ICTJ | World Report October 2015 – Transitional Justice News and Analysis

In Focus

Devil Is in the Detail of Colombian Justice DealDevil Is in the Detail of Colombian Justice DealIn this op-ed, ICTJ Vice President Paul Seils analyzes the criminal justice agreement announced by the Government of Colombia and the FARC and discusses what aspects of the deal need clarification to ensure that it is capable of delivering the kind of truth and justice that victims of Colombia’s armed conflict deserve.

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World Report

AFRICAIn South Africa, the African National Congress passed a resolution to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC prosecutor unveiled 60 new war crimes charges – including using child soldiers and keeping sex slaves – against Dominic Ongwen, a former commander of Uganda‘s Lord’s Resistance Army. ICC judges refused to cut the 14-year sentence of former Democratic Republic of Congo militia leader Thomas Lubanga, who was convicted for using child soldiers. Less than half of the candidates running in this month’s presidential election in Côte d’Ivoire signed a good conduct pledge designed to help avert a repeat of the political violence that followed the country’s 2010 election. A militia leader accused of destroying historic mausoleums in Mali was arrested and transferred to the ICC.

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AMERICASIn Colombia, a former army colonel charged with the murders of 32 civilians said he wants his trial to be transferred to a transitional justice court if and when a peace deal is signed, while a prosecutor asked the Supreme Court to open a criminal investigation into former president Alvaro Uribe’s alleged complicity in a 1997 paramilitary massacre. The judge and prosecutor in the genocide trial ofGuatemala‘s former ruler, Efraín Ríos Montt – former Judge Iris Yassmin Barrios Aguilar and former Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz Bailey – were awarded the Civil Courage Prize for human rights work. Brazil‘s electoral authority found grounds to investigate President Dilma Rousseff for allegedly using donations from companies involved in a corruption scheme to finance her 2014 re-election campaign. The president of Mexico told the families of the 43 college students from Ayotzinapa who were disappeared one year ago that he would appoint a new special prosecutor to investigate disappearances in the country.

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ASIAAt the request of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), an international panel of experts is ready to investigate the bombing of a MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan by US forces, but is waiting on permission from the US and Afghan governments. Nepal‘s parliament promulgated the country’s new constitution, and MP Sharma Oli was elected prime minister. The UN Human Rights Council adoptedby consensus a resolution aimed at achieving justice and accountability for crimes committed during Sri Lanka‘s civil war with Tamil rebels, and the Sri Lankan goverment signaled that it will establish a credible judicial process involving foreign judges and prosecutors as called for in the resolution. Meanwhile, four Sri Lankan soldiers were sentenced to 25 years in prison for the rape of a Tamil woman. A museum in China published a collection of confessions by Japanese war criminals during World War II.

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EUROPEEuropean Union foreign ministers criticized a planned referendum by the Republika Srpska that would challenge the authority of Bosnia and Herzegovina‘s state judiciary. In his address to the UN General Assembly, the president of Serbia criticized Kosovo’s bid to join UNESCO and called on the international community to do more to protect Serbian cultural heritage in the former Serbian province.Kosovo’s foreign minister said that the government has nothing to hide from a newly created war crimes court that will try former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters. Croatia’s security and intelligence agency transferred secret service documents dating from 1937 to 1990 to the state archives, where they can be viewed by the public for the first time. The ICC prosecutor asked judges to open a full investigation into Georgia‘s 2008 conflict with Russia over the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia.

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MENATunisia’s National Dialogue Quartet – a coalition of workers, employers, human rights activists and lawyers – won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to steer the country towards democracy. A judge inLebanon opened an investigation into three corruption complaints submitted by activists after protests over garbage collection grew into a larger movement calling for institutional reforms to increase accountability. Amid a wave of violence, Israel set up road blocks in Palestinian sections of Jerusalem.Algeria’s president credited the 2005 Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation – which provided amnesty to armed rebels and exonerated government forces of abuse allegations – with protecting the country from instability, but ten years after the end of the country’s civil war, victims are still calling for justice. In Egypt, former president Hosni Mubarak’s two sons, who were convicted of embezzlement and face additional charges, were released by an Egyptian court after it found that their time in temporary detention exceeded the legal limit.

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Publications

Squaring Colombia’s Circle: The Objectives of Punishment and the Pursuit of PeaceThis paper weighs the possible modes and competing policy objectives of punishing FARC members for serious crimes in the context of Colombia’s ongoing peace negotiations. It argues that punishment has to occur in a way that does not damage one of the underlying objectives of the peace process, transforming the FARC from an insurgent group into a political actor.

Tunisia in Transition: One Year After the Creation of the Truth and Dignity CommissionThis briefing paper details and analyzes the progress made so far in Tunisia to implement its historic Transitional Justice Law, with a particular focus on the Truth and Dignity Commission, created one year ago.

Confederate Flag Supporters Indicted On Terrorism Charges

By Samuel Miller
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America and Oceania

ATLANTA, Georgia, United States of America — On Monday, fifteen individuals associated with a group of Confederate flag supporters in Douglas County, Ga., were indicted on terrorism charges. The July incident came in the midst of a debate that spread from South Carolina about removing the Confederate flag from public spaces.

The Confederate Flag Has Become a Symbol for Southern Tensions. (Photo Courtesy of CBS News)

The charges are related to a July 25 incident in which members of a group called Respect the Flag drove a convoy of vehicles displaying Confederate flags through a neighborhood in Douglasville, when they were involved in an altercation with residents outside a home where a children’s birthday party was taking place.

The indictment alleges that Respect the Flag is a “criminal street gang,” and that members of the group threatened “to commit a crime of violence” against people at the party, “with the purpose of terrorizing those individuals and in reckless disregard for the risks of causing such terror.”

The two sides had wildly divergent accounts of what occurred.

Residents said the demonstrators entered their neighborhood and started shouting racial slurs. Melissa Alford, who hosted the July birthday party, said tensions flared when the trucks drove by the home in Douglasville, Georgia.

In an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ms. Alford recalled, “One had a gun, saying he was gonna kill the [racial slur].” Ms. Alford then alleged one of them said, ‘Gimme the gun, I’ll shoot them [racial slur].”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which is representing some of the people who attended the party, praised the prosecutor for pushing forward with the case.

Morris Dees, the organization’s chief trial counsel, issued a written statement: “These cowards chose unarmed African-Americans enjoying a peaceful birthday party to vent their violent racist hatred. This is reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan — modern-day night-riders terrorizing African-Americans in the name of Southern heritage.”

Members of the caravan countered that the group only drives around with flags and sells them to raise money to donate American flags to people who can’t afford them.

Levi Bush, one of the drivers, told the paper the convoy had been attacked by residents throwing rocks, and after he got a flat tire the residents swarmed his truck and threatened him.

Kayla Norton, another member of the Respect the Flag group, detailed the confrontation between her group and the party-goers in an interview with the local Atlanta Fox affiliate. She says, “We informed that other group that we did have guns in our vehicles and if need be, we could go get them.”

For more information, please see:

China Post — Confederate flag supporters charged over threats – 15 October 2015

CNN — Group that waved Confederate flags indicted – 15 October 2015

U.S. News & World Report — Georgia Confederate Flag Supporters Charged With Terrorism – 13 October 2015

CBS News – Ga. Confederate flag supporters face terrorism charges – 12 October 2015

Washington Post — Confederate flag supporters face terror charges after disrupting black child’s party – 12 October 2015

Transgender Activist Killed in Argentina

By Kaitlyn Degnan
Impunity Watch, South America

BUENOS AIRES – Argentina — Diana Sacayan, a well-known Argentine transgender activist was found dead at age 40 in her Buenos Aires apartment. Her body showed signs of violence, including multiple stab wounds.

Murdered transgender activist Diana Sacayan. (Photo courtesy of ILGA, @ILGAWORLD).

She is the third transgender woman in Argentina to have been killed in the past thirty days: Marcela Chocobar and Coty Olmos were also violently killed in Santa Fe and Santa Cruz.

Sacayan was a leader of the Antidiscrimination Liberation Movement in Argentina, and was on the board of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and intersex Association.

Amnesty International, among other organizations, are calling on Argentinian authorities to investigate the violence. Mariela Belski, executive director of Amnesty International Argentina said that, “A dark cloud has set over Argentina’s trans community. Unless this latest wave of murders is effectively investigated and those responsible taken to justice, a message will be sent that attacking trans women is actually OK.”

In 2014, the Argentine Homosexual Community reported 14 hate-crime murders.

Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has asked the national security services and the Metropolitan police to investigate the killing. President Fernandez personally issued Sacayan’s new national identification card in 2012. Sacayan was the first person in Argentina (one of the few countries that allows citizens to change the gender on official identification documents) to have her national ID changed.

Argentina’s Special Crime Unit Against Gender Violence has made a formal motion to classify Sacayan’s death as a femicide, so the case can be investigated and tried as such. Argentina has recently seen spiked levels of femicide, with a woman being killed about one every thirty hours in the country.

Following the news of Sacayan’s death, social media was inundated with tributes and messages of outrage over her death. A vigil outside of Argentina’s supreme court building drew dozens of supporters.

Latin America has some of the highest murder rates for transgender persons, according to Amnesty International. Activist group Transgender Europe reports that from 2008 until 2014, approximately 78% of the 1,731 murders of transgender and gender-diverse persons worldwide occurred in Latin America.

 

For more information, please see:

Amnesty International – Argentina must investigate horrific wave of attacks against trans activists – 14 October 2015

The Guardian – Argentina’s third violent transgender death in a month sparks call for justice – 14 October 2015

Reuters – UPDATE 1-Outcry over the killing of three transgender women in Argentina – 14 October 2015

TeleSur – Argentine President Demands Inquiry into Trans Activist’s Death – 14 October 2015

BBC – Argentina transgender killings spark outcry – 15 October 2015

International Business Times – Who is Diana Sacayan? Transgender Activist in Argentina Found Dead After Possible Hate Crime – 15 October 2015

 

 

 

Guatemalan Mayor Lynched Following Political Violence

By Samuel Miller
Impunity Watch Desk Reporter, North America and Oceania

CONCEPCION, Guatemala — The mayor of Guatemala’s western town of Concepcion was killed in an apparent retaliatory mob lynching over an earlier attack on the mayor’s political opponent. The residents believed he was behind an earlier attack in which two women were killed and five other people injured.

A man cries over the coffin of mayor Bacilio Juracan. (Photo Courtesy of The Guardian)

Guatemala is one of the most violent countries in Latin America; however, the lynching of an elected official is considered rare.

The incident began last month when Juracan defeated former mayoral candidate Lorenzo Sequen in Concepcion’s mayoral race. After losing the election, Sequen accused Juracan of mismanagement and demanded an investigation into Concepcion’s finances.

Villagers blamed Juracan for an attack on Sunday on Sequen, who was riding in a pickup with relatives when about 10 armed and masked men opened fire. His daughter and niece were killed, and at least five others, including Sequen, were wounded.

When news spread of the attack on Sequen, angry residents began searching for Juracan, who they believed was behind the attack.

The angry mob tracked down began burning houses belonging to Juracan’s family, until they found the mayor at his home. They dragged him out, beat him and set him alight. Police arrived too late to save Mr. Juracan.

According to the Latino Post, Guatemala is considered to be the most violent non-war zone on the planet. Additionally, this is not the first instance of political instability within the country.

Earlier this year, President Otto Perez Molina stood down after Congress voted to strip him of his immunity. Mr. Perez Molina is accused of involvement in a case known as “La Linea”, named after a hotline businesses allegedly called to access corrupt officials.

According to figures issued recently by the state’s National Institute of Forensic Sciences, there were 2,343 murders reported in Guatemala between January and May. In 2014, there was an average of 15.5 homicides per day.

Rural parts of Guatemala often see vigilante killings because of the lack of police officials in the areas. Guatemala belongs to one of the most violent countries in Latin America, and gun crime in particular is widespread in the country.

A national police spokesman, Jorge Aguilar, said 50 officers had been sent to patrol the village, where burnt cars remained in the streets on Monday.

For more information, please see:

Harvard Political Review — Fed Up in Guatemala – 13 October 2015

Latino Post – Guatemalan Mayor Beaten & Burned Alive by Vengeful Mob – 13 October 2015

The Guardian — Villagers in Guatemala burn their mayor to death after political rivalry escalates – 13 October 2015

UPI — Guatemalan mayor beaten, burned alive by revenge-driven angry mob – 13 October 2015

BBC News — Guatemalan mayor lynched by crowd over attack on rival – 12 October 2015