By Alexandra Sandacz
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

BERLIN, Germany – On Sunday, September 9, 2012, a rally of Jewish and Muslim Germans protested in Germany’s capital, Berlin, to demand their religious freedom.

Over 50 Jewish and Muslim organizations staged a protest over a court ruling that was handed down in June. The protest commenced when news surfaced that a rabbi in Bavaria was investigated over the religious practice of circumcision.

The Cologne court determined that the ritual practice of circumcision of young boys constituted “bodily harm” and could not be performed regardless of family religious practices. However, the court noted that the medical procedure could be preformed on older males with their consent. As a result of the local court’s decision, the German Medical Association advised doctors across the country to stop performing circumcisions.

According to the Jewish religion, boys are required to be circumcised by  religious leader at eight days old.  For the Muslim religion, the age at which the ritual is carried out differs according to family, country and branch of Islam.

One protester stated, “I’m here to stand for the freedom of religious rights.” Dieter Graumann, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called it “unbearable that we, Jews, are being branded as child tormenters and that Jewish life is being presented as illegitimate in some way.” Furthermore, another Jewish community member stated the court’s decision was a “flagrant intervention in the over-3,000-year tradition of Judaism.”

Despite the Cologne court’s controversial decision, the German government announced their intentions to legislate to overrule the Cologne court’s decision and to legalize circumcision. However, until further legislation is passed, circumcision will continue to be criminalized unless preformed by a doctor, and the state must advise the parents of the risk associated with male circumcision.

The former head of Berlin’s Jewish Community stated, “We were getting sick and tired of all the heated and incompetent gibberish on circumcisions. So today, we want to clarify a few things through our rabbi … what circumcision really is and what circumcision means to our religion.”

For further information, please see:

BBC — Germany Jews and Muslims Protest at Circumcision Ruling – 9 September 2012

The Huffington Post — Muslims And Jews Protest Circumcision Law In Germany After Police Investigate Rabbi – 9 September 2012

Reuters — German Jews, Muslims Unite to Protest against Circumcision Ban – 9 September 2012

The Jerusalem Post — Berlin Jews reject Germany Restrictions on Brit Mila – 7 September 2012

By Emilee Gaebler
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

WARSAW, Poland – After over 70 years of silence regarding Soviet culpability in the Polish Katyn massacre of 1940, the United States has indirectly acknowledged the cover up they participated in.  Documents released on Monday show that the United States was aware, at a very early point, that the Soviet claim of the massacre being the work of the German Nazi’s, was false.

In May of 1943, British and American POW’s were taken into the Katyn forest by their German captors and shown a mass grave site in a clearing.  The grave contained the bodies of close to 22,000 Polish high-ranking officers.  The men had been the educated elite of Poland in their civilian lives: doctors, lawyers, teachers and other professionals.  They had all been shot in the back of the head and dumped into the mass graves.  Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, had killed them to eliminate public challenges to Stalinism.

Objects, like correspondence, ID cards, and newspaper clippings that were recovered from their bodies were dated from 1940 and earlier.  The uniforms that were still on the corpses were in new condition, hardly worn or used at all.  The bodies were in a partly mummified state and showed signs of advanced decay; all of this pointing to the reality that these bodies had been in the grave since 1940 or earlier

The Katyn forest was in the control of the Soviets until the Germans were able to gain control of it in 1941.  American officers, Captain Donald B. Stewart and Lieutenant Colonel John H. Van Vliet Jr., were among the POW’s taken to the site of the Katyn massacre.  Included in the roughly 1,000 documents released on Monday are coded messages sent by the two men, while still in captivity, that state their belief that the German claim that the massacre was done by the Soviets was true.

In 1951-1952 Congressional hearings were held regarding the Katyn massacre.  Both Stewart and Van Vliet testified at these but the record of the hearings does not reflect these coded messages from 1943, suggesting they were deliberately excluded.  As well, Van Vliet wrote two reports on the massacre, one in 1945 and one in 1950 but neither of them were part of the hearings or released by the United States government at any point.

Experts believe that the truth regarding responsibility for the Katyn massacre was deliberately withheld in 1943 by President Theodore Roosevelt to maintain the alliance between the two countries against Germany.  Following the end of the war the truth remained hidden to keep Cold War tensions down.

In 1990, during the fall of the Iron Curtain, the last head of state of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, finally admitted to the Soviet guilt in the massacre.  Even then, the United States government refused to admit to their participation in the cover-up.  United States historian and author of a Katyn massacre book, Paul Allen, believes that a public apology to the Polish people is required as Katyn remains a wound on the Polish psyche that to this day affects Polish and Russian relationships.

 

For further information, please see:

BBC News – US “Hushed up” Soviet Guilt Over Katyn – 11 September 2012

The Moscow Times – Secret Memos Show U.S. Hushed up Katyn Crime – 11 September 2012

Polskie Radio – Veterans Attend Release of US Katyn Documents – 11 September 2012

The Telegraph – US “Hushed up Katyn Massacre” – 11 September 2012

Associate Press – AP Exclusive: Memos Show US Hushed up Soviet Crime – 10 September 2012

By Madeline Schiesser
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

STRASBOURG, France – The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) heard four religious workplace discrimination cases on Tuesday, September 4, 2012.  The four applicants, all British Christians who lost separate employment tribunals in the United Kingdom, alleged that they were discriminated against in their workplace due to their religious beliefs.  The ECtHR, reserving judgment for a date to be determined, is expected to render a landmark decision.

The British Christians claimed that their employers violated articles nine and fourteen of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibit religious discrimination while protecting “freedom of thought, conscience and religion.”  However, the British government argued that these rights are only protected in the private sphere, not the workplace.

Shirley Chaplin and Nadia Eweida’s cases arose out of their desire to each wear a Christian cross at work.  However, Chaplin, a former nurse, was told that, despite having worn her cross for 30 years around the hospital wards, the necklace was a safety risk.  She was offered a desk job.  Eweida, an airways check-in worker, was asked to conceal her cross necklace according to airways uniform policy.  Instead she went home without pay and did not return until the policy was changed.

Lillian Ladele was a marriage registrar.  After civil partnerships became legal in the U.K. in 2004, Ladele would not conduct them.  Initially, she was permitted to trade civil partnerships with other registrars.  However, her employment rules changed, curtailing this flexibility; Ladele also felt pushed to choose between her faith and employment.  An employment tribunal ruled for her on the grounds of harassment; but this decision was reversed.

Gary McFarlane was a marriage counselor and church elder who was dismissed for gross misconduct after expressing concern to his employer that if he was asked to give advice to a homosexual couple, he might not be able to do so.

The applicants brought their cases before the ECtHR after various hearings before employment tribunals, the British Employment Appeal Tribunal and, in one case, the Court of Appeal.   Each desires roughly the same thing: the accommodation of their faith in the workplace.

McFarlane explained: “There should be allowances taken into account whereby individuals like me can actually avoid having to contradict their very strongly-held Christian principles.”

The National Secular Society, which intervened to argue alongside the British government, disagrees with this desire for further religious accommodations.  NSS Executive Director, Keith Porteous Wood said: “Any further accommodation of religious conscience in UK equality law would create a damaging hierarchy of rights, with religion trumping all. Any change to the law to increase religious accommodation stands the risk of seriously undermining UK equality law. . . .

“[O]ccasionally there may be limited circumstances where the State and private employers will be justified in restricting the display of religious symbols, or indeed, expressions of non-belief, in the interests of protecting the rights of fellow employees, users of public services, and private customers.”

Yet, Andrew Marsh, campaign director at religious group Christian Concern, expressed that the four could have been accommodated without harm.  He asserted “The crucial question in these cases is this: could these four individuals have been reasonably accommodated and their Christian faith respected, without detriment or damage to the rights of others – and the answer to that question is clearly yes.

“Each of them could have been reasonably accommodated without there ever being any danger of risk, significant risk to others or indeed of anyone who is entitled to a service being denied that service.”

For further information, please see:

International Herald Tribune – Christians Claim Workplace Discrimination in Landmark Case – 5 September 2012

Press Association – Faith Case Battle in Strasbourg – 5 September 2012

BBC News – Christians Take ‘Beliefs’ Fight to European Court of Human Rights – 4 September 201

BBC News – Why are Four Christians Accusing Their Employers of Discrimination? – 4 September 2012

National Secular Society – NSS Intervene in Landmark Cases at European Court of Human Rights – 2 September 2012

By Connie Hong
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia —  Amnesty International is urging the Slovak government to address the issue of segregation that plagues the country’s schools and classrooms.  Currently, thousands of Romani children living in Slovakia are forced to learn in classrooms separated from their Slovakian peers.  Although the organization has urged the government for the past five years to provide reform to the country’s educational system, nothing has changed.

Roma students are being forced to learn in separate classrooms. (Photo Courtesy of Equality) Continue Reading

By Pearl Rimon
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

KIEV, Ukraine – A three judge panel in Ukraine’s highest court upheld a guilty verdict against former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. In October 2011, Tymoshenko was convicted of abuse in office for negotiating and signing a natural gas contract with Russia.

The United States, Russia and the European Union have condemned the high court’s ruling.

Ukrainian Judge Oleksandr Elfimov said in his ruling that he “found no grounds to uphold the appeal,” and that the prison term is “adequate to the gravity of the crime.”

The EU issued a statement that Ukraine needs to “redress the effects of selective justice.” This is not the firs time the EU has commented on the Tymoshenko affair, in 2011 they released the statement that the trial “did not respect the international standards as regards fair, transparent and independent legal process.”

Sergiy Vlasenko, Tymoshenko’s lawyer, said that they are filing another appeal in the EU Court of Human rights.

“Today we again received a shameful decision which proves that a dictatorship is establishing itself in Ukraine,” Eugenia Tymoshenko, the daughter of Yulia Tymoshenko, told reporters.

Even Ukraine’s close allies’, Poland and Sweden, have expressed their concern about the Tymoshenko verdict.

Vice prime minister Sergei Tigipko, said “It is clear to us there is a clear violation. This was a criminal case, not a political case.” The Yanukoyvch government blames Tymoshenko’s gas deal with Russia for the Ukraine having the most expensive gas prices in Europe. Tigipko says that the deal cost the country six billion dollars in 2011.“Under Ukrainian law the cabinet should approve all such international agreements and this agreement was not approved by the cabinet,” added Mr Tigipko.

The European Court of Human rights in Strasbourg opened hearings on Tuesday probing into Tymoshenko’s pre-trial detention being politically motivated and if her rights were violated in prison.

Tymoshenko was the leader of the opposition party, All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland Party”. She is credited as helping organize the 2004 Orange Revolution that resulted in massive protests across the country.

 

For further information, please see:

Focus News Agency– Yulia Tymoshenko’s Jail Sentence Confirmed — 29 August 2012

International Business Times — Former Ukrainian PM Yuliya Tymoshenko Loses Court Appeal, Stays In Jail – 29 August 2012

The Telegraph — Ukraine Minister Insists Yulia Tymoshenko Broke The Law – 29 August 2012