It’s been quite a while since I’ve written a blog and a lot has happened over the past several weeks. Since I am at home on Thanksgiving break and away from school, I thought I’d jot down some of my thoughts on some of today’s pressing issues. I’m breaking this up into separate parts because there are a lot of things I’d like to cover. This post is Part 1. Read the rest of this entry »
Category Archives: Human Rights
Articles and thoughts on torture, Afghanistan and the environment
I haven’t written about current events lately so I thought I would take the time out to write some of my thoughts and post some good articles about the latest events.
TORTURE:
On Friday, October 16, 2009, the British High Court issued a ruling that rejected the U.S./British cover-up of torture evidence. Binyam Mohamed, a British resident of Ethiopian descent who was suspected to be involved in terrorism, was tortured by the CIA in Pakistan and other countries he was rendered to by the U.S. The CIA told British intelligence exactly what they did to him and the British recorded this on various memos. Last year, the British High Court ruled that Mohamed – who was at Guantanamo then – had the right to obtain those documents from British intelligence in order to prove that his statements to the CIA were the result of coercion. Read the rest of this entry »
Rally Against War Crimes speech (featuring Noam Chomsky, Oct. 4, 2009)
Forty years ago, on April 3, 1969, more than 800 people met in Stanford University’s Dinkelspiel Auditorium to form what became known as the April Third Movement (A3M). This movement called upon Stanford and the Stanford Research Institute, which was owned by the university, to halt chemical and biological warfare research, classified research and other programs related to the Vietnam War. The April Third Movement was more than just an activist movement that took place at Stanford. It was part of a national youth movement that mobilized against America’s colonial and atrocious war in Southeast Asia. This movement occurred on university campuses across America, in which students organized sit-ins, teach-ins and rallies, printed flyers and occupied buildings to express moral outrage against and put an end to the war in Vietnam. Through their hard work and passionate organizing, Stanford students were successful in eliminating classified research at Stanford and contributed to the popular movement that ended the Vietnam War. Read the rest of this entry »
Washington Post (Incorrectly) Asserts that Torture Worked
Trying to provide a justification for the effectiveness of torture, the Washington Post published an article, on August 29, called “How a Detainee Became An Asset: Sept. 11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding”. The article’s main argument can summed up in these paragraphs:
“After enduring the CIA’s harshest interrogation methods and spending more than a year in the agency’s secret prisons, Khalid Sheik Mohammed stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called ‘terrorist tutorials.’…
These scenes provide previously unpublicized details about the transformation of the man known to U.S. officials as KSM from an avowed and truculent enemy of the United States into what the CIA called its ‘preeminent source’ on al-Qaeda. This reversal occurred after Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning and prolonged sleep deprivation, among other harsh interrogation techniques….
[F]or for defenders of waterboarding, the evidence is clear: Mohammed cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the inspector general’s report and other documents released this week indicate.”
Pakistanis see US as biggest threat, says recent poll
A recent Al-Jazeera-Gallup survey in Pakistan (released Sunday, August 9, 2009) revealed that a large majority of the Pakistani public views the United States as the biggest threat to Pakistan. According to the poll, 59% see the U.S. as the greatest threat to Pakistan, while 18% considered India and 11% considered the Taliban to pose the greatest threat. This could be a result of the U.S.’s drone attacks in Pakistan, which have massive civilian casualties, and are opposed by 67% of the Pakistani public.
To view the entire poll, click here.
Here’s the Al-Jazeera article: “Pakistanis see US as biggest threat” by Owen Fay (Al-Jazeera, August 10, 2009).
Israel evicts Palestinian families
This past Sunday, August 2, 2009, Israeli security forces evicted two families from their homes in East Jerusalem after a court rejected their appeal against the eviction [NOTE: For those who are unaware, Jerusalem is split between East and West. Israeli Jews live in the West, while Palestinian Arabs live in the East, however, Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 Six Day War, even though this annexation is seen as illegitimate in the eyes of the international community.]. The al-Ghawi and al-Hanoun families have been living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood since 1956. Even though Israel has no legal ownership over the land, it plans on using the land the houses were built on to build a new hotel project. And the al-Ghawi and al-Hanoun families aren’t the only ones who are suffering from this. According to al-Jazeera,
“Despite pending appeals and the lack of legal ownership of land in the neighbourhood, the settler organisations sold their property claim in 2008 to an investment company that plans to demolish the 28 Palestinian homes and build 200 settlement units for new Jewish immigrants. Further reports state that two additional construction plans being currently reviewed by the Jerusalem municipality would create an additional 150 housing units, for a total of 350 new housing units for Israelis, as well as a synagogue in Sheikh Jarrah.”
Israeli settlement expansion onto Palestinian land has been going on for over 30 years. According to the Foundation for Middle East Peace, the total number of settlements has increased from 10,608 in 1972 to 484,862 in 2007. In East Jerusalem, those numbers are 8,649 in 1972 to 189,708 in 2007. These settlements are a clear violation of international law, particularly Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states:
“Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”
It is also important to note that the right to housing is an established human right in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a treaty that Israel has signed and ratified. Article 11(1) says:
“The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international co-operation based on free consent.”
The actions of the Israeli government in evicting these two families from their homes and building more illegal settlements is a violation of the fundamental human rights of the Palestinian people. It is up to citizens across the world to build a movement that advances the human rights of the Palestinians and pressures governments such as the United States to stop providing $3 billion of aid every year to governments like Israel that violate fundamental human rights.
————————————————————————————–
Here are some articles and sources:
1. “Israel evicts Palestinians families” (Al-Jazeera, August 3, 2009).
2. “US criticises Israeli eviction move” (Al-Jazeera, August 4, 2009).
3. “Comprehensive Settlement Population 1972-2007” (Foundation for Middle East Peace)
4. Fourth 1949 Geneva Convention.
5. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Blues African 