Oman Court Jails Newspaper Editors Over Government Corruption Allegations

September 25, 2011

By Tyler Yates
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

MUSCAT, Oman — A court in Oman has ordered two senior journalists to be jailed for five months after they insulted the justice minister. The court also ordered the closing of Ibrahim al-Maamary Yussuf and al-Haj’s newspaper, Azzaman, for one month.

Al-Mukeebli, an Omani civil servant, was also sentenced to five months in jail, presumably for giving information to the newspaper about the case.

The three men were convicted of “insulting” Justice Minister Mohamed al-Hanai and his under secretary of state by accusing them of “fraud, deception, and prevarications.”

The insults were published in Azzaman, and were included in a May 14 article alleging corruption inside the justice ministry. Specifically, the article accused the justice minister and his deputy of refusing to grant salary and grade increases to al-Mukeebli, described as a longtime civil servant.

In response to the article the justice minister brought charges of slander against the newspaper, which led to the court’s ruling.

Ahmed al-Ajmi, the defense lawyer for the three men, has succeeded in getting them freed on bail and the order closing the newspaper suspended, until an appeal on 15 October.

The newspaper will continue to operate until the appeal decision is reached.

The case has given rise to complaints about media suppression in the Gulf Arab nation, which underwent pro-reform protests earlier this year.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on the appeals court to immediately overturn the lower court’s decision, citing that the charges appear to violate international standards of freedom of expression, including the right to criticize government ministers.

“Journalists should be permitted to report freely about the government without fear of criminal charges and retribution,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at HRW. “Omani authorities shouldn’t use the courts to silence independent publications critical of the government.”

Freedom of expression is guaranteed under international human rights law. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) holds that “everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression…to seek, receive, and impart information, and ideas of all kinds.”

Oman is not party to the ICCPR, but the covenant serves as an authoritative guideline that reflects the international standard. Accepted international standards only allow restrictions of the press in extremely specific circumstances, for example cases of slander or libel against private individuals or speech that threatens national security.

For more information, please see:

Human Rights Watch — Oman: Newspaper Verdict Aims to Silence Dissent — 23 Sept. 2011

The National — Oman jails newspaper editor for slandering justice minister — 22 Sept. 2011

BBC News — Oman editors jailed for ‘insulting’ justice minister — 21 Sept. 2011

Boston Globe — Oman paper shut for month over corruption series — 21 Sept. 2011

Times of Oman — Oman journalists get jail terms for insulting minister — 21 Sept. 2011

An End to an Era of Silence: U.S. Repeals Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy

September 25, 2011

By Ryan T. Elliott
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America/Oceania

WASHINGTON D.C., United States — The policy “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) was officially repealed Wednesday. The history of the policy is an interesting one. The repeal marks a major step forward for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community. However, at the time of its enactment, the policy was viewed as a progressive step forward because it allowed individuals to serve in the military regardless of their sexual orientation.

: DADT repeal becomes effective as of September 20, 2011. (Photo courtesy of Liberty Voice)

The policy was a product, and some may say a compromise, of the Clinton Administration. The policy became a legal reality under 10 U.S.C. § 654 on December 21, 1993. The Clinton Administration also issued a Defense Directive, which provided that military applicants were not to be asked about their sexual orientation.

The policy’s well-known name is derived from its provisions, which allowed gay men and women to serve in the armed forces so long as they did not reveal their sexual identity. The government’s rationale for the policy has often been explained in terms of the negative impact that gays, lesbians and bisexuals serving openly would have on the morale, discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essential to military capability.

The “Don’t Ask” provision of the policy mandated that military officials were not to ask members to reveal their sexual orientation. This meant that superiors couldn’t investigate service members without witnessing prohibited behavior or receiving credible evidence of homosexual behavior. Meanwhile, the “Don’t Tell” provision meant that members could be discharged for claiming to be a homosexual or bisexual, or making a statement indicating a tendency towards or intent to engage in homosexual activities.

The two other, less well-known, provisions followed later. They included the “Don’t Pursue” and “Don’t Harass” provisions. The “Don’t Pursue” provision simply established the basic requirements that would be necessary in order for officials to initiate an investigation. And due to unauthorized investigations and harassment, the policy was expanded to include a “Don’t Harass,” which really applied to all service members, and directed a zero tolerance provision of harassment or violence against service members.

At its outset, the policy was thought to be an even-handed approach that would allow gays and lesbians to enlist and serve in the armed forces. However, history confirmed that the policy was anything but impartial. In fact, the policy created an environment where no one was punished for asking, but where the military discharged nearly 14,000 troops from the military for “telling.”

Realizing the unfairness of this policy, in 2008, President Obama campaigned on the promise to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” But this promise only began to gain real momentum and garner national attention after the Pentagon released a report on the issues associated with a repeal of DADT. The report gathered information from more than 100,000 surveys returned by service members and their spouses. The major findings of the study were: (1) allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly posed a “low risk” of disruption; and (2) nearly 70 percent of active-duty and reserve forces saw little or no problem with ending DADT.

However, in a 13-page section of the report, dozens of quotes reflected the attitudes of the remaining 30 percent. Among these views, the Washington Post reported that these individuals expressed fears about: (1) contracting AIDS; (2) getting leered at in the showers; (3) disturbing critical bonding at barbecues and bar outings; (4) affronts to religious beliefs; and (5) that this is not the appropriate time to make major changes in the military when we are at war and our men and women overseas.

Despite these divergent views, it is clear the latter is now in the minority. Last year, a California federal judge, Virginia Phillips, ruled that the DADT policy violates service members’ free-speech and due process rights. Now, the law that for nearly 18 years has banned gay Americans from openly serving in the armed forces was repealed Tuesday. This repeal comes nine months after Congress voted to end the law that began during the Clinton Administration.

While President Obama signed the repeal into law last December, its provisions required time for the Pentagon to prepare for the policy changes. For the estimated 65,000 gay members currently serving in the military, the years of debate and months of preparation are finally over. For the first time in the history of the United States, gay service men and women can serve openly in the armed forces without fear of being discharged.

For more information, please see:

Is the Constitutionality of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Still at Issue? – 21 September 2011

With Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ An Era Ends 20 September 2011

“The Legal Brief” — May 2010

261 DADT Discharges in 2010 – 25 March 2011

Obama calls for ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ repeal –27 January 2010

Obama Signs Away ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ – 22 December 2010

Senate Repeals Ban Against Openly Gay Military Personnel – 18 December 2010

New bill introduced to end ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ – 11 December 2010

Voices from the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ report of troops who oppose repeal – 30 November 2010

Protests in China Over Land Seizures

September 24, 2011

By: Jessica Ties
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China – Protests continue into a fourth day in China where residents are expressing anger that land taken by the government has remained idle for years.

Protests of land takings in China have led to violence by both protestors and government authorities (Photo Courtesy of Radio Free Asia). — Protests of land takings in China have led to violence by both protesters and government authorities (Photo Courtesy of Radio Free Asia).

Police have been exercising control of Guangdong’s Lufeng city as citizens protest not only the government’s taking of farmland but also the inadequate compensation paid by officials.

Reportedly, the protesters had only received 500 yuan per person, the equivalent of 78 American dollars, in compensation. The amount of compensation is shockingly low when compared to the $156 million paid by developers for the most recently seized plots.

According to Lufeng city officials, the land has been sold to be used for the development of industrial parks and high priced housing. There have also been reports that developers intend to use the land to build a luxury holiday resort, tourism villas and a neon-lit nightclub.

One protester, Chen, stated that the police “…have been sitting on that land and not using it, while more than 10,000 people in our area have no land to cultivate.”

A local resident and protest participant, Yang, estimated that between 3,000 and 4,000 people took part in the first day of protest which began on Wednesday following reports that more than 800 acres of the land that had been taken from farmers had been sold.

By Thursday several hundred armed officers and riot police were dispatched to disperse protesters. Violence increased following the detention of several protesters by police as fellow protesters attacked the police station and overturned two police cars in demanding release of those who had been detained.

According to a local resident, the four individuals who were detained haven’t been released and the police have become increasingly violent, sending several people to the hospital including two thirteen year old children who were seriously harmed.

Chen described the nature of such attacks: “[a]t about 10:00 a.m. [Thursday], the villagers were having a meeting, when [the police] suddenly drove up and starting beating people.”

The villagers retaliated against police violence by vandalizing four police cars, besieging government buildings, overturning SWAT team vehicles and attacking police officers. The clashes resulted in more than a dozen protesters being injured by police batons.

It has also been reported that residents have attacked local businesses, including a factory and a livestock farm. On Friday, hundreds of protesters gathered outside of government offices, banging gongs, chanting and carrying banners reading “Return our farmland!”

Thousands of protests, many of which become violent, by local communities in China are sparked each month by official land acquisitions that result in lucrative offers for officials while the landowner receives little compensation in return.

For more information, please see:

Reuters – Land Grab Protest in S. China Simmers for 4th Day – 24 September 2011

The Wall Street Journal – Riots Erupt Over Land in China – 24 September 2011

The New York Time – Farmer’s in China’s South Riot Over Seizure of Land – 23 September 2011

Radio Free Asia – Protests Intensify After Clashes – 23 September 2011

“Responsibility to protect has arrived,” UN Secretary-General says

September 24, 2011

By Polly Johnson
Senior Desk Officer, Europe

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon delivered remarks at a roundtable discussion on Friday in New York (Photo Courtesy of UN News Centre).

NEW YORK, United States – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed the importance of the “responsibility to protect” populations from genocide, war crimes, and atrocities at the Ministerial Roundtable Discussion on Responsibility to Protect: Responding to Imminent Threats of Mass Atrocities, held in New York yesterday and co-hosted by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Guatemala, in association with the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect.

Ban, who delivered remarks at the meeting, began by noting that Responsibility to Protect, which has become known as “R2P” is at a “critical moment,” as since its endorsement by the World Summit in 2005, “this doctrine has gone from crawling to walking to running.”

R2P’s mission and doctrine is rooted in protecting populations from crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and atrocities. The roundtable discussion was meant to share ideas, discuss responses and policy instruments, and initiative effective and coordinated international responses.

Focusing his remarks on how to put R2P’s mission into action, Ban noted that information and assessments about states under stress must be shared. “Effective prevention requires early, active and sustained engagement,” he said, adding that R2P and the international community “need to look at our development, capacity-building and peace-building programmes through the lens of atrocity prevention to be sure they are healing fissures within societies, not deepening them.”

Ban cited specific examples. He noted that in Libya, “the international community found the will and the means to respond.”

However, such responses are not the norm. He cited Syria and Juba as examples of places where authorities have failed to meet their responsibility to protect.

Ban’s office will collaborate with other UN groups to conduct training sessions on genocide prevention and the R2P in South Sudan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Colombia and Cambodia, among other places.

Mr. Ban concluded hopefully, commending the “remarkable progress to date” and sustained efforts contributing to the momentum. “Let us do our utmost to ensure that this umbrella of protection covers all who need it.”

For more information, please see:

UN News Centre – Responsibility to protect principle must cover all who need it, Ban says – 23 September 2011

UN Secretary-General Office of the Spokesperson – Secretary-General’s remarks at Breakfast Roundtable with Foreign Ministers on “The Responsibility to Protect: Responding to Imminent Threats of Mass Atrocities” – 23 September 2011

Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect – Joint Statement: Ministerial Roundtable Discussion on Responsibility to Protect: Responding to Imminent Threats of Mass Atrocities – 23 September 2011

Ministerial Roundtable Discussion on

Responsibility to Protect: Responding to Imminent Threats of Mass Atrocities

Migrants Exposed to Sub-Human Living Conditions, the EU’s “Hands are Dirty,” says HRW

September 24, 2011

By Alexandra Halsey-Storch
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

BRUSSELS, The Netherlands — On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch issued a twelve-page report, entitled The EU’s Dirty Hands, which provides extensive evidence demonstrating a European agency’s role in exposing migrants to severe human rights violations.

Immigrant Detainees in Lesvros, Greece. (Photo Curtesy of Freepressers.com)

Frontex was established on October 26, 2004 as an executive agency of the European Union (“EU”). Its purpose has been to generate “cooperation between EU member states on issues of border enforcement.” Since its establishment, Frontex has played “a key role in enforcing EU immigration policy.” While participating states, like Greece, provide the “manpower and material support,” Frontex employees help to “manage the influx of migrants [including those seeking asylum] into the north-eastern region of Greece along the Evros River bordering Turkey, among other places.”

Commencing in July 2007, Frontex operations were supplemented with the Rapid Border Intervention Team (“RABIT”), designed “as an emergency measure in response to the arrival of a large number of migrants to Greece.” As part of the RABIT mission, Frontex personnel were “authorized to apprehend migrants and then transfer them to Greek counterparts who ran detention centers in Greece.”

The European Court for Human Rights noted in M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece that Greek detention practices violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights which strictly prohibits torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, and called the current asylum system “dysfunctional.” The Court went on to hold that Belgium violated the human rights of an Afghan asylum seeker when the State transported him back to Greece. Arguably, Frontex could be liable for such participation under this decision. Human Rights Watch seeks to extend this holding to Frontex, which is bound by the European Convention, by arguing that the Agency is “also responsible for having knowingly exposed migrants to treatment which is absolutely prohibited under human rights law.”

During Frontex’s RABIT mission, Human Rights Watch conducted an investigation of various detention centers in the Evros region of Greece in December 2010. While there, they found that Greek authorities held “migrants, including members of vulnerable groups, such as unaccompanied children, for weeks or months in conditions that amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment.”

At one detention center, men, women and children are all herded together in a cell where “sewage was running on the floors. According to the Greek guards, this was because the prisoners broke the toilets, while protesting their conditions. The smell was hard to bear, and Greek guards wore surgical masks when they entered the passageway between the large barred cells,” reported Human Rights Watch.

Another detention center held 130 detainees while police authorities reported that the space was meant to hold 48. Furthermore, migrants were forced to “sleep on pieces of cardboard or directly on the concrete floors.” The detainees were given bottles in which to urinate because they did not have access to toilets. They were escorted by prison guards to a field to defecate.

At yet another detention center, 120 migrants were being held in a space meant for 30 people. One boy recounted that for seven days he had been sleeping in the toilet because there was no other space.

A 17-year-old Iraqi boy explained that he tried to escape, but he was caught. “They beat me a lot on my neck, legs, head. They kicked me…for fours hours they tied my hands to the bars…and they threw water on me…I was beaten for 30 minutes or one hour. Everybody beat me. I was not taken to the doctor. I was injured on my fingers, and my nail fell off. For two weeks I couldn’t sleep because I was in so much pain.”

In a separate report issued by Doctors Without Borders, it was revealed that more than “60 percent of the migrant’s medical conditions are directly caused by or linked to the degrading conditions.” 1,147 out of 1,809 patients treated between December 10 and March 2011 were diagnosed with respiratory tract infections, body pains, diarrhea, gastrointestinal disorders, psychological conditions, and skin diseases, all health problems directly related to poor living conditions.

While many of the detainees come to Greece seeking asylum from the turmoil in their own countries, Greece is currently in the midst of its own turbulent financial crisis. At least some of the degrading human rights violations are likely to be an effect of Greece’s fiscal woes. A commander at one of the detention centers explained that, “they simply do not have the ability to provide better standards: we owe money to laundry and food providers. The detainees don’t have soap now because the supermarket that provided this is fed up. We asked again and again. Some people buy from their own money. When we get help it is usually not from our state but from others.”

The report has been met with some resistance. For example, EU spokeswoman, Michele Cercone commented in Brussels that, “the logic of placing part of the blame on Frontex was entirely flawed. We’re aware that conditions in some of these centers are unacceptable. But Greek authorities alone bore the responsibility for that.”

Futhermore, Frontex spokesman said that, “the agency welcomed much of the new report, but…transporting migrants to centers where they were interviewed and identified did not constitute complicity in abuse.”

Greek officials have made no immediate comment.

For more information, please visit:

Forbes Magazine – Rights Group: EU Agency Exposing Migrants to Abuse – 21 Sept. 2011

Human Rights Watch – The EU’s Dirty Hands – 21 September 2011

The Washington Post – Rights Group Says EU Border Enforcement Agency Exposing Migrants to Abuse in Greek Detention – 21 September 2011

Doctors Without Borders – Greece: Migrants’ Medical Problems Due to Inhumane Detention Conditions – 15 June 2011