliable” sources, who have been caught committing crimes and blaming them on the government since unknown snipers opened fire on protestors and police in the town of Deraa in March 17, 2011.

Amnesty International is a war propaganda organization for imperialism. In fact, the majority of the most highly publicized human rights organisations in the West function as ideological indoctrination agencies for neo-colonialism and imperialism. In this respect, they have replaced the Christian missionaries of the 19th century who provided the justification for colonial subjugation on the pretext of spreading “Christian civilization”. Christian value-spreading colonialism has been superseded by human rights promotion.

During the terrorist campaign led by the CIA’s Mujahedeen against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan during the 1980s, Amnesty International published a report condemning alleged torture and human rights abuse against the Mujahedeen terrorists by the Afghan government, while ignoring the car bombings and atrocities against civilians being committed by Bin Laden and his hoards of drug-dealing thugs, racists, and misogynists.

The mastermind of the ‘Afghan Trap’, designed to provoke a Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, was US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. He is also a former director of Amnesty International. The current director of Amnesty International’s American section is Suzanne Nossel, former US State Department Assistant Secretary for International Organizations. It is time to question not only Amnesty International but the entire ideology of human rights.

Human Rights versus Social Rights

French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that man as an ‘empirico-transcendental doublet’ was essentially an invention of the 18th century, arguing that the notion of individuality conceived as transcendental ego separable from social and historical forces, first appears in Western philosophy during the Enlightenment. Foucault celebrated the “death of man” as human beings began to be conceptualized by structuralists and post-structuralists as decentered points in a vast matrix of power relations, a vision which ultimately deprived the human being of agency. The political consequence of this profoundly Nietzschean conception of man is relativism, nihilism and petty-bourgeois, reactionary leftism, which opposes everything and defends nothing. However, in spite of their rejection of man post-structuralists and postmodernists still defend human rights.

Marxists also reject the notion of human rights due to the fact that it represents a bourgeois conception of the human being. For Marxists, human rights are bourgeois categories that correspond to bourgeois class interests.

Many left-wing activists defend the notion of human rights. There are others, however, who contend that the concept of human rights should be critiqued and rejected; human beings as social entities are what we should be defending; human beings as socially and historically constituted actors, shaped by their environment but also capable of shaping and overcoming that environment; complex social, dialectical beings not abstract egos with rights.

It should not surprise us that human rights agencies would function as the propaganda departments of imperialism. The concept of the rights of man was born with the historical rise of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist mode of production. Therefore, human rights go hand in hand with the rights of property. Human rights are always property rights; the rights of exploiters; the rights of oppressors, of the terrorists.

Instead, we need to defend social rights. Man, as Aristotle argued, is a political animal, that is to say, an animal whose being is inseparable from the polis, the social fabric, the community. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and similar rights-based organizations are the call girls and rent boys of a new type of hyper-individualist imperialism that is threatening the future of human beings’ ability to empathize with the suffering of others. Human rights groups are more interested in “rights” than humans, with titles and deeds than emotions and passions, with being on the “right” side of political correctness than being truthful and honest; with the liberty of the market than the liberty of the human being.

Peace activists should not only denounce, expose, and condemn their lies and manipulation but the very philosophy of human rights itself; for human beings cannot be conceptualized as entities born with inalienable rights but rather as social beings growing and evolving in dynamic communities that impose ineluctable duties, debts and obligations upon them towards their fellow toilers and labourers. Without such complex relations of interdependence there would be no society and consequently no human beings.

We should reject abstract human rights and proclaim concrete social rights; rights to free housing; the right to democratic ownership of means of production; the right to live in peace; the right to a job; the right to privacy; the right to free education, transport and health care; the right to healthy food and water; the right to freedom of expression.

We should not forget that most, if not all, the unspeakable crimes of this war have been committed by the so-called rebels. We should not forget the massacres of Houla, Banias, Hatleh, Aleppo University, among countless others less known, less publicized; and now the massacre of Jaramana. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others, have been complicit in covering up these crimes. They should be held to account. It is not because Amnesty International is a phony human rights organization that it is complicit in the war crimes being committed against the Syrian people; rather, Amnesty’s war propaganda on behalf of imperialism is simply a corollary of the bourgeois ideology adhered to by all human rights groups. The current “humanitarian” wars so zealously defended by human rights fanatics are symptomatic of a deep crisis of civilization.

In the 1960s, France’s Maoist film director Jean-Luc Godard attempted to show in his nightmarishly prescient film Le Weekend how French bourgeois ideology would turn civilized humans into blood-thirsty cannibals. This author has heard numerous commentaries in the French and international press playing down and explaining the cannibalism of some of the Syrian terrorists as a reaction to the unfathomable “brutality” of the “regime”. Cannibals and psychopaths have been converted into Montaigne’s noble savages. This is the ideology of a decadent consumer society where certain atavistic tendencies of hunter-gatherism are re-emerging in the chaos caused by the slow death of technocratic capitalism.

We must document crimes such as the massacre of Jaramana and expose those who attempt to cover for their perpetrators, not because they are violations of human rights but because they are violations of humanity and the social networks that sustain meaningful human relations. We must stand up for the human being and consign human rights to the dustbin of history.

Canada allows spy agency to use information obtained through torture

Press TV

Canada has given the country’s spy agency permission to use information extracted from suspects through torture, despite claims that it would never use such data, Press TV reports.

Canada’s intelligence services, including the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), have recently been given an annual budget of about $400 million to use and share information extracted through the use of torture, despite the Canadian government saying it does not condone such acts.

Human rights activists condemned the move, arguing that Canada is propagating the use of torture.

“Whenever information obtained under torture is used by other people, whoever that may be – a police officer, a government agency, a journalist, anyone – then all that is doing is encouraging the torturers to continue to torture. It’s essentially creating a market,” said Robert Alexander Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada.

In a directive, issued in December 2010, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was given permission to employ such information in cases where it claimed ‘public safety is at stake’.

The move is part of a broader, so-called Five Eyes intelligent sharing network involving the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

“All that does is [to] deepen the concern that this is very clearly now deeply entrenched policy in Canada, that the government is prepared to allow security and policing agencies to make use of information that may have been obtained under torture and that raises very serious international human rights concerns,” said Neve.

This comes despite the fact that in 2009, Canada’s then-Public Safety Minister had pledged that the government would never use information obtained by torture.

The use of torture during confessions has been widely criticized by human rights groups that say the practice may cause people to lie or make false admissions.

UN Human Rights chief: Whistleblowers need protection

by Carlos Latuff

UN Human Rights chief: Whistleblowers need protection

Al Manar

In her first reference to whistleblower Edward Snowden’s case, UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay has called on all countries to protect the rights of those who uncover abuses and stressed the need to respect the right for people to seek asylum.

Commenting on the fugitive former US intelligence contractor, who is presently wanted by the US for leaking classified details of its surveillance programs, Pillay noted that undue surveillance could amount to an infringement of human rights.

“National legal systems must ensure that there are adequate avenues for individuals disclosing violations of human rights to express their concern without fear of reprisals,” said Pillay.

“Snowden’s case has shown the need to protect persons disclosing information on matters that have implications for human rights, as well as the importance of ensuring respect for the right to privacy,” she added.

Snowden appeared with human rights activists during a press event at Sheremetyevo International Airport on Friday, during which he expressed thanks for “all offers of support or asylum I have been extended,” which so far include Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua.

At the same time, Snowden indicated that he would seek asylum from Russia, at least for the time being, until such time as travel to Latin America would be possible.

Meanwhile, the White House warned Russia not to offer the former intelligence contractor a “propaganda platform,” while the US ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, called a member of the humans rights delegation on Friday and asked her to pass on a message to Snowden that he was not considered a whistleblower by the US, reports the Guardian.

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Asylum for Snowden won’t stop Greenwald from publishing more leaks

RT

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has indicated that he is willing to halt his leakage of US secrets, a condition for gaining Russian asylum, though the journalist who first published information from those leaks intends to continue.

Glenn Greenwald, a journalist working with both the British Guardian newspaper and Brazil’s O Globo, had been in direct contact with the now fugitive Snowden and coordinated with the former intelligence contractor ahead of publishing information on secret online surveillance programs.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that asylum for Snowden would be offered only under the condition that he releases no further information that could prove damaging to the US. Greenwald, however, has indicated that he would consider the intelligence provided by Snowden already in his possession fair game.

“There are many more domestic stories coming, and big ones, and soon,” Greenwald wrote in an email to Politico on Friday.

“Given everything I know, I’d be very shocked if he ever asked me that,” Greenwald told Politico when asked if he would halt publishing any sensitive information if Snowden were to ask.

“I’d deal with that hypothetical only in the extremely unlikely event that it ever happened, but I can’t foresee anything that would or could stop me from further reporting on the NSA documents I have,” he added.

On Friday, Snowden said that he would remain in Russia until able to get safe passage to Latin America, where he has been offered political asylum by Venezuela as well as Honduras. Comments made during a meeting with human rights activists at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport Friday also indicated that he intended to renew a petition for asylum from Russia.

“Snowden is serious about obtaining political asylum in the Russian Federation,” said Vyacheslav Nikonov, a lawmaker who attended the meeting at the Moscow airport, reports The Guardian.

Most recently, Greenwald in conjunction with several reporters with O Globo published further information showing the existence of a wide array of surveillance programs tracking citizens of South American countries.

O Globo cited documents this week indicating that from January to March of 2013, NSA agents carried out “spying actions” via the ‘Boundless Informant’ program, which collected telephone calls and Internet data. Agents also used PRISM from February 2 to 8 this year, O Globo said.

Essentially all of Latin America is reported to be targeted for surveillance, including Argentina, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Paraguay, Chile, Peru and El Salvador. The most intense surveillance according to O Globo seems to have been directed at Colombia, a key US ally in the so-called War on Drugs, as well as Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico.

Comments by Greenwald to Politico on Friday suggest that the journalist already has a backlog of leaks to work with, and that any agreement Snowden were to make with a foreign government in regards to conditions of political asylum would be independent of Greenwald’s publication of that information.

Meanwhile, Snowden released a statement on Friday via WikiLeaks, which has orchestrated his legal defense as well as asylum petitions, to convey that he would accept all offers of political asylum made to him.

“I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future,” Snowden stated during his meeting with rights activists and lawyers at Sheremetyevo.

“I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted,” he told the meeting.

Modern day slave trade

by Jamal Kanj, source

Last summer I purchased trousers from a well-known US fashion designer in San Diego. I liked the fit and the price, so I paid and walked away not knowing where they were made or who made them.

Putting the trousers on at home, I was surprised to find out they were actually made in Bahrain.

The vast majority of garments sold in US retail stores are made overseas. US and European fashion designers establish relations with suppliers based on profit, regardless of where the product is made or the working conditions.
The world’s little-regulated free trade agreements, competition between fashion designers and the craving of Western consumers for low-cost products traditionally drive the fast-growing outsourcing of textile manufacturing to countries that lack protection for workers and where unions do not exist.

The collapse of the Rana Plaza building in the Savar district of Bangladesh’s capital last April, killing more than 1,100 workers, highlighted the plight of exploited garment laborers in Asia.

According to official investigation, the upper four floors of the building were erected without proper permits. Just one day earlier, inspectors ordered the evacuation of the building after uncovering serious structural cracks. However, the victims – half of whom were women and their nursing children – were threatened with having one month’s salary (about $50) deducted if they didn’t report to work the next day.

About six months earlier, 112 workers were killed in another garment factory in Bangladesh. Two weeks after April’s garment factory tragedy, another eight people lost their lives when fire swept through a large clothing factory in Dhaka.

Following the latest incident, human rights organizations initiated a campaign urging Western fashion designers and outlet stores to sign the Fire and Building Safety Accord in Bangladesh. The accord calls for an end to abysmal, unsafe factory conditions and requires a commitment from major Western retailers to invest in renovations and repairs necessary to make buildings safe.

The accord’s preamble calls for establishing a fire and building safety program where “no worker needs to fear fires, building collapses, or other accidents that could be prevented with reasonable health and safety measures”.

The pact’s five-year commitment requires participating retailers to carry out independent safety inspections of factories and contribute up to $500,000 per year towards safety improvements.

Wistfully, some 14 major American and eight UK fashion retailers refused to endorse the Bangladesh readymade garment agreement. This included three of the largest buyers: Wal-Mart and GAP of the US and Asda of the UK.

It is disgraceful that major American and UK fashion retailers refuse – albeit under superficial pretexts – to sign the 25-point plan ensuring a safe work environment, especially when the cost to these large retailers comes to less than 0.1 per cent of their annual profits.

Labor organizations, trade unions and human rights groups in the EU and North America should bring the fight home and lobby unscrupulous retailers not just to sign the safety plan, but take it a step further and force these sweatshops to abide by internationally accepted labor standards with an eight-hour day – putting an end to modern slavery.

A growing body of evidence has established a clear correlation between long working hours and the risk of occupational injuries.

A US study of over 100,000 job records and over 5,000 workplace injuries for the period 1987 to 2000, carried out by the Centre for Health Policy and Research at the University of Massachusetts, concluded that long working hours “precipitate workplace accidents”.

Hungering for freedom at Guantanamo: Obama’s legacy of broken promises

by Ramzy Baroud, source

The Guantanamo Bay prison is a glaring attestation to the state of political indecision which the United States has experienced since President Barack Obama’s first day in office. While his second term is unlikely to deliver much of the ‘change’ he had so industriously promised, skeletal men continue to sink into utter despair at the American gulag at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

Many, if not most of the 166 people currently imprisoned in Guantanamo are innocent. This is so even by the standards of the US government as it continues to violate the Geneva Convictions and US laws regarding prisoners’ rights during armed conflicts. In fact, 86 of the Guantanamo detainees have been designated for release, but lack of resolve on the part of the administration, obstacles by Congress and a general lack of interest in the plight of these men, has left Guantanamo a human rights abomination that is still open for business eleven years later.

In a Speech on August 1, 2007, Obama, then a senator, laid out a moral framework for his views on inhumane travesty. “In the dark halls of Abu Ghraib and the detention cells of Guantanamo, we have compromised our most precious values,” he said. His conduct of later years as president however didn’t reflect an unyielding desire to break away from the legacy of his predecessor.

The administration of former President George W. Bush had capitalized on the fear and anger produced by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011, instituting the type of injurious policies that not only undermined the US constitution, but also furnished a platform for global lawlessness. Never before had international law been as devalued as it was during the Bush years. Even men who were entrusted with insuring the upholding of the law, worked diligently to undermine it. Former attorney-general Alberto Gonzales, a personal friend of Bush, mastered this art of legal manipulation in a way that allowed his bosses to adorn their gratuitous actions with the air of legitimacy. Guantanamo was his ultimate masterpiece.

But Obama appeared adamant in ending the Guantanamo era, although it merely exemplified US official detestation of human rights and international law that guarded them, as demonstrated from Abu Ghraib in Iraq to Bagram in Afghanistan.

On January 22, 2009, the newly inaugurated Obama, armed with a significant popular mandate, signed an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility within one year. The wording then reflected the new impetus to reclaim the country’s squandered values, or so it seemed. Today, however, they ring with familiar hollowness, as many of Obama’s many other pledges do. His action then was meant to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism.” In actuality, Obama’s truism was an attempt to catch up with the expectations of a frustrated public and a Supreme Court ruling (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld) on June 29, 2006, which entitled the Guantanamo detainees to protection under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

It goes without saying that the quest to shut the Guantanamo prison down would have been dropped completely from media or government calculations if it were not for the indefatigable efforts of many human rights campaigners who continue to demand the government to do the right thing. Obama, at least for a while, gave every sign that real action was underway. On December 15, 2009, he sought to replace Guantanamo with another maximum security prison in Thompson, Illinois, and to transfer the prisoners into the main land where due process would then apply.

Congress, however, empowered by the rise of an extremist right-wing outfit, the Tea Party, seemed in no mood to allow for any radical shift away from Bush’s abhorrent policies. As his first term in office proved, Obama was not ready to use the political capital necessary to shut Guantanamo down.

A crucial Congressional verdict arrived on May 19, 2010, blocking any efforts aimed at redefining the status of Guantanamo detainees or to shut the prison down. The president quickly capitulated, especially as public interest waned and pressure on Obama to deliver on his early promises slowly evaporated. On March 7, 2011, Obama re-instituted military tribunals in Guantanamo. Over the course of two years, any hope for justice disappeared as if no executive order was ever signed in the first place. On January 28, 2013, the very office assigned to the job of closing the Guantanamo prison was itself shut down.

Writing in the Huffington Post, under the title “Obama’s Guantanamo Is Never Going To Close, So Everyone Might As Well Get Comfortable”, Ryan J. Reilly filed, on Feb 16 a most revealing exposé from the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. “As Obama’s second term begins, Guantanamo seems to be putting down roots,” he wrote. “Indeed, parts of the naval base have taken on the appearance of a new beachside housing development. Hundreds of homes are currently under construction in neighborhoods with names like Iguana Terrace and Marina Point, to house the growing population of military personnel, civilian contractors and their families, which currently stands at approximately 5,000.”

An industry is now being built at the expense of those mostly innocent men, as if they are animals in a zoo. Reilly reported: “The base features a Starbucks, a Subway, a McDonald’s, a KFC/Taco Bell, a supermarket, a golf course, a restaurant serving Jamaican jerk chicken and an Irish pub. A gift shop sells stuffed iguanas and T-shirts emblazoned with Guantanamo Bay slogans like ‘Close, But No Cigar.’”

But no text can truly describe the agony of these men in Guantanamo, many of them were held for over a decade without being charged. As of April 19, 63 of these men have been on a hunger strike, some since early February. For them, it is either dignity or death. One is Samir Naji al-Hasan Moqbel, a Yemeni prisoner who has suffered untold hardship since 2002. On April 14, he wrote an article that was published in the New York Times, entitled: “Gitmo Is Killing Me.”

“Last month, on March 15, I was sick in the prison hospital and refused to be fed. A team from the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter, which was painful, degrading and unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray.

“During one force-feeding the nurse pushed the tube about 18 inches into my stomach, hurting me more than usual, because she was doing things so hastily. I called the interpreter to ask the doctor if the procedure was being done correctly or not. It was so painful that I begged them to stop feeding me. The nurse refused to stop feeding me. As they were finishing, some of the ‘food’ spilled on my clothes. I asked them to change my clothes, but the guard refused to allow me to hold on to this last shred of my dignity.”

On April 12 Guantanamo prison authorities had broken down a prisoners’ protest by force, isolating them all into individual cells. The number of the hunger strikers is growing by the day.

“I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantanamo before it is too late,” wrote Moqbel, who is now 35-years-old and his only hope is to go back to Yemen and start a family.

British staff disclose US abuses in secret jail in Iraq

Press TV

The British forces who were present at a secret US prison in Baghdad have unveiled new details regarding some of the most shocking human rights abuses to occur in Iraq during the US-led invasion of the country in the facility.

On Tuesday, the Guardian published a report based on interviews with British soldiers and airmen from the UK Royal Air Force and Army Air Corps who had been given guard and transport duties at the secret prison at Baghdad International Airport, known as Camp Nama, during the US-led war in Iraq.

“I saw one man having his prosthetic leg being pulled off him, and being beaten about the head with it before he was thrown on to the truck,” said a British serviceman who had served at Camp Nama.

According to the report, Iraqi prisoners were subjected to electric shocks and routinely hooded.

The witnesses also said the detainees at Camp Nama were held for long periods of time in cells the size of large dog kennels.

A probe launched by Human Rights Watch disclosed that the detainees at the secret center were subject to “beatings, exposure to extreme cold, threats of death, humiliation and various forms of psychological abuse or torture.”

General Stanley McChrystal, the then-commander of US Joint Special Operations Forces in Iraq, was frequently seen at the prison, the report added…

Saudi court dissolves rights group, sentences activists to jail

(File photo-Saudi Arabia)

Press TV

A court in Saudi Arabia has ordered the dissolution of a human rights group and handed heavy jail sentences to two of the group’s members.

Riyadh criminal court dissolved the Saudi Association of Civil and Political Rights (ACPRA) on Saturday, with the judge saying the group had failed “to obtain authorization.”

The court upheld a six-year jail sentence for Abdullah al-Hamed, an ACPRA activist, and increased his sentence by five more years.

Hamed has also received an 11-year travel ban, which will prevent him from leaving Saudi Arabia for a little over a decade after his release from prison.

The Saudi court sentenced Mohammed Gahtani, another group member, to 10 years in prison and handed him a 10-year travel ban.

The court ordered the seizure of the group’s assets, and gave the two activists 30 days to appeal the verdict.

The two men were convicted of breaching the kingdom’s cybercrime law by using Twitter to lash out at the country’s political system and social life.

The men, however, said they would continue their “peaceful struggle” despite the verdict.

In June 2012, Gahtani said he was accused of “spreading sedition” and “rebelling against the authority” of the monarchy.

ACPRA says it has listed “hundreds of human rights violations over the past two years,” and helped people seek justice. It says some 30,000 political prisoners are held in prisons across the Kingdom.

According to the activists, most of the detained political thinkers are being held by the government without trial or legitimate charges and have been arrested for merely looking suspicious.

Some of the detainees are reported to be held without trial for more than 16 years. Attempting to incite the public against the government and the allegiance to foreign entities are usually the ready-made charges against dissidents.

Qatari poet jailed for 15 years over verse deemed offensive to ruler

Press TV

A Qatari appeals court has sentenced a poet accused of incitement against the regime to 15 years in prison, his lawyer says.

The poet, Mohammed al-Ajami, was given a life term by a lower court last year for publicly reading a poem considered offensive to Qatar’s ruler.

Ajami was arrested in November 2011 after the publication of his “Jasmine poem,” which criticized Arab governments across the Persian Gulf region in the wake of crackdowns on the Arab Spring uprisings.

In a clear reference to Qatar, home to a major US base, he wrote, “I hope that change would come in countries whose ignorant leaders believe that glory belies in US forces.”

But, his lawyer Mohammed Nejib al-Naimi insists that “there was no evidence Ajami had recited the poem he is being tried for in public,” a key claim by the prosecution, and that he only read it “at his apartment in Cairo.”

Following the appeals court on Monday, Naimi said that “the appeals court was apparently politicized and does not differ much from the court of first instance,” which was held behind closed doors and did not give Ajami a chance to defend himself.

Naimi, who is a former Qatari justice minister, said that according to the charges against his client he was liable to a maximum of five years in jail.

Amnesty International has urged Qatar to release Ajami.

“It doesn’t matter if he’s in jail for a day, for 15 years or for life, it’s a flagrant violation of his human rights,” said Sunjeev Bery, the Middle East and North Africa advocacy director for Amnesty International…

Bahrain rights defender Maryam Al-Khawaja pulls out of UNESCO ceremony over honor to “Israel’s” Peres

by Ali Abunimah, EI

Bahrain human rights defender Maryam Al-Khawaja has pulled out of a UNESCO human rights conference that is honoring her father, political prisoner Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, because the same event is honoring Israeli President Shimon Peres.

Amnesty International considers Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja and other Bahrain rights activists held in prison “to be prisoners of conscience, held solely for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly” and has called for their immediate, unconditional release.

Maryam Al-Khawaja was scheduled to speak in her father’s place at the 13th Annual UNESCO Chair & Institute of Comparative Human Rights Conference at the University of Connecticut on 23 October, titled “Legacies Of Human Rights Leadership And Struggles.”

“Whilst I am honored that you chose my father, I am also utterly disappointed that you would honor him alongside a person who has been responsible for many human rights violations and should be put on trial, not honored,” Al-Khawaja wrote in an open letter to UNESCO, in her personal capacity, announcing her withdrawal. Al-Khawaja sent a copy of the letter to The Electronic Intifada.

Among the other handful of human rights “leaders” the conference will recognize is Shimon Peres whom the official program claims “is widely regarded as a ‘dove,’ and a strong supporter of peace through economic cooperation.”

The stated purpose of the conference is “to educate ourselves about individuals who contributed to the expansion of the range of human rights we enjoy today by providing enlightened and ecumenical leadership.”

Maryam Al-Khawaja objected strongly to the inclusion of Peres in this category along with her father.

“My father always says that when it comes to human rights, there is no grey area, you both stand for human rights everywhere and against perpetrators of human rights violations or you do not,” Al-Khawaja wrote.

“Without any disrespect intended to your esteemed organization, and the important work you do around the world, as a human rights defender I must respectfully withdraw from this event as I cannot allow myself to take part in legitimizing a person who should be tried for human rights violations, not honored,” Al-Khawaja concluded.

Al-Khawaja attached a list of the human rights violations and war crimes in which Peres is directly implicated, including the 1996 “Operation Grapes of Wrath” invasion of Lebanon while Peres was prime minister. Among the most notorious incidents during that attack, which caused hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, was the Israeli shelling of the UN base at Qana killing more than 100 refugees and UN peacekeepers.

UN and international investigations contradicted Israeli claims that the shelling had been an accident and concluded it had been deliberate.

Peres is also renowned as the “father” of Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program, and having held almost every state office in Israel is directly responsible for many policies including colonization of Palestinian land in the occupied territories.

In a 2008 call on the University of Oxford not to honor Peres, PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, stated, “Peres is implicated in the myriad crimes and international law infringements committed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory.”

Maryam Al-Khawaja is the acting president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, founded by her father. The current president of the organization, Nabeel Rajab, is also in prison in Bahrain for his advocacy of political change and human rights.

Maryam Al-Khawaja’s letter to UNESCO

Dear Organizers of the UNESCO conference,

I hope this finds you well. I wanted to first thank you for choosing my father, Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, as one of the human rights defenders whom you honor for his peaceful human rights work. I also would like to point out here that I am writing this letter in my personal capacity and not representing any organization or center.

I was honored when I received a letter from UNESCO asking me to participate in a conference to speak about how my father had dedicated his entire life to fighting for human rights and social justice, as he so had done. He started his work in the field when he was merely a teenager, and today is serving life in prison at the age of 52 for his work. He is a firm believer in the struggle for human rights no matter what the cost may be, and thus endured a 110-day hunger strike to shed light on the human rights situation in Bahrain. He has dedicated his life to working on many issues, whether it was migrant workers rights, women rights, rights of the unemployed, those in dire need of adequate housing, political prisoners, and the list goes on. He served internationally, working as the regional protection coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Region for Front Line Defenders, training and working with human rights defenders from the Western Sahara to Saudi Arabia and beyond. My father was also involved in the fact-finding mission in Iraq in 2002 organized by Amnesty International to look into the atrocities of mass graves. I cannot do my father’s human rights work justice in this short letter, and so I will not attempt to.

I am writing to you today because it has come to my attention that you have made a decision to honor Shimon Peres alongside my father at your event. Whilst I am honored that you chose my father, I am also utterly disappointed that you would honor him alongside a person who has been responsible for many human rights violations and should be put on trial, not honored. This decision comes as a surprise as UNESCO usually has good stances on human rights issues without bias.

My father always says that when it comes to human right, there is no grey area, you both stand for human rights everywhere and against perpetrators of human rights violations or you do not. I believe that allowing myself to accept honoring my father’s work alongside a person responsible for human rights violations is an insult to his beliefs and what he stands for. I have included at the bottom of my letter a list of violations that Shimon Peres is responsible for as well as a list of past appeals made against him.

Without any disrespect intended to your esteemed organization, and the important work you do around the world, as a human rights defender I must respectfully withdraw from this event as I cannot allow myself to take part in legitimizing a person who should be tried for human rights violations, not honored. Please accept my apologies for the late withdrawal and any inconvenience it may cause.

Best regards,

Maryam Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja

List of policies and crimes Shimon Peres is responsible for:

In 1996, as Prime Minister, he launched “Operation Grapes of Wrath” against Lebanon, causing massive destruction and forcing 400,000 Lebanese civilians to flee their homes, with almost 800 of them taking refuge at a UN base in the village of Qana, South Lebanon.
During that operation, the Israeli army shelled the UN shelter in Qana, killing 102 civilians, mainly women, children and the elderly. Human Rights Watch, the UN and Amnesty International subsequently established that Israel’s attack on the UN base was deliberate, disproving Israeli propaganda to the contrary. Shimon Peres said at the time, “In my opinion, everything was done according to clear logic and in a responsible way. I am at peace.”
He is an architect of Israel’s nuclear weapons program – one which remains outside the scrutiny of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
He is directly responsible for building – even initiating the construction of – colonies on occupied Arab land, in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention; endorsing a policy of extra-judicial killings and house demolitions; supporting the brutal siege on occupied Gaza, widely regarded as a form of collective punishment; and legitimizing the apartheid Wall and the elaborate system of roadblocks all across the occupied West Bank, in pursuit of “racial segregation,” a concept and strategy promoted by Peres more than most Israeli leaders.
Peres played a key role in whitewashing the Israeli army atrocities and wanton destruction of homes in the Jenin refugee camp in 2002, as well as in the carnage committed by the Israeli army in its recent war on Lebanon in 2006.
Peres has also consistently defended the acquisition of land through military aggression, claiming that Israel has the right to the Golan Heights and large parts of occupied Jerusalem because it captured those territories during war.
In 1982, both Peres and Yitzhak Rabin supported the onslaught of Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon on Lebanon, and a year later they supported the decision to set up the “Security Zone”, which prolonged the war for 27 more years.
In 1974, Shimon Peres set up the first settlement in the heart of the West Bank, Kedumim, which has been terrorizing its Palestinian neighbors to this day.
After Rabin and Peres recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization and accepted the 1993 Oslo agreements, they soon violated them by not opening the promised “safe passages” between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and not carrying out the third and main withdrawal. The establishment of new settlements continued.
These have been copied from one of the PACBI appeals below, with the exception of the last 3, which have been taken from an article by Uri Avnery of Peace Now. This list provides a highlight of Peres’s political career and is not complete. There is also the matter of his involvement in the Haganah in 1947, and his role in the expulsion of Palestinians that far back.

A List of Past Appeals and Actions Against Shimon Peres: This is a sample of past appeals and actions against institutions that have sought to host or honor Peres. The text in some of these repeats itself but we have included them to alert you of different actions.

• PACBI appeal
• Peres Center
• Oxford protests
• Student protest UK
• UK protest
• EI – war criminal
• Oakland protest
• Sao Paulo protest
• Swiss protest

Video: Obama vs Romney on human rights

HRW accuses US of human rights violation

Moqawama

Human Rights Watch (HRW) slammed the United States for a wide range of rights violations in the country, including torture, child labor, jammed prisons and a flawed judicial system.

According to a recent report by the New York-based HRW, the US has the largest incarcerated population with some 2.3 million inmates serving time in prisons across the country.

“American courts sometimes impose very long sentences tainted by racial disparities,” the report added.

Pointing to the detention of 368,000 immigrants in 2010, the report highlighted the increasing number of non-citizens being held in immigration detention facilities

The HRW criticized Washington’s counter-terrorism policies, citing detentions without charge at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and flawed military commissions.

The rights group also slammed the effective blockage of any lawsuit seeking redress for torture victims in US custody.

In review of the country’s cruel punishments, the report finds that “there are 34 US states that continue implementing the death penalty, as 39 people were executed in the United States in 2011.”

The report also examined issues such as poverty and extreme criminal punishments as well as child labor in the United States.

Some 46 million Americans live in poverty, the largest number in 52 years.

According to the HRW, hundreds of thousands of children work on US farms, being exposed to increasingly long hours of work — some often work 10 or more hours a day — without receiving minimum wage pay.

“The working children are at the risk of pesticide poisoning, heat-related illnesses, injuries, life-long disabilities and death,” the report said.

Outlook for the New Year: Tyranny in the forecast

by Paul Craig Roberts, source

The outlook for liberty is dismal. Those writers who are critical of Washington’s illegal wars and overthrow of the US Constitution could find themselves in indefinite detainment, because criticism of Washington’s policies can be alleged to be aiding Washington’s enemies, which might include charities that provide aid to bombed Palestinian children and flotillas that attempt to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The Bush/Obama regimes have put the foundation in place for imprisoning critics of the government without due process of law. The First Amendment is being all but restricted to rah-rah Americans who chant USA! USA! USA! Washington has set itself up as world prosecutor, forever berating other countries for human rights violations, while Washington alone bombs half a dozen countries into the stone age and threatens several more with the same treatment, all the while violating US statutory law and the Geneva Conventions by torturing detainees.

Washington rounds up assorted foreign politicians, whose countries were afflicted with civil wars, and sends them off to be tried as war criminals, while its own war crimes continue to mount. However, if a person exposes Washington’s war crimes, that person is held without charges in conditions that approximate torture.

Bradley Manning is the case in point. Manning, a US soldier, is alleged to be the person who released to WikiLeaks the “Collateral Murder” video, which, in the words of Marjorie Cohn, “depicts U.S. forces in an Apache helicopter killing 12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists. People trying to rescue the wounded were also fired upon and killed.”

One of the Good Samaritans was a father with two small children. The video reveals the delight that US military personnel experienced in blowing them away from the distant skies. When it became clear that the Warriors Bringing The People Democracy had blown away two small children, instead of remorse we hear an executioner’s voice saying: “that’s what he gets for bringing children into a war zone.”

The quote is from memory, but it is accurate enough. When I first saw this video, I was astonished at the brazen war crime. It is completely obvious that the dozen or so murdered people were simply people walking along a street, threatening no one, unarmed, doing nothing out of the ordinary. It was not a war zone. The horror is that the US soldiers were playing video games with live people. You can tell from their commentary that they were having fun by killing these unsuspecting people walking along the street. They enjoyed killing the father who stopped to help and shooting up his vehicle with the two small children inside.

This was not an accident of a drone, fed with bad information, blowing up a school full of children, or a hospital, or a farmer’s family. This was American soldiers having fun with high tech toys killing anyone that they could pretend might be an enemy.

When I saw this, I realized that America was lost. Evil had prevailed.

I was about to write that nothing has been done about the crime. But something was done about it. An American soldier who recognized the horrific war crime knew that the US military knew about it and had done nothing about it. He also knew that as a US soldier he was required to report war crimes. But to whom? War crimes dismissed as “collateral damage” are the greatest part of Washington’s 21st century wars.

A soldier with a moral conscience gave the video to WikiLeaks. We don’t know who the soldier is. Washington alleges that the soldier is Bradley Manning, but Washington lies every time it opens its mouth. So we will never know.

All we know is that retribution did not fall on the perpetrators of the war crime. It fell upon the two accused of revealing it—Bradley Manning and Julian Assange.

Manning was held almost two years without charges being presented to a court. In December’s pre-trial hearings, all Washington could come up with was concocted accusations. No evidence whatsoever. The prosecutor, a Captain Fein, told the court, if that is what it is, that Manning had been “trained and trusted to use multiple intelligence systems, and he used that training to defy that trust. He abused our trust.”

In other words, Manning gave the world the truth of a war crime that was being covered up, and Washington and the Pentagon regard a truth teller doing his duty under the US military code as an “abuser of trust.”

In the 1970 My Lai Courts-Martial of Captain Ernest L. Medina, the Prosecution Brief states:

“A combat commander has a duty, both as an individual and as a commander, to insure that humane treatment is accorded to noncombatants and surrendering combatants. Article 3 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War specifically prohibits violence to life and person, particularly murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture. Also prohibited are the taking of hostages, outrages against personal dignity and summary judgment and sentence. It demands that the wounded and sick be cared for. These same provisions are found in the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. While these requirements for humanitarian treatment are placed upon each individual involved with the protected persons, it is especially incumbent upon the commanding officer to insure that proper treatment is given.

“Additionally, all military personnel, regardless of rank or position, have the responsibility of reporting any incident or act thought to be a war crime to his commanding officer as soon as practicable after gaining such knowledge. Commanders receiving such reports must also make such facts known to the Staff Judge Advocate. It is quite clear that war crimes are not condoned and that every individual has the responsibility to refrain from, prevent and report such unwarranted conduct. While this individual responsibility is likewise placed upon the commander, he has the additional duty to insure that war crimes committed by his troops are promptly and adequately punished.”

At the National Press Club on February 17, 2006, General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral.” General Pace said that the military is prohibited from committing crimes against humanity and that such orders and events must be made known.

However, when Manning followed the military code, his compliance with law was turned into a crime. Captain Fein goes on to tell the “court” [a real court would throw out the bogus charges, but Amerika no longer has real courts] that “ultimately, he aided the enemies of the United States by indirectly giving them intelligence through WikiLeaks.”

In other words, the “crime” is an unintended consequence of doing one’s duty—like the “collateral damage” of civilian casualties when drones, bombs, helicopter gunships, and trigger-happy troops kill women, children, aid workers, and village elders. Why is Washington only punishing Manning for the collateral damage attributed to him?

Captain Fein could not have put it any clearer. If you tell the truth and reveal Washington’s war crimes, you have aided the enemy. Captain Fein’s simple sentence has at one stroke abolished all whistleblower protections written into US statutory law and the First Amendment, and confined anyone with a moral conscience and sense of decency to indefinite detention and torture.

The illegal detention and treatment of Manning had a purpose, according to a number of informed people. Naomi Spencer, for example, writes that Manning’s long detention and delayed prosecution is designed to coerce Manning into implicating WikiLeaks in order that the US can extradite Julian Assange and either prosecute him as a terrorist or lock him away indefinitely in a military prison without any recourse to the courts, due process or the law.

Assange’s case is mysterious. Assange sought refuge in Sweden, where he was seduced by two women. Both admit that they had sexual intercourse with him voluntarily, but afterwards they have come forth with claims that as they were sleeping with him in the bed, he again had sexual intercourse with them, and that they had not approved this second helping and that he was asked to use a condom but did not.

The Swedish prosecutorial office, after investigating the charges, dismissed them. But, strangely, another Swedish prosecutor, a woman suspected of connections to Washington, resurrected the charges and is seeking to extradite Assange to Sweden from the UK for questioning.

The legal question is whether a prosecutor can seek extradition for investigative purposes. The UK Supreme Court thinks that this is a valid question, and has agreed to hear the case. Normally, extradition requests come from courts and are issued for persons formally charged with a crime. Sweden has not charged Assange with a crime.

– Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments.

A World United for Human Rights

by William A. Cook, source

‘ … disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people …’ — (United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Today the American people, in concert with their brothers and sisters around the world, proclaim the rights to which they are entitled by birth and citizenship, by Constitutional law and Proclamation, and by membership in the collective body of nations that has universalized recognition of these rights for all humanity. And today, in cities and hamlets across this nation, and in many nations around the world, people gather in peace to demand of their governments’ recognition of these rights that have been abrogated by the few and denied to many.

Citizens no longer control their government; they are slaves to it. Representatives no longer serve the citizen seeking their consent to govern, they are servants of the corporations and lobbies that control the economic system to which the citizen is enslaved. Presidents no longer lead, they are the obedient lackeys of their corporate overseers. Freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want do not determine the needs of humans, economics of the market place supersedes all at the expense of the citizen and human rights. We exist in a corporate world of unending wars, of vengeance and recrimination, of fear as a commodity that imprisons the mind, of greed that destroys the resources of this planet without remorse, and of insatiable arrogance that harbors no concern for those it destroys.

This spring of human depression and desperation has given way to a fall harvest of hope and expectation as the citizens of the world unite to cast aside those who have commandeered their rights to a government of the people, by the people and for the people. They know now that economics must serve the people, all the people, not just the few: they see, as the arrogant cannot, that concern for all guarantees recognition of all, that compassion secures contentment, that justice overcomes prejudice and animosity, that fairness ensures equity, and that love secures lasting peace. Feeding the Golem of War is the path to destruction; feeding those in need, relieves the mind and the soul of its fear.

To achieve this harvest of hope, we must dismantle both the myth and the reality of corporate control. Capitalism is not and never has been a closed system independent of regulations imposed by governments or social systems; laissez faire as a concept feeds a lie; it is a ruse to maintain deregulation, to prevent the government’s right to control so that all citizens are served, not the few. The rights of citizens to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness require the government to ensure these rights. That in turn means universal health care from birth to death, not care of private insurance companies the business of which is profit for the investor, corporate owners and CEOs; it means freedom of speech and freedom of the press, not controlled access to speech or free surveillance of the citizens’ speech by phone or Internet or library by government agents who report to agents of corporate power; it means equal justice for all not justice for those who can pay; and it means freedom from want and freedom from fear, and that means political and economic rights that can and must be provided by the government the people elect. The economic system must serve the people not the Capitalists or the corporations; therefore, the profits must be collected so that the rights are protected and provided, before they are divided with the investors and CEOs.

Rights before privilege must prevail. Nationomics, the economic system that serves the people first must prevail. Uncontrolled Capitalism, that has metamorphosed into Globalization, where the control of resources can determine the health and wellbeing of people around the world, must give way to human rights not privileged rights. The few, the privileged nations of the G8, the bank monopolies, the privately appointed IMF, WB and Federal Reserve Bank System must be regulated so that currency flows first to support the rights of the people and then the wages of the privileged few.

Sixty seven years ago near the end of the Second World War, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented the Congress with a new, carefully and compassionately crafted Bill of Rights, rights to be added to and complement the original ten Bill of Rights. The Congress then saw fit to defeat Roosevelt’s program. But Roosevelt understood then, as the Great Depression demonstrated so eloquently, Capitalism is a failed system for the majority of people because it sustains itself on the least amount of expenditure for the greatest profit. Today, we live in the second great depression, and what we now should understand is the reality of Capitalism, the wealthy survive on tax dollars, the majority suffer deprivation and despair.

Roosevelt’s plan addressed the realities of that time and the growing disparity between the rich and the poor, the worker and the executive, the weak and the healthy, the legislator and the subjugated, and he realized that the only way to ensure economic rights is by legislation with the government overseeing the distribution of wealth to ensure equity for all.

Here then is a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

“The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.” (Franklin Delano Roosevelt)

This second Bill of Rights completed what the political rights protected, by guarantying the rights inherent in “pursuit of Happiness.” Roosevelt put it this way: “All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being… We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.”

Should Americans join with their brothers and sisters around the world to force their governments to meet the ideals enunciated by Roosevelt in his second Bill of Rights, marking the need to address them first as necessities and second as responsive to the unique cultures of each nation, then the last three articles of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights can be met and the ultimate goal of a world at peace might be possible.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 28.

• Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.

• (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

• (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

• (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.

• Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

– William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His works include Psalms for the 21st Century, Mellon Poetry Press, Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, and most recently in 2010, The Plight of the Palestinians.

Saudi Arabia under West’s microscope – Part III (human rights)

Participants in demonstration holding a signboard saying: We Demand the Release of Prisoners of Thought in the Kingdom; Saudi Arabia.

by Nidal Hamade, Al Manar

Once the Human Rights Files Get Opened

Dr. Haytham Manna’a the mouthpiece of the Arabian Committee for Human Rights based in Paris says in an interview with Al-Manar Website that the number of the prisoners of the freedom of thought in Saudi Arabia is a much larger number than those in Syria. “There are around 5000 freedom of thought prisoners in Saudi Arabia, according to the Committee statistics, some of whom we have got no idea of their whereabouts for the past many years; for instance, those of Al-Khobar prisoners whose news has been totally unknown for the past six years,” adds Dr. Manna’a.

The speaker for the Arabian Committee for Human Rights elaborates with our website about, “Numerous of arbitrary arrests in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for mere suspicions of mere intentions. Certain people were arrested because of their declaring their intentions for protests in support to the Gazans during the Israeli aggressions against the strip of Gaza, and those arrested people are still in jail till the moment.”

Dr. Manna’a reiterates the moves the Arab Committee for the Human Rights is making in cooperation with international rights organizations in the past two months for one main reason: “The results of 300 trails have been secretly conducted with no one attending them, not even lawyers were allowed to communicate with the media whatsoever or even to see their clients sometimes; moreover, the rest of the trials were very clandestine.

This is the reason why we have fear about the destiny of the 5000 still held prisoners. There is a general caution among the international and the Arab human rights organizations due to the situation correlated with arbitrary arrests in the Kindgom. This issue has been calling for the need of issuing additional reports as you will see in September and October with no political agenda beforehand, yet they will be not only due to the infringements committed by the authorities in the Kingdom but also due to its continuing political war against terrorism at the time that such futile war has been dropped by the American administration.”

From its side, the Human Rights Watch Organization had released a report on 3/9/2009 about the human rights in Saudi Arabia including numerous issues, and the report specified the infringements and the sectarian discrimination and class distinction against the Shi’as as such:

a. There have to be steps to rid of discrimination based on faith against the Shi’as when it comes to employment. Also, there should be a review of the governmental employment policy so that it would reflect the religious structure of the various provinces of the Kingdom. Furthermore, the proficient Shi’as have to be encouraged to assume local governmental high ranking positions; particularly in the regions where the Shi’as fairly large minorities or the majority like in (Qatif, Al-Ahsa, Najran, Al-Medina). There must be special focus on eradicating discrimination in employment in the sector of education. In addition, the Shi’as must be allowed to study in military schools and join drafting. Also, a consideration of installing Shi’ite figures in the central government, such as ministers, must be looked into.

b. A procedure to eliminate discrimination based on faith in the judicial system must be taken. Shi’as must be allowed to qualify for judicial positions in courts in the ordinary levels in addition to the four Shia’ judges currently positioned in Al-Qatif and Al-Ahsa courts (whose authority is limited to civil cases). There must be a guarantee that any Shiite must never be denied the right to have justice and not to be denied the right to qualify for witnessing as a witness, or to work as a lawyer, due to the faith identity of the person concerned.

c. There must be steps to eradicate discrimination in faith, and Shia’s must be allowed to teach religion at schools. There must never be discrimination when issuing permission upon planning and building Shiite mosques and husayniyat (cultural centers), and similar parlors for the use of religious and cultural purposes.

The imams of the Shia’s and their mosques must be granted the same amount of funds provided to the Sunni imams and mosques by the government.

Moreover, there must be no interference in the Shiite religious observances whether common or individual, and their right in worship services must be protected with no interference by others. The imams of the Shia’s must never be arrested because of their religious practices. Also, other followers of other faiths such as Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism must be allowed to practice their religious rituals without state interference.
 
d. The senior governmental officials must condemn the rhetoric of hate directed toward the Shiite senior clerics, who are yet sometimes governmental officials; furthermore, public declaration of approval of the Shia’s and the Ismaelis as full standing citizens must be shown without discrimination. The Shia’s and the Ismaelis must be enlisted in the Saudi diplomatic corps, including the Saudi diplomatic delegation in the conference organization.

The Human Rights Watch had issued a report on April 18th saying that the Saudi authorities had arrested more than 160 activists since February as the Kingdom was trying to fortify itself against public uprising sweeping the Arab countries. The report called Minister of Interior Prince Nayef to immediately release what it described as peaceful protestors and added that their arrest is considered an infringement against the international law of human rights.
 
Christopher Wilk, a researcher in the organization, criticized what he described as silence on the behalf of the U.S.A. and the European Union toward arresting peaceful protestors he adds:” It does not have to be a matter of choice for Brussels and Washington when it comes to the imprisonment of 160 peaceful protestors ….. and with a surge in the number of Saudi political prisoners, the American and European silence becomes more deafened.”
 
In the same line, sources in the international alliance for resisting torture including rights societies some of which are the Arab Committee for Human Rights, the International Observer for Human Rights, and Karamah Center that the Saudi file is going to be full of infringements in the report to be issued by Human Rights watch and Human Rights Societies to be released in 2011. Dr. Haytham Al-Manna’a announced that there would be reports coming out in September and October about violating human rights in Saudi Arabia that would highlight a drastic decline in this subject.

See also:

Saudi Arabia under West’s Microscope – Part I

Saudi Arabia under West’s Microscope – Part II

On democracy and slave owners

Settler graffiti (file photo)

by Seraj Assi, source

This month the Knesset in Israel approved the final reading of the Boycott Prohibition Law, which imposes severe punishments on any person or organization that calls, directly or indirectly, for boycotting Israel, including the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The Boycott Law is by no means surprising. For it joins a series of fascist laws that were recently approved by Knesset starting from the “Nakba Law” through the Loyalty Law, along with a list of new law bills under preparation.

What is unique about these laws is that they render unnecessary any effort to explain what make them fascist. Yet it seems that all these laws represent a state of denial and political disconnect on the side of Israel. The Boycott Law in its turn misses the point because the campaign for boycotting the Israeli products primarily includes the Israeli law itself. For the boycotters’ main message to the State of Israel is that its existence on Palestinian lands is completely illegal.

This takes us directly to the question of Israel’s democracy as a whole. We should remember here that the Constitutional Law of 1985, which was passed by the vast majority of the Knesset, bans the participation in the Knesset elections of any party that opposes the principle of the “Jewish State”.

The Law makes it clear that the Israeli democracy is an exclusively ethnic democracy fashioned for the exclusive interests of the Jewish community. This kind of democracy can therefore be seen as a modern colonial version of the slave-owners’ democracy in ancient Greek society. At bottom of the whole structure are the natives, namely the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who have been made into a class of “free servants” of this hegemonic democracy.

Israel’s democracy thus functions as the political rule designed by the Zionist institution to maintain the repression of Arab-Palestinian citizens and Palestinians everywhere through legal manipulations. The idea is to reduce all forms of resistance against Zionist hegemony in the region to the narrow official circles and state courtrooms and turn all political struggles into civil struggles.

It is thus a democracy goaded into the service of the Zionist colonial enterprise. For any voice that is not directly aligned with the Zionist interests is immediately silenced- hence the abundance of this kind of fascist legislations. Perhaps this examines why the supremacy of the so-called Israeli democracy is stated in such a violent way so that any critique of its core principles and foundations is met with fanatic nationalist hysteria.

Statements flooding from Israeli official circulations to defend Israel’s democracy by all means clearly testify to the strategic role democracy plays in service of the Zionist agenda. For Zionist statesmen know very well that without this kind of democracy, it will be almost impossible to carry out Israel’s ethnic hegemony in the region while effectively reducing all forms of resistance to peaceful and gentlemanly legal struggles. This is the winning formula of liberal Zionism.

The irony is that Israel’s democracy has long been propagated worldwide as a witness to an Israeli multicultural and hybrid space where Arab citizens can vote and Arab Knesset members can enjoy full parliament privileges. Here precisely lies the bitter irony of the practice of this kind of democracy. For according to this democracy, Arabs in Israel are allowed, once every few years, to decide which particular representatives of the Zionist gang should be in the Knesset to oppress them!

Hypothetically speaking, Israel could become the greatest democracy in the world- a haven of human rights and social justice and a dreamland of multiculturalism and hybridity. To be sure, however, it will always remain a colonial state whose existence was founded on the dispossession of another people. The combination of democracy with the multicultural space, whether real or fictional, should not hide the deep hegemonic structures of this hybridity and the historical conditions that created it, namely, the Zionist occupation of Palestine.

Unfortunately, one now has to undertake excavations in order to reveal this truth and bring it to the knowledge of the masses and intellectuals alike. It now requires an enormous intellectual effort to remind liberal activists, academics, politicians and intellectuals that any critique of Israel and its institutions must begin with its colonial foundations instead of its contemporary political hypocrisy and undemocratic pitfalls.

– Seraj Assi is a PhD Student in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, Washington DC.