Author: Tim

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Nuon Chea arrested

Nuon Chea, the oldest living member of the Khmer Rouge regime was arrested this week by Cambodian police.

Nuon Chea, better known as Brother No 2, was seized from his house near the Thai border and charged with crimes against humanity. The second-in-command to the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, his arrest is the boldest move yet made by the UN-Cambodian tribunal, which was set up last year to investigate one of the bloodiest periods of rule in modern world history.

The Cambodian tribunal has been plagued by legal sidestepping and a bureaucratic malaise that finally began to end earlier this year as the court decided on key principles and paved the way for enlisted the judges necessary to begin the proceedings.

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Black Nazi victim remembered by artist

Gunter Demning, a German artist, is working on a project called “Stolpersteine,” where the former houses of Nazi victims are identified with 10 inch square brass monument plaques known as “stumbling stones.” Shortly, Demning will be placing the first marker to honor an African victim of the Nazi regime.

The stone will be placed in front of the house on Brunnenstrasse in Berlin’s Mitte neighborhood formerly occupied by Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed, a Sudanese man, who enlisted as a soldier in the colonial forces of then German East Africa. In 1929 Mahjub moved to Berlin, where he worked as a waiter in an upscale hotel while holding bit roles in 20 films from 1934 to 1941.

In 1941, Mahjub was arrested by the Nazi authorities and accused of miscegenation. He died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin on Nov. 24, 1944.

The placement of the stone coincides with the release of a biography, “Truthful Till Death,” about Mahjub written by Africa scholar Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst.

Thus far, Demning’s stones have been placed throughout Germany, with the exception of Munich where they’re concerned with anti-Semitic activity, as well as Salzburg and Budapest.

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Weapons enter Darfur camps

The UN is now reporting that the refugee camps in Darfur are seeing an influx of weapons.

Mr Holmes told the BBC that some of the 1.2 million refugees are impatient, politicised, and armed.

He said having thousands of disaffected men cooped up in camps in which weapons were available, was dangerous.

He believes the situation in the camps is bound to lead to clashes, and reflects the fact that there is no peace settlement in place for Darfur.

With Sudanese forces circling the camps the situation is potentially explosive.

Ironically, this is a rather expected outcome as the same thing happened in the refugee camps following Rwanda. Even though Holmes is speculating on outbreaks of violence between the refugees and Sudanese forces (a likely possibility), he failed to mention the similarly probable outcome of armed refugees splitting into rival gangs.

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Systematic rape continues in Darfur

A new report by the United Nations Office for Human Rights implicates Sudanese military forces and allied militia groups (Janjaweed) in the capture and rape of fifty women. According to the latest release, the women were taken to a government facility where they were held for a month and repeatedly abused.

Women in Darfur are also at risk of sexual violence outside the context of large attacks. Women risk being raped if they leave their camp for internally displaced people to search for firewood. In some areas, the current African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) has provided “firewood patrols” to accompany groups of women once or twice a week as they gather firewood. But these patrols have often been ineffective due to poor organization, lack of resources, and lack of communication with the people who benefit from the patrols.

As Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, pointed out, the upcoming UN/AU peacekeepers need the authority to intervene in such situations.

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UN/AU general fingered for Rwandan genocide

The general who is slated to lead the joint UN/AU peacekeeping forces in Sudan has recently come under scrutiny for his alleged involvement in the Rwandan genocide. General Karenzi Karake was approved by the African Union to become the deputy commander of the African forces.

A Belgium-based Rwandan exile group has accused General Karake of supervising the killings of civilians during the genocide in Rwanda and the DR Congo.

“We are taking the allegations very seriously and we have invited the groups to forward them so that we can do an independent background check,” Mr Sorokobi told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.

Rwanda’s Foreign Ministry has dismissed the claims as a mere fabrication and an attempt to tarnish Rwanda’s image.

“Major-General Karake is a well-trained and experienced senior officer who has ably served in various senior command staff roles in the Rwanda Defence Forces and rightly deserves the post,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, the government of Khartoum is claiming that this is a smear campaign to give the participating members of the African Union a black eye. According to a spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, Karake has yet to be placed under contract with the peacekeeping forces.