Month: April 2003

Thank heavens we have the UN Human Rights Commission on the job, as this article details that body’s quick and appropriate responses to ever-growing reports of human rights violations within Iraq:

April 15
U.S. Marines discover and free 123 prisoners, some of them women, from deep underground bunkers at the Baath party’s Al-Istikhbarat Al-‘Askariya torture facility west of Baghdad. All the prisoners are emaciated and some have survived by eating scabs off their sores.
In Geneva, the U.N. Human Rights Commission approves three separate resolutions condemning Israel for the “gross violations of human rights and international humanitarian law” involved in its “policy of liquidation” against Palestinians and Syrians in the Golan Heights, which policy the commission calls an “offense against humanity.”
April 16
Western newspapers publish reports on the thousands of documents British troops have recovered from Basra’s “Mother of All Battles Branch” of Saddam’s Baath party, documents detailing a decades-long and hair-raising program of systematic terror against Shiite locals.
The U.N. Human Rights Commission passes yet another resolution of censure against Israel, but declines to take any action on the epic human rights violations by Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe or on the recent wave of political arrests and executions by Fidel Castro’s government in Cuba.

Of course, the UNHRC has finally decided to condemn Iraq for its human rights violations.

The resolution focusing on Saddam’s regime won support from 31 countries, including the United States, Canada, Japan, European and Latin American nations.
It condemned the “all-pervasive repression and oppression sustained by broad-based discrimination and widespread terror” during Saddam’s rule.
The commission also extended for a year the mandate of a U.N. investigator consistently banned from visiting Iraq when Saddam was in power and asks him to report to the commission next year, “focusing on newly available information about violations … by the government of Iraq over many years.”

Of course, this being the UN, things are never quite that smooth.

Critics including China, Libya, Cuba and South Africa said resolution put to the commission by European nations, the United States and Canada was one-sided and failed to address the coalition’s role during the war and as an occupying power since Saddam’s ouster.
“This resolution is shameful,” said Cuban representative Juan Antonio Fernandez. “This is a case of foreign occupation.”
Cuba, Malaysia and Zimbabwe voted against the resolution. Twelve countries abstained. Six including China and South Africa refused to vote, saying they would not be associated with any decision.

Ah — where would we be without those shining beacons of human rights, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Libya, China, et al., leading the way toward a better tomorrow?

(via SDB)

Cool site that compares Baghdad in size to other cities, with maps, so that when you’re wondering exactly how far Ministry A is from Air Base B, you can compare it to distances you do know.

This is, alas, a little late in being blogged about, but it’s still cool.

(via xBlog)