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from Photographers Blog:
My memories of a dictator
Buenos Aires, Argentina
By Marcos Brindicci
Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla died on May 17 at the age of 87 inside his cell in a prison near Buenos Aires, where he was serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity. He was the first President and most emblematic figure of the military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, during the so-called "Dirty War" years. Human rights organizations claim that around 30,000 people disappeared during those years, and Videla never repented about the kidnappings and murders ordered by the state.
His death of old age got me thinking about one of my first memories of him, and also, one of my last ones.
When I was about five years old my mother took me to Iguazu Falls for a winter vacation and we ended up staying at the same hotel where Videla, as president, was staying. I was running all around the hotel and, at one point, I was stopped by members of his guard and led back downstairs. My mother later told me what was going on and that Videla was the guy I had seen on TV. It is a candid memory of someone I learned to loathe for what he had done and what he represented, as most Argentines do.
That former army commander was sentenced to life in prison in 1985 for human rights abuses under his rule, but was pardoned in 1990 by then-President Carlos Menem. Some years later, when I became a photojournalist and more Dirty War cases were opened in Argentina, I got a few chances to take pictures of him, usually through the window of a car as he arrived at a courthouse or from a distance as he was led out of it.
from The Human Impact:
Fiery activist persuades Gambia to ban FGM
Gambian rights activist Isatou Touray has dedicated her life to ridding her country of female genital mutilation (FGM). In return she has received death threats, been imprisoned and suffered repeated harassment.
But Touray has good news. This year, the tiny West African country is finally set to pass a law banning the brutal ritual, which causes horrific pain and long-term health and psychological problems.
from The Human Impact:
Fiery activist persuades Gambia to ban FGM
Gambian rights activist Isatou Touray has dedicated her life to ridding her country of female genital mutilation (FGM). In return she has received death threats, been imprisoned and suffered repeated harassment.
But Touray has good news. This year, the tiny West African country is finally set to pass a law banning the brutal ritual, which causes horrific pain and long-term health and psychological problems.
from The Human Impact:
Swift action needed in fight against child marriage – UNFPA report
Despite gains in some countries, more than 14 million girls under age 18 will be married each year over the next 10 years, a figure expected to increase to more than 15 million girls a year between 2021 and 2030, according to a new report from the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) released on Thursday.
As the number of girls who are married as children grows, the number of children bearing children will increase, and deaths among girls will rise, said the report, timed to mark the inaugural International Day of the Girl Child.
from The Human Impact:
Syrian women face growing abuses, says opposition activist
Suhair Atassi was beaten and detained for her involvement in protests at the start of Syria's uprising, before going into hiding and being smuggled out of the country late last year.
Now an exile living in Paris, the prominent opposition activist is trying to drum up support for humanitarian aid in Syria where the conflict has escalated. News from Syria seems to get bloodier by the day with civilians killed, wounded and uprooted by clashes between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and rebel groups.
from The Human Impact:
Tunisian constitution must enshrine equal status of women, says activist
Tunisian human rights activist Amira Yahyaoui recalls how, at the age of 17, she narrowly missed being shoved under a subway train. This is just one example of the threats and pressures her family faced for their opposition to the country’s then president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted last year in a popular uprising.
During Ben Ali’s 23-year rule, Yahyaoui’s father, one of the North African country’s most distinguished judges, lost his job after sending an open letter to the president decrying corruption and the state of the justice system. Her cousin was arrested for publishing satirical articles about the former leader, and died from the torture he underwent.
from Alison Frankel:
Kiobel brief shows State/DOJ split over human rights litigation
When John Bellinger of Arnold & Porter was the legal adviser to the State Department in the administration of George W. Bush, the Justice Department filed about a dozen amicus briefs addressing the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 law that has become a modern vehicle for international human rights litigation. Bellinger told me on Thursday that he signed every one. When foreign nationals use the ATS to bring cases in U.S. courts for conduct that took place overseas, foreign policy is implicated, and the State Department wants a voice. That's why Bellinger believes it's so significant that when the Justice Department filed its new amicus brief in the reformulated Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum case at the U.S. Supreme Court, State Department legal adviser Harold Koh did not sign it.
"That seemed to be a not-so-subtle message -- more to the human rights community than the Supreme Court -- that State did not agree with the Justice Department position," said Bellinger, who blogged about the DOJ brief on Wednesday night at Lawfare. "The Obama administration was in a tight spot in this one."
from The Human Impact:
VIDEO BLOG – “Call me Kuchu”: the lives of LGBTI activists in Uganda
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/43987683[/vimeo]
from Bernd Debusmann:
The arms race for human rights
Profits from arms deals tend to trump human rights. The United Nations Security Council, whose five veto-wielding permanent members count among the world’s biggest arms dealers, is falling down on its job. Hypocrisy is rampant as governments pay lip service to human rights.
So says Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organization, in its latest annual report, published this week. It deplores an “endemic failure of leadership” and says 2011 – the year of the Arab Spring – had made clear that “opportunistic alliances and financial interests have trumped human rights as global powers jockey for influence…”
from David Rohde:
At the site of a European massacre, fears of genocide by ballot
SREBRENICA, BOSNIA -- Six months from now, a municipal election will be held in this isolated mining town, the scene of the largest massacre in Europe since World War Two.
The town’s current mayor, a 33 year-old Bosnian Muslim, says the election will hand Bosnian Serbs control of the town and complete the “ethnic cleansing,” or removal, of all Muslims from eastern Bosnia. Serbs say it is democracy, plain and simple.
