BRIEF: Zawahiri Declares UN ‘Enemy of Islam’

BRIEF: Zawahiri Declares UN ‘Enemy of Islam’

CAIRO, Egypt – Al Qaeda’s media arm, al Sahab, announced last December that Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s ideological chief and second-in-command, would answer questions submitted by the public on various websites.  In a 103-minute video Zawahiri addressed issues ranging from Palestine, opportunities for female militants and Osama bin Laden’s health.  This video was billed as the first installment of Zawahiri’s responses to the over 900 questions submitted.

One question related to al Qaeda’s suicide attacks on UN offices in Algiers on December 11, which at least 41 people died, including 18 UN employees.  The attacks on the United Nations office and the Constitutional Council building were claimed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

An Algerian medical student wrote, “I want al-Zawahiri to answer me about those who kill the people in Algeria. What is the legal evidence for killing the innocents?”  Zawahiri responded that the people killed were not innocents.  Rather, according to al Qaeda, “they are from the Crusader unbelievers and the government troops who defend them.”  He defended the attacks by stating the one of the targets, a UN building, was a legitimate target because the UN is “an enemy of Islam and Muslims.”

In addition, Zawahiri denied that the group was responsible for killing innocent people and stated, “If there is any innocent who was killed in the mujahedin’s operations, then it was either an unintentional error or out of necessity.”  Instead, Zawahiri claimed that al Qaeda’s enemies of intentionally taking positions amongst innocent people and using them as human shields.

For more information, please see:
Al Jazeera – Al-Qaeda Deputy: UN Enemy of Islam – 3 April 2008

Bloomberg – Zawahiri Defends Al-Qaeda that Kill Muslims – 3 April 2008

CCN – Al Qaeda No. 2: We Don’t Kill Innocents – 3 April 2008

Los Angeles Times – Bin Laden’s Deputy Fields Queries – 3 April 2008

BBC – Al-Qaeda Deputy Defends Attacks – 2 April 2008

Australia Accuses Fiji Over Using Claim to Deflect Attention from Elections

By Ryan L. Maness
Impunity Watch Senior Desk Editor, Oceania

SYDNEY, Australia — Relations between Fiji and Australia have been strained since the 2006 coup, but the tension has been palpable in recent days.  Since the Pacific Island Forum, the Australian government has placed pressure on Fiji to make substantial movement towards reestablishing democratic elections, going so far as to threaten to relocate Pacific Institutions currently housed in Fiji.  The Fijian government has responded by calling for its neighbors to allow Fiji to work through the problems underlying its “coup culture”. 

The back and forth has ascended to a new level with an accusation by the Fiji Human Rights Commission that the Australian Navy may have violated international law with their military activities in the lead up to the 2006 coup.  Specifically, Fiji Human Rights Commission Director Dr. Shaista Shameem has said that the presence of Australian war ships near Fijian waters and Special Air Service soldiers flying commercially into Fiji represented the early stages of a possible future invasion.  These forces, Shameem told Radio Australia, were assembled after now interim Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama first threatened to overtake the Qarase government. 

The Australian government claims that the vessels were not in place to invade Fiji, but merely to protect Australian citizens in the event that the coup should turn violent.  They also insist that at no time did the ships enter Fijian waters or make any signs of aggression.  Australian Foreign minister Stephen Smith explained that “The Australian military were effectively on standby so as to ensure the safety and welfare of Australian nationals should that have become necessary.” 

He also says that Australia has heard these “spurious” claims before and that Fiji is presenting them now to try to draw attention away from the lack of progress being made towards free and fair elections.  “The best thing that can happen in Fiji is not spurious suggestions about Australian activity but having an election, returning Fiji to democracy, respecting human rights and democracy and allowing a potentially very prosperous nation to get on with the job of providing for its citizens.”

For more information, please see:
Fiji Times — Concentrate on having an election: Smith — 03 April 2008

Fiji Broadcasting Corporation Limited — Report receives negative response — 03 April 2008

Radio New Zealand International — Australia’s foreign minister responds to Fiji’s Human Rights Commission — 02 April 2008

Australian Broadcasting Corporation — Smith rejects Fiji accusation — 02 April 2008

Radio New Zealand International — Fiji Human Rights Commission wants probe of Australia’s pre-coup role — 01 April 2008

BRIEF: Khmer Rouge Regime Survivor Dith Pran Dies

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – Dith Pran, photojournalist and survivor of the Khmer Rouge Regime, died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 65 years old. Before the Khmer Rouge Regime took power in 1975, Dith Pran worked with the NY Times taking notes, translating, and taking pictures. After the Khmer Rouge Regime took power, Dith Pran became a prisoner. Although he and his family had the opportunity to flee Cambodia, Dith Pran choose to stay and let his family go because he believed that “his country could be saved only if other countries grasped the gathering tragedy and responded.”

Soon afterwards, he was sent to the countryside to work all day in the fields. He survived in the countryside doing backbreaking labor and eating only a tablespoon of rice a day for four years. Dith Pran avoiding summary execution by hiding his education, passing himself as a taxi driver, and throwing all his money away. In 1978 he returned to his hometown of Siem Reap and discovered that 50 members of his family had been killed. The wells had been filled with skulls and bones. In 1979 Dith Pran escaped the country over the Thai border and then later come to New York to continue his journalistic career.

For more information, please see:

The NY Times – Dith Pran, Photojournalist and Survivor of the Killing Fields, Dies at 65 – 31 March 2008

BRIEF: Aung San Suu Kyi Barred from Office

YANGON, Myanmar – According to a new proposed constitution, Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Laureate and leader of the opposition party, cannot stand for election because she was once married to a foreigner. Reuters obtained a copy of the charter and confirmed that it says a “person who is entitled to rights and privileges of a foreign government, or a citizen of a foreign country” cannot run for office. The provision is not a new creation but copied over from the 1947 and 1974 country’s constitutions. The proposed constitution will go to referendum in May, but voters are unsure how to vote because the public is not allowed to see the final version yet. The constitution is a key provision in the country’s seven-point “road map to democracy.”

For more information, please see:

Reuters – Proposed Myanmar Charter Bars Suu Kyi from Office – 31 March 2008

BRIEF: Human Rights Group Accuses Sri Lanka of Cover-Up

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Action Against Hunger/Action Contre la Faim (ACF), an international human rights organization, has claimed that the Sri Lankan government is responsible for and is covering up the massacre of 17 of their aid workers in 2006.

The mostly Tamil ACF workers were helping rebuild in the town of Muttur after the tsunami when they were murdered.  They were found on the ground of a ACF compound, shot in the head.

The University Teachers for Human Rights (UTHR), a Sri Lankan organization, recently published a study on the murders.  The report stated that a local guard and two police constables killed the ACF workers, and that senior police officers covered up the murders.  It stated that three witnesses to the event had already been killed, one was missing, and others had left the country in fear of their lives.  The report also mentioned that since the ceasefire between the government and rebel Tamil Tigers collapsed in 2002, there has been an environment of impunity which has prevented justice from being reached.

The Sri Lankan government originally claimed that the aid workers had been caught in civil war fighting and had been killed by the Tamil Tigers.  The government responded to this latest report by saying that they will conduct an inquiry into the deaths.

Rajan Hoole, a UTHR spokesman, said, “The killing of civilians during time of conflict is a war crime. The perpetrators and their superiors should be brought to justice.”

For more information, please see:

Action Against Hunger – The Muttur Massacre: ACF Demands International Inquiry into Sri Lankan Assassinations – 1 April 2008

BBC News – Sri Lanka accused over massacre – 1 April 2008