Mladic was indicted 15 years ago for genocide in the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo. (Photo: Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images)
Ratko Mladić, otherwise known as “The Butcher of Bosnia,” has been arrested after being sought for over a decade. The 69-year-old former Serbian general and war crimes suspect was arrested on May 26 by Serbian special police in Lazarevo, Serbia. Mladić was accused of war crimes shortly after the 1992–1995 Bosnian War. He was wanted for genocide and crimes against humanity, including the orchestration of a massacre of over 8000 Muslim Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica.
The arrest has prompted protests from Serbian nationalists, who herald Mladić as a national hero and patriot. However, the international reaction to Mladić’s capture is more positive. French President Nicolas Sarkozy praised Serbia’s actions, saying it is another step for Serbia on the path to joining the European Union. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt gave similar praise, saying that the Serbia’s prospects of joining the EU are “brighter than ever.”
Serbia’s war crimes court ruled that Mladić is fit for trial, despite claims from family and supporters to the contrary. Ratko Mladić’s son Darko claims that his father is too weak to face extradition to The Hague for trial. Mladić could face extradition within a matter of days.
The first four months of 2011 witnessed an unprecedented surge of ordinary people speaking up for their rights and demanding change. Inspired by political upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa, protesters peacefully called for greater freedoms in Sudan and Azerbaijan, while online activists in China urged a ‘Jasmine Revolution’. But the authorities’ repressive attempts to silence these voices through arrests and detentions, ill-treatment and prison sentences continued.
Civilians elsewhere also paid a heavy price for exercising their civil and political rights. Hundreds were killed during Nigeria’s election period in April, and hundreds of thousands of people displaced by post-election violence in Côte d’Ivoire still fear reprisals if they return home.
In contrast, 2011 has seen some victories for international justice, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia’s sentencing of three former generals for crimes committed during the Balkans war. Another step was made on the path towards ending the death penalty, as Illinois became the USA’s 16th abolitionist state.
Yet entrenched human rights abuses and insecurity continued unabated in many countries. In Mexico, 11,000 migrants were abducted during a six-month period alone, and in Colombia, more human rights activists were killed. Amid increased Taliban attacks in Afghanistan, questions about security are also mounting following the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.
Worldwide, the struggle for free expression, security and human rights is in sharper focus than ever.
Watch Daniel Goldhagen’s ground-breaking documentary WORSE THAN WAR, which premiered on PBS on April 14, 2010, focused on the worldwide phenomenon of genocide.
“By the most fundamental measure — the number of people killed — the perpetrators of mass murder since the beginning of the twentieth century have taken the lives of more people than have died in military conflict. So genocide is worse than war,” reiterates Goldhagen. “This is a little-known fact that should be a central focus of international politics, because once you know it, the world, international politics, and what we need to do all begin to look substantially different from how they are typically conceived.”
WORSE THAN WAR documents Goldhagen’s travels, teachings, and interviews in nine countries around the world, bringing viewers on an unprecedented journey of insight and analysis. In a film that is highly cinematic and evocative throughout, he speaks with victims, perpetrators, witnesses, politicians, diplomats, historians, humanitarian aid workers, and journalists, all with the purpose of explaining and understanding the critical features of genocide and how to finally stop it.
MANAMA, Bahrain, May 11 (UPI) — Bahraini security forces have kidnapped and beaten teenage schoolgirls, alleged victims charge.
In an interview with al-Jazeera aired Wednesday, a 16-year-old girl calling herself Heba said she and three classmates were seized from their school and beaten severely while held for three days.
An officer “hit and banged me against the wall to scream,” she said. “Since we did not cry out or scream, we were beaten more and more.”
The government did not respond to a request for comment.
The opposition Al Wefaq party charges police have raided up to 15 girls schools, detaining, beating and threatening to rape girls as young as 12. Meanwhile, pro-government MPs charged Wednesday that Shiite employees have been plotting for decades to sabotage the state oil company.
The Gulf Daily News reported lawmakers blamed Energy Minister Abdulhussain Mirza for lax control of Bapco. MP Jassim al-Saeedi charged the plot has been afoot ever since Bapco began promoting into senior posts in 1980.
“Employment, promotion and training was divided among this sect, while those belonging to the other sect (Sunnis) were left out in pain despite being deserving,” he said.
MP Abdulhaleem Murad charged Bapco gave bonuses to striking workers trying to overthrow the monarchy.
The conviction of retired U.S. automaker John Demjanjuk on 28,060 counts of acting as an accessory to murder at a Nazi death camp has sparked controversy due not only to the defendant’s advanced age and frail condition, but also because no evidence that Demjanjuk committed a specific crime was presented.
As the Associated Press is reporting, the 91-year-old Demjanjuk was ruled to have been a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland from March 27 to mid-September 1943, and received one count of being an accessory to murder for each person who died during that time frame. In Munich, presiding Judge Ralph Alt deemed Demjanjuk — who sat in a wheelchair and showed no reaction when the verdict was read — was a piece of the Nazis’ “machinery of destruction,” and ruled the defendant’s physical presence at the camp in itself made him an accomplice, the first time such a legal argument has been made in German courts. He has been sentenced to five years in prison, but was released pending an appeal.
Demjanjuk has repeatedly denied the charges, insisting he was held as a Nazi prisoner of war before joining the Vlasov Army, a force of anti-communist Soviet POWs and others that was formed to fight with the Germans against the Soviets in the final months of World War II. As the New York Timesreports, he also has maintained that an SS identity card in his name is a fake produced by the Soviet KGB, though court experts say the card appears genuine.
Of course, Demjanjuk’s case is merely the latest in a string of elderly men convicted of Nazi war crimes in Germany. View a Timeline of recent Nazi war criminal convictions here (Click on picture to be redirected):
Anton Malloth, an 89-year-old former guard at the Theresienstadt fortress in occupied Czechoslovakia, is sentenced to life in prison for beating and kicking a Jewish inmate to death in 1944. Malloth's appeal is rejected. He dies in 2002. (AP)
FREEDOM RIDERS is the powerful harrowing and ultimately inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever. From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives—and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment—for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders met with bitter racism and mob violence along the way, sorely testing their belief in nonviolent activism.
From award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson (Wounded Knee, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, The Murder of Emmett Till) FREEDOM RIDERS features testimony from a fascinating cast of central characters: the Riders themselves, state and federal government officials, and journalists who witnessed the Rides firsthand. The two-hour documentary is based on Raymond Arsenault’s book Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice.
I got up one morning in May and I said to my folks at home, I won’t be back today because I’m a Freedom Rider. It was like a wave or a wind that you didn’t know where it was coming from or where it was going, but you knew you were supposed to be there.
— Pauline Knight-Ofuso, Freedom Rider
Despite two earlier Supreme Court decisions that mandated the desegregation of interstate travel facilities, black Americans in 1961 continued to endure hostility and racism while traveling through the South. The newly inaugurated Kennedy administration, embroiled in the Cold War and worried about the nuclear threat, did little to address domestic civil rights.
“It became clear that the civil rights leaders had to do something desperate, something dramatic to get Kennedy’s attention. That was the idea behind the Freedom Rides—to dare the federal government to do what it was supposed to do, and see if their constitutional rights would be protected by the Kennedy administration,” explains Arsenault.
Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the self-proclaimed “Freedom Riders” came from all strata of American society—black and white, young and old, male and female, Northern and Southern. They embarked on the Rides knowing the danger but firmly committed to the ideals of non-violent protest, aware that their actions could provoke a savage response but willing to put their lives on the line for the cause of justice.
Each time the Freedom Rides met violence and the campaign seemed doomed, new ways were found to sustain and even expand the movement. After Klansmen in Alabama set fire to the original Freedom Ride bus, student activists from Nashville organized a ride of their own. “We were past fear. If we were going to die, we were gonna die, but we can’t stop,” recalls Rider Joan Trumpauer-Mulholland. “If one person falls, others take their place.”
Later, Mississippi officials locked up more than 300 Riders in the notorious Parchman State Penitentiary. Rather than weaken the Riders’ resolve, the move only strengthened their determination. None of the obstacles placed in their path would weaken their commitment.
The Riders’ journey was front-page news and the world was watching. After nearly five months of fighting, the federal government capitulated. On September 22, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued its order to end the segregation in bus and rail stations that had been in place for generations. “This was the first unambiguous victory in the long history of the Civil Rights Movement. It finally said, ‘We can do this.’ And it raised expectations across the board for greater victories in the future,” says Arsenault.
“The people that took a seat on these buses, that went to jail in Jackson, that went to Parchman, they were never the same. We had moments there to learn, to teach each other the way of nonviolence, the way of love, the way of peace. The Freedom Ride created an unbelievable sense: Yes, we will make it. Yes, we will survive. And that nothing, but nothing, was going to stop this movement,” recalls Congressman John Lewis, one of the original Riders.
Says filmmaker Stanley Nelson, “The lesson of the Freedom Rides is that great change can come from a few small steps taken by courageous people. And that sometimes to do any great thing, it’s important that we step out alone.”
More than two weeks after he was first detained, Ai Weiwei’s family still hasn’t received official notice from Chinese authorities that they are holding the artist, or what the possible charges against him may be. His mother, Gao Ying, and wife, Lu Qing, posted missing persons notes in Beijing because, for all intents and purposes, all they really know for sure is that Ai has been missing since April 3rd.
And authorities have gone beyond simply detaining Ai. While the world-famous artist’s disappearance has been widely covered and discussed, fewer have taken note that his friends and associates have also been targeted. Four of Ai’s associates are also missing: journalist Wen Tao, Ai’s driver Xiao Pang, ‘FAKE Design’ company accountant Hu Mingfen and ‘FAKE’ designer Liu Zhenggang. Earlier today, Liu Xiaoyuan, a rights lawyer who had represented Ai in the past and had said he was willing to do so again, ‘reappeared’ after a five-day disappearance.
Ai’s family, assistants and volunteers have also been targeted, questioned by local police and contacted by phone and through home visits. Ai’s wife Lu Qing was questioned at the Beijing tax office for three hours last week. His foreign assistants who had lived at the ’258 Fake Studio’ complex in Beijing — including Inserk Yang, who was featured in the FRONTLINE story — were forced to move out in the days following Ai’s disappearance, and have been pressured to leave the country. Shortly after his disappearance, a member Ai’s cleaning staff, Xiao Wei, was picked up at his home in Anhui province by Beijing and local police and flown to Beijing for questioning. It was his first plane ride.
The nature of possible charges against Ai is still unclear. Statements in Chinese and Hong Kong newspapers have alluded to crimes as diverse as tax evasion, bigamy and spreading pornography online. His family maintains that the charges are politically motivated, saying the company that handles Ai’s financial affairs, Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd., is registered under wife Lu Qing’s name and belongs to her. All that the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman would say to international journalists last week is that Ai is a suspected criminal, and that foreign support for the artist has confused and angered the Chinese people.
International response has included a coordinated, hour-long sit-in at Chinese embassies and consulates around the world on Sunday, April 17 and the U.S., U.K., France and Germany calling for Ai’s release. The EU delegation to China cited his case in a statement calling for the “Chinese authorities to refrain from using arbitrary detention under any circumstances.” The art community has also spoken up, with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation starting an online petition calling for his immediate release, while the Tate Modern, home to Ai’s ‘Sunflower Seeds’ exhibition, put a large sign on their exterior that reads “Release Ai Weiwei.”
Finally, the title of my FRONTLINE segment, Who’s Afraid of Ai Weiwei? has entered the public consciousness and been harnessed as a rallying cry of sorts since his disappearance. Graffiti tags began appearing around Hong Kong with Ai’s face that read “Who’s Afraid of Ai Weiwei?” Local authorities said they would seriously investigate the matter, and the student artist who marked up the city risks being charged with criminal damage, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ in prison.
“It will be worth it if just one person sees what I’ve done and asks themselves: `Why should Ai Wei Wei be silenced?’” she told the South China Morning Post.
Fourteen-year-old Rose Manette Sully lives a twisted Cinderella tale. She works from dawn to dusk as a maid for her master. She sleeps on the floor of a tent.
The lanky teen is far from an isolated case in Haiti. She’s just one among tens of thousands of child servants in Haiti who endure what the United Nations calls a modern form of slavery.
Underaged domestic help is everywhere in Port-au-Prince’s tent cities, which formed after last year’s devastating earthquake and remain because of the glacial pace of reconstruction. The January 2010 quake caused many more of these young indentured servants to be put to work. And now, their lives are harder than ever before, experts said.
Before the earthquake, child servants lived and worked in Port-au-Prince’s homes. Today, many, like Rose Manette, serve their masters in tents.
With the nation’s entire infrastructure in disrepair — schools and neighborhoods destroyed — fewer of these children are going to school, and neighbors less frequently look out for their welfare, according to Nicole Muller César, founder of the Institute for Human and Community Development, a school in Port-au-Prince for slave children.
The children also face higher risks of being neglected and abused.
“Now, because of the tent situation, they are more exposed,” she said. “Anybody can do anything to them, without having someone say ‘Stop! You cannot do that.’”
With the birth rate tripling after the quake, according to the United Nations Population Fund, the number of these children, known as restaveks (from the French “to stay with”), could grow in the coming years as more families struggle to feed their children.
Haiti’s president-elect Michel Martelly, the right-wing pop star who takes office this weekend, has pledged to make public education free in Haiti, but so far he has made no promise to otherwise help these child servants.
The children haven’t received much attention from international aid groups, either.They are everywhere, and nowhere, in a sense: They may as well be invisible.
Some never reunite with their mothers, and they often don’t get loving physical contact from the adults they live with. ‘Owners’ are often unaffectionate, even if the host family is the child’s aunt or other biological relative, César said.
“They don’t have a life,” she said. “And nobody seems to care because it’s okay, it’s no problem, we’re used to the system.”
Restaveks often eat different food from other children in a household, wear cheaper clothes and are often not allowed to play with their peers.
In Haiti, “there’s nothing lower than a ‘restavek’ child except a dog,” said Glenn Smucker, a cultural anthropologist and consultant.
This Mother’s Day send a message to a mother you care about by sending a gift to Women for Women International. Choose a virtue that is close to your heart and share her story – like Khadija from Afghanistan. She is a twenty-year-old mother of four children, Khadija says her financial situation was poor upon enrolling in the program. Learning about women’s rights, financial management and job-skills training, Khadija purchased an embroidery machine and now sells items at bazaars to generate income so she can send her children to school.
This Mother’s Day send a message to a mother you care about by sending a gift to Women for Women International. Choose a virtue that is close to your heart and share her story – like Clessence from Rwanda. She is a twenty-nine-year-old mother to a girl and a boy. Before joining the Women for Women International program, Clessence performed manual labor, cultivating others’ gardens so she could have a source of food. Clessence and her husband are divorced, and her husband never provided any support — not even for their three-year-old son’s medical care. Send an eCard to an important women in your life today! Visit: http://www.womenforwomen.org/clessence
YAMBIO, SUDAN - JANUARY 13: A woman and her child sit in the courtyard of a hospital that is run in partnership with Doctors Without Borders, aka Medecins Sans Frontieres (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
This week, Save the Children released its annual report on the State of the World’s Mothers, which ranks the status of mothers in countries worldwide using a wide set of criteria including female life expectancy, lifetime risk of maternal death, women’s economic equality, child mortality, and working conditions for mothers.
Topping this year’s index is Norway, the developed country with one of the highest ratio of female-to-male earned income, the world’s highest contraception rate, and one of the most generous maternity leave policies anywhere. Northern Europe dominated the top 10 with the United States coming in at a not particularly impressive 31st, thanks in part to its 1 in 2,100 maternal death ratio — the highest of any industrialized nation– and its maternity leave policies, the shortest and least well-supported financially of any wealthy nation.
This Mother’s Day, it’s worth remembering the struggling moms in the following 10 countries, who make up the bottom of the list.
Jackie and Mike Bezos have donated a personal gift of $25,000 to "The RaiseForWomen challenge," a fundraising initiative supporting nonprofits doing work to empower women and girls around the world. The donation, combined with $75,000 from The Skoll Foundation, brings to $100,000 the total in prizes going to the causes that raise the most funds. Ja […]
We are thrilled to announce a very successful first week in the RaiseforWomen Challenge, with over $126,000 raised! We would like to thank everyone who has participated in the challenge so far. We have under five weeks left –– until June 6 –– to raise as much as possible! Half the Sky Movement will be giving out weekly prizes to individuals participating in […]
I remember reading Betty Harragan’s Games Mother Never Taught You when it first came out over thirty years ago. As a woman entrepreneur, that book had a huge impact on me — both in how to navigate at work, a new universe that felt like I had been dropped onto Mars, and how I saw myself as an agent of change. This was long before cell phones, the Internet, an […]
Just over a year ago, the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first hearing on racial profiling in over a decade on the heels of the murder of 17-year-old Florida resident Trayvon Martin. His death gave a face to the terrible practice of racial profiling and brought new media scrutiny to the issue. Over the years, many of our political leaders have recognize […]
Earlier this week, in a case brought by the ACLU, the ACLU of Arizona, and the Center for Reproductive Rights, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit struck down an extreme Arizona law that bans abortion care starting at 20 weeks. The court called it "per se unconstitutional." That's judicial-speak for "are you kidding me with this […]
As the Supreme Court takes up affirmative action once again, the word "diversity" has found its way into many legal briefs. For me, it is not an abstract concept. If today I am a supportive colleague, a successful civil rights lawyer, a good citizen in the broadest and best sense, it is thanks to affirmative action. I arrived at the University of C […]
Headline Title: Syria’s conflict, felt from afar 24 May 2013 “The tragedy is not only inside, but also outside Syria,” says a London-based Syrian human rights activist. Media Node: Husam Helmi Twitter Tag: AIR2013 Story Location: Syria 33° 27' 34.9452" N, 36° 14' 18.2508" E “The hardest thing has been to watch while the country I grew […]
Headline Title: Malaysia: Release activists arrested in government U-turn on repressive law 23 May 2013 Malaysia must end its post-election crackdown and release a member of parliament and other opposition political activists arrested under the repressive Sedition Act, Amnesty International urged today.Opposition activists Tian Chua MP, Ibrahim Harris and T […]
Headline Title: Report 2013: World increasingly dangerous for refugees and migrants 23 May 2013 Global inaction on human rights is making the world an increasingly dangerous place for refugees and migrants, Amnesty International said today as it launched its annual assessment of the world’s human rights. The organization said that the rights of millions of […]
Tweet Widget Facebook Like Email Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should make improving the human rights situation in Burma a top priority during his visit to the country this week. (Tokyo) – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should make improving the human rights situation in Burma a top priority during his visit to the country this week, Human Rights Wa […]
Tweet Widget Facebook Like Email Many of the 1,429 households resettled to make way for Vale and Rio Tinto’s international coal mining operations in Tete province, Mozambique have faced serious disruptions in their access to food, water, and work. The Mozambican government’s speed in approving mining licenses and inviting billions of dollars in investment ha […]
Tweet Widget Facebook Like Email Ukrainian authorities should allow the Kiev Pride Equality March, scheduled for May 25, 2013, in Kiev, to proceed and protect its participants from violence, Human Rights Watch said today. In a letter sent to Kiev’s city administration on May 21, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International urged the office not to ban the Equ […]
Today is a historic day for Boy Scouts across the country who want to be a part of this great American institution, but the new policy doesn't go far enough.
Just moments ago, the Nevada State Assembly approved SJR13, by a vote of 27 to 14, with Republican Assemblymember Michele Fiore joining the Democratic majority.
Support for loving, committed same-sex couples is at a record high 59 percent – a 19 percentage point increase in the last 12 years, according to a Gallup poll released today.
Few female immigrants have enjoyed the benefit of the travel ban on people with HIV lifted three years ago Financial hardships, fear of stigma in their homelands and uncertainties about their U.S. legal status all block the way.
Critics say federal wage protections for these workers will drive elderly and disabled people into institutionalized settings. Advocates say that hasn't happened in states that currently extend the minimum wage to home care workers.
Tabitha Waugh, a registered nurse in a West Virginia hospital, can't complain about the pay. But it's tough finding time with her kids and the work takes a toll, physically and mentally. "I just don't want to do direct patient care forever," she said.
A senior United Nations official has encouraged Kyrgyzstan's efforts to address the causes of the inter-communal violence that erupted in 2010, while stressing that they must be fully in line with human rights standards.
A United Nations official today stressed that Africa has taken positive steps to protect the rights of indigenous people, adding that the continent must continue making progress and avoid repeating mistakes made by other regions.
Indigenous peoples in Latin America have undergone an unprecedented mobilization in the past 20 years, but political participation, particularly among women, is still low, the United Nations said in a new report released today.
President Barack Obama delivers a speech at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., May 23, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) Today at National Defense University, President Obama laid out the framework for U.S. counterterrorism strategy as we wind down the war in Afghanistan. President Obama discussed how the threa […]
Go behind the scenes at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue by checking out The White House Photo Office’s latest photo gallery. The gallery highlights some of the major events that occurred in April – from the Easter Egg Roll to the opening of the George W. Bush Library and Museum. Check out some of our favorite images below, and then see the full set on our Flickr ga […]
Today marks one year since we released the Digital Government Strategy (PDF/ HTML5), as part of the President’s directive to build a 21st Century Government that delivers better services to the American people. The Strategy is built on the proposition that all Americans should be able to access information from their Government anywhere, anytime, and on any […]
“Ahora el video de la Cascada de Tratamiento de VIH también está disponible en español” Recently we shared an animated video about the HIV treatment cascade in the United States that has quickly become one of the most-watched videos ever on the AIDS.gov YouTube channel . We’re pleased to share the Spanish language version of this...
Today marks one year since we released the Digital Government Strategy (PDF/ HTML5), as part of the President’s directive to build a 21st Century Government that delivers better services to the American people. The Strategy is built on the proposition that all Americans should be able to access information from their Government anywhere, anytime, and on any […]
Last week, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced a nearly $1 billion initiative that will fund grant awards and evaluation to build on the Obama administration’s work to transform the health care system by delivering better care and lowering costs for taxpayers and patients. The Health Care Innovation Awards are funded by...
