Saturday 23 June 2012

Rwanda's Long Shadow: U.S.-Rwandan Relations and a Path Forward in Eastern Congo

Evidence continues to mount that the government of Rwanda has been harboring, supporting, and arming war criminals and mutineers, including Bosco Ntaganda, in neighboring eastern Congo. Former rebels from the Rwanda-linked National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, and an affiliated offshoot group called the M23 movement are currently in open rebellion against the government in Kinshasa and fighting the Congolese national army, or FARDC. Further, recent documents leaked by the United Nations Mission to Congo, or MONUSCO, as well as several interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch and corroborated by the Enough Project field team are pointing to the government of Rwanda forcibly recruiting men and boys into the Rwandan army, or RDF, sending them to fight as rebels for M23 in eastern Congo, and summarily executing them if they prove too weak or try to escape.

Additionally, as part of its annual reporting process, the U.N. Group of Experts on Congo conducted an investigation into the allegations of Rwandan support to the M23 rebellion in Congo. In the process of briefing U.N. Security Council member states as part of the group’s interim report process, the results of this investigation were shared. Several U.N. diplomats as well as NGOs have confirmed that the investigation uncovered evidence of direct Rwandan involvement in the rebellion. Several sources also indicated that this group is best suited to continue investigation into the matter through the remainder of this year. Read more

Dangerous and Deadly Arms Trade

Hundreds of thousands of people are killed, injured, raped, repressed and forced to flee their homes every year as a result of the international arms trade. Families are torn apart. Livelihoods and lives are destroyed. Armed conflicts destroy social and economic infrastructure, breed corruption and divert public finances, denying the poor access to health care, water, food, shelter and education, increasing poverty and causing yet more deaths.

For decades there has been a global treaty on the import, export and transfer of dinosaur bones yet there is no global treaty to strictly control the deadly trade in conventional arms. Revolvers, rifles, machine guns, bullets, hand grenades, missiles, rockets, armoured vehicles and other weapons and arms can be traded between governments, arms dealers and armed groups with few restrictions. Unscrupulous governments allow almost unlimited amounts of arms to be supplied to those flagrantly violating human rights and destroying lives.

Regulation at the country level has failed to adapt to an increasingly globalized trade – components are sourced from across the world, and production and assembly take place in different countries. It’s time for all governments to commit to securing an international Arms Trade Treaty. Read more

"Prison is Not for Me": Arbitrary Detention in South Sudan

Flawed processes, unlawful detentions, and dire conditions in South Sudan’s prisons reflect the urgent need to improve the new nation’s fledgling justice system, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 105-page report, “Prison Is Not for Me: Arbitrary Detention in South Sudan,” documents violations of due process rights, patterns of wrongful deprivation of liberty, and the harsh, unacceptable prison conditions in which detainees live. The research was done during a 10-month period before and after South Sudan’s independence, on July 9, 2011.

“The experience of those in detention in South Sudan reveals serious flaws in the emerging justice system,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “South Sudan is a new country and badly needs an effective justice system that upholds human rights and dignity. It is a fundamental building block for establishing rule of law and accountability.” Read more

Friday 22 June 2012

End of the Roadmap: Somalia after the London and Istanbul Conferences

Indications are that, with continued international support and pressure, Somalia's Transition Roadmap will continue towards its goal of handing over to a caretaker administration on 20 August, 2012.

As such, Somalia's international partners should focus in the next few months on how to transform the momentum injected into the Roadmap process into policy attention and diplomatic support, or pressure, needed to see the caretaker administration develop into more of a government. A more functional government would focus on the provision of services beyond the attention already paid to the security sector.

The end of the Roadmap will not signal an end to Somalia's transition. The new administration will face many of the same challenges threatening the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), and some others generated by the Roadmap process itself. However some progress has been made in Mogadishu, and Somalis – especially in civil society and the private sector – are in a position to build upon that base. Constructive international engagement could support that process. Read more

Eritrean national tells police he was walking in south Tel Aviv park when he was set upon without cause by three teenagers

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Eritrean migrants Photo: Marc Israel Sellem
Three Tel Aviv youths launched a physical assault on an African migrant on Wednesday night, police said.

An Eritrean national told police he had been walking in a south Tel Aviv park when he was set upon without cause by three teenagers. In addition to absorbing blows, the man said, he was also pelted with rocks in the attack.

The migrant managed to flee his attackers, and arrived at a local police station to file a complaint.

Within minutes, police escorted him to the scene of the attack, and soon, the man spotted three boys aged 14 and 16 and recognized them as the attackers.

Officers proceeded to arrest the suspects. Police are treating the incident as a hate crime.

The victim sustained bruising in the attack and received medical attention.

Last month, a gang of 12 youths from south Tel Aviv were arrested on suspicion of launching a series of assaults on African migrants in south Tel Aviv.

Police believe the suspects, most of whom are minors, assaulted the migrants on several occasions.

During some of the assaults, the suspects allegedly beat victims with clubs, while in others, pepper spray was involved, police suspect.

African migrants have regularly reported being attacked in the neighborhoods of south Tel Aviv, often by young men riding up on motorscooters and assaulting them or throwing rocks or bottles at them before speeding off.

Last Saturday night, two men on a motorscooter drove up to an Eritrean-owned bar in the Hatikva neighborhood and threw a firecracker inside the establishment, leaving one patron lightly injured.

The same bar was ransacked during anti-migrant rioting that took place after a protest against asylum-seekers in the neighborhood in late May. 
source http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=274796

Yishai: I’ll work to deport all Sudanese, Eritreans

Yshai Interior minister speaks as 123 S. Sudanese prepare to board flight to Juba; deportees express anger, relief at journey home.

The deportation of the 700- 1,500 South Sudanese in Israel barely scratches the surface of solving the migrant problem facing the country, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said Sunday evening, as a group of 123 South Sudanese prepared to board a midnight flight home to Juba.
Yishai said the real problem “is with Eritrea that has 30,000 people [in Israel] and north Sudan with 15,000,” adding that he hopes “that the legal obstacles to this will be lifted soon and we can expel them as well.”
Yishai admitted that the South Sudanese make up only a “drop within a drop” of the 60,000 or so African migrants in Israel, but added that deporting them is a “national interest” and that if he “has to chose between the interests of Israel and the interests of the Sudanese, I will choose Israel.”
Currently Israel cannot legally deport migrants from Sudan, an enemy state where they would stand to face persecution upon return, or Eritreans, who are citizens of a police state and would potentially be in grave danger if sent back. As a result, both groups are granted group protection status and cannot be deported, giving them de-facto refugee status without the rights that refugee status affords.
As Yishai spoke, South Sudanese men, women, and children were being processed for their midnight flights behind mounds of suitcases inside Ben-Gurion Airport’s Terminal 1. They will be joined on the charter flight by four members of a South Sudan diplomatic delegation that came to Israel last Thursday to oversee the administration of the deportations and meet with local members of the South Sudanese community in Israel.
Gidon Cohen, the head of the encouragement of willful repatriation department of the Population, Immigration and Border Authority, said that each South Sudanese adult received $1,300 in cash, with an additional $500 for each minor traveling with them. They were also given vaccines against diseases common to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Cohen said each passenger was allowed to carry 30kg. of luggage. Many of the suitcases clogging up the entry to Terminal 1 were left by families who had exceeded their luggage limit, and Cohen said he had no idea if the luggage would be shipped to them or remain behind in Israel.
The first leg of the deportation of the South Sudanese community of Israel began early Sunday morning, when a bus full of South Sudanese left Eilat to make its way to the airport. It was followed by a bus leaving Arad at 9 a.m., while the rest of the deportees left from the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station at midday.
Escorted by friends and trailed by cameramen and reporters, dozens of South Sudanese men, women, and children filled into buses on the seventh floor of the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station. As they loaded their bags onto the bus in the midday sun, the migrants described a mixture of feelings. While many spoke of anger towards the anti-migrant atmosphere in Israel and the arrests that accompanied the deportations, others spoke of relief that the deportation saga is coming to an end and happiness about finally returning to their homeland, a new country that did not exist when they fled years earlier.
Andrew Akolawine smiled on the pavement at the bus station, saying “I’ve been here for five years and I’m happy to be going back. You know in any circle, you must end at the point where you start. I started there [South Sudan] and I will finish there, this is enough.”
Akolawine, a father of four, spoke warmly of the Israeli friends he’d made over his years in the country, but added that recent anti-migrant statements by Israeli politicians had soured his opinion of Israel.
Still, he cracked, “I’m very proud that I am part of a people Israel thinks are so important that they don’t talk about the Palestinians anymore, just us.”
One South Sudanese man facing eviction next week came to bid farewell to some of his friends, and sounded far more bitter towards the deportations.
“I need to say to Israel thank you, you don’t want any black people only whites.
When I go back to there, maybe I’ll work in the interior ministry and I will remember well what was done to us.”
He added “I remember growing up reading the Bible thinking Israel is people who help each other… we ran to Israel and we realized that it’s not Israel any longer, it’s just like Russia, Iraq, Egypt.”
Orit Marom of the Assaf NGO, which assists African migrants, called Sunday “a day of shame,” saying that Israel’s Interior Ministry “has trampled on the honor of great friends of Israel, the South Sudanese.” Marom added “the South Sudanese, unlike Eli Yishai, have a big heart and they forgive him.”
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the deportations during Sunday’s cabinet meeting, saying “today the government will begin the operation to repatriate illegal work infiltrators to their countries of origin. We will do this is an orderly and dignified manner.”
Netanyahu also spoke of the government’s efforts to stop the entry of further illegal migrants by finishing construction of the border fence, finishing detention facilities for illegal migrants and using diplomatic steps to find third countries to take in African asylum seekers.
On June 7, the Jerusalem District Court rejected a petition by human rights groups opposed to the deportation of South Sudanese, saying the NGOs did not prove that the South Sudanese would be in physical danger if they were returned home. Though assurances were made that the migrants would be given a week to prepare for deportation, three days later immigration officials began arresting South Sudanese across the country.
The arrests follow a decision announced in January by the Interior Ministry, which gave South Sudanese until April 1 to leave Israel willingly or face deportation.
The Jerusalem Post
source 

Tuesday 19 June 2012

Frozen Words: Memory and Sexual Violence Amongst Sudanese Refugee Women in Cairo


Comprehensive Peace Agreement [CPA] between the North and South. The peace process culminated in a referendum in January 2011, when the people of South Sudan voted overwhelmingly to secede from the North. Despite the CPA, South Sudanese refugees continued to apply for asylum in Egypt between 2006 and 2010 in more or less the same numbers as were recorded in earlier years.

This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in Egypt with South Sudanese female refugees seeking educational, legal and psychosocial services at St. Andrew’s Refugee Services in downtown Cairo. The information presented in the paper derives from participant observation, interviews with single South Sudanese women and NGO service providers between August 2011 and February 2012.

The author assisted in preparing refugee resettlement referrals to UNHCR throughout the research period and also undertook an analysis of relevant media articles, policy documents, internet blogs and literature produced by UNHCR and the Egyptian government between January 2004 and February 2012. Pseudonyms are provided for all women discussed in this work. Institutional Review Board approval from the University of South Florida was obtained prior to beginning fieldwork.    Read more

Cruelty and Denial: Medial Evidence for State-Sponsored Torture in Ethiopia

: Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front [EPRDF] have ruled Ethiopia since 1991. In 1994, the Government of Ethiopia [GOE] became a signatory to the U.N. Convention on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment, incorporated the language of the Convention into its constitution, and subsequently criminalized all acts of torture committed in the country. Over the past two decades there has been a widening gap between law and practice, with numerous reports of torture of dissidents in conflict zones [the Ogaden area of Somali, and Gambella regions], and elsewhere in the country. This report is a detailed analysis of the alleged torture history, and the physical and psychological findings from forensic examination of 102 asylum seekers in the United States who presented credible evidence that they were tortured in Ethiopia. This study is unique because it is the first comprehensive medical forensic analysis of a cohort of asylum seekers from Ethiopia, a country whose officials deny that it engages in torture, and cruel and degrading practices.

This study confirms the growing body of evidence that torture is widespread, systemic and committed with impunity by GOE officials, police, and the military to control opposition to the EPRDF. The arrests and the alleged torture described by our patients were entirely extrajudicial, with no charges being made, often resulting in long detentions, and prisoners denied access to counsel and the courts. It is evident from the statement of the U.N. Committee Against Torture in 2010, that the GOE is in violation of the Convention on Torture, including article , which requires signatories to take action to prevent acts of torture. This situation is likely to worsen with the passage of the 2009 Anti-Terrorism Law, which permits security officers and police to engage in torture rather than criminalize it, and the Charities and Societies Law which weakens monitoring of abuses committed in prison. It is in the United States’ interest to move away from its policy of “quiet diplomacy” towards Ethiopia, and in concert with its donor partners, leverage the enormous amount of development aid given to Ethiopia to force it to uphold and comply with the articles and principles of the Convention. Read more