Vijay Prashad

Sirte all but flattened. Thousands killed. - What's so humanitarian
about that? Wasn't the UN Resolution 1973 (2011) about "the
protection of civilians" and the Security Council's "strong commit-
ment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and
national unity of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya"? Did the UN do
anything whatever to stop the vicious US-NATO attack on Libya?

Ten days into the uprising in Benghazi, Libya, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council established the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya. The purpose of the Commission was to

“investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law in Libya.”

The broad agenda was to establish the facts of the violations and crimes and to take such actions as to hold the identified perpetrators accountable. On June 15, the Commission presented its first report to the Council. This report was provisional, since the conflict was still ongoing and access to the country was minimal. The June report was no more conclusive than the work of the human rights non-governmental organizations (such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch). In some instances, the work of investigators for these NGOs (such as Donatella Rovera of Amnesty) was of higher quality than that of the Commission.

Due to the uncompleted war and then the unsettled security state in the country in its aftermath, the Commission did not return to the field till October 2011, and did not begin any real investigation before December 2011. On March 2, 2012, the Commission finally produced a two hundred-page document that was presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Little fanfare greeted this report’s publication, and the HRC’s deliberation on it was equally restrained.

Nonetheless, the report is fairly revelatory, making two important points:

■ first, that all sides on the ground committed war crimes with no mention at all of a potential genocide conducted by the Qaddafi forces;
■ second, that there remains a distinct lack of clarity regarding potential NATO war crimes.

Not enough can be made of these two points. They strongly infer that the rush to a NATO “humanitarian intervention” might have been made on exaggerated evidence, and that NATO’s own military intervention might have been less than “humanitarian” in its effects.

It is precisely because of a lack of accountability by NATO that there is hesitancy in the United Nations Security Council for a strong resolution on Syria.

“Because of the Libyan experience,” the Indian Ambassador to the UN Hardeep Singh Puri told me in February, “other members of the Security Council, such as China and Russia, will not hesitate in exercising a veto if a resolution – and this is a big if – contains actions under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which permits the use of force and punitive and coercive measures.”

More »

Amnesty International

NATO has so far failed to investigate the killing of scores of civilians in Libya in airstrikes carried out by its forces, Amnesty International said today in a new briefing paper released a year after the first strike sorties took place.

Libya: The forgotten victims of NATO Strikes says that scores of Libyan civilians who were not involved in the fighting were killed and many more injured, most in their homes, as a result of NATO airstrikes. Amnesty International said that NATO has not conducted necessary investigations or even tried to establish contact with survivors and relatives of those killed.

The organization said that adequate investigations must be carried out and full reparation provided to victims and their families.

"It is deeply disappointing that more than four months since the end of the military campaign, victims and relatives of those killed by NATO airstrikes remain in the dark about what happened and who was responsible" said Donatella Rovera, Senior Crisis Response Adviser at Amnesty International.

"NATO officials repeatedly stressed their commitment to protecting civilians. They cannot now brush aside the deaths of scores of civilians with some vague statement of regret without properly investigating these deadly incidents.”

NATO appears to have made significant efforts to minimize the risk of causing civilian casualties, including by using precision guided munitions, and in some cases by issuing prior warnings to inhabitants of the areas targeted. But this does not absolve NATO from adequately investigating the strikes which killed and injured scores of civilians and from providing reparation to the victims and their families.

Investigations must look into whether civilian casualties resulted from violations of international law and if so those responsible must be brought to justice.

More »

Stephen Lendman

An Afghan policeman stands guard inside Kandahar jail on April
27, 2011. (Photo: CNN / Caption: RAWA.org)

Post-9/11, torture became official US policy. Bush officials mandated it. Obama continues it in US overseas prisons and foreign ones, including in Afghanistan.

Even the Army Times noticed. On March 18, it headlined "US sent detainees to banned prisons," saying:

A report by two human rights groups revealed the practice continues "despite an announced moratorium on such moves." More on their report below.

The New York Times also covered the story in an article headlined, "Groups Report on the Continued Transfer of Detainees to Afghan Prisons," saying:

Following months of investigations, evidence shows American agencies "abett(ed) torture," besides committing it at US run prisons like Bagram, Guantanamo, and numerous black sites. It's one of many American dirty secrets.

While "not groundbreaking," the new report increases the body of evidence "uncovered last year by the United Nations, and highlights the continuing challenge of trying to end the abuse."

Documented cases examined captured US detainees transferred to Afghan facilities known to commit torture. transfers continued after doing so was supposed to stop.

More »

Khalid Amayreh

French President Nicolas Sarkozy (L) has reportedly described
hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a "liar"
during a chat with US president Barack Obama. "I cannot stand
him. He's a liar," Sarkozy was overheard by reporters while
speaking with Obama at the Group of 20 Summit in southern
France, The Financial Times reported. [Nov. 2011] (On Islam)

In his reaction to the tragic shooting incident outside a Jewish school in France Monday, Israeli Prime Minister invoked "Palestinian terror."

"I haven't heard any condemnation from the UN, but one of its bodies, the human rights council, invited representatives of Hamas who condemned the US for killing Osama bin Laden and kills Jewish men, women and children. This is who UNHRC invites today. I have one thing to say to the UNHRC: What do you have to do with human rights? You should be ashamed of yourself."

Netanyahu is elaborate about the death of a few Jews in occupied Palestine, for which nefarious Zionism is solely responsible (responsible because Zionism brought these Jews into Palestine from their original homelands in Eastern Europe elsewhere to live on a land that belongs to another people), but quite dismissive or completely silent about the pornographic killings of non-Jews at the hands of the "holy tribe" or "Master race."

In fact, as the pathological liar was speaking about the regrettable incident in France, his dirty hands were being stained with the innocent blood of Palestinian children.

Netanyahu and other Israeli political and military leaders got accustomed to giving Israeli Jews a "present" on major Jewish holidays in the form of killing Arab civilians, particularly children, in cold blood.

This happened last week in Gaza when Israel's war machine wreaked havoc on Palestinian homes throughout the coastal enclave, killing farmers, workers, school children and women.

The Palestinians are mostly helpless and defenseless people, and ganging up on them using state-of-the-art of the American technology of death is analogical to the Third Reich embarking on the extermination of Jews during WWII.

It is also an expression of ultimate cowardice to attack people, especially innocent people, who don't have the means to defend themselves and protect their children.

More »