I worked for Reuters back in the 80s and 90s, and still get email sometimes about things that happen to Reuters employees. I got one today concerning the murder of Reuters journalists that was exposed by Pfc Manning, the US soldier recently convicted of leaking confidential documents to WikiLeaks. The email contained a press release from Amnesty International calling on President Obama to pardon Manning, and included a link to a YouTube video: Iraq shooting exposed by Manning and WikiLeaks.
The video is difficult to watch. The dispassionate attitude of the military personnel is offset by the incredible force of their guns - enough force to knock over a minibus. (A minibus containing children.)
Sometimes news coverage gets so caught up in daily details that we forget the real story behind the news: in this case, why Manning leaked confidential US documents. That video certainly reminded me.
In the private electronic exchange that got Manning arrested, Manning sounds haunted. Manning wrote, "If you... saw incredible things, awful things ... things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC ... what would you do?”
During the three years after arrest and before trial, Manning was subjected to conditions so foul that they have been described as torture. Initially Manning was held in an 8 by 8 by 8 foot wire mesh cage, and then was moved to an even smaller 8 by 6 foot cell, in total isolation (even nearby isolation cells were kept vacant). For at least nine months Manning was forced to sleep on his side facing a bright lamp; kept naked and shoeless much of the time, without even sheets or blankets; shackled when leaving the cell; denied access to visitors, including a lawyer, for long periods; and not allowed any amusements, not even pictures or books or writing materials.
Manning has said that the only thing he had to amuse himself was a small mirror, and he spent a lot of time looking at himself. He also said that he danced as much as he could in his tiny cell, just to keep moving (there was no music of course). His guards said in court that he licked the bars on his cell a lot.
Given the prolonged privations and abuse that Manning suffered, I have to wonder about his decision to become a woman. Can a person in that situation be competent to make that decision? Manning is 5'2" and slight, and she (I will respect her gender identification from this point forward) may have thought about gender reassignment in her past life, but lots of people have thoughts about things that they never pursue fully. If Obama actually did pardon Manning and she had a few years to recover from this ordeal, I wonder if her decision would be the same.
My final thoughts about Manning are about the huge difference in outcome for Manning and America's other famous whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, was tried for treason but not convicted. Manning got 35 years. There are a lot of differences - class (Ellsberg has a PhD), context (Manning was tried in a military court), government abuse (Nixon's henchmen plotted to kill Ellsberg and raided the office of his psychiatrist), etc - but the essential difference between Manning and Ellsberg seems to be the difference in public opinion. In 1971, the American public was outraged by the lies and abuses that Ellsberg exposed about Viet Nam. People were politically active and engaged. In 2013, the US public consumes infotainment instead of news; they are politically unengaged and ignorant. In short, they could care less about civil and human rights within or outside the US. I wish I could say that Canada was any better.
Showing posts with label human rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human rights. Show all posts
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Loliondo and the Shiek
The A marks Loliondo, a Maasai village and district in northern Tanzania.
I have written about the Maasai before, on this blog in The Wheat Field, and in African publications in the 90s. In the fight between pastoralists and farmers, I tend to support the farmers, if only because poor countries need food sources. But in the fight between the pastoralists and the oil sheiks who want to turn Maasai land into the Disneyworld of Big Game Hunting, you have to support the Maasai.
At this very moment, the government of Tanzania is evicting Maasai from their land in Loliondo to please Mohamed Abdul Rahim Al Ali, an uber-wealthy Arab who bought the rights to hunt there. This is the sad end to a land dispute that has been going on for over 20 years.
Eighteen years ago, I visited Loliondo and saw what was going on.
The drive from Arusha to Loliondo is less than 400 km, but it's a hard trip. The first few miles are paved, but quickly you have to turn onto a road with ruts so deep that people are regularly killed when their cars roll. The going is slow. About 100 kilometers from Loliondo, in the heart of the Serengeti plain, we had to abandon roads altogether and drive cross-country, navigating by the stars. We used all three of the spare tires on our truck. It's not a trip that anyone would want to make frequently.
The rich man from the United Arab Emirates doesn't have to drive. He built himself an airport. He also built himself a large compound, which for some reason I was invited to visit. Two decades ago large screen TVs and satellite reception were rare even in North America, but he had both in a huge tent with a sand floor covered in layers of carpets. Giant hookahs with many hoses were scattered around, along with large pillows. The compound was surrounded by high fences, and there were lots of security personnel with lots of guns.
Tanzania doesn't allow hunting, but this fellow apparently bought himself an exemption. His airport and compound awaited his occasional weekend visits with friends.
The Maasai are semi-nomadic cattle herders who graze their herds over large areas. They don't believe in killing wild animals, or even their own cattle if at all possible. However, the Tanzanian government (apparently at the behest of this fellow) is claiming that the Maasai are killing wildlife, and that the wild animals need to be protected by ousting the Maasai and their cattle from large tracts of land. The restrictions that are being imposed right now are so large that Maasai cattle herds will have to be reduced by 75%.
There aren't a lot of people in Loliondo, and those that are there live on a narrow margin. These reductions mean depopulation, the end of a traditional way of life, and possibly starvation. For the wildlife they have stewarded so well, the future also does not look rosy: with no laws to stop them, the Arab hunters are already known to hunt from helicopters.
Here's an excellent brief video that shows the Maasai speaking on this issue: Voices of Loliondo.
Tanzania relies greatly on tourism, and so the government is sensitive to international public pressure. There's a petition that needs a lot of support: http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_the_maasai.
More information:
History of OBC in Tanzania
Update: I just remembered how I got on to that compound. I met a Maasai man who was selling honey to the cook on the compound, and I tagged along - then got a tour.
I have written about the Maasai before, on this blog in The Wheat Field, and in African publications in the 90s. In the fight between pastoralists and farmers, I tend to support the farmers, if only because poor countries need food sources. But in the fight between the pastoralists and the oil sheiks who want to turn Maasai land into the Disneyworld of Big Game Hunting, you have to support the Maasai.
At this very moment, the government of Tanzania is evicting Maasai from their land in Loliondo to please Mohamed Abdul Rahim Al Ali, an uber-wealthy Arab who bought the rights to hunt there. This is the sad end to a land dispute that has been going on for over 20 years.
Eighteen years ago, I visited Loliondo and saw what was going on.
The drive from Arusha to Loliondo is less than 400 km, but it's a hard trip. The first few miles are paved, but quickly you have to turn onto a road with ruts so deep that people are regularly killed when their cars roll. The going is slow. About 100 kilometers from Loliondo, in the heart of the Serengeti plain, we had to abandon roads altogether and drive cross-country, navigating by the stars. We used all three of the spare tires on our truck. It's not a trip that anyone would want to make frequently.
The rich man from the United Arab Emirates doesn't have to drive. He built himself an airport. He also built himself a large compound, which for some reason I was invited to visit. Two decades ago large screen TVs and satellite reception were rare even in North America, but he had both in a huge tent with a sand floor covered in layers of carpets. Giant hookahs with many hoses were scattered around, along with large pillows. The compound was surrounded by high fences, and there were lots of security personnel with lots of guns.
Tanzania doesn't allow hunting, but this fellow apparently bought himself an exemption. His airport and compound awaited his occasional weekend visits with friends.
The Maasai are semi-nomadic cattle herders who graze their herds over large areas. They don't believe in killing wild animals, or even their own cattle if at all possible. However, the Tanzanian government (apparently at the behest of this fellow) is claiming that the Maasai are killing wildlife, and that the wild animals need to be protected by ousting the Maasai and their cattle from large tracts of land. The restrictions that are being imposed right now are so large that Maasai cattle herds will have to be reduced by 75%.
There aren't a lot of people in Loliondo, and those that are there live on a narrow margin. These reductions mean depopulation, the end of a traditional way of life, and possibly starvation. For the wildlife they have stewarded so well, the future also does not look rosy: with no laws to stop them, the Arab hunters are already known to hunt from helicopters.
Here's an excellent brief video that shows the Maasai speaking on this issue: Voices of Loliondo.
Tanzania relies greatly on tourism, and so the government is sensitive to international public pressure. There's a petition that needs a lot of support: http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_the_maasai.
More information:
History of OBC in Tanzania
Update: I just remembered how I got on to that compound. I met a Maasai man who was selling honey to the cook on the compound, and I tagged along - then got a tour.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
We Are Not the Good Guys
An editorial in the March 13 Globe & Mail starts, "While Canada keeps its human-rights reports on Afghanistan... strictly secret, the U.S. state department posted its 2009 report on its website Thursday for anyone who cares to read it. The report says about its Afghan ally, in part: 'Torture and abuse methods included, but were not limited to, beating by stick, scorching bar, or iron bar; flogging by cable; battering by rod; electric shock; deprivation of sleep, water, and food; abusive language; sexual humiliation; and rape...'"
The US report certainly backs up Richard Colvin's testimony that Afghans detained by Canadian troops were routinely tortured in Afghan jails. Not long ago PMO talking points claimed that the only torture was one detainee having a shoe thrown at him. They were claiming that since Colvin hadn't seen the torture firsthand, his testimony was bogus and the torture never occurred. Plus they were claiming that all detainees were murderous terrorists, rather than Colvin's testimony (backed up by the US reports) that many detainees were just ordinary Afghans who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Conservatives also claimed these things in the Comments sections of this blog (eg here). My question is: what do you have to say now? Is the US government lying too?
It's clear now why Harper prorogued parliament. He needed to create a gap in time between all those hateful things MacKay shouted last fall and the exposure of everything MacKay said as utter, self-serving lies. It also gave him time to come up with a new strategy: try to smear the previous Liberal government as much as possible before the full truth comes out so that he can say that he wasn't the only one to blame. (Not that I oppose exposing actions by the Martin government; as Ignatieff has stated all along, the investigation should not exclude Martin.)
Harper's deceitful, undemocratic actions are shameful. But the most important part of this affair continues to be this: When we have armed troops in another country, we have an absolute obligation to respect the human rights of the people in that country - and to be seen to do so. We have failed so spectacularly that we are not only in contravention of the Geneva Convention, but our government is known to be engaged in a coverup of our abuses. We must withdraw from Afghanistan immediately, have a full investigation, and start to think about reparations.
###
The US report certainly backs up Richard Colvin's testimony that Afghans detained by Canadian troops were routinely tortured in Afghan jails. Not long ago PMO talking points claimed that the only torture was one detainee having a shoe thrown at him. They were claiming that since Colvin hadn't seen the torture firsthand, his testimony was bogus and the torture never occurred. Plus they were claiming that all detainees were murderous terrorists, rather than Colvin's testimony (backed up by the US reports) that many detainees were just ordinary Afghans who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Conservatives also claimed these things in the Comments sections of this blog (eg here). My question is: what do you have to say now? Is the US government lying too?
It's clear now why Harper prorogued parliament. He needed to create a gap in time between all those hateful things MacKay shouted last fall and the exposure of everything MacKay said as utter, self-serving lies. It also gave him time to come up with a new strategy: try to smear the previous Liberal government as much as possible before the full truth comes out so that he can say that he wasn't the only one to blame. (Not that I oppose exposing actions by the Martin government; as Ignatieff has stated all along, the investigation should not exclude Martin.)
Harper's deceitful, undemocratic actions are shameful. But the most important part of this affair continues to be this: When we have armed troops in another country, we have an absolute obligation to respect the human rights of the people in that country - and to be seen to do so. We have failed so spectacularly that we are not only in contravention of the Geneva Convention, but our government is known to be engaged in a coverup of our abuses. We must withdraw from Afghanistan immediately, have a full investigation, and start to think about reparations.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
1984
The scariest thing I ever read is an account (I read decades ago) of a torture training session in a Latin American country. Prisoners were used to demonstrate and practice methods of torture, which took the inhumanity of torture to an even higher level than the torture itself.
That level of inhumanity is almost matched in recent revelations about the Bush government's policies on torturing Muslims suspected of anti-American activities. Every act was scrupulously proscribed, monitored and reported. There was little random abuse. Every detail, down to the number of calories a day they were kept alive on, the temperature of the water used to torture them, and the number of hours they could be kept in various sized boxes, was detailed.
As details of the practices leaked, the public rose in angry protest, to no avail. The Bush administration even ignored a 2006 demand by the the US Supreme Court to stop torturing prisoners and follow the Geneva Convention.
It's a tricky political road for one president to preside over the prosecution of his predecessor (as we have found with our inability to prosecute Brian Mulroney), but Obama must bring justice to this case. As a New York Times editorial says today, "Only by making public officials accountable under the law can Americans be confident that future presidents will not feel free to break it the way Mr. Bush did."
###
That level of inhumanity is almost matched in recent revelations about the Bush government's policies on torturing Muslims suspected of anti-American activities. Every act was scrupulously proscribed, monitored and reported. There was little random abuse. Every detail, down to the number of calories a day they were kept alive on, the temperature of the water used to torture them, and the number of hours they could be kept in various sized boxes, was detailed.
As details of the practices leaked, the public rose in angry protest, to no avail. The Bush administration even ignored a 2006 demand by the the US Supreme Court to stop torturing prisoners and follow the Geneva Convention.
It's a tricky political road for one president to preside over the prosecution of his predecessor (as we have found with our inability to prosecute Brian Mulroney), but Obama must bring justice to this case. As a New York Times editorial says today, "Only by making public officials accountable under the law can Americans be confident that future presidents will not feel free to break it the way Mr. Bush did."
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
New Public Policy Required Around Retirement
One of the most negative consequences of the current financial collapse is the effect on pensioners who live off savings. Their portfolios have collapsed. Government regulation forces them to remove a certain percentage of their savings every year, so they are forced to sell assets that have dropped greatly in value - resulting in an unfortunate forced situation of “buy high sell low”.
Now, back when I studied financial management, the rule of thumb was that you should have the percentage represented by your age in non-risky savings. If you’re 60, then only 40% of your savings should be in risky assets, with the rest in fixed return assets. It is obvious from the plight of seniors that this rule of thumb is no longer followed.
The reason, I imagine, is that it is not possible to get a high enough return on secure assets. The Rule of 25 tells us that to live off investment income, you need to save 25 times your desired income. To retire with $50,000/year income, you need to save $1.25M. This rule is based on a return of 4%. Where do people get a 4% real return (return above inflation)? Not from anywhere safe, certainly. That makes us have to contemplate a Rule of 50: to get $50K, you need to save $2.5M.... that kind of saving is simply beyond the ability of most people. (It also requires a higher interest rate while saving, which entails more risk.) If we moved to a Rule of 50 paradigm, we would need to rethink RRSP limits, which currently have an upper ceiling of $20K/year. But even that doesn't help when we have the severe business cycles of the last ten years, during which we have had two catastrophic market events (the tech bubble and subprime meltdown) that wiped out much of people’s savings.
Government bureaucrats and educators all have pensions and benefits till death, and many of them don’t seem to comprehend that most of us don’t have that security, and must finance our retirements through savings. That’s not the hard part though. The hard part is managing the savings so that we can actually retire on them. We are pressured to find investments with decent returns. Most of us aren’t gamblers – we try to find mutual funds that balance risk and return in a responsible way – but we’ve still lost our shirts twice in the past decade. The market bounced back after the tech bubble, but many investments were lost forever, whether we sold or not.
What is needed is a new approach to public policy around retirement savings that is based on the reality of most people. We have a crisis coming with the aging population, and it is a crisis of poverty. Affluent, hard-working people are facing a retirement in poverty – through no fault of their own. We saved, but the unavailability of appropriate savings options and the severity of business cycles have meant that we will have inadequate funds to live on. Sure, we can downsize and cut back, but how will we pay for our prescriptions, walkers and home care? The current system, designed by bureaucrats who have lifetime benefits attached to their pensions, is simply inadequate.
As the "bulge" of the baby boom is 10-15 years away from retirement, we need to make some changes to avoid human catastrophe. As we reregulate the financial industry we need to ensure the following:
* Citizens have appropriate places to invest retirement savings.
* Business cycles are less severe.
* There is more public education about investment, and better regulation of claims made by banks.
In addition, I think we need to consider some more dramatic and controversial ideas:
* Health benefits for seniors need to be improved, including prescriptions and prosthetics.
* Public service pensions should be scaled back and CPP/SocSec should be scaled up, resulting in a more equitable treatment for citizens.
Update: Funny that I wrote this just before things started to really get bad.###
Now, back when I studied financial management, the rule of thumb was that you should have the percentage represented by your age in non-risky savings. If you’re 60, then only 40% of your savings should be in risky assets, with the rest in fixed return assets. It is obvious from the plight of seniors that this rule of thumb is no longer followed.
The reason, I imagine, is that it is not possible to get a high enough return on secure assets. The Rule of 25 tells us that to live off investment income, you need to save 25 times your desired income. To retire with $50,000/year income, you need to save $1.25M. This rule is based on a return of 4%. Where do people get a 4% real return (return above inflation)? Not from anywhere safe, certainly. That makes us have to contemplate a Rule of 50: to get $50K, you need to save $2.5M.... that kind of saving is simply beyond the ability of most people. (It also requires a higher interest rate while saving, which entails more risk.) If we moved to a Rule of 50 paradigm, we would need to rethink RRSP limits, which currently have an upper ceiling of $20K/year. But even that doesn't help when we have the severe business cycles of the last ten years, during which we have had two catastrophic market events (the tech bubble and subprime meltdown) that wiped out much of people’s savings.
Government bureaucrats and educators all have pensions and benefits till death, and many of them don’t seem to comprehend that most of us don’t have that security, and must finance our retirements through savings. That’s not the hard part though. The hard part is managing the savings so that we can actually retire on them. We are pressured to find investments with decent returns. Most of us aren’t gamblers – we try to find mutual funds that balance risk and return in a responsible way – but we’ve still lost our shirts twice in the past decade. The market bounced back after the tech bubble, but many investments were lost forever, whether we sold or not.
What is needed is a new approach to public policy around retirement savings that is based on the reality of most people. We have a crisis coming with the aging population, and it is a crisis of poverty. Affluent, hard-working people are facing a retirement in poverty – through no fault of their own. We saved, but the unavailability of appropriate savings options and the severity of business cycles have meant that we will have inadequate funds to live on. Sure, we can downsize and cut back, but how will we pay for our prescriptions, walkers and home care? The current system, designed by bureaucrats who have lifetime benefits attached to their pensions, is simply inadequate.
As the "bulge" of the baby boom is 10-15 years away from retirement, we need to make some changes to avoid human catastrophe. As we reregulate the financial industry we need to ensure the following:
* Citizens have appropriate places to invest retirement savings.
* Business cycles are less severe.
* There is more public education about investment, and better regulation of claims made by banks.
In addition, I think we need to consider some more dramatic and controversial ideas:
* Health benefits for seniors need to be improved, including prescriptions and prosthetics.
* Public service pensions should be scaled back and CPP/SocSec should be scaled up, resulting in a more equitable treatment for citizens.
Update: Funny that I wrote this just before things started to really get bad.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
A Personal Account of the Rwanda War Crimes Tribunal
A week ago today, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda convicted Theoneste Bagosora, who is widely seen as the mastermind of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, on eleven counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
I was a spectator in the court on the day Bagosora was indicted, back in 1997. I happened to be in Arusha several times during the first few months of the tribunal and went to the court whenever I could. I saw the indictments of Bagosora, who ran the army, and Jean-Paul Akayesu, the mayor of a small town called Taba, and I heard a fair bit of testimony.
To imagine the court, think of a large rectangular room that is divided long-way down the middle, creating two long, thin rooms. The rooms were divided by a large glass window. One side of the window was the spectator area and had bleacher-type seating with about four or five long rows. Each chair had headphones so we could hear simultaneous translations of the proceedings. In the court area there was a long high bench in the middle, facing us, at which the half-dozen judges sat, with the chief judge in the center. To our right was a table at right angles to us with prosecution lawyers (who rarely seemed to be there), and behind them were places for a number of clerks, who were always busily doing things. To our left was an area for the accused and their lawyers.
There were never very many spectators when I was there (I don't think there were ever as many as ten) and they mostly seemed to be, like me, aid workers who had dropped in. The day that Bagosora was indicted we had a celebrity in the spectator room: Philip Gourevitch, a writer for the New Yorker. He carried a big stack of black and white photocopies of the cover of a New Yorker that identified him as the author of an article on Rwanda; this apparently is how he establishes his bona fides. He sat in the front row chatting with people nearby, to the annoyance of those of us who were trying to listen to the court. The event seemed to call for a more respectful, somber attitude than he displayed.
The Rwandans in the court spoke in Kinyarwanda, which sounded to me like a mix of French and Swahili. I mostly used the headphones but could follow along pretty well without, and did that from time to time to get a sense of the speakers' emotions. Everyone was quite dispassionate: very articulate, respectful, not nervous, not sounding at all upset - even those who described watching their families get hacked up.
The initial phase of the court seemed a bit jumbled to a spectator. Testimony came from survivors of the massacres, but also from Human Rights Watch workers and journalists who were there during and after the genocide. There was a mix of first and second hand information, some of which would not be admissible in a regular criminal court. I assumed that they were trying to get every bit of information into the record.
My overwhelming reaction was utter incomprehension. I heard one journalist describe standing at a bus stop shortly after the genocide ended. She was eavesdropping on some Rwandan housewives who were holding groceries and waiting for the bus. As the journalist described it, they were perfectly ordinary middle-class women with homes and children, but they were calmly discussing their part in hacking up their neighbors.
The eeriest moment was during the indictment of the mayor, Akeyesu. A young man testified that Akeyesu came to his neighborhood with a gang of killers and he, his family and neighbors all fled to the crop fields behind their houses. The young man climbed a tree but most people hid in the crops. He described watching the killers fan out through the crops, finding and killing the people hiding there. He described Akeyesu hacking his little sister and mother to death with a machete. Then the judge asked the young man to show where this took place. A big blown-up map was brought in on an easel, and the man stood in front of it and pointed to the various killing spots. The judge then asked Akeyesu to indicate where something happened, so the mayor went up and stood next to the young man to point at the map. The two men stood so close that they were touching, and the young man didn't flinch at all, or even seem uncomfortable.
I have read about the Rwandan genocide but I have never heard anyone explain the emotional response of the victims and killers. I can't explain it. I can think of possible explanations for the reactions of the victims - life is cheap in Africa, or the victims were so traumatized they were numb, or the victims share the emotions of the killers and so understand why they did it - but none of those seem right. Likewise, I can think of explanations for the killers - they were riled up by the Interahamwe, they believed they were acting in self-defence - but those don't seem sufficient for the frenzy of killing by perfectly ordinary people. If it were not for the ID cards that identified people as Tutsi or Hutu, it would have been difficult to even distinguish the two, as there is no ethnic or linguistic difference and they lived together in the same neighborhoods.
The court is now done - its prosecution phase ends next week, although it will hear appeals for at least two more years. In its 12 years of operation, the court convicted 30 people and acquitted five. It also amassed a record of what went on during those fateful 100 days in 1994.
Note: I took extensive notes while watching the proceedings but have lost them, so all of this is from my memory of events 12 years ago, and I may have mixed up some of the details. It would be great if anyone else who was there could correct or augment these recollections.
###
I was a spectator in the court on the day Bagosora was indicted, back in 1997. I happened to be in Arusha several times during the first few months of the tribunal and went to the court whenever I could. I saw the indictments of Bagosora, who ran the army, and Jean-Paul Akayesu, the mayor of a small town called Taba, and I heard a fair bit of testimony.
To imagine the court, think of a large rectangular room that is divided long-way down the middle, creating two long, thin rooms. The rooms were divided by a large glass window. One side of the window was the spectator area and had bleacher-type seating with about four or five long rows. Each chair had headphones so we could hear simultaneous translations of the proceedings. In the court area there was a long high bench in the middle, facing us, at which the half-dozen judges sat, with the chief judge in the center. To our right was a table at right angles to us with prosecution lawyers (who rarely seemed to be there), and behind them were places for a number of clerks, who were always busily doing things. To our left was an area for the accused and their lawyers.
There were never very many spectators when I was there (I don't think there were ever as many as ten) and they mostly seemed to be, like me, aid workers who had dropped in. The day that Bagosora was indicted we had a celebrity in the spectator room: Philip Gourevitch, a writer for the New Yorker. He carried a big stack of black and white photocopies of the cover of a New Yorker that identified him as the author of an article on Rwanda; this apparently is how he establishes his bona fides. He sat in the front row chatting with people nearby, to the annoyance of those of us who were trying to listen to the court. The event seemed to call for a more respectful, somber attitude than he displayed.
The Rwandans in the court spoke in Kinyarwanda, which sounded to me like a mix of French and Swahili. I mostly used the headphones but could follow along pretty well without, and did that from time to time to get a sense of the speakers' emotions. Everyone was quite dispassionate: very articulate, respectful, not nervous, not sounding at all upset - even those who described watching their families get hacked up.
The initial phase of the court seemed a bit jumbled to a spectator. Testimony came from survivors of the massacres, but also from Human Rights Watch workers and journalists who were there during and after the genocide. There was a mix of first and second hand information, some of which would not be admissible in a regular criminal court. I assumed that they were trying to get every bit of information into the record.
My overwhelming reaction was utter incomprehension. I heard one journalist describe standing at a bus stop shortly after the genocide ended. She was eavesdropping on some Rwandan housewives who were holding groceries and waiting for the bus. As the journalist described it, they were perfectly ordinary middle-class women with homes and children, but they were calmly discussing their part in hacking up their neighbors.
The eeriest moment was during the indictment of the mayor, Akeyesu. A young man testified that Akeyesu came to his neighborhood with a gang of killers and he, his family and neighbors all fled to the crop fields behind their houses. The young man climbed a tree but most people hid in the crops. He described watching the killers fan out through the crops, finding and killing the people hiding there. He described Akeyesu hacking his little sister and mother to death with a machete. Then the judge asked the young man to show where this took place. A big blown-up map was brought in on an easel, and the man stood in front of it and pointed to the various killing spots. The judge then asked Akeyesu to indicate where something happened, so the mayor went up and stood next to the young man to point at the map. The two men stood so close that they were touching, and the young man didn't flinch at all, or even seem uncomfortable.
I have read about the Rwandan genocide but I have never heard anyone explain the emotional response of the victims and killers. I can't explain it. I can think of possible explanations for the reactions of the victims - life is cheap in Africa, or the victims were so traumatized they were numb, or the victims share the emotions of the killers and so understand why they did it - but none of those seem right. Likewise, I can think of explanations for the killers - they were riled up by the Interahamwe, they believed they were acting in self-defence - but those don't seem sufficient for the frenzy of killing by perfectly ordinary people. If it were not for the ID cards that identified people as Tutsi or Hutu, it would have been difficult to even distinguish the two, as there is no ethnic or linguistic difference and they lived together in the same neighborhoods.
The court is now done - its prosecution phase ends next week, although it will hear appeals for at least two more years. In its 12 years of operation, the court convicted 30 people and acquitted five. It also amassed a record of what went on during those fateful 100 days in 1994.
Note: I took extensive notes while watching the proceedings but have lost them, so all of this is from my memory of events 12 years ago, and I may have mixed up some of the details. It would be great if anyone else who was there could correct or augment these recollections.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
You Have Gay Family and Friends
I don't know how many times I've been talking with acquaintances and someone makes a snarky remark about homosexuality. The remarks are rarely malicious. The speaker just assumes that everyone in the conversation is hetero and so they make a crack about the "other".
I don't know what the percentage of gay people is but it's substantial, so you can be quite certain that someone you work with, probably even someone in your own family, is gay.
It's really impolite to speculate about other people's sexual orientation, but if you just keep the idea in your head that there might be gay people around, you might hold off on the careless comments. (And as a hetero, I can assure that it's not only gay people who are offended.)
Even more importantly, many gay people agonize over coming out to their parents, families and close friends. If those parents, family members and friends could just open a little crack in the door to let their loved ones know that they accept them in all orientations, it could ease so much pain. It would also make it less likely that you'll lose someone you care about.
Apologies for the preachy tone.
###
I don't know what the percentage of gay people is but it's substantial, so you can be quite certain that someone you work with, probably even someone in your own family, is gay.
It's really impolite to speculate about other people's sexual orientation, but if you just keep the idea in your head that there might be gay people around, you might hold off on the careless comments. (And as a hetero, I can assure that it's not only gay people who are offended.)
Even more importantly, many gay people agonize over coming out to their parents, families and close friends. If those parents, family members and friends could just open a little crack in the door to let their loved ones know that they accept them in all orientations, it could ease so much pain. It would also make it less likely that you'll lose someone you care about.
Apologies for the preachy tone.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Who Will Stand Up to the Cuban-American Lobby?
Will any of the candidates for president stand up to the Cuban-American lobby in Florida and promote the idea of lifting the embargo against Cuba?
Now that Fidel has resigned the US government is revving up to make Raul the next Great Satan.
The US government could take advantage of Fidel's resignation to open talks with Cuba, but no... CNN reports that "Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said the U.S. embargo on Cuba will not be lifted in the near term."
Cuba had a socialist revolution in a time of great capitalist corruption, including US-sponsored corruption. Some property was confiscated. Harm was done to both sides. Cuba has some human rights abuses. The US has some human rights abuses - some of them being perpetrated on illegally occupied Cuban soil.
The Cuban revolution was nearly 50 years ago. The Soviet Union ended nearly 20 years ago. Even the Sandinista revolution was nearly 30 years ago (not that I think Cuba was on the wrong side of that one, by any means). It was all a long time ago. Get over it. Stop embargoing this small idealistic island off your southern shores. And give back Guantanamo. The behavior of the US has been shameful and it's time to stop it.
Sure, if only one candidate supports lifting the embargo, then they may lose Florida and that would probably cost them the election. But isn't everyone all about "change" this year? Aren't they all promising to stop with the same old/same old crap and bring some sense to presidential policy? Isn't US persecution of Cuba just about the biggest human rights fiasco that the western hemisphere has endured in the last half century?
###
Now that Fidel has resigned the US government is revving up to make Raul the next Great Satan.
The US government could take advantage of Fidel's resignation to open talks with Cuba, but no... CNN reports that "Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said the U.S. embargo on Cuba will not be lifted in the near term."
Cuba had a socialist revolution in a time of great capitalist corruption, including US-sponsored corruption. Some property was confiscated. Harm was done to both sides. Cuba has some human rights abuses. The US has some human rights abuses - some of them being perpetrated on illegally occupied Cuban soil.
The Cuban revolution was nearly 50 years ago. The Soviet Union ended nearly 20 years ago. Even the Sandinista revolution was nearly 30 years ago (not that I think Cuba was on the wrong side of that one, by any means). It was all a long time ago. Get over it. Stop embargoing this small idealistic island off your southern shores. And give back Guantanamo. The behavior of the US has been shameful and it's time to stop it.
Sure, if only one candidate supports lifting the embargo, then they may lose Florida and that would probably cost them the election. But isn't everyone all about "change" this year? Aren't they all promising to stop with the same old/same old crap and bring some sense to presidential policy? Isn't US persecution of Cuba just about the biggest human rights fiasco that the western hemisphere has endured in the last half century?
Friday, November 23, 2007
Religious Persecution
The Halton Catholic School Board has not only removed Philip Pullman's books (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass) from its libraries; it has even removed catalogs that advertise the books. The reason given is that the author is an atheist and the books have atheistic themes. Halton's move was based on a local complaint and is subject to review, but the campaign against the books (and atheism in general) is widespread, and has been promoted by groups such as the US Catholic League.
It would be outrageous if a school board banned books because the author was Muslim or Hindu; why is it acceptable to have open season on atheists? Atheism is a deeply held conviction of many people, including myself, and we should have equal rights with people of differing faiths. Persecuting atheists should be just as illegal as persecuting other faiths.
Fearing atheists as devil-worshippers or god-killers is tantamount to calling educated women witches. Atheists are no threat. We don't even proselytise. You never see atheists out knocking on doors trying to badger people into changing their faith.
Can we not take the Halton Catholic School Board to court for breaching a fundamental tenet of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms - freedom of religion? The assault on atheism is a denial of my right to my own faith.
Update: US School Bans Dictionary
###
It would be outrageous if a school board banned books because the author was Muslim or Hindu; why is it acceptable to have open season on atheists? Atheism is a deeply held conviction of many people, including myself, and we should have equal rights with people of differing faiths. Persecuting atheists should be just as illegal as persecuting other faiths.
Fearing atheists as devil-worshippers or god-killers is tantamount to calling educated women witches. Atheists are no threat. We don't even proselytise. You never see atheists out knocking on doors trying to badger people into changing their faith.
Can we not take the Halton Catholic School Board to court for breaching a fundamental tenet of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms - freedom of religion? The assault on atheism is a denial of my right to my own faith.
Update: US School Bans Dictionary
Saturday, September 15, 2007
We Need Censorship
These days, mainstream North America seems to believe that censorship is always bad, that adult pornography is perfectly legitimate, and that the only real problem with porn sites is that they may leave annoying cookies on your computer. Do you agree? If so, do me a favor: go to google and type porn bondage. Open the first site in the long list, which I think will be yobt. Take a long look at what's there.
If you look through the links on this site you'll see things that will give you nightmares. Some of it, like the blood and whip marks, may be make-up. Some of it, like the electrodes attached to genitals, is probably fake. But some of it is not fake: the lack of blood circulation, distended orifices and objects stuck inside the women. These women are not into pain and humiliation: in real bondage, the person being dominated is asking/paying to have it done and has a safe word to make it stop. These women are porn models who are being posed, and being hurt while the filming is done. And it's part of a mainstream, huge porn site, used by millions of men.
When I saw this site, my first thought was to call the RCMP and report it. But as far as I can tell it's completely legal to do this to women as long as they're adult. In a few minutes of clicking I found dozens of similar sites, and yet I have never heard a peep of criticism about it - in the media, from friends, on other blogs. Think of the outrage if a horse is shot in a movie, and there is no notice assuring us that "no animals were harmed in the making of this film." I have even seen movies say that no insects were harmed.
The damage is not limited to the women. The men who look at this stuff are also being desensitized. I don't know much about pornography, but I suspect that men who look at softer porn that humiliates and degrades the models are led slowly to the hardcore stuff.
I'm not saying that we should go back to the days when Robert Mapplethorpe exhibits were raided. But we need to apply some tougher legal standards to adult pornography. We need to start acknowledging that it has harmful effects on the workers in the industry. If we didn't have laws, poor people might do all sorts of things for money that caused them harm, like sell their internal organs. Pornography has become a sacred cow and that needs to stop.
It's true that it would be difficult to get this stuff off the internet. It's tough enough to track down the creators of child pornography. But we're miles away from trying to stop this hardcore porn: we're still at the stage of saying there's nothing wrong with it. That complacency hurts our children and our culture.
###
If you look through the links on this site you'll see things that will give you nightmares. Some of it, like the blood and whip marks, may be make-up. Some of it, like the electrodes attached to genitals, is probably fake. But some of it is not fake: the lack of blood circulation, distended orifices and objects stuck inside the women. These women are not into pain and humiliation: in real bondage, the person being dominated is asking/paying to have it done and has a safe word to make it stop. These women are porn models who are being posed, and being hurt while the filming is done. And it's part of a mainstream, huge porn site, used by millions of men.
When I saw this site, my first thought was to call the RCMP and report it. But as far as I can tell it's completely legal to do this to women as long as they're adult. In a few minutes of clicking I found dozens of similar sites, and yet I have never heard a peep of criticism about it - in the media, from friends, on other blogs. Think of the outrage if a horse is shot in a movie, and there is no notice assuring us that "no animals were harmed in the making of this film." I have even seen movies say that no insects were harmed.
The damage is not limited to the women. The men who look at this stuff are also being desensitized. I don't know much about pornography, but I suspect that men who look at softer porn that humiliates and degrades the models are led slowly to the hardcore stuff.
I'm not saying that we should go back to the days when Robert Mapplethorpe exhibits were raided. But we need to apply some tougher legal standards to adult pornography. We need to start acknowledging that it has harmful effects on the workers in the industry. If we didn't have laws, poor people might do all sorts of things for money that caused them harm, like sell their internal organs. Pornography has become a sacred cow and that needs to stop.
It's true that it would be difficult to get this stuff off the internet. It's tough enough to track down the creators of child pornography. But we're miles away from trying to stop this hardcore porn: we're still at the stage of saying there's nothing wrong with it. That complacency hurts our children and our culture.
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