Genocide in Srebrenica

SREBRENICA (Bosnia), July 11: Tens of thousands of grieving Bosnian Muslims gathered on Sunday to bury the remains of 775 newly identified victims killed when Bosnian Serbs overran this town exactly 15 years ago. Troops led by the-then Bosnian Serb general, Ratko Mladic, seized Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, and went on a week-long killing spree as UN personnel protecting the town stepped aside.

Around 8,000 Muslims were killed in what is now seen as Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II. Those who tried to escape were hunted down. Mladic remains at large.

On Sunday, men passed green-draped coffins from hand to hand towards freshly dug graves. Sobbing women murmured prayers as they kneeled among rows of white marble gravestones.

“I have nothing left to lose,” Hatidza Mehmedovic, 58, said through tears. She came to bury her husband and two sons, killed when they were aged 18 and 21.

“Now I can only fight for justice to be served.”

A Bosnian Croat man, Rudolf Hren, shared the fate of thousands of his non-Serb neighbours when he was killed in 1995.

At the funeral on Sunday, Hren was the only victim who had a Roman Catholic burial ceremony.“Rudolf is buried among the friends he stayed with until the last day,” said his mother Barbara Hren, whose other son was also killed in Srebrenica.

The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague has indicted Mladic and his political chief Radovan Karadzic for genocide in Srebrenica. Karadzic is on trial but denies all counts of the indictment, including on Srebrenica.

Mladic is said to be hiding in Serbia. Failure to arrest him has hindered Serbia’s progress towards EU membership.

“We have Karadzic on trial and it is important the trial is completed and justice is done but it is of even greater importance that commander of the forces responsible for these murders is brought to justice,” said Stephen Rapp, the United States ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues.

After the massacre, Serbs dumped the victims’ bodies into mass graves. They were later dug out with bulldozers and moved to smaller graves in an attempt to cover up the crime.

More than 3,700 victims have been buried in the special memorial graveyard after being unearthed from hundreds of mass graves and identified.—Reuters

Turkish Rally Around Nazi Flag

Nazi flag hoisted by Turkish Flotilla

Turkish supporters for flotillas aimed at breaking Israel’s maritime embargo on Hamas-controlled Gaza recently raised the Nazi flag with an expression of gratitude. The Turkish language slogan on the flag is a common expression of gratitude, according to the [Islam] Religion for Peace.com website.

Turkey was not allied with the Nazi regime but retained important trade agreements that allowed Nazi Germany to import key materials until the pact was broken one year before the end of World War II.

The web site states that Muslim jihadists have committed 15,533 attacks around the world since the September 11, 2001 aerial suicide bombings on the United States.

Turkey and the terrorist-linked IHH organization organized the last flotilla May 31, when IHH members, many of them with training by terrorist groups, attacked Israeli Navy commandos who prevented the Mavi Mamara ship from continuing on course to Gaza.

The clash sparked another crisis in Turkish Israeli relations, which have rapidly deteriorated since last year’s three-week Operation Cast Lead war against the Hamas terrorist infrastructure.

“For a sovereign state, giving up on a matter like this requires giving up on its statehood,” a senior government official told journalists, as reported by Turkey’s Today’s Zayman. “Turkish-Israeli ties appeared headed for a collapse if Israel refuses, as it does now, to offer a formal apology,” for the clash.

The official also alleged that the Mavi Mamara was headed for Egypt’s El-Arish port and not to Gaza. (IsraelNationalNews.com)

Bosnian Serbs Jailed for Genocide

Two Bosnian Serbs have been convicted of genocide by a UN war crimes court and sentenced to life imprisonment for their role in the Srebrenica massacre of around 8,000 Muslim men and boys in 1995.

The judgment, delivered on Thursday, is the harshest ever by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague, the Netherlands.

The court judge said the "only appropriate sentence" for Vujadin Popovic, 53, and Ljubisa Beara, 70, both officers in the Bosnian Serb army, was "life imprisonment".

Read it all here.

Peter Erlinder Denied Bail in Rwanda

Lawyer and law professor Peter Erlinder, charged with genocide denial in Rwanda, has been denied bail. The facts are hard to determine, but it appears that his alleged crime is simply the act of advocacy on behalf of persons accused. The news article relates that Erlinder's health issues are being exacerbated in jail.

Erlinder was hospitalized last Tuesday. Rwandan police said Erlinder had tried to commit suicide but his family denied this.

On Friday, June 4 Erlinder pleaded not guilty to the charges during his first court appearance since the arrest. Appearing weak in court, Erlinder had asked to be granted bail so he could return home for treatment, and promised to comply with any conditions the court sets.

Erlinder was in Kigali helping with the legal defense of an opposition leader who wants to run for president in Aug. 9 elections.

Erlinder — a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota — has a reputation for taking on difficult, often unpopular defendants and causes. A past president of the progressive National Lawyers Guild, Erlinder leads a group of defense lawyers at the U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is trying the alleged leaders of the 1994 genocide.

Erlinder is accused of violating Rwanda's laws against minimizing the genocide in which more than 500,000 Rwandans, the vast majority of them ethnic Tutsis, were massacred by Hutus in 100 days. He doesn't deny massive violence happened but contends it's inaccurate to blame just one side.

The massacres ended when mostly Tutsi rebels led by President Paul Kagame defeated the mostly Hutu extremist perpetrators.

Read more here.

Former SS Guard loses US Citizenship, Sent to Austria

An 85-year-old man, who has admitted he was a SS guard at three Nazi concentration camps, has had his US citizenship revoked and will be deported to Austria.


Anton Geiser, who lives in Sharon, Philadelphia, admitted he served as an SS Guard in Sachsenhausen in 1943, where he marched forced labourers and was on orders to shoot attempted escapees. He was a member of the SS Death’s Head battalion

He also admitted serving as an armed guard at Buchenwald and Arolsen between November 1943 and April 1945.

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breur said Mr Geiser had admitted the allegations. He said: “As a Nazi concentration camp guard during World War II, Anton Geiser must be held to account for his role in the persecution of countless men, women and children.

“The long passage of time will not diminish our resolve to deny refuge to such individuals.”

Mr Geiser, who is originally from Austria moved to the US in October 1956. He became a US citizen in 1962. His citizenship was revoked by a court order in 2006 after his Nazi past was revealed.

Immigration Judge Charles Honeyman has now ordered Mr Geiser to return to Austria, under the 1978 Holtzman Amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which bans the US from granting sanctuary to Nazi war criminals. More than 100 US citizenships of former Nazis have been revoked using this law.

Read it all here.

Will Obama Keep His Promise?

Turkey has warned the US against approving a draft bill that recognizes as genocide the massacre of Armenians between 1915 and 1918 during World War I.

The US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee is to decide on Thursday whether to recognize as genocide the mass killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during the period.

Such a resolution would damage ties between Ankara and Washington and undermine efforts to normalize relations between Turkey and Armenia, Burak Ozugergin, spokesman of Turkey's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was quoted as saying on Monday by the semi-official Anatolia News Agency, Xinhua reported.

Describing the issue of "genocide" as a baseless allegation, Ozugergin urged the House panel to "act with a sense of responsibility."

President Barack Obama promised during his election campaign that his administration would recognize the Armenian massacre as genocide.

Read it all here.

Agathe Habyarimana in Custody

March 3:  France has arrested the former Rwandan first lady, who has been accused by the current Rwandan government of helping to plan the 1994 genocide.

French officials said Agathe Habyarimana was detained in the Paris region by police executing a Rwandan-issued international arrest warrant, BBC reported.

Mrs. Habyarimana was taken into custody at her home south of Paris on Tuesday.

The assassination of Agathe's husband, President Juvenal Habyarimana, is widely considered the trigger for the Rwandan genocide.

The current Rwandan government says Agathe was one of the main architects of the genocide, in which Hutu extremists killed over 800,000 people.

Read it all here.

Read related news here.

Rwandan Genocide Officer Sentenced

The United Nations war crimes tribunal set up in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide has sentenced a former top officer in the country’s armed forces to 25 years of imprisonment after being found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Lieutenant Colonel Ephrem Setako, who was also head of the Division of Legal Affairs in the Ministry of Defence in 1994, is believed to be one of the key architects of the mass killings during which an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed – often by machete or club – during a 100-day period.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Arusha, Tanzania, found that Lt-Col Setako ordered the killings on 25 April 1994 of 30 to 40 Tutsis at Mukamira military camp in Ruhengeri prefecture and around 10 other Tutsis there on 11 May.

He was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity (extermination) and serious violations of Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol II (murder), but acquitted of complicity to commit genocide, murder as a crime against humanity and pillage as a war crime.

Some 55 witnesses took part in the trial of Lt-Col Setako, who was arrested in the Netherlands in 2004.

From here.

Atrocities in Southern Sudan

Tuesday, 1st September 2009 Juba, Sudan

APPEAL regarding the recent atrocities in Jonglei and Western Equatoria States

On Saturday 29th August 2009 I received reports from Wernyol, Twic East County, Jonglei State, that there had been another attack on the peoples of the area in which over forty people – men, women and children – were killed. Amongst the dead were Ven. Joseph Mabior Garang, Archdeacon of Wernyol and Archbishop’s Commissary in the new Diocese of Twic East, who was shot at the altar of the church in Wernyol during a service of Morning Prayer. Tens of others have been wounded, some very seriously with gun-shot wounds and broken limbs. Only a few of these have been taken to Juba Military Hospital, whilst the rest are still in Bor Hospital.

I have leant from Episcopal Church sources on the ground that the attackers were well armed with new automatic weapons, dressed in army uniforms, and appeared well-organized and properly trained. Instead of attacking a cattle camp, this was an attack on a Payam headquarter town. Consequently in the view of the Church, this was not a tribal conflict as commonly reported, but a deliberately organized attack on civilians by those that are against the peace in Southern Sudan. These reports confirm the suspicions that I aired in my May 2009 appeal to the diplomatic and international community in Sudan.

Last week I received the news from Ezo, Ezo County, Western Equatoria State, that there had been another devastating attack by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) on Ezo town on 12th/13th August in which three people, including an Episcopal Church lay reader had been murdered. The attack included the abduction of children from the Episcopal church building in Ezo, and several thousand more people have been displaced into Ezo town – people that the local churches are struggling to care for. Ezo Hospital was also attacked, medicine stolen and equipment destroyed.

I hear from Bishop John Zawo of the Episcopal Diocese of Ezo that the attack could have been avoided if better military security had been given to the town.

I am therefore appealing to the government and the international community at large to act swiftly in order to prevent such atrocities from occurring in future. Continuing violence such as this is not only a crime against the innocent people killed and injured, it is a crime against the peace of the Sudan and if left unchecked will do great damage to the smooth implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

This is especially the case given the strained political situation whereby the two parties to the CPA – the National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) – are still not coming to an agreement regarding the laws governing the elections and referendum. The time frame given for the elections and referendum is already too short for the democratic processes to be effectively organized, and by the provisional dates chosen for voting in the elections, much of the South will already be suffering from logistics problems caused by the onset of the wet season.This is an indication to the citizens of the Sudan that the people on the ground are not being regarded or included in the politics of peace and that we are vulnerable to future violations of the CPA and an uncertain future for peace in the Sudan.

I refer the government and international community to my May 2009 appeal to the diplomatic community in Sudan, and now strongly reiterate my plea to urge your countries’ governments to do more to guarantee the implementation of the CPA at all levels. As shown from the Twic East example, there is now accurate evidence to suggest that such violence is deliberately perpetrated as I implied in the May appeal. So long as all violence such as that in Jonglei and that perpetrated by the LRA continues – violence which is preventable by better use of security personnel – there is no hope of conducting free and fair elections in these areas in 2010 and no hope of a fair referendum on Southern secession in 2011.

In the mean time I am appealing for humanitarian assistance to those 24,000 displaced and wounded people in Twic East County and those 15,000 displaced and wounded people Ezo County. I would like to especially appeal for help for the widow and children of Ven. Joseph Mabior Garang, who now require food and education.

Unless the guarantor governments of the CPA act now the peace is in grave danger. As the Church, we look for the upholding of the rights of every Sudanese to a peaceful future.

His Grace the Most Rev. Dr. Daniel Deng Bul Yak
Archbishop and Primate of the Province of the Episcopal Church of Sudan

Further details and photos will appear on http://www.sudan.anglican.org/

Makeli Found Guilty of Rwanda Genocide

Dominique Makeli, a journalist who worked for state-owned Radio Rwanda, was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Kigali district of Gikondo on 19 September by a gacaca, one of the popular courts set up specially to try cases linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The former journalist was convicted of inciting genocide on the national radio station and holding meetings to plan the genocide and attacks on Tutsis in the central city of Kabgayi. The court also found him guilty of criminal association, attempted murder and being a member of the highest level of genocide planners.

After being detained for 14 years, Makeli had previously been acquitted of genocide and released on 13 October 2008.

http://www.ifex.org/rwanda/2009/09/25/makeli_life_sentence/

For more information:
Reporters Without Borders
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75002 Paris
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Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51
http://www.rsf.org

Babbitt Dies. Her Portraits Survive

Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, an artist who had been forced to paint portraits of fellow prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp and later sought to recover the artworks from a museum there, died Wednesday in Northern California.

Babbitt, 86, died of cancer at her home in Felton, near Santa Cruz, her daughter Michele Kane said.

Babbitt’s long and unsuccessful campaign to retrieve the seven paintings of doomed Gypsy prisoners from a Polish state museum at Auschwitz became a rallying point for many other artists and Holocaust survivors. Although the museum recently sent Babbitt reproductions in what Kane acknowledged as “a kind gesture,” that was not enough, Kane said.

Babbitt “was terribly sad and upset and so despondent that she never got her pictures back. ‘Heartbroken’ is the right word,” Kane said.

The family pledged to continue fighting for the paintings, which Babbitt said helped save her life.
From her childhood in a Czech-Jewish family to her later success as a Hollywood animator, Babbitt was a witty, upbeat woman whose personality belied some of the tragedies she endured, said U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, the Nevada Democrat and Babbitt family friend who worked on her cause.

“For her to continue this quest took not only a certain strength of character, but a very optimistic view of life, rather than a pessimistic view,” Berkley said Friday.

Babbitt’s wry humor was evident during a 2006 interview, when she showed the forearm scar where her concentration camp number had been tattooed. (She had it removed during an unrelated surgery.) The number, 61016, had a symmetry that she sometimes used to play the California Lottery. “It doesn’t work,” she quipped.

A young art student when she was deported to Auschwitz, Babbitt drew a “Snow White” scene on a wall of a children’s barracks to help soothe the youngsters. Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor who performed hideous experiments on prisoners, heard of her talents and ordered her to paint portraits as mementos for his racist theories.

Babbitt said she told Mengele she would rather die if her mother was not also let out of a group of Jews scheduled to be gassed. Her mother was allowed to live. Her father and her fiance died elsewhere in the Holocaust.

Babbitt said she wanted to briefly hold the paintings, which bear her signature, and then lend them to a museum of her choice. “I wouldn’t be alive if it hadn’t been for those paintings, and my kids wouldn’t be here,” said Babbitt, who is also survived by another daughter, Karin Babbitt, and three grandchildren.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum insists it is the rightful home of the paintings, which it says it bought from camp survivors in the 1960s and ’70s. Artifacts proving Holocaust history should be in their original setting, museum officials say.

Babbitt and her mother managed to survive Auschwitz and evacuation marches. After liberation, Babbitt went to Paris and became an assistant to American cartoonist Art Babbitt, one of Disney’s “Snow White” animators. They married and moved to Hollywood and later divorced. Dina Babbitt worked in animation at various Hollywood studios.

Read the full report here.

Democracies Must Act to Defend Tamil

The horror that is unfolding in Sri Lanka becomes possible because of the silence that surrounds it. There is almost no reporting in the mainstream Indian media — or indeed in the international press — about what is happening there. Why this should be so is a matter of serious concern.

From the little information that is filtering through it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of ‘the war on terror’ as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country, and commit unspeakable crimes against the Tamil people.

Working on the principle that every Tamil is a terrorist unless he or she can prove otherwise, civilian areas, hospitals and shelters are being bombed and turned into a war zone. Reliable estimates put the number of civilians trapped at over 200,000. The Sri Lankan Army is advancing, armed with tanks and aircraft.

Meanwhile, there are official reports that several “welfare villages” have been established to house displaced Tamils in Vavuniya and Mannar districts. According to a report in The Daily Telegraph (Feb 14, 2009), these villages “will be compulsory holding centres for all civilians fleeing the fighting”. Is this a euphemism for concentration camps?

The former foreign minister of Sri Lanka, Mangala Samaraveera, told The Daily Telegraph: “A few months ago the government started registering all Tamils in Colombo on the grounds that they could be a security threat, but this could be exploited for other purposes like the Nazis in the 1930s. They’re basically going to label the whole civilian Tamil population as potential terrorists.”

Given its stated objective of “wiping out” the LTTE, this malevolent collapse of civilians and “terrorists” does seem to signal that the government of Sri Lanka is on the verge of committing what could end up being genocide.

According to a UN estimate several thousand people have already been killed. Thousands more are critically wounded. The few eyewitness reports that have come out are descriptions of a nightmare from hell. What we are witnessing, or should we say, what is happening in Sri Lanka and is being so effectively hidden from public scrutiny, is a brazen, openly racist war.

The impunity with which the Sri Lankan government is being able to commit these crimes actually unveils the deeply ingrained racist prejudice, which is precisely what led to the marginalisation and alienation of the Tamils of Sri Lanka in the first place.

That racism has a long history, of social ostracisation, economic blockades, pogroms and torture. The brutal nature of the decades long civil war, which started as a peaceful, non-violent protest, has its roots in this.

Death Squads
Why the silence? In another interview Mangala Samaraveera says, “A free media is virtually non-existent in Sri Lanka today.”

He goes on to talk about death squads and ‘white van abductions’, which have made society “freeze with fear”. Voices of dissent, including those of several journalists, have been abducted and assassinated. The International Federation of Journalists accuses the government of Sri Lanka of using a combination of anti-terrorism laws, disappearances and assassinations to silence journalists.

There are disturbing but unconfirmed reports that the Indian government is lending material and logistical support to the Sri Lankan government in these crimes against humanity. If this is true, it is outrageous.

What of the governments of other countries? Pakistan? China? What are they doing to help, or harm the situation?

In Tamil Nadu the war in Sri Lanka has fuelled passions that have led to more than ten people immolating themselves. The public anger and anguish, much of it genuine, some of it obviously cynical political manipulation, has become an election issue.

It is extraordinary that this concern has not travelled to the rest of India. Why is there silence here? There are no ‘white van abductions’—at least not on this issue. Given the scale of what is happening in Sri Lanka, the silence is inexcusable.

More so because of the Indian government’s long history of irresponsible dabbling in the conflict, first taking one side and then the other. Several of us including myself, who should have spoken out much earlier, have not done so, simply because of a lack of information about the war. So while the killing continues, while tens of thousands of people are being barricaded into concentration camps, while more than 200,000 face starvation, and a genocide waits to happen, there is dead silence from this great country.

It’s a colossal humanitarian tragedy. The world must step in. Now. Before it’s too late.

Source: Pakistan Dawn.com

Journalists Reporting on Darfur are Expelled

2 March 2009 - Freelance journalist Zouhir Latif deported following sudden arrest

SOURCE: Reporters sans frontières (RSF), Paris(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders condemns the deportation of Tunisian journalist Zouhir Latif on 1 March 2009. Latif, who has political refugee status in Britain, was put on a flight bound for London following his arrest on 27 February.

A freelance journalist who works for France 24's Arabic-language service and the pan-Arab daily "Al-Hayat", Latif was arrested at his home in Khartoum by intelligence agents and held for 48 hours before being expelled. Intelligence agents confiscated his computer's hard drive as well as video material and cassettes.

"We call on the Sudanese authorities to urgently explain this arrest, which comes less than a month after the expulsion of Heba Aly, a journalist with Canadian and Egyptian dual citizenship.", the organisation said.

Latif had just spent 21 days in the western region of Darfur although the travel permits issued to the journalists by the authorities are usually for periods of no longer than two weeks. According to local sources, his arrest could be linked to this visit to Darfur and the fact that he also works for the World Food Programme, a UN agency.

Heba Aly, who was working in Sudan for various international news media including Bloomberg News and IRIN (a UN humanitarian news agency), was deported on 2 February. Her expulsion may have been linked to her visits toDarfur and her reporting on the local arms industry.

For further information on the Aly case, see:http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/100738

Pope Responds to Neo-Nazi Bishop

It was not the gas chamber or the Todessteige which had the most profound effect on me that day, but a film showing an interview with an American soldier who helped to liberate the camp. The terror in his eyes as he recounted the horrific scenes is forever fixed in my mind, and towards the end of the interview he burst into tears, as did I and my friends who were watching.

I do not need exact figures or statistics to understand the scale of the atrocities which occurred under the Nazis, because at Mauthausen-Gusen I felt it – not only proof of the Holocaust but proof of indescribable evil. An eminent historian once told me that he has never yet heard a convincing argument for why the Holocaust happened, and for me the only answer can be that evil was at work. As a religion that values above anything else the sanctity of human life, Christians of all denominations cannot forget what happened in these camps, and pray that such things may never happen again.

At the end of a day of frantic blogging and media reaction, I reflect on what exactly the Pope has achieved. At the risk of another fierce media backlash he has made it possible for more separated brethren to come back to the mother church. The views of Bishop Richard Williamson are shocking and unacceptable, but they are not shared by the majority of the Society of St. Pius X.

I was particularly moved by the words of a Jewish reader who posted on Ruth Gledhill's blog, whose wife's great uncle was saved from a Nazi camp by Marcel Lefebvre's Father. Whilst his excommunication has been lifted, it is very unlikely that Williamson will again function in the Roman Catholic Church as a priest or a bishop, and he and his small number of followers may not even choose to return.

I do expect there to be an announcement from Rome regarding Williamson in the near future, for his views and his investigation in Germany for Holocaust denial cannot and must not go unnoticed.

To echo the words of my brother seminarian Athanasius, Pope Benedict's "master plan for unity" seems to be gathering pace, and we wait prayerfully to see what his next move will be.

Read it here.

Watch the full Swedish TV investigation into the Society of St Pius X, presented by Ali Fegan.

German prosecutors are preparing a case against Bishop Richard Williamson, who was speaking to Fegan at Zaitzkofen, a village in Bavaria where the society has a seminary. You may read about the case here.

Feminists Promote Genocide of Females

Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow

Sex-selective abortion is rampant in many countries and continues to grow.

According to a publication in Orissa, the female sex ratio in India alone is at an all-time low. Steven Mosher heads the Population Research Institute, which monitors abortion internationally.

"This is done in India in epidemic proportions. It’s done in China," he notes. "It’s done in many, many of the civilizations of East Asia and Southeast Asia."

Mosher contends it has been a losing situation for female children for centuries.

However, he says the rise of Christianity has actually helped females, not hurt them, because the Bible recognizes them as having souls and also as the pinnacle of God’s creation in Genesis 2.

"Let’s look back in history before the coming of Christianity. Virtually all societies treated women as not just the weaker sex, but the disposable sex," he points out. "Female infanticide was practiced by the Greeks, by the Romans, by most of the pagan societies – and it was only with the coming of Christianity that the status of women was raised." But Mosher adds that radical feminists continue to promote abortion internationally at the expense of their own gender.

"The feminists, who want to eliminate all distinctions between men and women, are only exposing their unborn sisters to a horrible form of sexual genocide," he concludes.

For more on how Feminists misrepresent Christianity, go here.

Remembering Yukiko Sugihara

Masha Leon

Were it not for Yukiko Sugihara, who died on October 8 at age 94, I might not be writing this column, nor would there be some 55,000 descendants of the Jews her husband helped save from the Holocaust.

Wife of Chiune Sugihara, Japan’s consul in Kovno, Lithuania, in 1940, she supported her husband’s issuing 2,139 visas for 6,000 Jews despite his government’s objections. I first met Mrs. Sugihara in May 1989, when she and her son Hiroki came to New York to accept the Anti Defamation League of B’nai B’rith’s posthumous “Courage to Care Award,” presented to her husband. Across the table at the Summit Hotel, Mrs. Sugihara responded to my questions in whispered Japanese, which Hiro translated. Unexpectedly, I began to weep. I explained that, like others, my mother and I had been helped by agencies such as the Jewish Labor Committee, American Joint Distribution Committee, the Red Cross, yet here I was with an individual — someone who changed history, who could have told her husband not to put his family and career in peril by issuing “illegal” visas to Jews at a time when Japan was an ally of Nazi Germany. In her book, “Visas for Life,” Mrs. Sugihara describes the crowds of Jews waiting outside the consulate for visas. “My mother was one of those,” I told her. While I slept in our hiding place in Vilnius, fearing arrest by Stalin’s NKVD, my mother took the night train to Kovno to wait outside for one of those life-saving visas— #1882.

Read it all here.

Tamils Demand Sanctions Against Sri Lanka

Tamils protested Wednesday, Sept. 24, in front of the United Nations Headquarters in New York to draw attention of the United Nations, demanding sanctions against Sri Lanka, and advocating to invoke the principle of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as a means to halt what the protesters alleged "genocide of Tamils." The protesters also denounced the visit to the UN by the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

About 20 Sri Lankan Government supporters, including Buddhist monks, showed up briefly for a counter protest.

Weeks before his visit to the UN the Rajapaksa government expelled all NGOs including the UN from the areas of conflict. Food and medicine to the trapped Tamil population was blocked while the Government armed forces emboldened by Iranian and Chinese funding were engaged in indiscriminate aerial bombings and artillery shelling of heavily populated Tamil enclaves, killing innocent civilians and displacing over 200,000.

The protesters chanted "Rajapaksa, don't come to the UN, go to The Hague." Speaking at the rally, Dr. Ellyn Shander, a US physician who volunteered in Sri Lanka after the Asian Tsunami, drew parallels to the Nazi holocaust with the plight of the Tamils in Sri Lanka and accused the Sri Lankan government of committing genocide against Tamils.

Read it all here.

Rwanda Report Implicates France in Genocide

PARIS -France condemned yesterday as "unacceptable" allegations by Rwanda it had played an active role in the 1994 genocide as Kigali said it hoped French officials would be indicted for war crimes.

"This report contains unacceptable accusations made against French political and military officials," Romain Nadal, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in France's first official reaction.

He also cast doubt on the "objectivity" of the Rwandan commission that produced it, noting it was explicitly asked to "gather evidence showing the implication of the French state in the genocide carried out in Rwanda in 1994."

Source: Agence France - Presse

Diamonds or Water?

Botswana's Bushmen have been forbidden from fetching water from their own borehole reserve after several water boreholes were sunk in preparation for a diamond mine in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

The exploratory boreholes were created as part of the environmental assessment which precedes the construction of Gem Diamonds' US $2.2 billion diamond mine at Gope, a traditional Bushman community within the reserve. The mine will require several wells to supply it with enough water to operate, in addition to the vast volumes of water that will be extracted from the mine pit itself.

As a result, Bushmen from the reserve have petitioed the government of Botswana to allow them to re-open a single borehole at Mothomelo, within the reserve, ever since the government dismantled it to 'encourage' people to relocate in 2002. Until their unlawful eviction from the reserve, Mothomelo had been the Bushmen's main source of water. The Bushmen won the legal right to return to their homes in December 2006, but the government continues to make this "almost impossible by refusing to allow them to operate a water borehole in what is an extremely arid and inhospitable environment," said Survival International.

"There is only one reason behind the government allowing the diamond miners to sink unlimited boreholes and preventing the Bushmen from using just one - the cruel vindictiveness of a government determined to keep the Bushmen out of their ancestral lands, and intent on making them pay for their victory in the high court," Stephen Corry, the Director of Survival International, said.

"The diamonds from this mine will be tokens of hate, not love," he said.

Source: Afrol News