Day: June 12, 2016

North Africa

Mass graves found at Libya detention centers

The United Nations is demanding an urgent investigation after several mass graves were discovered at detention sites in Libya. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said: “Our worst held fears are being confirmed: dozens of bodies have been discovered at these sites, along with the discovery of suspected instruments of torture and abuse, and potential evidence of extrajudicial killings.” About 80 bodies, some of them partially charred, were found at sites around Tripoli used for detention of migrants by a semi-official militia, the Stabilization Support Apparatus (SSA). The SSA leader, who went by the nom de guerre Gheniwa, was killed last month in an apparent purge of potentially disloyal elements by the Tripoli government, and his detention sites taken over. Türk called for the sites to be immediately “sealed off” and for Libyan authorities to conduct “prompt, independent, impartial and transparent investigations.” (Photo: Alessio Romenzi/UNICEF via UN News)

East Asia

North Korea political prisoners betrayed at summit

In the prelude to the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore, survivors of Kim Jong-un's prisons and concentration camps called for an amnesty for North Korea's tens of thousands of political prisoners to be a condition of any peace deal. They recalled a 2014 UN report finding that up to 120,000 were being held in prison camps in North Korea, subjected to "unspeakable atrocities and hardships." Of course, Trump breathed not a word about human rights at the meeting, but came away crowing about his "special bond" with Kim. And despite the fact that the agreement to come out of the meeting contained no specific commitments to move toward de-nuclearization of the peninsula (only vague expressions of principle), some peaceniks are already paradoxically cheering the right-wing demagogue who so recently threatened to unleash "fire and fury" on North Korea. (Map of North Korea's principal concentration camps via One Free Korea)

Central America

Podcast: Syria, Nicaragua, revolutionary parallels

In Episode 11 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg compares the legacies of revolutionary struggle in Nicaragua and Syria. The Somoza and Assad regimes were both hereditary family dictatorships. The Sandinistas and Syrian revolutionaries alike have roots in anarchism. Yet Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, again Nicaragua's president, is today himself facing a militant opposition movement, and has betrayed the Syrian revolutionaries in the interests of playing for Russian support in the Great Power game. In Syria, meanwhile, the secular, pro-democratic civil resistance continues to exist in spite of everything, and still governs areas of the country under a model of council-based popular democracy. The Kurdish autonomous zone in Syria is also informed by an anarchist ethic of direct democracy. Yet the Kurds and Arab-led civil resistance have been pitted against each other by Great Power intrigues. How can activists in New York and the United States move past global divide-and-rule stratagems and build solidarity with Syria's Arab and Kurdish opposition alike, as well as the campesinos and grassroots-democratic forces in Nicaragua? Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon. (Photo composition: Today Nicaragua, Waging Nonviolence)

CHIBOK GIRLS — DO WE REALLY CARE?

#BringBackOurGirls should be more than a hashtag

by Hilary Matfess, IRIN

MAIDUGURI — The world united in a campaign to demand #BringBackOurGirls after the abduction of the Chibok school girls two years ago by the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram. But there has been next to nothing in the way of support to the women that have managed to escape the militants.

They are now homeless, reduced to begging to survive, and forced to deal alone with the trauma of their ordeal.

Safiya sits on a woven mat under a scraggly tree in the grounds of Madina Mosque, on the outskirts of the northeastern city of Maiduguri, rocking her newborn son. The mosque has become a rough-and-ready sanctuary for around 2,000 people who have fled the conflict.

“We spent three months in the forest, crawling through the bush, bringing all five children and trying not to disturb the infection in my husband’s wound from where Boko Haram shot him,” she says.

She was pregnant as well at the time. When she felt the baby was almost due, she left her husband with the children and walked the remaining 70 kilometres to Maiduguri, and this mosque.

Safiya delivered her son here a week later, without a doctor, midwife, or medicine. Her family finally managed to join her, helped by communities along their path, and though they are now physically safe and united, that’s about the extent of it.

North Africa

Libya: Misrata militia force battles ISIS at Sirte

An alliance of militias from the city of Misrata—nominally aligned with Libya's UN-backed government—are battling ISIS for control of Sirte port, the group's major stronghold.

U.S. FAILING SYRIAN REFUGEES

by Philippa Garson, IRIN

The United States may be the global leader in refugee resettlement, but so far it has opened its doors to a mere 1,000 Syrians looking for a safe haven from their war-torn country. Human rights groups, members of Congress and city planners are among those trying to persuade President Barack Obama to allow more Syrians to settle here. However, security concerns, anti-immigration sentiment and bureaucratic hurdles all stand in the way.

It has taken the world a long time to acknowledge that most of the 12 million Syrians displaced—inside and outside their country—by the five-year civil war will not be going home anytime soon. Neighbors Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey have absorbed nearly four million Syrians between them. Other countries have been slower to step up to the plate, particularly in terms of pledging to take some of the 88,000 Syrian refugees allocated for resettlement by the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR. Twenty-eight countries have so far agreed to take in 62,000 of them—with Germany taking nearly half.

The Andes