Satellite Evidence of Human Rights Violations (10): Burning Village in the Nuba Mountains

On May 18, 2012, Sudanese security forces burned and looted the village of Gardud al Badry in the remote Nuba Mountains, just north of the volatile border between Sudan and South Sudan, according to evidence gathered by the Satellite Sentinel Project.

The Sudanese government accuses the South Sudanese government of backing rebels in the Nuba Mountains, charges the South denies.  Many inhabitants of South Kordofan fought for the south against the north during a civil war that lasted over two decades, and are ethnically linked to the south. (source)

This is what it looks like from above:

burned and looted village of Gardud al Badry in the remote Nuba Mountains, satellite view

And this is a ground view:

burned and looted village of Gardud al Badry in the remote Nuba Mountains, ground view

A gripping video testimony is here:

More about Sudan is here. More posts in this series are here.

Human Rights Maps (135): The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and Child Soldiers

The Lord’s Resistance Army is a religious and military group formed in 1987 and headed by Joseph Kony, who claims to be the “spokesperson” of God and a spirit medium, primarily of the Holy Spirit. The inspiration is mainly Christian. The LRA first engaged in an armed rebellion against the Ugandan government, but later moved its activities to parts of Sudan, Central African Republic and DR Congo. It’s infamous for widespread human rights violations, including murder, abduction, mutilation, sexual enslavement of women and children, and forcing children to participate in hostilities.

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More on child soldiers is here and here. More maps about child soldiers are here. More human rights maps in general are here.

Satellite Evidence of Human Rights Violations (8): Darfur, Ctd

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Other posts in this series are here. Something on the advantages of this kind of evidence is here. More on Darfur here.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (56): Food Theft in Sudan

Food theft in Sudan

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1998 picture by British photojournalist Tom Stoddart traveling with Medicins Sans Frontieres. More on Sudan, famine and development aid. More iconic images of human rights violations are here.

Related Articles

• UK should not put trade with Sudan ahead of human rights | Tom Porteous (guardian.co.uk)
• South Sudan LRA rebel raids rise (bbc.co.uk)
• donate to Oxfam, Unicef and/or Medicins Sans Frontieres

Satellite Evidence of Human Rights Violations (7): Darfur

Before and after satellite images provide evidence of the destruction of villages in Darfur. See more at http://www.eyesondarfur.org. Copyright 2009 DigitalGlobe

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More examples of satellite evidence of human rights violations are here. Something on the advantages of this kind of evidence is here. More on Darfur here.

Related Articles

• Susan Morgan: Obama’s Sudan Moment (huffingtonpost.com)
• The Situation in Darfur Deteriorates (humanrights.change.org)

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (49): Sudanese Girl Dying of Hunger as a Vulture Patiently Waits

(photo by Kevin Carter, a South African photographer who committed suicide in 1994, only a year after taking this Pulitzer Prize-winning photo)

Seeking relief from the sight of masses of people starving to death, he wandered into the open bush. He heard a soft, high-pitched whimpering and saw a tiny girl trying to make her way to the feeding center. As he crouched to photograph her, a vulture landed in view. Careful not to disturb the bird, he positioned himself for the best possible image. He would later say he waited about 20 minutes, hoping the vulture would spread its wings. It did not, and after he took his photographs, he chased the bird away and watched as the little girl resumed her struggle. Afterward he sat under a tree, lit a cigarette, talked to God and cried. “He was depressed afterward. He kept saying he wanted to hug his daughter.”

The haunting image made Carter a global celebrity, but it also raised uncomfortable questions about whether he should have helped the girl rather than simply watching her die. To be sure, Carter had plenty of emotional and financial problems, and he drank and used drugs excessively. But’s it’s not hard to imagine that his world-famous photo left him wracked with guilt, contributing to his suicidal state of mind. In his rambling final note, he wrote, “I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners.” (source)

There’s obviously a moral dilemma here, one which always occurs in disaster journalism: drop the camera and help (but what can you do?), or be a witness and mobilize the world (but will it listen?). What’s best? If you’re interested, we have a blog series going on about moral dilemmas. More on journalism here.

Why is this an iconic image of human rights violations? Isn’t famine just a natural disaster for which no one is responsible, like an earthquake? I explained here why this is not the case, why famines happen because of what people do or fail to do.

UPDATE: a reader, Anthony Ratay, writes:

I wanted to let you know that there is some conflicting information out about the fate of the small Sudanese girl in the photograph.  Featured in the documentary “Under Fire”  Paul Watson claims that this girl was eventually given medical attention and prevented from an untimely demise. In fact if you look at the photo in its original frame you can see humanitarian workers in the background.

More about famines, or about Sudan. More iconic images of human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (25): The Crime of Wearing Trousers

Lubna Hussein, Photograph: Ashraf Shazly/AFP/Getty Images

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A news story from a few weeks ago:

A Sudanese woman who wore pants in public was fined the equivalent of $200 but spared a whipping on Monday when a court found her guilty of violating Sudan’s decency laws. The woman, Lubna Hussein, an outspoken journalist who had recently worked for the United Nations, faced up to 40 lashes in the case, which has generated considerable interest both inside and outside Sudan.

Manal Awad Khogali, one of her lawyers, said the judge hearing the case had called only police witnesses to testify and refused to allow Mrs. Hussein — who had pledged to use her trial to bring attention to women’s rights in Sudan — to defend herself.

Sudan is partly governed by Islamic law, which calls for women to dress modestly. But the law is vague. According to Article 152 of Sudan’s penal code, anyone “who commits an indecent act which violates public morality or wears indecent clothing” can be fined and lashed up to 40 times. (source)

This is reminiscent of the case of a British schoolteacher who faced whippings and a prison sentence in 2007 for allowing her 7-year-old students to name a class teddy bear Muhammad.

And, as an antidote to the cultural bias and islamo-unease-ia that may be provoked by Ms Hussein’s story, here’s another, quite similar one:

A decree banning women from wearing trousers in Paris is still technically in force… The rule banning women from dressing like men – namely by wearing trousers – was first introduced in 1800 by Paris’ police chief and has survived repeated attempts to repeal it.

The 1800 rule stipulated than any Parisienne wishing to dress like a man “must present herself to Paris’ main police station to obtain authorisation”. In 1892 it was slightly relaxed thanks to an amendment which said trousers were permitted ”as long as the woman is holding the reins of a horse”. Then in 1909, the decree was further watered down when an extra clause was added to allow women in trousers on condition they were “on a bicycle or holding it by the handlebars”.

In 1969, amid a global movement towards gender equality, the Paris council asked the city’s police chief to bin the decree. His response was: “It is unwise to change texts which foreseen or unforeseen variations in fashion can return to the fore.” The latest attempt to remove the outmoded rule was in 2003, when a Right-wing MP from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party wrote to the minister in charge of gender equality. The minister’s response was: “Disuse is sometimes more efficient than (state) intervention in adapting the law to changing mores.”

As Evelyne Pisier, a law professor whose book Le Droit des Femmes (The Rights of Women) unearthed the curious decree points out, given that trousers are compulsory for Parisian policewoman, they are all breaking the law. (source)

More about the rules that should govern criminal trials here. More on Shari’a. More on gender discrimination. More on islamophobia.

Human Rights Facts (44): Support for Intervention in Darfur

Below are some public opinion data which confirm the numbers I posted previously. It’s very encouraging to see that large majorities or pluralities in some African and Muslim countries support some form of international action against the ongoing atrocities in Darfur/Sudan. Both the ICC’s arrest warrant for Bashir and a possible humanitarian intervention are viewed positively, despite the reluctance of most of those countries’ governments.

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More on Darfur.

Violence, A Collection of Images

More on violence here. Other collections of human rights images are here.

Violence in Iraq, Photo: Reuters

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COE campaign to stop domestic violence against women

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Columbine shooters Eric Harris (L) and Dylan Klebold, Getty Images

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Sudanese child draws image of rape

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Human Rights Ads (17): Darfur

More on Darfur.

Self-Defeating Human Rights Policies (1)

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Things don’t always work out the way we want them to. Almost any significant action has unintended consequences, and in some cases these consequences can turn out to be the exact opposite of what we intended. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, not in the sense that we only start to think about doing good when we’re already on the way to hell, but in the sense that our good intentions result not in more good, but in more harm.

This is the classic distinction in moral theory between consequentialists and deontologists. For the former, an action is morally good if and only if it produces good results, whatever the intentions. For the latter, an action is good or bad depending on the nature or character of the action. A deontologist might argue that lying is always wrong, regardless of any good that might come from it. Immanuel Kant is perhaps the best-known deontologist.

Immanuel Kant

Communism comes to mind as an example of good intentions gone wrong. But human rights activism is no stranger to this either. Some of the best intentioned human rights activism does in fact result in harm being done. A few examples:

• Some western governments have introduced hate crime laws and hate speech laws. They wanted these laws to target Islamist extremists preaching hate in mosques and mobilizing and recruiting terrorists. It turns out, in fact, that these very laws are now used by Islamist extremists to target critics of Islam.
• In a previous post, I mentioned the negative effect of international development aid on democracy.
• If you agree that the U.S. “war on terror” is (or was) at least in part about “protecting our values” and “protecting a free society” then it seems somewhat tragic that this war has led a free society to engage in torture, rendition, arbitrary arrest etc.
• A hasty imposition of democracy (“dropping democracy from a plane“) can lead to ethnic unrest and even civil war. Elections become exercises in ethnic census, and when one group loses, the other rebels.
• In the case of Sudan and Darfur, we saw that the indictment of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court led to the expulsion of aid workers from Sudan, aggravating the plight of his victims. And, of course, making the indictment all the more justified.
• One can also question the need for the bombing campaign against Serbia following the atrocities in Kosovo.

So, I would say it never harms to think first before you act, although no amount of thinking can prevent all unintended consequences.

Satellite Evidence of Human Rights Violations (1): Darfur and Zimbabwe

Modern technology has provided some interesting tools to detect and combat human rights violations. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) uses satellite imagery in its Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights Project.

Here are some examples. When you look at these two satellite photos of a small village in the Darfur region of Sudan, taken in March 2003 and in December 2006, you can clearly see the destruction that has taken place:

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The pictures below are of the settlement of Porta Farm, located just west of Harare, Zimbabwe. The settlement has been leveled by Mugabe, in what he called a sanitary operation to clean a “slum” (he called it “Operation Murambatsvina“, or “Operation Drive Out Trash”), but undoubtedly the real purpose was to hurt the opposition.

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Human Rights Maps (35): How the World Views Africa

More on the human rights situation in Africa in general and in Darfur in particular. And something on the correlation between concern and closeness. And here is someone else who can’t tell exactly where Darfur and Sudan are situated on a map.

Political T-Shirt (3): Save Darfur

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Spot the two mistakes…

(Solution: Neither Darfur nor Sudan are in South-America. And South-America doesn’t include a country called Sudan which includes a region called Darfur.)

More on Darfur.

Human Rights Cartoon (45): China in Africa, Investor or Predator, Rescuer or Abettor?

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During the last decade, China has been showing an increasing interest in Africa. In almost every corner of Africa there is something that China needs to fuel its enormous economic growth: metals, minerals, oil… Trade between Africa and China has grown rapidly:

Is history repeating itself? China’s involvement in Africa brings back the worst memories of Europe’s colonial domination. In its efforts to secure access to African natural resources, China tries to ingratiate itself with African dictatorships. The result is often aiding and abetting. For example, on several occasions, China threatened to use its UN Security Council veto to block the adoption of sanctions against Sudan over the Darfur conflict. It rewards its African friends and suppliers with arms sales, diplomatic support and financial and military assistance. It has no qualms to support the most brutal governments and sell them their weapons of oppression, and it thereby helps to sustain the resource curse.

Part of the ingratiating process is China’s strong belief in “no-strings” aid, a marked contrast to Western donors who – justifiably I think – impose human rights conditions on aid. China’s only demand for entering into commercial relations is a complete break of links with Taiwan. Understandably, given its own performance, it refrains from lecturing African governments on democracy and human rights. This has emboldened governments, allowing them to ignore Western calls for reform.

The rise in the price of agricultural products is also due in part to China’s growth because China is dependent on imports. And since African countries are as well major importers of those products, China’s rapid development and the concomitant price rises have negative consequences for African consumers.

On the bright side, China’s growth and involvement in Africa have given African countries a new export outlet and increased the price of raw materials on which these countries so heavily depend. But this is a theoretical bright side, given the resource curse (see above). China is also in the process of giving Africa a new infrastructure. It employs large numbers of local workers, although the wages they offer remain low and many Chinese companies prefer to use Chinese workers. Still, those Africans that are employed have an income that is often above the African average, and they learn new skills and knowhow.

When criticizing China for aiding and abetting, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the West often makes the same mistakes. While it’s unfair to silence the West because of it’s colonial past – it’s current criticism of China is in no way invalided by its own mistakes – it’s also unfair to blame China for all the evils in Africa. Africans themselves are partly to blame. And so is the colonial heritage, the apathy of the West and many other factors.

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More on human rights promotion here and here.

Human Rights and International Law (9): Impunity

Luis Moreno-Ocampo

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I deeply hope that the horrors humanity has suffered during the 20th century will serve us as a painful lesson, and that the creation of the International Criminal Court will help us to prevent those atrocities from being repeated in the future. Statement made by Luis Moreno-Ocampo on the occasion of his election as first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court by the Assembly of States Parties in New York on 22 April 2003.

Many gross violations of rights such as genocides, state oppression, torture etc. are committed by the political class of a country, and in particular by the political leaders. And if they don’t personally dirty their hands, they organize, order, facilitate and protect the executors. They view rights violations as a necessary element in the exercise of power.

For many reasons, legal and practical, these leaders often enjoy impunity, meaning literally “without punishment”. The “Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights Through Action to Combat Impunity” describes impunity in this way:

The impossibility, de jure or de facto, of bringing the perpetrators of violations to account – whether in criminal, civil, administrative or disciplinary proceedings – since they are not subject to any inquiry that might lead to their being accused, arrested, tried and, if found guilty, sentenced to appropriate penalties, and to making reparations to their victims. (source)

Reasons for impunity

Here are some of these reasons for impunity:

1. Self-Preservation

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A first reason for impunity is the fact that the perpetrators are in power and have subjected the justice system and the judiciary to their command. They have, in other words, destroyed the division of powers or failed to institutionalize it. Because they are so powerful, most of them die in the saddle and only have to fear a Higher Judge.

But some do not and end their reign (or see it ended) during their lifetime. But even then they manage to protect themselves. If they still have enough influence to stay in the country, they can either negotiate immunity or amnesty (take the case of Pinochet), or they have enough friends in high places to dispense with such formalities (take Deng Xiaoping, the butcher of Tienanmen).

2. The solidarity of tyrants

Milosevic and Karadzic

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If their exit from power is somewhat acrimonious, they may have to flee to another country where a friendly dictator will do everything to avoid a precedent of justice and will harbor the criminal until the end of his days (take Karadzic). How beautiful solidarity can be.

3. The law

Donald Rumsfeld

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Sometimes the national justice system can’t help, and at other times the international solidarity of tyrants hinders an otherwise able and willing justice system. Also the law can come to the rescue. State functionaries (sometimes even former functionaries) claim to enjoy legal immunity in national or even international law for acts carried out while in office. Individual perpetrators hide behind their states. Heads of state or leading functionaries are said to represent their states and all their actions are “acts of state”, and therefore the state is responsible for these acts.

Lower ranking officials are not responsible either, because they can hide behind the “Befehl ist Befehl” principle. They cannot be punished because they follow orders from people who themselves are not responsible either.

Only by transcending these principles of immunity and command can individuals be punished for violations of human rights and can human rights be protected (punishing states is very difficult and is not fair because it is a kind of collective punishment.) This has been the main achievement of the Nuremberg Tribunal. The Nuremberg tribunal was the first tribunal to judge the crimes of political leaders and to refuse to grant them immunity for war crimes and gross violations of human rights such as the holocaust. The charter of the fledgling International Criminal Court (ICC) also rules out defenses based on immunity:

Immunities or special procedural rules which may attach to the official capacity of a person, whether under national or international law, shall not bar the Court from exercising its jurisdiction over such a person. (source)

Charles Taylor of Liberia was indicted in 2003 while still in power, and is now in the dock in The Hague. Milosevic went before him and others will follow. But they have to be extradited. Political leaders will not extradite themselves, and after they leave office they will continue to enjoy some protection at home. Taylor was arrested because he first agreed to accept exile in Nigeria.

Moreover, countries have to sign up to the ICC treaty. Zimbabwe for example has not signed up, so Mugabe will not have his day in court, unless there is a referral to the court by the Security Council. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is now indicted on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes over the slaughter in Darfur, but will probably remain comfortably in his seat.

Some claim that the possibility of being handed over to the ICC after the end of their reign, forces tyrants to cling to power and use ever more violent means to do so. But then you could as well grant amnesty to all hostage takers out of fear that they would otherwise do more harm to their hostages.

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4. Institutional problems

The impunity of ordinary civil servants or members of the police is often the consequence of under-developed state institutions. Judiciaries that are malfunctioning or corrupt, policemen who are underpaid or have a lack of training etc.

Impunity arises from a failure by States to meet their obligations to investigate violations; to take appropriate measures in respect of the perpetrators, particularly in the area of justice, by ensuring that those suspected of criminal responsibility are prosecuted, tried and duly punished; to provide victims with effective remedies and to ensure that they receive reparation for the injuries suffered; to ensure the inalienable right to know the truth about violations; and to take other necessary steps to prevent a recurrence of violations. (source)

Data

The Committee to Protect Journalists has an impunity index in which countries are ranked according to the number of murder of journalists that are unresolved. More statistics are here.

Here’s a post on the related subject of universal jurisdiction.

More on justice for dictators.

Economic Human Rights (10): Famine

famine in Sudan

Here are some of the worst famines in the 20th century. In China between 1958 and 1962, an estimated 10 to 30 million people died as a result of Mao’s Great Leap Forward. The government was unaware of the problems and continued to export food and cut imports several years into the famine. Farmers were collectivised into communes of about 25,000 people and had to give the state a large percentage of their crops. Officials often exaggerated the size of harvests, and in many places the entire grain harvest was seized.

In the Soviet Union in 1921-22, 9 million people died because of massive crop failures due to drought. Lenin did not respond until it was too late. Again, in Ukraine in 1932-34, 8 million people died as a result of Stalin’s industrialization programme in which the government seized grain for exports. It needed the hard currency to buy industrial equipment. Stalin refused to them food aid.

Famine is often the result of:

• Climate conditions such as drought or other natural disasters such as flooding. Also soil degradation, desertification etc.
• Underdevelopment. Famine often occurs in countries with subsistence agriculture, that is, where most farming is aimed at producing just enough food energy to survive.
• Imbalance of population and food supply (over-population, sometimes as a consequence of refugee flows, in themselves the consequence of war, civil unrest, or famine elsewhere).
• War or civil unrest.
• Inadequate logistics for food distribution.
• Misguided or plain evil government policy. This is obvious from the examples above. The Great Irish Famine, 1845-1849, occurred as food was being shipped from Ireland to England because the English could afford to pay higher prices. The same thing happend during the 1973 famine in Ethiopia when food was shipped to other regions in Ethiopia because the people there could pay more. Famine is sometimes used as a tool of repressive governments as a means to eliminate opponents, as was the case in the Ukranian famine.
• Lack of democratic governance, resulting in lack of information flows and accountability. Amartya Sen stated that shortfalls in food supply do not cause widespread deaths in a democracy because vote-seeking politicians will undertake relief efforts and will be aware of the problems thanks to the freedom in their countries.
• A combination of the elements above.

It is often stated that climate change will result in more famines in the future, as a result of desertification, flooding, hurricanes etc.

More on famine.

Human Rights and International Law (2): Universal Jurisdiction

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Some countries have granted their courts so-called “universal jurisdiction” in certain matters. Traditionally, courts only have national jurisdiction and can only punish crimes committed on the national territory; crimes committed elsewhere should be handled by the courts of the country in question or by international courts. Laws of one country are also generally understood to be applicable in that country only. Universal jurisdiction in effect leads to extra-territoriality of the law. Some laws are valid outside the territory as well and national judiciaries can apply these laws to acts committed elsewhere.

Belgium, for instance, at one time allowed its courts to prosecute genocide, even if the crime of genocide was committed abroad and no Belgians were involved either as perpetrators or as victims. This was a commendable initiative from a moral point of view, but there are several reasons why universal jurisdiction is not very effective and cannot replace national and international law.

1. The victims of genocide, or the representatives of these victims, if they already know that Belgian courts can possibly help them, will find it difficult to go to Belgium to plead their case. These people will probably live in some Third World country and will not have the financial means to start court proceedings in Belgium (where the hell is Belgium anyway?)
2. The perpetrators are mostly not in Belgium and can therefore not be punished by the Belgian courts. If convicted, they will simply avoid Belgium and it is unlikely that they will be extradited by their home state since they generally occupy a leading function in the government of their state. The only tangible result is a number of diplomatic crises between Belgium and other states, sometimes traditionally friendly states.
3. The Belgian courts quickly find themselves in the position of Atlas, carrying the whole burden of global suffering. There is no way in which these courts, already suffering serious delays, can handle all submitted cases.
4. Political agitators will use the Belgian law to make publicity for their case. They will be tempted to file spurious charges against their political enemies. For example, friends of Saddam Hussein filed charges against President George W. Bush and some other leading members of his administration for waging war against Saddam. The Belgian courts, of course, could not refuse these charges without examination. So an investigation was launched, which deeply upset the Americans, who even threatened to move NATO headquarters out of Belgium, supposedly to protect American officials visiting these headquarters. After all, the Americans know that they are no saints and that Belgian courts can one day decide that there is a case to be made against some of their officials, and can try to arrest them.
5. What if several states decide to start cases simultaneously against one and the same offender, each using its right to universal jurisdiction? That would create judicial uncertainty and many practical problems.

However, in the absence of effective national or international jurisdiction, universal jurisdiction may be the only alternative. And even if it’s not effective for the reasons given above, it sends a signal.

More on justice for tyrants.