Human rights

As Peace News went to press, hundreds of protesters remained on the streets of Uzbekistan, following mid-May's unrest and subsequent massacre by government troops. Sian Glaessner has been talking with the founder of the Uzbek organisation

Many Peace News readers will have heard the news of the massacre of eight civilians, including three children, in the Colombian Peace Community of San Jose' de Apartad in February 2005 (see PN2460).

Assassinated with his family and five others was Luis Eduardo Guerra, a founder of the community and a speaker at the November 2002 Vigil to Close the School of the Americas (SOA).

SOA Watch has learned that the commander of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian…

On Sunday 15 May exiles from Sudan, along with supporters, gathered in London to demand that the British government take action to halt the genocide in the Sudanese region of Darfur.

The protest was organised by Waging Peace and the Darfur Solidarity Campaign and drew 300 people from across Britain. Protesters gathered outside Downing Street and the Sudanese Embassy and staged a die-in, symbolising the genocide. They held up placards with “Peace keepers into Darfur” and “Sanctions…

Mr Ahmad is accused of using the internet to raise funds for terrorist/resistance groups in Chechnya and Afghanistan. His family strenuously deny this. Further to that, they ask why he should be extradited…

You could be forgiven for thinking that the new Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), the result of an almost unprecedented to and fro between the Commons and Lords, is a much-watered down version of the Government's proposals for the replacement of the heavily criticised detention powers in the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act.

But the parliamentary tussles perhaps tell us more about the shortcomings of most Westminster debates than about any actual gains made by defenders of…

“The two stacks of hay there had been burnt; the apricot and cherry trees he had planted and reared were broken and scorched; and, worse still, all the beehives and bees were burnt. The wailing of the women, and of the little children who cried with their mothers, mingled with the lowing of the hungry cattle, for whom there was no food. The bigger children did not play, but followed their elders with frightened eyes. The fountain was polluted, evidently on purpose, so that the water…

On 20 January, just outside 10 Downing Street, the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities organised a protest – supported by an alliance of campaigning and human rights groups – against the detention of suspects without trial and calling for an end to the political terror that the anti-terror legislation has itself created. Activists, human rights lawyers and members of the London Muslim community attended the event at which they urged the government to stop detention without trial and…

Between 1961 and 1971 the United States dropped approximately 46 million litres of Agent Orange - a herbicide containing the highly toxic waste product dioxin - on South Vietnam. Some 20,000 villages were sprayed, affecting an estimated five million people.

In 1965 an official for the Dow Chemical Corporation wrote an internal memo in which he recognised that dioxin was “exceptionally toxic ... [with] tremendous potential for producing chloracne [a skin disorder similar to acne] and…

When a member of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, clinical psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, returns to a prison to interview, and finally to know, one of the behind-the-scenes murderers in the dreaded secret police, she faces not only a man who committed unspeakable deeds in his country, but she faces the universal questions of the nature of evil and human violence, the possibility of transformation and the human capacity for forgiveness.

The story of this…

April 2004 marked the tenth anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide, making this publication both timely and important. It uncovers a side of that terrible story largely hidden from public view. Shake Hands with the Devil is an intensely personal account, written by the head of the UN mission before and during the slaughter.

Informed that he was being posted to Rwanda, Lt General Dallaire remembers that the only information he had about the country was a photocopied page…

Colombia's president Alvaro Uribe Velez is, by his own admission, a man of the right. Unlike most recent Colombian Presidents, Uribe is from the land-owning class. He inherited huge swathes of cattle ranching land from his father Alberto Uribe Velez, himself subject to an extradition warrant to face charges of drug trafficking in the USA, until he was killed, allegedly by left-wing FARC guerrillas, in 1983. Uribe Jnr grew up with the children of Fabio Ochoa, three of whom were to become…

Although various human rights groups have documented and examined the practices used by the state of Israel against Palestinian political detainees, including child prisoners, this book is the first to be published which also provides an in-depth critical analysis of the political motivations behind these actions.

Separated into three sections - Framework and Context, Arrest through Incarceration, and Analysis & Conclusions - this book sets out not only to tell the complete story…

Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) is the most recent and widely reported symbol of "hate radio" throughout the world. Its broadcasts, disseminating hate propaganda and inciting the murder of Tutsis and opponents to the regime, began on 8 July 1993, and greatly contributed to the 1994 genocide of hundreds of thousands.

RTLM, aided by the staff and facilitiesof Radio Rwanda, the government-owned station, called on the Hutu majority todestroy the Tutsi minority. The…

Over the past three years, one of the most frequently asked questions in Zimbabwe (and often asked of me by my 79-year old mother) has been “why are they not taking to the streets and doing something about the situation?” My reply has generally been “who do you mean by they and why are you not on the streets yourself?” But then I am not either!

Many people explain away their inaction by claiming they are not part of the critical mass (in other…

Typical Western concerns about China have focused - in recent years at least - on the issue of Tibet. And while the Tibet issue remains a challenging problem, not least for the nonviolent political movement led by the Dalai Lama, it may not be the most pressing thing on the agenda of local Chinese activists.

The emergence of a Chinese NGO-based environmental movement, the continuing activities of “pro-democracy” campaigners, a number of recent unauthorised anti-war demonstrations,…