Tag: genocide

Southern Cone

Argentina: 48 ex-officers sentenced in ‘dirty war’

An Argentine judicial panel sentenced 29 former officials to life in prison, and 19 to between 8-25 years for murder and torture during the military junta's 1976-1983 "Dirty War." The sentencing concluded a five-year trial and represented Argentina's largest verdict to date for crimes against humanity. Collectively, the 48 defendants were charged with the deaths of 789 victims. The crimes were mostly committed at the notorious Higher Naval Mechanics School (ESMA).

Africa

Zimbabwe: new leader implicated in massacres

The swearing in of Zimbabwe's new President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa is being hailed as opening a new era for the country that had been ruled by Robert Mugabe from independence in 1980 until his dramatic downfall this week. But  some are demanding accountability over Mnangagwa's role in ethnic massacres against the country's Ndebele minority people in the 1980s.

Europe

Ratko Mladic guilty in Bosnia genocide

Former Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladi? was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, for crimes committed during the Bosnian conflict from 1992 to 1996. Mladi? was found guilty of two counts of genocide and five counts of crimes against humanity, including persecution, extermination, deportation and inhuman acts.

Syria

Russia vetoes Syria chemwar investigation —again

The Russian Federation vetoed a measure before the UN Security Council that would have extended the mandate of a panel investigating the use of chemical weapons in Syria for 30 days. The UNSC had established the Joint Investigative Mechanism with a two-year mandate following the use of chemical weapons in Syria in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Syria

Conviction in Syrian regime war crime —at last

For the first time, after six years of war and escalating atrocities, a member of the Syrian regime’s military has been convicted of a war crime—a low-level soldier now in Sweden as a refugee, and tried in that country’s courts. Yet there have been several convictions of Syrian rebel and ISIS fighters in European courts. This gross imbalance in convictions persists despite the fact that Assad has killed far more Syrians than ISIS or any other “terrorist” outfit in the country.

Iraq

Yazidis: UN resolution on genocide insufficient

Leaders of Ezidikhan, the newly declared Yazidi autonomous zone in northern Iraq, are protesting that a UN Security Council resolution calling for an investigation into possible genocide by ISIS doesn't go far enough. Yazidi authorities are calling for the scope of the investigation to be widened to include non-ISIS actors also complicit in the genocide—presumably including the Turkish state.

Europe

Moscow stonewalls on fate of Holocaust hero

A Moscow district court rejected a lawsuit by relatives of Raoul Wallenberg, seeking to access uncensored documents concerning his death in Soviet captivity. Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II. Soviet forces detained Wallenberg in 1945, supposedly for espionage. He was reported to have died two years later in Moscow's notorious Lubyanka Prison.

Africa
Nigeria

Nigeria: Biafra headed for new genocide?

Up to 20 were reported killed when Nigerian army troops raided the home of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). The raid follows deadly clashes between Igbo IPOB militants and ethnic Hausa and Fulani residents in several areas across Nigeria's southeast. President Buhari accuses the IPOB of a "deliberate and sinister agenda to provoke soldiers into killing innocent people."

The Amazon

Brazil: massacre of ‘uncontacted’ group reported

Prosecutors in Brazil have opened an investigation after reports that illegal gold-miners on a remote Amazon river massacred members of an "uncontacted" indigenous band. Two gold-miners have been arrested in the case. The killings allegedly took place last month in the Vale do Javari Indigenous Territory, known as the "Uncontacted Frontier," as it shelters more isolated peoples than anywhere else on Earth.

Southeast Asia

Duterte calls for genocide against drug users

National Police troops in the Philippines killed 32 people in a day of anti-drug operations in the working-class Manila suburb of Bucalan. In the resultant outcry, President Rodrigo Duterte expressed open enthusiasm for the bloodshed—and warned that it is just beginning. "There were 32 killed in Bulacan in a massive raid, that's good," Duterte boasted in a speech to his new newly formed anti-drug paramilitary force. "Let's kill another 32 every day. Maybe we can reduce what ails this country."

Syria

Syria: talks must address ‘disappeared’

International backers of negotiations to end the conflict in Syria should ensure that any transitional process includes a robust independent body to investigate thousands of “disappeared,” Human Rights Watch said Aug. 30, the UN-designated International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria has determined that the use of enforced disappearance by the Syrian regime is widespread, and may amount to a crime against humanity.

Southeast Asia

Thousands of Rohingya trapped on borderlands

Burma's army has responded to supposed Rohingya guerilla attacks with a massive new operation to encircle the rebels and block their escape into Bangladesh. Troops are accused of putting villages to the torch and carrying out extrajudicial killings. More than 8,700 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh, but at least 4,000 more are stranded in the no man's land between the two countries.