Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2009 and a diplomatic troubleshooter who worked for every Democratic president since the late 1960s and oversaw the negotiations that ended the war in Bosnia, died Monday evening in Washington. He was 69 and lived in Manhattan.
His death was confirmed by an Obama administration official.
Mr. Holbrooke was hospitalized on Friday afternoon after becoming ill while meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in her Washington office. Doctors found a tear to his aorta, and he underwent a 21-hour operation. Mr. Holbrooke had additional surgery on Sunday and remained in very critical condition until his death.
Mr. Holbrooke’s signal accomplishment in a distinguished career that involved diplomacy in Asia, Europe and the Middle East was his role as chief architect of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia. It was a coup preceded and followed by his peacekeeping missions to the tinderbox of ethnic, religious and regional conflicts that was formerly Yugoslavia.
More recently, Mr. Holbrooke wrestled with the stunning complexity of Afghanistan and Pakistan: how to bring stability to the region while fighting a resurgent Taliban and coping with corrupt governments, rigged elections, fragile economies, a rampant narcotics trade, nuclear weapons in Pakistan, and the presence of Al Qaeda, and presumably Osama bin Laden, in the wild tribal borderlands.
Graphic footage showing a Sudanese woman being lashed have led to shocked reactions among Sudanese expats and emigrés.
Punitive public lashings are the order of the day, according to RNW’s Ibrahim Jadelkarim, who is from Sudan. Tens of thousands of women are estimated to be subjected to this form of corporal punishment and public humiliation. It is unusual, however, for such scenes to be seen the world over via YouTube.
It is unclear what the woman was accused of, nor is her identity known.
Indecent Behavior The women involved are often accused of having committed adultery, of being improperly dressed in public, or of having behaved ‘indecently’ in other ways. Sudanese law, which is based on islamic Sharia rules, does not specify when clothing is considered indecent. This lack of definition allows policemen free reign to determine who is looking indecent. Women who were punished for such offences are usually too ashamed to speak about it.
Trousers Journalist Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein was arrested last year for wearing trousers, considered offensive by the authorities. Unlike other women, Lubna went public about her arrest and invited hundreds of friends and the media to attend the court session.
The promotion and protection of human rights has been a major preoccupation for the United Nations since 1945, when the Organization’s founding nations resolved that the horrors of The Second World War should never be allowed to recur.
Respect for human rights and human dignity “is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”, the General Assembly declared three years later in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1950, all States and interested organizations were invited by the General Assembly to observe 10 December as Human Rights Day (Resolution 423(V)).
The Day marks the anniversary of the Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Over the years, a whole network of human rights instruments and mechanisms has been developed to ensure the primacy of human rights and to confront human rights violations wherever they occur.
The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was today placed on an empty chair in Oslo’s city hall in a symbolic act to mark its award to Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese writer and pro-democracy activist who is serving a jail sentence in his home country.
In the centrepiece of a simple, moving ceremony watched by an audience of 1,000 people, among them Norway‘s king and queen and a clutch of fellow Chinese dissidents, the chairman of the Nobel committee, Thorbjoern Jagland, placed the citation and medal on a simple, blue upholstered seat on a small row of chairs to the right of the hall’s stage.
“We regret that the laureate is not present here today,” Jagland told the audience, who stood several times during the ceremony to applaud.
“He is in isolation in a prison in north-east China. Nor can the laureate’s wife, Liu Xia, or his closest relatives be here with us. No medal or diploma will therefore be presented here today. This fact alone shows that the award was necessary and appropriate. We congratulate Liu Xiaobo with this year’s peace prize.”
It is the first time since 1936, when the German journalist and pacifist Carl von Ossietzky was stopped by Nazi authorities from travelling to Oslo, that the peace prize has been awarded in this way. On three other occasions – Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, Lech Walesa in 1983 and Andrei Sakharov in 1975 – family members have had to collect the prize instead.
While Liu was jailed for 11 years last year for subversion, his wife remains under house arrest, meaning no one could collect the award for him.
Beijing used its increasing economic heft to press 18 countries with diplomatic representation in Oslo not to send diplomats to the ceremony. Pakistan, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Argentina were among those boycotting the event.
Authorities in China launched a severe crackdown on other dissidents ahead of the ceremony, described by rights groups as one of the most severe for years. Some were placed under house arrest, others moved forcibly from Beijing or deprived of phone and internet connections. Some foreign websites, such as the BBC, were suppressed and there were even apparent attempts to censor the web use of pictures of an empty chair, a symbol for Liu’s prize.
In his absence, the Norwegian actor Liv Ullman spoke on Liu’s behalf, reading out extracts of his last public address, in December last year to the court which was about to jail him. Explaining his philosophy of protest, it has as a central message: “I have no enemies, and no hatred.” Several audience members wiped away tears during a section in which he described his love for Liu Xia.
The ceremony ended with a performance by a children’s choir – a request from Liu in the one message he was able to send from prison via his wife.
A picture of this year's Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo at an exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo on December 10, 2010. Photo: Scanpix Norway / Reuters
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