At Least 30 Killed by Rebel Rockets in Ukraine

By Kyle Herda

Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

KIEV, Ukraine – Rebel shelling of the Ukrainian city Mariupol has reportedly killed at least 30 and injured over 100. Rebels have been recently increasing number and intensity of attacks, although this appears to have been the peak of the recent attacks. 

Smoke and fire in the streets of a residential part of Mariupol where rebel shelling killed dozens. (Photo courtesy of Reuters)

Ukrainian Prisdent Petro Poroshenko says that Kiev has confirmed the shelling came from Russian-backed separatists. Uragan and Grad rockets that pounded the city came from rebel-held territory within Eastern Ukraine, and Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak said the Ukrainian military has destroyed four of the six Grad systems that were used to carry out the attack on Mariupol. President Poroshenko went as far as to call the attack “a crime against humanity,” and he subsequently sent more military men into the region.

Following the attack, both sides were once again quick to blame the other for escalating the conflict. The truce sworn to by all involved parties in Belarus last year seemingly has lost most of its weight and neither Eastern Ukraine, Western Ukraine, nor Russia is willing to take the blame for the breakdown. Last week, President Poroshenko accused Russia of having 10,000 Russian troops and 500 Russian tanks in Eastern Ukraine aiding the rebels, with as many as 2,000 of those troops and 200 of those tanks having recently entered.

In addition to Mariupol, four Ukrainian servicemen were killed and 17 injured over the past day at the hands of the rebels, and Debaltseve has seen strong rebel fighting. Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the rebels, says they aim to surround the town. This would come in addition to increased fighting in Donetsk, particularly at the airport where shelling has once again become quite regular and casualties continue to rise. Altogether, the United Nations reports over 5,000 people have been killed in the Ukrainian conflict.

For more information, please see:

Reuters – Rebels launch ‘intense’ attacks on Ukraine government troops: Kiev military – 25 January 2015

ABC – Ukraine Says Calls Prove Rebels Attacked City, Killed 30 – 25 January 2015

BBC – Ukraine conflict: Poroshenko vows to ‘calm’ Mariupol fighting – 25 January 2015

LA Times – 30 killed, 102 injured in missile attack on Ukraine port city – 25 January 2015

The Wall Street Journal – Deadly Rebel Attack in Ukraine Signals Escalation – 25 January 2015

Reuters – Pro-Russian rebels attack key port; Ukraine says at least 30 dead – 24 January 2015

The New York Times – War Is Exploding Anew in Ukraine; Rebels Vow More – 23 January 2015

Nicaraguan Canal Project Shrouded in Secrecy and Controversy

By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch, Managing Editor 

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – At the end of 2014, construction began on the Grand Canal in Nicaragua, the Nicaraguan government has kept the details of the project secret since it was first proposed only 2.5 years ago. In return for a concession to the Chinese company HKND, the Nicaraguan government hopes the project will produce billions of dollars of investment and tens of thousands of jobs. The 278-km long canal system will take an estimated 5 years to complete. The canal project is the dream of the Nicaraguan government and Chinese business investors, the canal would transform the remove coastal regions of Nicaragua and would carry cargo too large for the Panama Canal, which celebrated its central last year. According to Pedro J. Alvarez, a editorialist for the peer-reviewed periodical Science, the Nicaraguan government failed to show sufficient evidence that it has appropriately accounted for the impact on the environment as well the potential effects of the project local residents who may lose their home or witness severe degradation of the environment they depend on to survive.

A boat on Lake Nicaragu (Photo courtesy of the Guardian)

If construction is completed the Canal would be three times as deep as the Panama Canal, a feat that would require the removal of more than 4.5 billion cubic meters of earth which the Guardian reports would be “enough to bury the entire island of Manhattan up to the 21st floor of the Empire State Building.” The project would also be a shock to local economies and communities bringing sudden development on of Central America’s most sparsely populated regions. Senior officials compare the scale of change that will be brought to the region to the regions first contact with colonizers. “It’s like when the Spanish came here, they brought a new culture. The same is coming with the canal,” said Manuel Coronel Kautz, the garrulous head of the canal authority. “It is very difficult to see what will happen later – just as it was difficult for the indigenous people to imagine what would happen when they saw the first [European] boats.”

Courtesy of The Guardian

Protesters have called the project a form of Chinese imperialism and the Taiwanese government has called on China to respect the independence of Nicaragua. “If the Chinese government is behind this project, it has to be responsible for everything,” said an official from Taiwan’s embassy in Nicaragua. “If it fails, that’s a bad image. They have to maintain their distance.”

The Nicaraguan government hopes the canal can help the nation achieve the Sandinista dream of eradicating poverty. However, when the groundbreaking ceremony took place on 22 December of last year protest against the project were held. Demonstrators cited concerns over the effects the canal project may ultimately have on indigenous and other local community and voiced doubts that the destructive project could even be finished considering the amount of capital needed for construction. Concerns have not been limited to those of protesters, Nicaragua’s neighbors, including Costa Rica have expressed concern that they have not been given enough information about that potential impacts of the large scale project, which will likely bring widespread consequences for the region.

For more information please see:

Science – Rethink the Nicaragua Canal – 23 January 2015

The Guardian – Land Of Opportunity – And Fear – Along Route of Nicaragua’s Giant New Canal – 20 January 2014

The Tico Times – Costa Rican Officials: We Still Have Little Information about Nicaragua’s Grand Canal Plans – 21 January 2015

Reuters – Doubts Deepen Over Chinese-Backed Nicaragua Canal As Work Starts – 26 December 2014

Supreme Court Gives Inmate Second Chance To Appeal Death Penalty Conviction

By Lyndsey Kelly
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

WASHINGTON, D.C., United States of America – On Tuesday, 20 January 2015 the United States Supreme Court threw out an appeals court ruling that went against a Missouri death row inmate, effectively putting off the imminent threat of execution. The Supreme Court had previously made a ruling on this case, blocking the 28 October execution, allowing the inmate a chance to file new court papers. Now, inmate Mark Christeson will be given the chance to argue that his court-appointed attorneys were ineffective due to their failure to file an appeal in federal court back in 2005.

Missouri inmate Mark Christeson to be given a second chance for appeal (Photo Courtesy of Reuters)

Christeson currently faces a death sentence for killing Susan Brouk, 36, and her children in 1998. Christenson and his cousin Jesse Carter, at the time 18 and 17 years old, broke into Brouk’s home in order to steal her vehicle as part of their plan to run away from the home they were living in. Both men were armed with shotguns, when they kidnapped Brouk and her children, subsequently killing them and throwing the bodies into a nearby pond.

A group of attorneys argues that Christenson’s court-appointed attorneys, Phil Horwitz and Eric Butts, should be replaced from the current appeal due to a conflict of interest because they have refused to admit their own ineffective assistance. Horwitz and Butts missed a 2005 deadline t file a federal appeals petition. The groups of new attorneys have argued that substituting lawyers would give Christenson a fair chance to win a federal review.

In an unsigned petition, the Supreme Court said that the lower courts should have acknowledged that Horwitz and Butts faced a conflict of interest. Thus, making it nearly impossible to make a legal argument that would threaten their professional reputation. However, the opinion of the court was not unanimous as Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, stating that they would not have reversed the appeals court’s decision without a full briefing from both parties.

Christenson would have been the 11th man executed in Missouri last year, had the Supreme Court not put his execution on hold while it considered his appeal.

 

For more information, please see the following:

BOSTON HERALD- Supreme Court: Death Row Inmate Deserves Hearing – 20 Jan. 2015.

REUTERS- Supreme Court Gives Missouri Death Row Inmate Another Chance – 20 Jan. 2015.

STAR TRIBUNE- Supreme Court Says Missouri Death Row Inmate Deserves New Hearing – 20 Jan. 2015.

WALL STREET JOURNAL – Supreme Court Gives Second Chance To Condemned Missouri Inmate -20 Jan. 2015.

Six Dead After Inhaling Methane Gas At Healing Ceremony

By Delisa Morris

Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

QUITO, Ecuador – – Two Shaman along with a family of four died just before midnight on Tuesday.  The family was participating in a healing ceremony when the hot springs they were bathing in, located in the northern Andean province of Imbabura, leaked a poisonous gas, probably methane.

A Shaman performing a ritual/ image courtesy of allyouneedisecuador.com

Nearby a seven-year-old-boy, the couples son, slept in the car.  The tragedy came after he fell asleep while he waited for the night ceremony to finish.

Gabriel Bunay and his wife Martina Tacuri were taken to a thermal rockpool inside an indigenous settlement with their three children for an ‘energy healing’ ritual after being met by a local in the nearby city of Otavalo.

Shaman Gladys Tercero died along with another Shaman, her helper.  The spring, a thermal rockpool, began emitting a poisonous gas during the ceremony, thought to be methane gas.

Police chief Jacqueline Haro added: “The boy that survived fell asleep inside his family’s car after his mother told him to go and rest because the water was cold.”

“He is now in a children’s home receiving counselling while we wait for relatives to come and pick him up” she added.

“It’s an accidental death resulting from the inhalation of toxic gases emanating from the thermal waters,” the interior ministry said in a statement.

Local firefighter Carlos Lopez told AFP that toxicological tests had not yet been performed, “but it is confirmed that it is from inhalation of gases.”

t the site, authorities found homemade cane liquor, candles, eggs, medicinal plants, entrails and dead birds, as well as the business card of a shaman offering to solve problems with money, love, work, business and travel.

This isn’t the first time a participant has died during a ritual with Shamans:

Last April British student Henry Miller died at a tribal ceremony in neighboring Colombia.

Henry, 19, from Bristol, collapsed after taking a hallucinogenic drink called yage at a remote rainforest near the village of Mocoa in the south-east of the country.

For more information, please see:

London Evening Standard – Six dead from Healing Ceremony Methane Poisoning in Ecuador – 22 Jan. 2015

Jamaica Observer – Six die in shamanic ritual in Ecuador – 22 Jan. 2015

Business Standard News – Six die in shamanic ritual in Ecuador  – 23 Jan. 2013

The Straits Times – Six die in shamanic ritual in Ecuador – 22 Jan. 2013

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia Dies at 90

By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch, Managing Editor

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Abdullah ibn Abdilazīz, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has died at the age of 90, Saudi state television has said. Saudi state run media television cut to Koranic verses early on Friday, which often signifies the death of a senior member of royal Royal Family, the House of Saud. Just a few minutes after cutting to readings of Koranic verses a formal announcement about King Abdullah’s passing was made, he had been hospitalized for several weeks and was suffering from pneumonia. Abdullah came to power in 2005 but had suffered frequent bouts of ill health in recent years.

King Abdullah ibn Abdilazīz of Saudi Arabia. (Photo courtesy of BBC)

United States President Barack Obama said of King Abdullah, “as a leader, he was always candid and had the courage of his convictions. One of those convictions was his steadfast and passionate belief in the importance of the US-Saudi relationship as a force for stability and security in the Middle East and beyond,” he said.

According to Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra King Abdullah “is someone who is definitely going to be remembered as a reformist within the royal family.” State media also announced that Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, aged 79, is now officially the new Saudi king. “His Highness Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and all members of the family and the nation mourn the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, who passed away at exactly 1 a.m. this morning,” State TV reported.

The newly named King Salman called on the royal family’s Allegiance Council to recognize Prince Muqrin as the new crown prince. “His Highness Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and all members of the family and the nation mourn the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, who passed away at exactly 1am this morning,” the statement said.

King Abdullah has been called a reformer by some for his allowance of mild criticism of his government in the press. As king he also hinted that more women should be allowed to work in Saudi Arabia. However, throughout his reign as king Human Rights violations remained rampant in the country, most recently a webizen was convicted and sentenced to lashing for criticizing the state on an internet blog. Basic rights are denied to foreign workers in the country and freedom of movement is limited for women without a male companion and women are denied other rights including the right to drive.

For more information please see:

Al Jazeera – King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia dies – 22 January 2015

The Associated Press – Saudi State TV Reports: King Abdullah Has Died At 90 – 22 January 2015

BBC News – Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah dies – 22 January 2015

Bloomberg – Oil Surges in New York After Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Dies – 22 January 2015