By Terance Walsh
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

BARANAVICHY, Belarus — Rallies planned for October 16 in Baranavichy, Belarus in support of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Yymoshenko have been quashed by local authorities.

Ryhor Hryk, member of the United Civic Party, received a letter from the local Baranavichy government saying that “the public gathering in Belarus to support…Tymoshenko could be construed by the Ukrainian government as interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs, and therefore cannot be held.”  The city used the Mass Events Law to prohibit the demonstration.

Hryk blasted the decision of the Baranavichy authorities.  He called the ban “absurd, because I am not calling on anyone to overthrow the legally elected government of Ukraine. I just want to express moral support for Yulia Tymoshenko.”  Article 35 of the Belarusian constitution protects the right of Belarusian citizens to gather, march, and assemble.  Hryk claims that these rights of Tymoshenko’s supporters are being trampled.  He plans to file an appeal to the Baranavichy City Prosecutor’s Office.  Hryk had visited Ukraine this year, attended Tymoshenko’s trial, and participated in demonstrations in Kiev.

This is not the first time Hryk has been banned from holding a public demonstration.  In October 2009 he was arrested for protesting tax hikes on small businesses in Baranavichy.

Tymoshenko was tried for abuse of power after she brokered a 2009 gas deal with Russia that resulted in a $200 million loss in Ukraine’s budget.  Amnesty International has decried the conviction as “politically motivated.”

Tymoshenko plans to appeal her conviction and seven-year prison sentence as Amnesty International calls for her release.  Tymoshenko was openly defiant throughout the proceedings and called the conviction a “political lynching.”

The sentence drew harsh criticism form the United States and the European Union.  Officials of the US and the EU have warned that the conviction will likely worsen relations with Ukraine.

In the meantime Tymoshenko and her family are trying to alleviate her prison sentence.  The international community has put pressure on Ukraine to refrain from imposing a punishment that is driven by politics.  Tuesday’s sentence has placed in jeopardy Ukrane’s free trade agreements and the prospect of joining the EU.  The west has set a sort of deadline for October 20 to reform the sentence.  The Ukranian Parliament is set to convene on October 18 to discuss the decriminalization of the offense for which Tymoshenko is charged.

“All the signals indicate that before the 20th something should happen,” Tymoshenko’s daughter, Yevhenia Carr, said, “The result of the trial is already a big mistake, a big kind of technical error. It’s just the story of one person’s revenge.”

Tymoshenko has persuaded women in prison to start exercising and stop smoking.  She has also immersed herself in the Bible as a way to focus her attention on anything but politics.  Despite all the turmoil Carr believes her mother will one day be president of Ukraine.

For more information please see:

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — Amnesty International Repeats Call For Tymoshenko Release — 13 October 2011

NY Times — Tymoshenko To Be Freed Soon, Daughter Says — 12 October 2011

Naviny — Authorities in Baranavichy Ban Opposition Activists From Demonstrating In Support Of Ukraine’s Ex-PM Tymoshenko — 11 October 2011

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — Belarusian Activists Banned From Holding Rally For Tymoshenko — 11 October 2011

Charter ’97 — Baranavichy Businessmen Cracked Down For Protest Rallies — 2 October 2009

By Terance Walsh
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — The trial of Albina Terzic for charges of inhuman treatment of prisoners began Tuesday.  Terzic, the first woman to be tried for war crimes in Bosnia, must account for the allegations of crimes stemming from the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  If she is convicted she will be just the fifth woman in the world convicted for war crimes.  Terzic entered a plea of not guilty in response to the charges.

The trial for Albina Terzic for warcrimes began this week (Photo courtesy of Radio Netherlands)

Terzic’s indictment, filed in April 2011, states she, “used to hit [the detainees] with a police baton on their necks, shoulders and heads, slap them, encouraged dogs to attack them, tortured, abused, humiliated and insulted them in various ways, by, among other things, forcing the detainees into having sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual violence.”  The alleged mistreatment occurred in a school building and a factory in Odzak from May to July 1992.

Prior to her indictment Terzic had certain prohibitive measures ordered against her.  She was deemed a flight risk and was ordered to turn over her travel documents and refrain from using photo identification for crossing the state border.

Only one other woman from Bosnia has been convicted for war crimes and she was tried in The Hague.  Biljana Plasvic plead guilty to crimes against humanity and was released from prison in 2009 after serving most of her 11-year sentence.  About twenty to thirty women are currently being investigated for war crimes by the State Prosecutor’s office.  Two women accused of committing war crimes were apprehended in the United States earlier this year.

Azra Basic, who went by the alias “Issabell”, was arrested in Stanton, Kentucky last May.  She is accused of abusing and murdering civilians in 1992 in Derventa prisons.

Last April Rasima Handanovic was arrested in Oregon for helping the Army of Bosnia attack a village in central Bosnia.  The attack left sixteen dead and four injured.

A 2010 report from the International Court Tribunal for Yugoslavia reported only 526 female fatalities out of 62,626 total combatant fatalities in the war.  About 5,360 of the 90,000 troops serving with the predominantly Bosniak Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina were women.

Boris Grubesic of the State Prosecutor’s Office posited that the low number of women prosecuted for crimes from the Bosnian war accurately corresponds to the low number of women who fought in the war.  “Women are not usually included in warfare.  During the war [in Bosnia] it was unusual for women to participate in the police or in armies.

For more information please see:

By Greg Hall
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

SOFIA, Bulgaria – About two thousand protesters marched into Bulgaria’s capital city of Sofia in anti-Roma protests.  Prejudices against Roma in Bulgaria and intolerance to daily crime and impunity after several serious incidents have triggered a series of national demonstrations that have increased ethnic tensions.  The nationalistic party, Ataka, held demonstrations protesting against the impunity of Roma.

There has been an increase in protests recently due to a death of a youth hit by a car driven by relatives of a Roma clan boss.  Following the accident, an angry crowd of roughly 2,000 people attacked three houses owned by the Roma leader in the village.  Smaller protests occurred in other towns the following week.

National Security Council President, Georgi Parvanov, called on political parties and the media to cease using hate speech.  He also announced that a Roma inclusion program would begin in November and was being funded by the European Union and the Bulgarian government.  The time could not have come any later, as opinion polls state that 69% of Bulgarians rule out the possibility of having Roma friends and 63% find it unacceptable to live in the same neighborhood as them.

Volen Siderov, Ataka’s far right candidate, is calling for the death penalty to be reinstated and for Roma “ghettos to be dismantled.”  The recent violence in Bulgaria has been called the worst since the violence that took place in 1997.

This violence demonstrates the struggles of the Bulgarian country.  Bulgaria is the poorest country in the European Union.  Roma makes up only 5% of the population in Bulgaria. The attacks triggered worries that Bulgarian Turks, the county’s largest minority at almost 10%, will also become subject to attacks.  As of now, a great majority of the attacks have been directed only at the Roma.

All of these protests and attacks come just three weeks before the Bulgarian presidential elections. Some fear that a few civil servants that are Bulgarian Turks will be forced to work for the governing party’s electoral campaign.  Roma Rangel Palamoudov stated that the nationalist parties are inciting young people to turn against them so they can win the election.

The Roma community lives mostly in depressed areas with higher rates of poverty and unemployment and lower levels of education than the national average. Public frustration against corruption, a growing gap between rich and poor and the weakness of the justice system has helped turn people against the Roma, as well as against Bulgaria’s Turkish minority.

The unemployment rate among Roma is 65% and as high as 80% in some other regions.  The prejudice and distorted perception of Roma coupled together with low levels of education make it extremely difficult for Roma to get jobs.  It is also believed that quality of education to Roma children is inferior to that afforded to other students.

For more information, please see:

Hurriyet Daily News – Turks Worry as Bulgarian Nationalists Rally Ahead of Polls – 3 October 2011

iFocus – European Press Review – 3 October 2011

BBC News – Bulgarian Rally links Roma to Organised Crime – 1 October 2011

By Alexandra Halsey-Storch
Impunity Watch Desk Reporter, Europe

MADRID, Spain — The United Nations World Tourism Organization held its annual Congress on Ethics and Tourism last week in Madrid, Spain with the stated purpose to encourage countries to “intensify efforts to place ethics at the core of tourism development.”  While the tourism industry brings opportunities for jobs, economic growth and social power, it also brings “challenges that can’t be ignored.” Perhaps the biggest challenge the industry faces, in countries around the world, is the challenge to determine the means by which officials may eradicate the very pervasive, yet clandestine and often ignored, phenomenon of child sex tourism.

Child sex tourism is an industry that accommodates individuals who travel specifically for the purpose of engaging in sexual activities with children; however, within this context, the people who exploit children for sex are not necessarily pedophiles. More often, they can be described as “situational child sex tourists – “someone who abuses children by way of experimentation or through the anonymity and impunity afforded by being a tourist.” He or she does not have an exclusive sexual inclination for children.” This phenomenon span the globe, and can be found in increasing numbers in Eastern Europe, Latin America, South Africa and East Asia.

The statistics to date indicate that three to five million people travel each year with the sole purpose of exploiting young children for sexual advantages, and while the numbers range, it is estimated that 1.2 – 3 million children are trafficked each year throughout the world for the purpose of child sex tourism. Of these children, 80-90% are girls. Some suggest that these numbers are severely underreported and are actually far greater.

In 1997, the non-profit organization End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT) spearheaded, developed and wrote the Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children From Sexual Exploitation in Travel & Tourism in an effort to thwart child sex tourism.  The Code lays out six main principles for companies and associations of the tourism, travel and transport industry to adopt and follow. Eighty members and seventy countries have adopted the Code since 1998.

Since its inception, ECPAT has worked tirelessly to encourage more tourism counterparts to sign and adhere to the Code. They explain that vulnerable children are procured and channeled through commercial sex rings. Customers—mainly men—perpetuate the market simply by continuing to use children for sexual gratification. This market is virtually uninhibited as a result of corruption, collusion, lax law enforcement personnel, and a set of laws that are inadequate and/or absent.

While most customers are men, ECPAT has said that society at large is responsible for allowing this abuse to continue: family members, the business sector, service providers, customers, community leaders and government officials, all contribute to the exploitation through indifference to and ignorance of the harmful consequences suffered by children. Additionally, the desperation of poverty combined with a cultural and historically entrenched conception of children as economic commodities further perpetuates this business.

Child sex tourism in Eastern Europe, in particular, is a violent, criminal network dating back to the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The dangerous nature of the industry in Eastern Europe has made it particularly difficult for ECPAT workers to successfully intervene.

In 2005, Cathrin Schauer, a social worker and nurse who works at a nongovernmental organization on the German-Czech border providing health and social services to prostitutes, gathered evidence of 500 children fallen prey to the child sex tourism industry. In her book, Children Walk the Streets, she says that parents and relatives act as pimps. For a couple of euros or a piece of candy for an older sibling, a mother will prostitute her three-year-old. Fifteen-year-old “Antonin” (the names in the book have been changed as safety precautions) says, “When the Germans ask for younger children, I bring them my six-year-old brother.”

As recent as April 2011, ECPAT and 30 other children’s rights organizations submitted a letter to the United Nations arguing that Sweden continues to fail to take appropriate measures in combating child sex tourism.

On Thursday, ECPAT, in collaboration with The Body Shop, submitted a petition with 7 million signatures to the United Nations—perhaps the largest petition the UN has ever received. The petition urges the UN to take action to stop the sex trafficking of children. “Offenders have been [and continue] operating with impunity,” said Kathleen Speake, executive director of ECPAT International, “and child victims are often criminalized or abandoned without care options;” however, the petition has already generated “unprecedented change,” by motivating the world to call for change and prompting 14 countries to adopt new legislation pertaining to child sex trafficking.

For more information, please visit:

The Irish Times — Don’t Let Child Abuse Travel – 24 September 2011

SOS Children’s Villages Canada – Tourism Industry Endorses Code of Conduct – 20 September 2011

World Tourism Organiztion UNWTO – Congress on Ethics and Tourism Opens With Calls to Place Ethics at the Core of Tourism Development – 15 September 2011

ECPAT International — Europe and CIS – September 2011

ECPAT International – Largest Ever Human Rights Petition to European Commission Calls for Action to Stop Sex Trafficking of Children – 28 June 2011

Child Protection in Europe – Childs Rights Group Slams Sweden on Sex Crimes – 13 April 2011

ECPAT International – ECPAT International: Report of the World Congress III Against Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents – September 2009

By Terance Walsh
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

LONDON, United Kingdom — McCue and Partners, a British law firm, has posted a “Prosecution Kit” to guide civilians, NGOs, and governments in arresting Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.  The Kit is a dossier of evidence of human rights violations committed by Lukashenko.

McCue had originally announced that it would be compiling a prosecution file for Lukashenko last March.

The firm’s website reads, “Wherever Lukashenko travels, he now faces the prospect of prosecution. The international community of nations and its organizations has so far failed to hold Lukashenko to account and to prevent further human rights abuses in Belarus. Only the E.U. and U.S. [have] managed to maintain an intermittent travel ban: lifting it when Lukashenko promises to reform only to re-impose it when he inevitably offends again. Unless Lukashenko is prepared to face justice, a de facto people’s travel ban has now been imposed by his victims and the people of Belarus. . . .  Just as his victims have had to look over their shoulders in constant fear for their security and that of their families. Lukashenko now knows that wherever he goes he cannot evade justice.”

Matthew Jury, a partner at McCue, said, “Due to the current travel ban on Lukashenka traveling within Europe, there is no possibility at present of him traveling to our jurisdiction here in England.  As a result, what we have done — what the people of Belarus have done — [is to make] available a prosecution file.”

He identified the file as “universally available as an open source document for download on the Internet so that private lawyers, nongovernmental organizations, or even governments can file for the arrest of Lukashenka should he travel to their jurisdictions.”

The firm also promises that “[i]f Lukashenko should travel to the U.K. we confirm that we will seek a warrant for his arrest.”

Senior partner Jason McCue stated, “Dictators and rogue regimes have evaded the law for too long. They do this through brutality and jumping through loopholes in sovereign and international law. We have developed a pragmatic solution to fill the gaps. Lukashenko and other would-be dictators around the world had better sit up and pay attention to this precedent. It is to the credit of the people of Belarus that this novel human rights tool has been developed.”

The dossier comes after Belarusian citizens who claimed they were tortured by Lukashenko’s government since the disputed Belarusian election last December approached McCue.  Protests began in Belarus shortly after Lukashenko announced he won the election, securing a fourth term in office for himself.  Former Belarusian opposition candidate Ales Mikhalevich was detained and compared the detention center in which he was held to a concentration camp.

Earlier this week Andrzej Poczobut, a Polish activist living in Belarus, was banned from exiting the country after allegedly defaming Lukashenko.  The ban comes as the Eastern Partnership is set to convene this week in Warsaw to discuss relations with its member countries, including Belarus.

Belarusian rights group Charter’97 welcomes McCue’s efforts.  “McCue & Partners represent Lukashenko’s victims, their families, and the campaign group Free Belarus Now that initiated this legal action. Heading a Belarusian/international coalition of leading lawyers, it has prepared a criminal case against him on charges of torture and hostage taking. We would like to see charges brought against Lukashenko in Belarus, but his tight control of state administrative apparatus, including the courts, precludes this from happening. However, Lukashenko has committed crimes, such as torture, that punishable under international law, meaning that any government may seek to prosecute Lukashenko upon these charges under universal jurisdiction. The people of Belarus today invite Lukashenko to submit to the universal jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales or any other E.U. country where a fair trial can be guaranteed.”

The dossier created by McCue is a relatively novel concept.  “As far as we are aware, this approach hasn’t been taken before. And really, what our intent is [is] to put the power to bring [trials against] human rights abusers and those who would commit crimes against humanity into the hands of civil society rather than solely in the hands of national governments or international organizations,” Jury said. “By making this prosecution file universally available, we allow the victims themselves to decide where and when they bring a prosecution rather than leaving it in the hands of politicians and diplomats.”

Lukashenko was dubbed “Europe’s last dictator” by the United States and has faced a travel ban from the European Union since last December’s election.

“By preparing this prosecution,” McCue’s website posits, “his victims, their families and international civil society have ensured that impunity with respect to torture and electoral fraud in Europe will not stand in the 21st Century.”

For more information please see:

Polskie Radio — British Lawyers Produce Lukashenko ‘Prosecution Kit’ — 28 September 2011

Charter’97 — Global Prosecution of Europe’s Last Dictator — 27 September 2011

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — London Law Firm Publishes Torture Dossier Against Belarusian President — 27 September 2011

McCue & Partners — The Prosecution of Alexander Lukashenko, The Last Dictator in Europe