Tag Archives: Genocide

Spain first European country to ask UN court for permission to join South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide

Spains-Foreign-Minister-Jose-Manuel-Albares-Bueno

Important Takeaways:

  • South Africa filed its case with the International Court of Justice late last year. It alleged that Israel was breaching the genocide convention in its military assault that has laid waste to large swaths of Gaza.
  • The court has ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah but stopped short of ordering a cease-fire for the enclave.
  • “There should be no doubt that Spain will remain on the right side of history,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez
  • Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua, Libya and the Palestinians are waiting for the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, to grant approval to their requests to join the case.
  • Over 140 countries have recognized a Palestinian state — more than two-thirds of the U.N. — but none of the major Western powers, including the United States, has done so.
  • Last year, the International Court of Justice allowed 32 countries, including Spain, to join Ukraine’s case alleging that Russia breached the genocide convention by falsely accusing Ukraine of committing genocide in its eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and using that as a pretext for the invasion.
  • Netanyahu is also facing a separate legal challenge from the International Criminal Court, whose prosecutor is seeking an arrest warrant against the Israeli leader and others, including leaders of the Hamas militant group.

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“There are straight-out calls for genocide of Jews…because of complacency and appeasement by our academic institutions,” Student Lawyer Columbia university

Encampment-Sign

Important Takeaways:

  • The attorney of an anonymous Jewish Columbia student who is suing the University for Allegedly Not providing “a safe educational environment” says his client is having to deal with calls for genocide while attending school.
  • “There are straight-out calls for the genocide of Jews. This has happened because of complacency and appeasement by our academic institutions,” Jay Edelson, who is representing the student, told NewNation’s Leland Vittert on “On Balance.”
  • …both verbal and in written form on massive banners and signs –– with statements such as: ‘Death to the Jews’; ‘Long live Hamas’; ‘Globalize the Intifada,’” the lawsuit said.
  • Edelson said it’s “fine” to debate how Israel should have responded to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and other aspects of the war, but “what’s going on is something different.”
  • The student argues in the lawsuit that since the pro-Palestinian encampment went up two weeks ago, Jewish students have felt they are at an increased risk of harm or harassment.
  • Edelson said in the interview it is “insane” Columbia is negotiating with the student protesters and that this lawsuit fights back for Jewish students.
  • “The difference is, this isn’t the 1930s. We’re not in Germany. We’re going to stand up and we’re going to fight back. We filed this class action lawsuit, and we’re not going to sit by the sidelines. This is not going to happen again,” he said.

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Gangs surge across Haiti; Prime Minister steps down following multinational emergency meeting seeking solution

Dead-lie-in-Haiti-streets

Important Takeaways:

  • Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry, 74, resigns after gangs warned of civil war and ‘genocide’ if he did not step down amid bloody uprising
  • Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry has resigned, following an emergency summit called to address gang-led violence currently occurring in the country.
  • The 74-year-old head of state tendered his resignation Monday, a week after the growing coalition of gangs warned of civil war if he did not step down.
  • His resignation was swiftly confirmed by Guyana’s president Mohamed Irfaan Ali, the current chair of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
  • The coalition called the emergency meeting as gangs across the Caribbean country continue to unite, shooting up government buildings and foreign embassies.
  • As a result, thousands have had fled their homes, and locals continue to report the overwhelming stench of the dead. Meanwhile, politicians across the region are scrambling for a solution – one that may now be in sight following Henry’s removal.

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U.N. panel accuses U. S. and Israel of genocide; some calling for the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants

Israel-Hamas.jpg-640x480

Important Takeaways:

  • The United Nations hosted a panel discussion on Tuesday in which panelists accused the state of Israel of genocide – and implicated America for its support of the country – in its ongoing war against the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas.
  • Panelists claimed that Israel’s military operation in Gaza, the Hamas stronghold, to ensure that the terrorist group ceases to pose a threat to civilians after the killing of 1,200 people and abduction of about 250 others on October 7 constituted genocide on the grounds that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have targeted seemingly civilian structures such as hospitals and schools. One panelist accused the United States of being complicit in genocide due to weapons sales to Israel.
  • Katherine Gallagher – a senior staff attorney for the Centre for Constitutional Rights…
    • “I would argue the United States has crossed the line into complicity,”
    • “The United States is the largest provider of military, economic, and political assistance and – I would argue – political cover that has the ability to use its considerable influence and unique position to take all measures to stop Israel’s unfolding genocide,” she told the panel. “Of course, the United States is not the only country that has such influence and such ability. Instead, though, the United States at every opportunity has done the opposite.”
    • Gallagher also suggested pressuring the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue “arrest warrants for those who are committing and those who are aiding and abetting the crimes of genocide,” presumably including American political leadership up to American President Joe Biden.

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Hundreds of journalists pressure media to cast Israel as the problem

Important Takeaways:

  • 750 global journalists say media should cast Israeli actions as ‘genocide, apartheid’
  • Over 750 former and current journalists around the world have signed a petition calling on the media to begin using terms such as “genocide” and “apartheid” to describe Israel’s actions in the conflict with the Palestinians, while blasting international media coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
  • “Israel has blocked foreign press entry, heavily restricted telecommunications, and bombed press offices,” the petition read. “Some 50 media headquarters in Gaza have been hit in the past month. Israeli forces explicitly warned newsrooms they ‘cannot guarantee’ the safety of their employees from airstrikes.
  • “Taken with a decades-long pattern of lethally targeting journalists, Israel’s actions show wide-scale suppression of speech,” it claimed.
  • Journalists from Reuters, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, and The Washington Post are among the signatories.

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Hamas supporter North Korea blames IDF for explosion near al-Ahil hospital in Gaza; makes accusation of ‘Genocide’

North-Korea-blames-IDF

Important Takeaways:

  • North Korea accuses Israel of ‘genocide’ in Gaza, labels US an ‘accomplice’
  • North Korean media accused Israel of responsibility for the recent explosion near al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the Gaza Strip.
  • “What should not be overlooked is that Israel’s such criminal act was openly committed under the undisguised patronage of the U.S.,” a North Korean foreign ministry spokesperson told state media outlet Korean Central News Agency.
  • “Immediately after the bombing of the hospital by Israel, the U.S. covered such crime, making absurd sophism that the incident seemed to be committed by other forces rather than Israel,” the North Korean spokesperson continued. “This shows that the U.S. is an accomplice who connived at and fostered Israel’s genocide.”
  • Russia has boasted similar rhetoric to North Korea, blaming U.S. interventionism for the terrorism and violence plaguing the region.
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un have significantly strengthened relations between the countries — most recently with a rare diplomatic envoy from the hermit kingdom.

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Watch Turkey. Seems as long as the U.S. remains weak anything can happen

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Erdogan Threatens Greece
  • “We have only one sentence for Greece: Do not forget Izmir [the city of Smyrna]. Your occupying the [Aegean] islands will not stop us; we will do what is necessary when the time comes. You know what we say: ‘Unexpectedly one night we shall come to [conquer] you.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sondakika.com, September 4, 2022.
  • The Turkish attacks against the Greeks and Armenians of Smyrna began [in 1922] with looting, rapes and massacres, and ended with a fire that destroyed the Christian districts of the city.
  • The Republic of Turkey actually boasts of its genocide.

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Biden signs bill banning goods from China’s Xinjiang over forced labor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law legislation that bans imports from China’s Xinjiang region over concerns about forced labor, the White House said.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is part of the U.S. pushback against Beijing’s treatment of the China’s Uyghur Muslim minority, which Washington has labeled genocide.

The bill passed Congress this month after lawmakers reached a compromise between House and Senate versions.

Key to the legislation is a “rebuttable presumption” that assumes all goods from Xinjiang, where Beijing has established detention camps for Uyghurs and other Muslim groups, are made with forced labor. It bars imports unless it can be proven otherwise.

Some goods – such as cotton, tomatoes, and polysilicon used in solar-panel manufacturing – are designated “high priority” for enforcement action.

China denies abuses in Xinjiang, a major cotton producer that also supplies much of the world’s materials for solar panels.

Its Washington embassy did not respond to a request for comment.

Nury Turkel, Uyghur-American vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, told Reuters this month the bill’s effectiveness would depend on the willingness of Biden’s administration to ensure it is effective, especially when companies seek waivers.

One of the bill’s co-authors, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, said it was necessary to “send a resounding and unequivocal message against genocide and slave labor.”

“Now … we can finally ensure that American consumers and businesses can buy goods without inadvertent complicity in China’s horrific human rights abuses,” he said in a statement.

In its final days in January, the Trump administration announced a ban on all Xinjiang cotton and tomato products.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency estimated then that about $9 billion of cotton products and $10 million of tomato products were imported from China in the past year.

(Reporting by Paul Grant and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Howard Goller)

U.S. imposes sweeping human rights sanctions on China, Myanmar and N Korea

By Daphne Psaledakis, David Brunnstrom and Simon Lewis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States on Friday imposed extensive human rights-related sanctions on dozens of people and entities tied to China, Myanmar, North Korea and Bangladesh, and added Chinese artificial intelligence company SenseTime Group to an investment blacklist.

Canada and the United Kingdom joined the United States in imposing sanctions related to human rights abuses in Myanmar, while Washington also imposed the first new sanctions on North Korea https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-maintain-troop-level-south-korea-minister-2021-12-02 under President Joe Biden’s administration and targeted Myanmar military entities, among others, in action marking Human Rights Day.

“Our actions today, particularly those in partnership with the United Kingdom and Canada, send a message that democracies around the world will act against those who abuse the power of the state to inflict suffering and repression,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a statement.

The North Korean mission at the United Nations and China’s, Myanmar’s and Bangladesh’s embassies in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Biden gathered over 100 world leaders at a virtual summit this week and made a plea for bolstering democracies around the world, calling safeguarding rights and freedoms in the face of rising authoritarianism the “defining challenge” of the current era. The U.S. Treasury Department has taken a series of sanctions actions this week to mark the summit.

The Treasury on Friday added Chinese artificial intelligence company SenseTime to a list of “Chinese military-industrial complex companies,” accusing it of having developed facial recognition programs that can determine a target’s ethnicity, with a particular focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs.

As a result the company will fall under an investment ban for U.S. investors. SenseTime is close to selling 1.5 billion shares in an initial public offering (IPO). After news of the Treasury restrictions earlier this week, the company began discussing the fate of the planned $767 million offering with Hong Kong’s stock exchange, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

U.N. experts and rights groups estimate more than a million people, mainly Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities, have been detained in recent years in a vast system of camps in China’s far-west region of Xinjiang.

China denies abuses in Xinjiang, but the U.S. government and many rights groups say Beijing is carrying out genocide there.

The Treasury said it was imposing sanctions on two Myanmar military entities and an organization that provides reserves for the military. The Directorate of Defense Industries, one of the entities targeted, makes weapons for the military and police that have been used in a brutal crackdown on opponents of the military’s Feb. 1 coup.

The Treasury also targeted four regional chief ministers, including Myo Swe Win, who heads the junta’s administration in the Bago region where the Treasury said at least 82 people were killed in a single day in April.

Canada imposed sanctions against four entities affiliated with the Myanmar military government, while the United Kingdom imposed fresh sanctions against the military.

Myanmar was plunged into crisis when the military overthrew leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her government on Feb. 1, triggering daily protests in towns and cities and fighting in borderlands between the military and ethnic minority insurgents.

Junta forces seeking to crush opposition have killed more than 1,300 people, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) monitoring group.

The Treasury also blacklisted North Korea’s Central Public Prosecutors Office had been designated, along with the former minister of social security and recently assigned Minister of People’s Armed Forces Ri Yong Gil, as well as a Russian university for facilitating the export of workers from North Korea.

North Korea has long sought a lifting of punishing U.S. and international sanctions imposed over its weapons programs and has denounced U.S. criticism of its human rights record as evidence of a hostile policy against it.

The Biden administration has repeatedly called on North Korea to engage in dialogue over its nuclear and missiles programs, without success.

The U.S. State Department on Friday also barred 12 people from traveling to the United States, including officials in China, Belarus and Sri Lanka.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, Simon Lewis, David Brunnstrom, Matt Spetalnick, Alexandra Alper, Tim Ahmann and David Ljunggren; Editing by Chris Sanders, Alistair Bell and Jonathan Oatis)

Germany jails Islamic State member for life over role in Yazidi genocide

FRANKFURT (Reuters) -A German court on Tuesday jailed a former Islamic State militant for life for involvement in genocide and crimes against humanity against minority Yazidis in Iraq and Syria, including the murder of a five-year-old girl.

It was the first genocide verdict against a member of Islamic State, an offshoot of al Qaeda that seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014 before being ousted by U.S.-backed counter-offensives, losing its last territorial redoubt in 2019.

In a landmark ruling, the court in Frankfurt found Taha al-Jumailly, 29, an Iraqi national, guilty of involvement in the slaughter of more than 3,000 Yazidis and enslavement of 7,000 women and girls by IS jihadists in 2014-15.

This, the court ruled, included the murder of a five-year-old girl the defendant had enslaved and chained to a window, leaving her to die in scorching heat in 2015 in Iraq.

Al-Jumailly, who entered the court covering his face with a file folder, was arrested in Greece in 2019 and extradited to Germany where relatives of slain Yazidis acted as plaintiffs supporting the prosecution.

“Today’s ruling marks the first ever worldwide confirmation by a court that the crimes of Islamic State against the Yazidi religious group are genocide,” said Meike Olszak of Amnesty International’s branch in Germany.

The defendant’s German wife, identified only as Jennifer W., was used as a prosecution witness at his trial. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison last month for involvement in the enslavement of the Yazidi girl and her mother.

The Yazidis are an ancient religious minority in eastern Syria and northwest Iraq that Islamic State viewed as supposed devil worshippers for their faith that combines Zoroastrian, Christian, Manichean, Jewish and Muslim beliefs.

Islamic State’s depredations also displaced most of the 550,000-strong Yazidi community.

(Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Mark Heinrich)