Human Rights Watch: Pakistan Forcing Return of Afghan Refugees

There is a strong dose of irony in this report beginning with the surprising, to me at least, fact that more than a million Afghans thought that going to Pakistan would improve their lives. At the same time, Pakistanis are leaving Pakistan to look for better lives in Europe. 

Now, Pakistanis, who make the worst refugees in Europe, just ask anyone in Rochdale, or Rotherham, or any of several other cities in the UK, find Afghans unacceptable. I wonder how many complaints there will be when the UK starts deporting Pakistani child rapists back to Pakistan?

By Ed Adamczyk  UPI

Afghan children play outside a religious school at Afghan Refugees Camp in Karachi on February 26, 2015. Human Rights Watch released a report Monday saying the United Nations was complicit in Pakistan's practice of forcing Afghan refugees to return to their country through coercion. File Photo by Zafar Ahmed Khan/News Lens Pakistan

Pakistan forced the repatriation of nearly 600,000 Afghan refugees through coercion and abuse since July, Human Rights Watch said Monday.

The New York-based humanitarian organization released a 76-page report Monday saying Pakistani authorities have forced hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing poverty, war and unemployment in Afghanistan to return to their homeland. It adds that the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees' office is complicit in Pakistan's efforts to remove the refugees by "failing to call for an end to the coercive practices."

The returnees to Afghanistan include 365,000 registered refugees. Pakistan has about 1.1 million Afghan refugees, about 750,000 of whom are unregistered, Human Rights Watch said.

"After decades of hosting Afghan refugees, Pakistan in mid-2016 unleashed the world's largest recent anti-refugee crackdowns to coerce their mass return," said Gerry Simpson, author of the report. "Because the U.N. refugee agency didn't stand up publicly to Pakistan's bullying and abuses, international donors should step in to press the government and U.N. to protect the remaining Afghan refugees in Pakistan."

Many returning Afghan refugees were persuaded to leave Pakistan by a doubling, to $400, of cash support from the United Nations, the report said, although the refugees typically had no home to which to return. Many reported they felt threatened by a wave of anti-Afghan hostility in Pakistan.

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Colombia's Military Shot Thousands of Civilians Instead of FARC, Intentionally

Apparently, this is not news to anyone in South America, but it's the first I heard of this insane practice

Colombia: New Evidence Against Ex-Army Chief, Says HRW

Posted By: Editoron, Santiago Times

Attorney General Should Move Ahead with Prosecution

Washington, DC – Previously unpublished evidence strongly suggests that a former top commander of Colombia’s military did not take reasonable steps to stop or punish hundreds of illegal killings, Human Rights Watch said today. The Colombian Attorney General Néstor Humberto Martínez Neira should revive the stalled prosecution of the general, Mario Montoya Uribe.

Colombian Attorney General
Néstor Humberto Martínez Neira

Montoya has been under investigation since at least 2015 for “false positive” killings throughout the country when he was the army commander between February 2006 and November 2008, a period during which these killings peaked. The thousands of false positive killings, committed systematically by soldiers throughout the country to boost enemy body counts in the war, began in 2002. In March 2016, Montoya was summoned to a hearing where prosecutors were set to charge him, but he has yet to be charged.

“Montoya led the Colombian army while it engaged in one of worst episodes of mass atrocity in the Western Hemisphere in recent years” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “The case against him is a test on how far Attorney General Martínez is willing to go to prosecute those most responsible for these killings.”

Montoya was summoned to a hearing where prosecutors were set to charge him in March 2016, but the Attorney General’s Office cancelled the hearing. In November, lawyers representing victims asked the Attorney General’s Office to set a date for a new hearing, media reports said, but no date has been set and Montoya has not been charged. Later that month, the prosecutor in charge of the case reportedly replied to victims’ lawyers that his office was still reviewing the evidence against Montoya. However, lawyers with detailed knowledge of the case told Human Rights Watch that authorities within the Attorney General’s Office have apparently decided to stall the prosecution.

In October 2016, Human Rights Watch had access to hundreds of pages of transcribed testimony provided by six current and retired army generals to prosecutors in closed hearings carried out between August 2015 and January 2016. The testimony strongly suggests that General Montoya knew, or at the very least had information available to know, about false positive killings under his command, and did not take measures he could have taken to stop them.

General Mario Montoya Uribe

Montoya is one of at least 14 generals currently under investigation for their alleged roles in false positive killings. Others include Luis Roberto Pico Hernández, who commanded one of the seven divisions of the army during Montoya’s time, and Juan Pablo Rodríguez Barragán, the current commander of the Colombian armed forces.

If these guys killed thousands of civilians just to make it look like they were accomplishing something, how easily would they kill the AG if he attempts to convict them of these horrible crimes, especially while one is still in charge of the Armed Forces? At the very least, he has to go. 


Recent agreement with FARC could save Generals

Human Rights Watch is concerned that the prosecution against Montoya and others could be jeopardized because many false positive cases could be tried before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, an ad hoc judicial system created by the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as part of their peace talks.

During the almost three years Montoya commanded the army, extrajudicial killings in Colombia reached unprecedented levels. Prosecutor’s office data shows that at least 2,500 civilians were allegedly killed during that period, most of them by army troops. In 2006 and 2007, for example, more than one in every three reported combat killings could be extrajudicial executions by the army, according to the office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights in Colombia. Montoya resigned in November 2008, right after false positives were unveiled in the “Soacha scandal” – involving army killings of young men and teenage boys from the Bogotá suburb of Soacha.

The testimony Human Rights Watch reviewed strongly suggests that General Montoya failed to take steps to prevent the false positive killings. Gen. Jorge Arturo Salgado Restrepo, who currently commands one of the nine army divisions and is himself under investigation, told prosecutors that General Montoya should have known of false positive killings and did not take reasonable steps to prevent or punish these crimes.

Similarly, Gen. Gustavo Matamoros Camacho, who was Montoya’s chief of operations, told prosecutors that he warned Montoya about irregularities in the reported combat deaths in 2008 that might have indicated illegal killings, but Montoya did not take any action to address them.

The testimony adds to other evidence implicating Montoya that Human Rights Watch and others have already released. In 2009, the army’s inspector-general told the US Embassy that a main factor behind false positives was Montoya’s “constant pressure for combat kills,” and said that he was among the officers who were “involved in” or “tacitly condoned” the crimes, according to an embassy cable. In 2015, a Colombian journalist released an interview of a former soldier and paramilitary who suggested that General Montoya actively furthered false positive killings.

In the June 2015 report, “On their Watch: Evidence of Senior Army Officer’s Responsibility for False Positive Killings in Colombia,” Human Rights Watch presented convincing evidence suggesting that numerous senior officials, including General Montoya, bear criminal responsibility for false positive killings. Evidence against Montoya in the report includes the testimony of one high-ranking army officer who told prosecutors that Montoya knew of the executions when he was the army’s top commander, and the testimony of Lt. Col. González del Río, who said that when Montoya was the army’s top commander, he pressured subordinate commanders to increase body counts, punished them for failing to do so, and was the principal “motivator” for false positives.

“The evidence against Montoya piles up only to gather dust in a drawer somewhere in the Attorney General’s Office,” Vivanco said. “It is about time Colombian authorities move forward with this case.”

Montoya is being investigated for “homicide of protected people,” meaning civilians, which is a crime committed during conflict. Since the Special Jurisdiction for Peace will hear cases of crimes that were “directly or indirectly related” to the armed conflict, it is possible that it would handle his case.

The justice portion of the peace deal dictates that the Special Jurisdiction will rely upon a narrow definition of command responsibility – the rule that establishes when superior officers can be held responsible for crimes committed by their subordinates – that does not conform with international law. The definition could require authorities to prove commanders actually knew about and had control over the actions of their subordinates at the time they committed the crimes.

Such a narrow definition of command responsibility would mean that commanders who were not present at a crime scene to exercise control over their troops’ actions at the time, but had effective control over the troops implicated in abuses and should have known about their actions, could escape accountability, although they bear criminal responsibility for their troops under international humanitarian law.

Under international law, a superior is criminally liable when he knew or should have known that subordinates under his effective control were committing a crime, but failed to take the necessary and reasonable steps to prevent or punish the acts.

“Montoya’s case could end up being a paradigmatic example of how the deliberate ambiguities in the justice agreement could be misused to let senior army generals off the hook and to deny the many victims justice,” Vivanco said.

Saudi Arabia - Leading the World in Human Rights!!!!!!???

Saudi prince flogged by police after court ruling

© Reuters

A Saudi Prince from the kingdom’s ruling royal Al Saud family has been flogged in prison as part of a court-ordered punishment just weeks after another prince was executed for murder, according to local reports.

Okayz Daily, a Saudi Arabian daily newspaper located in the port city of Jeddah, reported Wednesday that the unidentified prince was given lashes in a prison in the city on Monday.

It comes less than a month after Prince Turki bin Saud al-Kabir was put to death in Riyadh for shooting dead another man, identified as Adel al-Mahemid, in a brawl. It was the first execution of a member of the Saudi royal family in more than four decades.

Kabir was the 134th person to be put to death in the country in 2016, according to an AFP tally of ministry statements confirming executions.

The legal system of Saudi Arabia is based on Sharia law, under which murder, drug trafficking, armed robbery, rape and apostasy are all punishable by death.

The oil rich country and close ally of the US had the third highest number of executions in 2015 after Iran and Pakistan, according to Amnesty International.

China is not included in the ranking as the data is treated as a state secret but the human rights organization believes China remains the world’s top executioner.

‘Like asking if you’ll stop beating your wife’

Saudi ambassador dodges Yemen cluster bomb question

 © Zaid Jilani / YouTube

The Saudi ambassador to the US has dodged a journalist’s question on the use of cluster bombs in Yemen, saying it’s like asking, “Will you stop beating your wife?” He also said the Saudi-led coalition will continue bombing Yemen, “no matter what.”

Prince Abdullah Al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, was confronted by a reporter from the Intercept, the publication said on Tuesday.

“Will you continue to use cluster weapons in Yemen?” the reporter asked the diplomat.

Al-Saud laughed before answering: “This is like the question, ‘Will you stop beating your wife?’”

After the reporter repeated the question, the ambassador again dismissed it, saying “You are political operators. I’m not a politician.”

Speaking at the Annual Arab-US Policymakers Conference last week, al-Saud insisted that the Saudi-led coalition will continue its bombing campaign in Yemen, the Intercept reported. “If anyone attacks human lives and disturbs the border, in whatever region, we’re going to continue hitting them, no matter what,” said al-Saud.

On Monday, the US envoy to the UN, Samantha Power, called on the Saudi-led coalition to “refrain from taking steps that escalate violence” in Yemen. However, her appeal contradicts Washington’s actions, with the Pentagon continuing to supply arms and provide military support to Riyadh.

Earlier, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the Saudi-led coalition of war crimes following an airstrike on a funeral in Yemen on October 8. In that incident, at least two air-dropped munitions penetrated the roof of a hall containing over 1,000 mourners during the funeral ceremony of Ali al-Rawishan, the father of the Sanaa-based administration’s interior minister, Jalal al-Rawishan. At least 140 people were killed and 610 wounded.

Despite calls by US officials to review its support for its Middle Eastern ally, Washington continues to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, approving more than $20 billion in military sales in 2015 alone, HRW reports.


According to UN data from August this year, the Saudi intervention in Yemen has claimed the lives of at least 10,000 people, including almost 4,000 civilians. The UN and HRW have repeatedly accused the Saudi military of dropping cluster bombs in Yemeni residential areas.


Saudi Arabia leading the world in human rights!!!!!!???

So, in spite of bombing funerals in a foreign country, in spite of wife-beating being a standing joke, in spite of beheadings and floggings, often for what would not even be crimes in a civilized country - Saudi Arabia just got re-elected to the UN Human Rights Council. To make matters worse, the head of that council is also a Saudi. 

Saudi Arabia exercises Sharia law which is founded in 7th century, barbarian, madness and has no place in the 21st century. Yet, there will be no complaints about human rights from the UN.

Saudi Arabia is flexing its muscles in many corners of the world and is becoming more dangerous by the hour. The low price of oil is causing considerable financial stress in Riyadh, the consequences of which could be global in extent. The Saudis have loaned billions, if not trillions of dollars to western countries and the fear of them recalling those loans may explain why western countries keep selling mountains of military weapons to the kingdom. Or, maybe it is just greed.

‘Concerns of Major Cover-up’: Turkey Bans Probes into Kurdish Op Killings, HRW Says

© Sertac Kayar / Reuters

Turkey is blocking all access for independent investigations into the abuses against civilians in southeastern Turkey, where security forces are battling Kurdish fighters, Human Rights Watch said, calling for the UN to be allowed in to investigate.

Some of the alleged abuses against civilians include unlawful killings, mass scale displacement, and unlawful destruction of private property, according to HRW’s report.

“The government should promptly grant the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights permission to enter the area and investigate according to its standards,” HRW said in a statement.

The Turkish blockade fosters “concerns of a major cover-up,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher at HRW.

“Credible accounts of Turkish security forces deliberately killing civilians, including children, when they were carrying white flags or trapped in basements should be ringing loud alarm bells,” said Sinclair-Webb. “The prosecutor in Cizre should conduct a full, effective, independent investigation capable of delivering justice for the victims.”

According to HRW, at least 338 civilians have died in the clashes following the breakdown of a ceasefire in July 2015. Other estimates range between 500 and 1,000 civilians killed.

Thousands of other innocent people are said to be affected by the fighting between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Turkish security forces. And over 355,000 people are said to have been temporarily displaced because of the conflict.

Kurdish militants are fighting for the right to self-determination and greater autonomy for Kurds – demands which Ankara rejects.

Majority of the destruction is said to have targeted nine towns in southeast Turkey, including Cizre.

Turkish security operations have introduced “round-the-clock curfews on 22 towns and city neighborhoods,” HRW said. The curfews prohibit all movement without permission and prevent access to non-governmental organizations, journalists, and lawyers.

“Authorities have blocked rights groups – including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights – from trying to document abuses even after curfews and operations ended,” according to HRW.

“Amid a mounting death toll and a spiralling conflict, real accountability in Turkey’s southeast is crucial” added Sinclair-Webb. “Prosecutors should thoroughly and effectively investigate all allegations of abuse by state forces and armed groups, and no legal or extra-legal measures should be taken to try to ensure impunity for personnel responsible for these crimes.”

Meanwhile, the Turkish government had denied allegations that is has targeted civilians in its military operations.

Despite mounting evidence of abuses, little is being done to lift the Turkish blockade. In March, RT launched a petition calling for a UNHRC-led investigation into claims that mass killings of Kurdish civilians had taken place in Cizre.

The petition was based on reports from an RT crew that visited the area and found shocking scenes of destruction. RT journalists also collected horrifying accounts of atrocities committed against Kurdish civilians there.

Astonishing - Saudi Arabia Won't Let Syrian Migrants in Because They Might Change Society

Gulf states under fire for not accepting Syrian refugees

A man carries children through a bombed-out city in Syria.

© AFP | 
Text by Khatya CHHOR

Gulf states are under fire from human rights groups for not doing more for Syrian refugees as Syria’s neighbours struggle to house those fleeing across their borders and the EU grapples with its worst refugee crisis since World War II.

The UN estimates that more than 4 million Syrians have fled the country’s civil conflict so far, with 3.8 million of these having temporarily sought refuge in just five countries: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq (mainly Kurdistan) and Egypt.

According to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), Turkey has taken in almost 2 million Syrian refugees while Lebanon has registered 1.1 million refugees within its borders – an influx that now accounts for 20 percent of the Lebanese population. Jordan, likewise, has received almost 630,000 asylum-seekers, Iraq close to 250,000 and Egypt another 132,000. Many other Syrians have crossed into these countries but have not been officially counted.

But while Syria’s neighbours struggle to accommodate the influx, an Amnesty International report from December noted that the six Gulf states — Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar — “have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees”.

The executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, underscored this point in a blunt tweet last week: “They're wealthy, Muslim and not taking ANY Syrian refugees: Saudi Arabia & other Gulf states,” he wrote on Twitter.

The Gulf states do provide significant financial help to those affected by the conflict. The United Arab Emirates has donated more than $540 million in humanitarian assistance and funded a refugee camp in Jordan as well as another in northern Iraq, a UAE government official told Bloomberg.

Saudi Arabia has donated $18.4 million to the Syria fund of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs so far this year while Kuwait has given almost $305 million, making it the third-largest international donor behind the United States (at $1 billion) and the United Kingdom ($475 million).

“If it wasn’t for the Gulf states, you would expect these millions to be in a much more tragic state than they are,” Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political science professor in the United Arab Emirates, told The New York Times. “This finger-pointing at the Gulf that they are not doing anything, it is just not true.”

But critics note that the Gulf states' aid does not involve opening up their borders to help deal with the crisis.

“Burden sharing has no meaning in the Gulf, and the Saudi, Emirati and Qatari approach has been to sign a check and let everyone else deal with it,” Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch for its Middle East and North Africa division, told the Times. “Now everyone else is saying, ‘That’s not fair.’ ”

'Shameful'

Nabil Othman, acting regional representative to the Gulf region at the UNHCR, told Bloomberg last week that there are currently 500,000 Syrians in Saudi Arabia. But many of these may have entered the country before or in the early days of the Syrian conflict as migrant workers.

The UN refugee agency’s own figures as of December 2014 put the number of international refugees welcomed by the kingdom at 561 along with another 100 asylum-seekers; it did not specify how many of these were Syrians.

"The bottom line is that in terms of resettlement, the Gulf states have not stepped up in accepting refugees," said Geoffrey Mock, chairman of Middle East specialists at Amnesty International USA. "They have offered zero resettlement places ... and this is shameful," he told USA Today.

A CARTOON BY SAUDI ARTIST ABDULLAH JABER FOR MAKKAH NEWSPAPER SATIRIZES THE GULF STATES' RESPONSE

"Shame on you EU, open your doors"

Some analysts point out that not only is Saudi Arabia wealthy enough to accommodate a significant number of refugees, but it also has the logistical capability to do so: Each year the kingdom receives an influx of millions for the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. And the construction companies that have built the mega malls and opulent skyscrapers of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh could be contracted to create temporary shelters, said one Quartz commentator, adding: “There’s no reason all this know-how can’t be put to humanitarian use.”

More welcome in Europe?

Syrians are required to obtain visas to enter all Arab countries except for Algeria, Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen. The process for requesting a tourist or work visa is expensive, and Gulf states have cracked down on the number of foreign work permits they grant in recent years.

Many have taken to social media to urge the Gulf states to do more for those who need asylum. The Arabic hashtag #Welcoming_Syria's_refugees_is_a_Gulf_duty has been tweeted more than 33,000 times in the past week, the BBC reports.

Two other hashtags in Arabic – “Open your doors” and “Welcoming Syrian refugees is the people’s demand” – are also making the rounds on Twitter. These were created the same day that the image of a Syrian toddler who washed up on a beach in Turkey made headlines across Europe, bringing home to many the human tragedy of a conflict that once seemed far away.

Domestic social and security considerations have underpinned some of the Gulf states' hesitation to allow large numbers of refugees to cross their borders. Concerns have been raised about newcomers taking jobs from locals or that jihadists might enter the country posing as asylum-seekers.

Astonishing!

"Saudi Arabia stopped issuing work permits to Syrian nationals at the beginning of the war in 2011," said Stéphane Lacroix, a researcher specialising in the Arab world at the Centre for International Research at SciencesPo university, in comments to FRANCE 24.

Lacroix said the response – or lack thereof – by authorities in Riyadh has been largely motivated by concerns over its own political stability.

As a Sunni monarchy, it cannot help but support the Sunni Syrian rebellion, he said. But Saudi Arabia also fears that "by welcoming outsiders it will, at the same time, import new ideas and new rhetoric that will contaminate Saudi society”.

Even more astonishing! Germany and Sweden have not asked themselves any of those questions, or addressed any of those concerns. Arabs use them as excuses to keep out other Arabs, almost all of whom are Muslim, while Germany and Sweden whose societies are already beginning to collapse under the weight of Islamic immigrants, don't seem to care about the consequences.

The irony is astounding! The stupidity of some of those European countries will precipitate the complete collapse of European societies bringing Sharia law much closer to reality than it was just last week.

The unique demographics of some Gulf states also make the authorities hesitant to allow in vast new numbers of foreign nationals, wrote Michael Stephens, head of the Royal United Services Institute Qatar research centre, in a contribution to the BBC. UAE and Qatari citizens account for just over 10% of their respective populations; the vast majority of residents are temporary foreign workers.

And many refugees themselves express a desire to make the journey to Europe instead of opting for resettling in Arab states.

“In Europe, I can get treatment for my polio, educate my children, have shelter and live an honourable life,” said asylum-seeker Yassir Batal in comments to Bloomberg. “Gulf countries have closed their doors in the face of Syrians.”

The EU is now struggling with its own migrant crisis, with an estimated 330,000 asylum seekers entering Europe so far this year. But as Amnesty International points out, the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey alone is more than 10 times the number of asylum applications received from Syrians by all 28 EU countries in the past three years combined.

Over 100,000 air-conditioned tents empty
Meanwhile, there are reports that there are over 100,000 air-conditioned tents in Saudi Arabia sitting empty. These tents were erected for the Hajj which starts next week. The Hajj is that insane circling of hundreds of thousands of people in the mosque at Mecca. 

Saudi Press Agency also claims that the Kingdom has accepted 2.5 million Syrians since the conflict began, but because they don't label them as refugees, some reporters claim that they have not taken any. Also, Saudi Arabia, as well as other Gulf States have given many millions of dollars to other countries and agencies to assist with caring for the refugees.

Saudi Arabia – which has taken in precisely zero migrants – has 100,000
air conditioned tents that can house over 3 million people sitting empty.

So that's the story, whether you believe the Saudi Press or whether you believe Amnesty Int'l and Human Rights Watch, is up to you.