Mission & Justice

Tom Coghlan; 17/5/08

Western secret services in Afghanistan are acting like South American “death squads”, a United Nations human rights expert has claimed. Professor Richard Alston of the United Nations Human Rights Council said the intelligence agencies and Afghan militias were targeting suspected insurgency leaders with “impunity”. Their missions, he said, were “unaccountable to any international military authority”. Although Professor Alston refused to identify which intelligence services he was talking about, his comments follow criticism of the activities of CIA units, often by military personnel from other nations operating in Afghanistan.

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Rotem Sela; 16/5/08

The Israeli mission to the United Nations is seeking clarifications after an official communique released by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s bureau made specific reference to the word “nakba,” according to a report broadcast on Israel Radio early Friday morning. The report said the UN chief telephoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to express his solidarity with the Palestinians on the day they mark the “nakba,” the Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” that is used in reference to the founding of the state of Israel. Danny Carmon, Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UN, told Israel Radio that the term “‘nakba’ is a tool of Arab propaganda used to undermine the legitimacy of the establishment of the State of Israel, and it must not be part of the lexicon of the UN.”

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9/5/08

The first UN aid plane arrived in cyclone-ravaged Burma last night, but US and other international efforts were on hold after the country’s military generals rescinded their approval for American planes to enter Burma. The generals had bowed to international pressure, agreeing to allow the US military to fly critical aid to survivors of last Saturday’s cyclone, which has left up to 100,000 feared dead and one million missing. Thailand’s Supreme Commander Boonsrang Niumpradit said yesterday Bangkok had convinced Burma’s secretive junta to accept US assistance using planes that have been in Thai-US military exercises. A US embassy official confirmed the decision, but US ambassador to Thailand Eric John said later the flight was not going ahead.

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28/4/08

Seven Palestinians have been killed during a raid by the Israeli army in the northern Gaza Strip, six of them by a shell which hit a family home. Four children and an elderly man were among the dead. The children’s mother was taken to hospital but died later as doctors struggled to save her life. The health ministry said shells were fired at a house in the town of Beit Hanoun - the family inside were eating breakfast at the time. The Israeli army said an air raid was targeting a group of armed men near the house.

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Lindsay Murdoch; 28/4/08

Two rebels involved in attacks on East Timor’s top two political leaders have been arrested at the Jakarta home of a notorious Timor-born gangster known as Hercules, Indonesian police say. Investigators in Dili have established that Hercules, whose real name is Rozario Marcal, was in contact with, and may have met, rebel leader Alfredo Reinado days before he led the February 11 attacks on President Jose Ramos Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao. Indonesian National Police chief Sutanto confirmed that two of four rebels arrested in Indonesia last week were at the home of Hercules, who has close ties to several retired Indonesian military generals. Mr Sutanto was quoted by Indonesia’s official newsagency, Antara, as saying that Hercules was willing to accommodate the rebels “because of humanitarian consideration and was willing to find them a job”. How the men managed to cross the border into Indonesia and then travel to Jakarta is unclear.

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Paul Toohey; 26/4/08

Rebel lieutenant Gastao Salsinha last night surrendered after two years on the run and put himself in the personal control of East Timor’s most senior army officer, Brigadier Tuar Matan Ruak. Salsinha’s capitulation will hopefully bring to an end two years of stand-offs, negotiations and violence that has torn the country apart. Salsinha, who allegedly led the attack on Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao on February 11 while Alfredo Reinado launched the raid on President Jose Ramos Horta’s compound, spent yesterday sitting in a house in Ermera, in the west of East Timor, with a Catholic Church priest acting as his mediator as armed forces surrounded the position. Negotiators had gone to a house near the town of Gleno, atSalsinha’s suggestion, to collect him.

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24/4/08; See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/977826.html

A state-run Lebanese news agency has said that an explosion of a cluster bomb left behind by the Israel Defense Forces from the Second Lebanon War wounded four young Lebanese in the country’s south. The report says that Friday’s incident occurred in the village of Adsheet when the four children, aged between 10 and 15, found the suspicious device and held it before it went off. The four were then taken to hospital in the southern province of Nabatiyeh. Lebanon has a huge problem with bombs left behind during the 2006 war. Twenty-seven civilians have been killed and 209 wounded since. UN and human rights groups say Israel dropped about 4 million cluster bomblets during the war. One million failed to explode and now endanger civilians.

Sherine Tadros; 24/4/08

From the moment I set foot in Gaza there was one question everyone kept asking me: “When are they going to open the crossings?” For almost a year now the two points at which people can get out of Gaza – the Erez and Rafah crossings - have been closed to all Palestinians. Even the Hamas forces guarding the crossings were asking me the same question. They are all prisoners in Gaza. But there is a larger problem beyond the closed crossings, one that will last long after deals on opening Rafah and Erez are made - Israel is using a controversial residency law to prevent Palestinian holders of Jerusalem identity cards currently living or even visiting Gaza from going back to their city. Israel unilaterally annexed Arab East Jerusalem in 1967, declaring its unification with predominantly Jewish West Jerusalem into what it called “the eternal capital of Israel”

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24/4/08

Australian actor Nicole Kidman, seven months pregnant and passionately committed to her other job as a UN goodwill ambassador, yesterday urged world leaders and ordinary people to join the global fight to end violence against women. “One in three women will encounter violence in some way, shape or form against them in their lifetime,” Kidman said at UN headquarters in New York. “That’s an extraordinary statistic. Yet do we ever hear it?” The 40-year-old became a goodwill ambassador in January 2006 for the UN Development Fund for Women, known as UNIFEM.

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23/4/08

The former head of state of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge government has appeared at United Nations-backed tribunal to appeal for release from his pre-trial detention. The tribunal has charged Khieu Samphan, 76, with crimes against humanity and war crimes committed when the communist Khmer Rouge held power between 1975 and 1979. Wednesday’s hearing in a special court on the outskirts of Phnom Penh was closed to reporters and members of the public at the request of prosecutors. Khieu Samphan, detained by the tribunal since November 19 last year, is one of five former Khmer Rouge leaders in custody awaiting trial.

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