By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Managing Editor Impunity Watch

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Ibrahim Abbas Ali and his family, who fled the deadly civil war in Syria in the hopes of finding safety in neighboring Lebanon, awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of gunfire outside their tent in a makeshift refugee camp housing around 200 people. The family fled to the nearby fields. The Gunmen set fire to several tempts, including the one used by Mr. Ali and his family, destroying the few belongs the family of 18 managed to bring across the border. The family also lost their officials documents, including their U.N. refugee cards. “We lost all the aid we received from the U.N. and all we were left with are the clothes we are wearing,” Mr. Ali said.

The camp appears to have been the target of a wave of so called revenge attacks that were carried out after one of several Lebanese soldiers who was captured by militants in Syria in a cross-border wave was beheaded by jihadists earlier this months. The killing of the Shiite soldier by Sunni extremists has aggravated sectarian tensions in Lebanon, a country whose population is now about 50% refugees, which has become bitterly divided over the ongoing war in Syria.

Violence targeting the refugee population has spread to the capital where a mob of young men attacked Syrian refugees sheltering under a bridge over the weekend. In other parts of Beirut, leaflets have been dispersed calling on Syrians to leave or “be slaughtered or tortured to death.”

Gunmen attacked refugees living in a camp near the town of Brital. The residents described a night of terror that was reminiscent of the horrors they fled in Syria. Mohammed Darwish, 45, said most of the camp’s residents were sleeping on the night of Sept. 6 when gunmen, many of them wearing masks, arrived in several SUVs. “Oh you dogs. We are coming to slaughter you,” he heard the gunmen yell as they fired their weapons into the air, driving out the camp the terrified residents. Mr. Darwish said he too fled into the nearby fields with his six children. A Lebanese resident of the town of Brital said the attack was carried out by local “thugs and troublemakers” who do not represent the feelings of the Brital community.

“We live in the fear of being subjected to an attack, although we have not been threatened,” said Fatoum Allawi, 65, who fled from the northern Syrian town of Saraqib and is now sheltering near Riyak. “We are mostly women and children here with a few men who work nearby,” she said as she sat on a plastic chair holding her granddaughter.

Syrian refugees living in Lebanon have faced discrimination both from violent thugs and members of the community who resent their entering the country and members of the government who have refused to recognize their status as refugees and have refused to provide government assistance to Syrians fleeing atrocity at home. Earlier this month the Lebanese Labor Minister Sejaan Azzi proposed that all Syrian refugees should go home suggesting that they should return to rebel held or regime held areas based on their loyalties. He said, “What is at stake now is the proposal that refugees who trust the regime return to the areas under regime control, and those who have faith in Nusra Front and ISIS go to the regions under their control.”

Shortly after the Labour ministers statements the Lebanese government announced its intention to set up two camps for Syrian refugees along the border, marking the first time the government established such camps in the three year history of the deadly conflict in Syria.  Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas announced the plan last Thursday. “The Council of the Ministers has taken a decision to set up camps for Syrian refugees, one in the Bekaa valley in the Masnaa area and one in the Abda area in northern Lebanon,” Derbas said. “Estimates are that each camp could accommodate 10,000 people,” he added.

The sudden influx of refugees into the ebonies population has placed great strains on the country’s limited resources. The government has so far failed to adequately address the issue, inflaming tensions between Lebanese citizens and refugees fleeing violence in Syria, who now fear that the war has followed them across the border. Aisha Mohammed, a 26-year old Syrian refugee said she came from Syria’s northern province of Raqqa, which is now held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group and has come under increasing attack by Syrian regime warplanes. “I wish I could return to Raqqa but the bombings have intensified,” she said. “We have fled from fear in Syria and here we are living in fear in Lebanon.”

For more information Please see:

USA Today – Syria refugees attacked in Lebanon – 13 September 2014

The Daily Star: Lebanon – Lebanon minister: All Syrian refugees must return home – 5 September 2014

The Daily Star: Lebanon – Lebanon to open first Syria refugee camps: minister – 11 September 2014

The New York Times – Syrian Refugees Surpass 3 Million, U.N. Says – 29 August 2014

 

 

By Kathryn Ryan
Impunity Watch Managing Editor

DAMASCUS, Syria – On Wednesday the Fijian military announced 45 UN peacekeepers who were captured in Syria’s Golan Heights in August will be released this week “without preconditions.” At a Wednesday morning news conference in Suva, Fiji’s military chief said the Fijian government had been told by U.N. headquarters in New York that the Nusra Front had agreed to release the peacekeepers later this week. However, the fate of the detained soldiers remains unclear.

The Peacekeepers were seized by rebels loyal to the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda-affiliated rebel group. The Fijian peacekeepers had been stationed in the Golan Heights between Syria and Israel where there had been heavy fighting since Syrian rebels captured a border crossing near the village of Quneitra last month. The al-Nusra Front had initially issued several demands as a precondition for the release of the Fijian soldiers, including dropping the group from the United Nation’s list of terrorist organizations. The group claimed the captured the UN peacekeepers because the United Nation’s was “ignoring the daily shedding of Muslims’ blood in Syria” and co-operating with government forces to “facilitate its movement to strike the vulnerable Muslims” in the demilitarized zone.

Shortly after Fiji’s military chief first announced that 45 peacekeepers would be released the government later tried to retract the comments, which had already been reported around the world. Fijian brigadier general Mosese Tikoitoga said three senior Fijian military officers would arrive in the Golan Heights soon to receive the peacekeepers once they were freed. The Fijian government also announced the news on social media.

Within hours of issuing the statement the messages had been deleted from the government’s social media pages and replaced with a vague statement: “All efforts to release the Fijian peacekeepers are continuing.” Fijian military officials also contacted local media outlets acting them to retract their earlier stories on the release of the Fijian Peacekeepers

Exactly what caused the Fijian government to back away from its initial statement was initially unclear. However, it is unlikely that the Fijian government was given the green light to issue any specific statement on the situation in Syria because the United Nations typically doesn’t comment on sensitive captive situations until they are resolved. Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said he had no information about the Fijian government’s statement. The al-Nusra, which typically communicates through its Twitter page, did not issue any statements on the situation on any of its social media pages.

For more information please see:

ABC News – Fiji May Have Jumped Gun on Fate of Its UN Troops – 10 September 2014

The Wall Street Journal – Fiji Says Syria Militants to Free Peacekeepers, Then Backs Off Comments – 10 September 2014

BBC News – Syria conflict: Fiji’s mixed messages over UN peacekeepers – 9 September 2014

The New York Times – Fiji Government Says Its Golan Heights Peacekeepers Will Be Released Soon – 9 September 2014

 

A Wrong Turn for Human Rights
Op-Ed by David Tolbert, President, ICTJ

NEW YORK – The world has plunged into a period of brutality, with impunity for the perpetrators of violence. Syria is suffering untold civilian casualties as a divided United Nations Security Council sits on the sidelines. Gaza was pummeled to dust yet again with the world watching on. Iraq is in flames, with no end in sight. Atrocities are mounting in South Sudan and the Central African Republic, which are also being swept by an epidemic of sexual violence. Even Europe is not immune: a civilian aircraft was shot down over a conflict zone in eastern Ukraine, and officials were prevented from investigating.

Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and more than a decade after the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC), shockingly little is being done to stop these abuses, and the prospects of the victims ever getting justice, let alone bringing the perpetrators to account, seem ever more remote.

For many years, the world seemed to be progressing toward greater recognition of human rights and demands for justice. As democracies emerged in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s, these issues assumed increasing importance. Although wars, conflicts, and atrocities continued, the global powers tried, and occasionally managed – albeit chaotically and usually late – to stop the killing.

Moreover, the international community created frameworks for justice to deal with the consequences of violence, a move that was scarcely imaginable during the Cold War. New UN-backed international and hybrid tribunals were created to bring to account perpetrators of atrocities in the Balkans, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia. The ICC, with jurisdiction over atrocities committed in 122 member states, was established to try cases referred to it by state parties or the Security Council (even though three permanent members – the United States, Russia, and China – have not ratified or acceded to the Rome Statute, which places parties under ICC jurisdiction).

In addition, many governments, with UN support, created mechanisms for transitional justice at home, including more than 40 “truth commissions” (such as in Argentina, El Salvador, East Timor, Morocco, and South Africa), reparation programs, and prosecutions. None of these efforts has been perfect, but they have given victims a voice and recognized their suffering, while signaling to culprits that their crimes will not be forgotten. Such measures have also deeply affected, and in some cases transformed, public discourse for the better.

Today, however, the international community appears to be backsliding on its human-rights commitments. The world’s emerging powers lack any sense of urgency in addressing abuses, preferring the pursuit of narrower, short-term interests to investing in long-term peace and justice.

Without robust support from the international community, the institutions of justice are coming under pressure – and losing their momentum. Several countries have attacked the ICC; African Union members want heads of state to be immune from prosecution, thus undermining a fundamental principle of the court.

To be sure, many states undergoing political transition are doggedly pursuing some form of justice. For example, justice and human rights are at the heart of the historic peace talks in Colombia. Despite the collapse of the Arab Spring, Tunisia is pressing ahead with reforms, including the creation of a Truth and Dignity Commission.

But these societies may find it difficult to address adequately their troubled pasts without the support of international institutions. Elsewhere, the fight for human rights might become virtually impossible. Indeed, it will be hard enough to defend the human-rights gains made since the end of the Cold War, much less to expand them.

Fortunately, governments’ growing reticence about progress on human rights – if not outright obstruction – will not stop civil-society groups from continuing their fight for justice. Groups like is Argentina’s Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Mothers of Srebrenica have always bravely led the way; they will, no doubt, continue to do so.

But the absence from this process of key governments, especially the emerging powers, threatens to end the world’s all-too-brief era of accountability. It is time for the international community to redouble its resolve, regain its sense of purpose, and reaffirm, in both word and deed, its commitment to human rights and a more just world.

Originally published on September 3, 2014, on Project Syndicate