I hope you had the chance to watch the video my young friend Danielle recently shared with you about my doll, Marlene.
I donated Marlene to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum because I want her to be preserved forever in memory of all children whose lives were destroyed by the Holocaust.
Artifacts like my doll give proof to the world that the Holocaust happened. The Museum is in a race against time to acquire evidence in more than 40 countries.
Your gift will support this effort and help the Museum educate more young people like my friend Danielle through artifacts and the powerful stories associated with them.
Thank you for making a generous year-end donation today. When we survivors are no longer here to tell our stories, these items will be the only authentic evidence that can help combat rising Holocaust denial and antisemitism.
By Kathryn Maureen Ryan Impunity Watch, Managing Editor
Washington D.C., United States of America – Sony Pictures Entertainment announced Wednesday that the study would cancel the December 25th Release of “The Interview” in response to threats from the North Korean regime. Following alleged ambiguous threats to movie goers referencing the September 11th 2001 attacks in the United States several major multiplex companies across the country refused to show the film. Sony referenced this issue in its announcement saying “in light of the decision by the majority of our exhibitors not to show the film.” The decision to cancel the release of “The Interview” comes as the United States government confirms that last month’s cyber-attack on Sony pictures originated form the Korean Peninsula and the North Korean regime was behind the attacks.
Major American theaters pull plans to show “The Interview” after threats from North Korea. The Film, a satirical comedy staring James Franco and Seth Rogen, centers on a plot to kill the North Korean dictator. (Photo courtesy of The New York Times)
“The Interview,” a satirical political comedy staring Seth Rogan and Academy Award Winning Actor James Franco told the story of two Americans tasked by the CIA to assassinate North Korea leader Kim Jung-un, played by Randall Park. The film was deemed offensive by the North Korean regime, one of the world’s most secluded and censored countries where the majority of people live in extreme poverty, which deemed the goal of preventing the film’s releases worth devoting its resources to carrying out one of the largest cyber-attacks ever carried out against an American corporation.
Sony Pictures cited alleged terror threats originating from the North Korean regime as its primary reason for pulling the film. On Tuesday an email, allegedly sent from the North Korean hacking group responsible for last month’s cyber-attack on Sony Pictures, was sent to various news outlets referencing the film and the September 11th attacks. However, The Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday there was “no credible intelligence to indicate an active plot against movie theaters,” but noted it was still analyzing messages from the group. United States President Barack Obama also responded to the alleged threats saying Americans should go to the movies.
Sony’s decision to pull the film is ultimately a business decision rather than a response to alleged future threats. The company suffered an embarrassing blow from the release of documents and personal emails from company expertise and potentially lost millions of dollars in revenue after the hackers released three unreleased movies online and posted full scripts of several upcoming Sony films. “This attack went to the heart and core of Sony’s business and succeeded,” said Avivah Litan, a cybersecurity analyst at research firm Gartner. “We haven’t seen any attack like this in the annals of U.S. breach history.”
Before Sony announced its decision Wednesday, Regal Cinemas, AMC Entertainment and Cinemark Theatres, the three top movie-theater chains in North America announced that they were postponing any showings of film. Regal said in a statement that it was delaying “The Interview” ”due to wavering support of the film ‘The Interview’ by Sony Pictures, as well as the ambiguous nature of any real or perceived security threats.” AMC noted “the overall confusion and uncertainty” surrounding the film.
The North Korean regime, a country with a GDP of just $40 Billion Dollars successfully attacked the servers of the Sony Corporation, an estimated $70 Billion company, stealing more than 100 terabytes of data from Sony Pictures and force the cancellation of an American motion picture.
The cancellation of the release of “The Interview” is reminiscent of the history of one of the greatest political satires of all time; Charlie Chaplin’s “the Great Dictator.” When Charlie Chaplin was producing the film the British Government stated that it would not allow the release of the film in British Theaters out of fear that it would offend the Hitler regime in Nazi Germany, at the time the British government was practicing the policy of Appeasement, refusing to stand up to one of the deadliest regimes in human history.
The Syrian Commission for Transitional Justice (SCTJ) in cooperation with the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) organized a study visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina, which ran between December 1 and 6, 2014. The SCTJ delegation included the Syrian Interim Government’s Minister for Justice, a member of the legal bureau of the Syrian National Coalition, in addition to a number of Syrian judges, lawyers, and representatives of Syrian NGOs involved in the documentation of human rights violations. The aim of the visit was to learn about the Bosnian experience in addressing the issue of missing persons in the aftermath of the Bosnian war 1992-1995.
This visit is a part of the Syrian Commission for Transitional Justice’s endeavors to contribute to the capacity building of legal and judiciary professionals, in the context of its work on programs of enforced disappearance, and in light of its work establishing the Syrian Special Court.
The delegation visited ICMP’s DNA laboratories, which work to match the DNA of the families of missing persons with the skeletal remains of anonymous victims exhumed from mass graves. Through such work, it has been possible to identify more than 17,700 missing persons. To learn about the process, the delegation was able to tour the ICMP’s premises in Sarajevo and Tuzla.
The delegation also visited the Potocari Memorial Center in Srebrenica, and met representatives of local societies for the families of victims. The delegation met a representative of the Missing Persons Institute which, on behalf of the government, is responsible for affairs concerning missing persons, and also met speakers from the Croatian Office of Detained and Missing Persons, which worked on DNA matching and identification prior to the establishment of the ICMP. The delegation also had the opportunity to meet representatives of civil society institutions involved in peace building.
All speakers stressed the importance of building a legislative and institutional system, as well as establishing a comprehensive national vision concerning missing persons’ affairs, before the commencement of field work.
SCTJ also made a brief presentation on the latest developments in its electronic system for the documentation of human rights violations in Syria. This system was built as a comprehensive central database for all human rights violations, and works in coordination with Syrian organizations currently documenting such abuses.
The delegation from the Syrian Commission for Transitional Justice included representatives of the Free Independent Judicial Council, the Free Lawyers Union, the Free Lawyers Gathering, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, in addition to a number of independent judges, allowing the knowledge and expertise of different groups and organizations to be shared and disseminated.
