Newsroom

Update

By Lillian Tan, Corporate Action Network Intern Their operations are vast and war zone contractors are likely here to stay, as Suzanne Simons writes in her CNN International article. Her article is a comprehensive piece that places emphasis on one of the more salient issues regarding private military and security companies (PMSCs) or contractors: lack of regulation, oversight, and accountability. The PMSC industry has grown rapidly since the war on terror and continues to play an integral role in the conflict in Afghanistan under the Obama administration, but the US government, as reported by the CWC in its Interim Report,…

July 3, 2009

Update

A new Amnesty International report about the recent conflict in Gaza concludes that Israel wantonly destroyed civilian infrastructure in Gaza, which could not be justified on grounds of "military necessity". More than 3,000 homes were destroyed and some 20,000 damaged in Israeli attacks which reduced entire neighbourhoods of Gaza to rubble and left an already dire economic situation in ruins. Israeli forces killed hundreds of unarmed Palestinian civilians and destroyed thousands of homes in Gaza in attacks which violate international law. Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups fired hundreds of rockets into southern Israel, killing three Israeli civilians, injuring scores…

July 2, 2009

Update

The Obama administration is reportedly close to finalizing the outlines of a new preventative detention regime likely to be crafted along the lines proposed by Matthew Waxman in a paper released last week by the Brookings Institute. Waxman's paper tries to reconcile the supposed need for some form of administrative detention without trial with the Supreme Court's Boumediene v Bush decision affirming the habeas rights of Guantanamo detainees and he proposes introducing legislation to create a new category of administrative detention subject to periodic judicial review. An increasingly familiar pattern is once again being repeated. The administration 'discovers' that the…

July 1, 2009

Update

UPDATE: 22 OF 25 IRANIAN NEWSPAPER STAFFERS FREED The Committee to Protest Journalists published a statement today that said 22 of the 25 journalists that worked on the staff of Kalameh Sabz have been released. According to their website, "Alireza Hosseini Beheshti, manager of Kalameh Sabz, told the site that three editorial staffers remain behind bars. Over the weekend, authorities also released Life.com photographer Amir Sadeghi, who was arrested about a week earlier." -- Iran's presidential election saw a government clampdown not only on protestors' right to express themselves, but the media's right to, as well. Currently, dozens of journalists…

June 30, 2009

Update

Unrest in Honduras flared today as protesters spared with police over the recent exile of President Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya was ousted over the weekend by the Honduran military after disagreements among officials about a controversial constitutional referendum Zelaya had asked Hondurans to vote on last Sunday. The referendum would have changed the constitution to allow Zelaya an additional term as president -- a move some have argued looks suspiciously close to the referendum Hugo Chavez proposed for Venezuela in 2007. Amnesty International has issued a press release on the crisis arguing that President Zelaya must be allowed to return to…

June 30, 2009

Update

In the midst of all of the political and social turmoil in Iran right now, activist and lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei was arrested this afternoon and taken away by plainclothes officers while out with his wife and daughter. The arrest was most likely related to his human rights activites connected with the recent protests, but he is most well-known for his work representing juveniles facing the death penalty.  The officials searched Mostafaei's home and his office after arresting him and then took him away to an undisclosed location. His family has not been informed of his whereabouts. Mohammad Mostafaei is a…

June 30, 2009

Update

The Israeli navy intercepted, boarded, and took control of a Greek cargo ship carrying foreign peace activists, including former US congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Nobel prize winner Mairead Maguire. Their ship was carrying humanitarian aid cargo for the residents of Gaza. The Israeli military instilled a blockade June 2007 in Gaza; a response to the rise in power of Hamas. Since then, the sanctions have made it incredibly difficult to get the bare essentials to the population, such as food, fuel, and medicine. This is not the first time Israel has blocked humanitarian aid—similar ships have been turned back after…

June 30, 2009

Update

Israeli senior officials yesterday said that Israel is open to a 3-6 month complete settlement freeze (including natural growth) in order to allow for Palestinian negotiations to take place. Officials asked they not be named, as the issue is so “explosive” within Israel that they do not wish to be associated with the idea yet. Despite the officials’ claims, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who meets with US envoy George Mitchell this week, has shied away from the subject, saying “the matter mentioned in the headlines has not been finalized.” This freeze, however, would allow for existing settlement construction to…

June 29, 2009

Update

Today, on its last day of work before summer vacation, the U.S. Supreme Court postponed its review of Troy Anthony Davis’ case until September.  As Amnesty International has repeatedly pointed out, Davis was sentenced to death for the 1989 shooting of a police officer in Savannah in the absence of any physical evidence against him and based solely on the testimony of 9 witnesses.  Since the trial, seven of the nine witnesses have recanted their statements or have changed them.  Moreover, nine affidavits exist that implicate one of the remaining two witnesses in the murder.   Doubts about the fairness of…

June 29, 2009

Update

A leading research group in South Africa released the results of a survey where one in four men admitted to having committed rape and nearly half admitted to raping more than one person. The study also drew a correlation between violence and HIV prevalence. When you consider the culture of impunity surrounding violence against women in South Africa, the survey is not surprising in the least. "According to the researchers, many of the study's participants appeared to see no problem with what they had done." Current South Africa President Jacob Zuma was acquitted of rape in 2006. The very fact that a case…

June 26, 2009

Update

(Originally published on the Boston Globe) On the evening of Sept. 18, 2007, six men broke into the home of Justine Masika Bihamba in Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Bihamba wasn’t home, but six of her children, ages 5 to 24, were. The men, reportedly government soldiers, tied up the children at gunpoint and abused two daughters in their 20s, sexually assaulting one with a knife. Bihamba and her children identified the attackers to military police but authorities refused to arrest the suspects, saying there was no evidence against them. They remain free today. The men targeted…

June 26, 2009

Update

Today, June 26, is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. In establishing the day in 1998, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan wrote, "Today the United Nations appeals to all governments and members of civil society to take action to defeat torture and torturers everywhere...This is a day in which we pay our respects to those who have endured the unimaginable." Murat Kurnaz is one such person who "endured the unimaginable." The 19-year-old German resident was held for five years, without charge or trial, and tortured and abused. In his book "Five Years of My Life," Kurnaz wrote: "They…

June 26, 2009