Category: Human Rights

Gaza’s Forgotten Children

The 1990 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child delineates children’s civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights. Every country in the world has ratified the Convention except of course for the United States and Somalia.

In article 6, it is stated that a child has the right to life. Governments should “ensure that children survive and develop healthily.” Article 19 states that governments should “ensure that children are properly cared for, and protect them from violence, abuse and neglect by their parents or anyone else who looks after them.” Article 27 declares that a child has a “right to a standard of living that is good enough to meet its physical and mental needs.” Finally, article 38 concerns the right to receive “special protection” in war zones.

In 1991, Israel ratified the Convention. It is therefore bound to respect and promote the rights of all children in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories.

This moving video speaks for itself. You are not alone, dear children of Gaza.

Obama kills over 700 Pakistanis in 44 drone strikes in 2009

Victims of Obama's drone attacks

The Pakistani daily Dawn — a pro-US paper not known for its antiwar stance — reports that US drones killed over 700 civilians in 44 bombings since Obama took office in January 2009. Of the 44 attacks, only five succeeded in hitting their target. In other words, Obama has surpassed his predecessor’s murderous record in Pakistan. (Of course these attacks are carried out with the complicity of Pakistan’s ruling elites — as Jane Mayer reported, and as Pervez Musharraf confessed — and are cheered on by native informers such as Ahmed Rashid).

PESHAWAR: Of the 44 predator strikes carried out by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over 700 innocent civilians.

Continue reading “Obama kills over 700 Pakistanis in 44 drone strikes in 2009”

What does courage look like?

Student protester Majid Tavakoli was arrested on December 7, 2009.

While the majority of mainstream news media’s focus on Iran has returned to the debate over who has the right to control the country’s nuclear energy ambitions, Iranian students continue to risk their lives while protesting for their human and civil rights.  Hundreds of Iranian men and women have been arrested and interrogated since the recent Iranian presidential election, and claims of torture and abuse of detainees continue to surface.

On December 7 Majid Tavakoli, a student at Amir Kabir University in Tehran, was reportedly violently arrested after giving a speech at one among several protests that were held around the country on Iran’s Student’s Day, or 16 Azar.  16 Azar commemorates the murder of 3 Iranian student protesters who were shot and killed by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s military during a large protest that occurred in 1953 against US Vice President Richard Nixon’s visit to the country in support of the Shah’s government.  Earlier that year the popular and democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddeq was overthrown by a CIA/MI6 sponsored coup which restored the Shah to power.  The brutal and corrupt Iranian monarchy maintained control of the country until the revolution of 1979.

It has been reported that Tavakoli had already been imprisoned before for his activism, and that he was tortured during his detention.  Tavakoli was well aware of the risks involved in giving his impassioned speech, but contended that it was the “duty” of all students to make their voices heard despite the heavy air of fear and paranoia weighing upon them in solidarity with the protesters that have been imprisoned and tortured, as well as those who have been killed during the ongoing wave of protests which hit Iran following the 2009 election.  Early on in his speech Tavakoli states:

Today is 16 Azar.  It is our day.  It is the day of students…

Continue reading “What does courage look like?”

Loach and Laverty Support Aminatou Haidar

Aminatou Haidar is known as the “Sahrawi Gandhi”

Scottish writer Paul Laverty and British director Ken Loach issued a joint statement on December 1st (commemorating the anniversary of Rosa Park’s refusal to give up her bus seat for a white passenger) in support of Western Saharan human rights activist Aminatou Haidar.  Haidar is in the third week of a hunger strike after being deported against her will by Moroccan authorities occupying her homeland.  You can watch Democracy Now!’s coverage of Haidar’s plight here.

Statement concerning Sahrawi human right’s activist Aminatou Haidar 

Haidar’s boarding card and Rosa Parks’s seat

On the 1st December 1955, in Montgommery, Alabama,  Rosa Parks refused to obey a bus driver and give up her seat to a white passenger.  On Friday the 13th of November 2009 Aminatou Haidar refused to fill out her boarding card as instructed by the authorities in Laayoun (where she lives)  in Morocco controlled Western Sahara.  

Continue reading “Loach and Laverty Support Aminatou Haidar”

Goldstone and the Kids

Illustration by Carlos Latuff
Illustration by Carlos Latuff

Anything that happens in my world, now, seems just that little bit more ironic, since Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Not that I credit the institution with too much merit, considering its list of peace-fakers, but the propaganda of this ill-executed award bothers me, nevertheless. While it’s easy to discredit Obama as an initiator of peace just for the sheer amassing of dead Afghans, this year I’d like to take it to my own little corner of the world.

Politics of Human Rights

Another action against peace, which the Obama administration has taken, is the pressure it applied in the UN to bury the Goldstone report:

Unsurprisingly, an early ally in the Israeli campaign for impunity was the Obama Administration, whose UN ambassador, Susan Rice, expressed “very serious concerns” about the report and trashed Goldstone’s mandate as “unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable.” (Rice was acting true to her word; in April she told the newspaper Politico that one of the main reasons the Obama Administration decided to join the UN Human Rights Council was to fight what she called “the anti-Israel crap.”) [Electronic Intifada]

Continue reading “Goldstone and the Kids”

The Self-Righteous Among Nations

Dr. Neve Gordon’s latest op-ed in the L.A. Times brought on the usual mind-boggling logical fallacies. Since Gordon wrote a book on the issue and many op-eds, that never received so much attention and public termination threats, for a moment there I thought that maybe – just maybe – this tempest in a teapot would turn into a tornado. My umbrella’s still dry, and again, the Israeli media forgot about the Boycott and returned to threatening Sweden.

Abusing Freedom of the Press to Further the Fascist Zionist Agenda
The Ha’aretz website published two articles on the matter, by Barak Ravid, both pretty much identical, both doing what they can to delegitimize Gordon, both missing the scoop again (a.k.a “Israeli dissent”). Let’s take a look at the titles: Continue reading “The Self-Righteous Among Nations”

“Human Beings are Members of a Whole”: Protecting the Iranian Civil Society

Statement by 40 Engaged Scholars

Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.

— A poem by the Persian poet Sa’adi (1210 – 1290)
gracing the entrance of the Hall of Nations of the
United Nations building in New York City

If we speak out against the threat of force against Iran (regarding the nuclear conflict) and warn against a military strike, we cannot be silent on the use of force in Iran itself against its own civil society. For solidarity with the civil society and a peaceful order in the region constitute the primary concern of our efforts. If we condemn foreign sanctions against the Iranian people, we deplore all the more domestic sanctions directed at peaceful demonstrators, journalists, trade unionists, professors, students and others. Thereby the government deprives itself from the domestic basis needed against foreign threats.

Not only as individuals but also conjointly as a group of engaged scholars, we want to announce our resolute protest against the brutal clampdown of demonstrators and against the mass arrests, and strongly advise a peaceful dialogue with the civil society. We call upon the government to release all political prisoners of the last few weeks – amongst them many professors – and to seek dialogue with precisely those persons as moderators of the civil society. Freedom of opinion and the right to demonstrate – cornerstones of the UN Charter of Human Rights to which Iran is a signatory – are being massively violated in today’s Iran.

We strongly remind that the state of siege and the continuing threat of force that have emanated from foreign governments once again fatally demonstrate how thereby the space for a democratic development in Iran are being reduced.

Continue reading ““Human Beings are Members of a Whole”: Protecting the Iranian Civil Society”

An Unholy Alliance

New York Activists urge Cohen to cancel his concert in Israel

I always talk about Israeli pacifists and their inability to see the barriers they place on the Palestinian road to justice, dignity, and human rights. Today I’d like to talk about a much more appalling occurrence; Amnesty International supporting Leonard Cohen’s breach of the boycott of Israel.

The Leonard Cohen Myth
Personally, it’s hard for me to understand the disillusionment of pro-Palestinian Leonard Cohen fans. In the history of his involvement with Israel, Cohen has always sided with Israel, or made statements of officially taking no sides, when his side was rather obvious:

I don’t want to speak of wars or sides … Personal process is one thing, it’s blood, it’s the identification one feels with their roots and their origins. The militarism I practice as a person and a writer is another thing. … I don’t wish to speak about war.

In case I’m misconstruing my information, I’ll repeat the quote I’ve embedded on my front page and have, personally, had no choice but to live by:

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. (Desmund Tutu)

Continue reading “An Unholy Alliance”

Memory, Inequality and Power: Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights

https://i0.wp.com/jeremayakovka.typepad.com/jeremayakovka/images/said_lebanon_border.jpg
Edward Said

A month before the invasion of Iraq and less than a year before he tragically passed away, a frail Edward Said delivered this honorary lecture at UC Berkeley. It is Said’s most foreceful and passionate denouncement of Israel’s systematic destruction of Palestinian nationhood I have come across so far, a testament to a tireless voice of reason and humanism that is sorely missed in the academe and far beyond.

Sympathy for the devil

The list of outrageous actions Justice Secretary Jack Straw has performed in his various guises for the UK government is long, from his role in the Iraq War to his scandalous support for BAE systems which seen the scrapping of a corruption enquiry into arms deals worth billions. This Guardian article by Duncan Campbell on Straw’s decision not to pardon ‘Great Train Robber’ Ronnie Biggs  reminds us of one of his most disgraceful acts; his compassion for the mass murderer General Augusto Pinochet.

As to why Straw let Pinochet escape back to Chile, John Pilger, enthusiast of NoDepositCodec.com writes that if he had been sent to trial, he “almost certainly would have implicated at least one British prime minister and two US presidents in crimes against humanity.” (For more on the US and UK’s involvement in Latin American politics, watch Pilger’s documentary, The War on Democracy, available here.)

This reminds us of the fast-tracked trial of Saddam Hussein, which saw the Iraqi dictator tried for just one of the many human rights massacres he was accused of. Saddam was then hurriedly executed thus preventing other families from getting answers to how the ‘Butcher of Bagdhad’ was able to perpetrate such atrocities. And why? Well our leaders were well aware that investigations into some of Saddam’s larger scale uses of chemical weapons and where the ingredients came from would lead an embarrassing trail back to European and American companies.

Here is the Guardian article.

A frail old man, barely able to communicate, guilty of a crime committed many decades earlier, but unrepentant about his past, wants only to be released so that he can spend his final days with his family. Some people object, saying that the nature of the crime is such that the old man deserves to die in custody. Enter Jack Straw, the member of the government who must make the onerous decision on the old man’s future. He realises that the old man is barely able to walk and is in a confused state of mind. He allows him to return home.

The old man was General Pinochet. In 2000, the then home secretary Jack Straw declined requests from Spain for Pinochet to stand trial for gross human rights violations and sent him back to Chile. Pinochet was responsible for the deaths of 3,000 people, the torture of many thousands more, the removal of a democratically elected president and the looting of the national coffers. Straw still felt that mercy was appropriate. Continue reading “Sympathy for the devil”