...Or Does It Explode?

Illegal to Discuss "The Disappeared" in Algeria

Lots of juicy civil rights abuse nuggets in this report from Algeria on two arrested lawyers and a banned reconciliation conference. Read the whole thing, but enjoy these excerpts:

On February 7 authorities broke up the "Truth, Peace and Conciliation" seminar organized by five Algerian organizations that represent families of some of the thousands of persons whom state agents forcibly disappeared during the 1990s, as well as families of those abducted or killed by terrorist groups. After several of the invited foreign speakers were unable to obtain visas to enter Algeria, police amassed at the Mercure Hotel in Algiers on the morning of February 7 and prevented the two-day conference from getting under way.

At 9 p.m. the night before, the Algiers prefecture notified the organizers, who had applied five weeks earlier for permission to hold the conference, that this conference could not take place. The prefecture did not explain its decision. However, Farouk Ksentini, who heads Algeria's state human rights commission, was quoted on February 11 in the French-language daily L'Expression as saying that banning the conference was "consistent with the terms of the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation." He said, "Article 46 [of the Charter] ... forbids raising anymore the issue of the 'disappeared.' The matter is closed and no one has the right to speak about it."

Asked to confirm his remarks in L'Expression, Ksentini told Human Rights Watch on February 15 that he was not expressing his own view but merely speculating on authorities' motives in banning the gathering. However, he acknowledged that he had yet to criticize or regret publicly the interdiction of the conference - to which he himself had been invited to speak.

Mr. Ksentini let slip an inconvenient truth about freedom of expression in Algeria, and his attempts to weasel out of it are both comic and a sign of the obstacles facing human rights advocates in Algeria.

Meditating on the Hariri Story

Annia  Ciezaldo has a long review in the Nation of several new books that consider the story of Rafik Hariri and the March 14 movement in Lebanon. She starts out harsh on Hariri's super-sketchy cocktail of politics and business, but actually ends up on a quasi-affectionate note. The ending metaphor of Hariri as Tony Soprano is provocative, but the harsh impact on individual activists is not overlooked:

Consider the case of Muhamad Mugraby, a human rights lawyer who represented the families of Lebanese citizens disappeared into Syrian jails.

Mugraby's father was one of the many small-business owners whose businesses had been demolished by Hariri's bulldozers, his little shops--vegetable stands, coffeehouses, butchers and other quintessentially Beiruti small businesses that had supported the family comfortably for decades--valued, he says, at a mere $20,000. Mugraby decided to fight back. He took on the cases of downtown property owners, including an elderly woman who he says was dragged out of her home by police so Solidere [Harari's company] could demolish it; she died less than a month later, of what geriatric medical experts would refer to as "transfer trauma" and Mugraby calls "a broken heart."

Mugraby's troubles began when he questioned the murky legal authority of Solidere's special appraisal committees, headed by judges, set up to determine the value of people's property. While they issued legally binding decisions, they operated outside the judicial system's jurisdiction--effectively an extrajudicial court, indirectly underwritten by Solidere, whose decisions downtown property owners could not appeal. If that sounds uncomfortably close to "special military tribunal," it gets better. In October 1999, Mugraby denounced Solidere's indirect payment of the judges as a conflict of interest that influenced them to undervalue certain properties. When he expanded his crusade against corrupt judges, the Syrian-controlled judiciary struck back: He was accused of "dishonoring" the judiciary, banned from practicing law and thrown in jail.

It's long past due to put an end to this whole dishonoring, insulting, and defaming thing.

Lovely Capital Punishment Case in Saudi

While the execution of Saddam Hussein generated lengthy debate about the conditions surrounding his trial and hanging, less prominent individuals are not even lucky enough to have legal counsel. Case in point is the recent execution of four hapless Sri Lankans in Saudi Arabia:

A human rights group said Thursday that Saudi Arabia violated international law when it ordered the beheadings earlier this week of four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh...

"The execution of these four migrants, who had been badly beaten and locked up for years without access to lawyers, is a travesty of justice," Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a report...

[Rajith] Silva said he and Victor Corea, Sanath Pushpakumara, and Sharmila Sangeeth Kumara, took up armed robberies in early 2004 because their Saudi employer was paying them each only $67 of the $107 a month agreed in their contract — money that barely covered lodgings.

Silva also told the Human Rights Watch he was never advised he could see a lawyer, or that he could face the death penalty. The four were not notified of proceedings ahead of time and had no consular assistance. Silva also said he was not told how to appeal the verdict and never received a copy of the verdict...

After the trial, the Sri Lankans managed to contact their embassy from prison, but were told it was too late to appoint a lawyer. The Sri Lankan government said it had appealed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia for clemency twice and was now trying to retrieve the bodies.

Saudi officials would not confirm that the body had been displayed but did confirm the four were executed Monday. They also confirmed the court order for the men's bodies to be displayed after the execution.

Imagine driving through Riyadh (male readers only, of course) and suddenly happening upon the bodies of four Sri Lankans on display. How quaint!

 

Diving into the Western Sahara Scene

The author of the new blog Western Sahara Info dropped by here and left some interesting comments. Readers, in turn, ought to check out the blog for well-reasoned insight into the complicated dynamics of the Western Sahara conflict. One example: a post on the limits of self-determination in Africa:

However, the African Union, previously OAU, has decided (like in §4b) that no-one is allowed to alter the colonial borders in Africa: uti possidetis, who has keeps. This has with time become the union's perhaps most sacred principle, and one of few to actually be respected by most of its members, since everybody agrees that if it could be safely ignored, that would open the gates of hell. It doesn't matter how badly drawn the borders are, because they're equally illogical all over, and almost every country in Africa is packed with secession-prone minorities, to the point that many doesn't have an ethnic majority at all...

What all this means is, more or less, that Touareg nationalists are chanceless. They fulfill none of the criteria that awarded colonial peoples self-determination rights -- to begin with, they aren't a "colonial people" at all, but one of many African peoples and tribes whose traditional lands have been cut up by European colonialists, and who will now have to find some way to deal with living under many different regimes. The Sahrawis, divided between Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, Mali and other places, are in the same situation: it is the Western Saharan Sahrawis that has a special right of self-determination, through being the (only) original population of a non-decolonized territory...

Also, check out the link to Western Sahara Cartoons blog, which included this little ditty:

102-Year-Old Yemeni Man Grows Horn

And now for something completely different (via the Yemen Observer):

"Saleh, 102, spoke to the Yemen Observer about the astonishing experience of growing horns on his head, beginning at the age of 77. The first, he said, began growing some 25 years ago, and kept growing until it reached a length of half a meter. But that horn broke off one day last year. Eight days later, another horn started growing in the same spot as the first one. This horn is currently still growing on the left side of his head. "

Friday Photos: A Slap Heard Round the World

A sad day for Egypt, for freedom of expression, for blogging, and for a quirky law student passionate about women's rights. Beyond the four-year jail sentence, the outrage of the day is reported on here:

Judge Ayman al-Akazi issued the verdict in a brief, five-minute session in a court in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. He sentenced Nabil to three years in prison for insulting Islam and the prophet and inciting sectarian strife and another year for insulting President Hosni Mubarak.

Nabil, wearing a gray T-shirt and sitting in the defendants pen, gave no reaction and his face remained still as the verdict was read. He made no comment to reporters as he was immediate led outside to a prison truck.

Seconds after he was loaded into the truck and the door closed, an Associated Press reporter heard the sound of a slap from inside the vehicle and a shriek of pain from Nabil.

His lawyer, Ahmed Seif el-Islam, said he would appeal the verdict, saying the ruling will "terrify other bloggers and will negative impact on the freedom of expression in Egypt."

No need for comment; the slap speaks volumes.

 

Iranian Activists Protest Impending Destruction of Cyrus' Tomb

Many Persians hail their ancient ruler Cyrus for introducing a code of civil rights. Indeed, the UN building in New York features a monument to Cyrus' decrees. But now the Iranian leadership is planning to flood the plain where Cyrus' monumental tomb and other archaelogical sites lie. It seems to be in part an attempt to wipe out Iran's pre-Islamic heritage.

But a group of young Iranian activists took to the streets outside the tourism ministry to protest a few days ago. Some even brandished pictures of Cyrus' tomb. Follow the link for more photos and background info.

Kurds in Wonderland

A fascinating video report on the boom in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Upcoming Referendum on Bashar

Nuggets about repression in Syria via an AFP report yesterday on Syria's upcoming "referendum" on Bashar Assad:

Syria plans a series of elections this year, including a referendum for a new mandate for President Bashar al-Assad, as the regime hardens its stand against opposition figures seeking to ease political restrictions.

The Baath party, in power since 1963, announced the referendum earlier this month but gave no date.

It described it as a "national and patriotic occasion which will allow the people to express their support for the policy" of Assad, who became president on July 11, 2000 after the death of his father Hafez al-Assad...

Only the Baath party and its allies are recognised by Syrian law, despite opposition calls for legal status.

When Assad took over from his father who had ruled with an iron fist for 30 years, the opposition voiced hopes that the transition would lead to a political opening.

A plebiscite gave him an official 97.29 percent of the votes...

Arrests of human rights militants, summonses by security services, bans on meetings, travel and the blocking of internet sites have all increased in recent months.

Today "there is a general disappointment. The regime has shut itself off and it not disposed to listen to the advice of other," said lawyer Hassan Abdel-Azim, spokesman for six banned parties united under the umbrella National Democratic Rally...

Ten members of the opposition who signed a petition calling for reform in Syria-Lebanon relations were arrested in May 2006. Three are still detained.

President Assad, questioned earlier this month on a US television channel about political prisoners, said that type of prisoner did not exist in Syria.

And all this is done with a straight face.

Human Rights Group Can't Meet Without Regime Apologists

Imagine if your Amnesty International chapter meetings had the same restrictions:

A Tunisian court has barred a leading human rights league from holding an assembly unless it allows pro-government members to take part.

In a case watched closely by international rights groups as a test of civil freedoms in the country, governmental critics have accused the court of suppressing free speech and stifling democracy.

The Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH) has tried since 2005 to hold the congress, which was suspended by the court after 22 league members accused the leadership of excluding them...

When the group attempted to meet in Tunis last May, dozens of police officers blocked their path.

Witnesses said that activists who tried to breach the cordon were kicked and beaten.