A Voice for the Voiceless

Oil-rich Nigeria’s Lack of Sanitation Contributing to Cholera Outbreak

Child treated for cholera at a rural clinic in Nigeria- Photo Courtesy of AP
Child treated for cholera at a rural clinic in Nigeria- Photo Courtesy of AP

By Laura Hirahara
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa
LAGOS, Nigeria – In Nigeria, a country that earns billions as one of Africa’s biggest oil exporters, half the country, approximately seventy-five million, lack access to clean water and proper sanitation facilities or services.  In the country’s rural population, two-thirds of Nigerians do not have access to clean water.  When rains are heavy and flooding occurs, which happened this year, raw sewage drains down hill in the villages, contaminating ground well water sources.  Nigeria’s rural populations also suffer from poorly staffed hospitals and clinics.  All of these factors have contributed to a recent cholera outbreak that has spread to several Nigerian states and into bordering countries.

Since January of this year, 1,555 people have died in Nigeria from cholera out of over 38,000 reported cases.  Women and children account for about eighty percent of these deaths.  Paula Fedeski, spokeswoman for UNICEF in Nigeria, told Reuters, “The rains this year have been very severe . . . [The cholera outbreak]  is considerably worse this year.”  UNICEF believes the outbreak originated in Nigeria and then spread to its bordering nations of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin, a country of particular concern since the floods earlier this year that have contributed to the deadliness of this outbreak covered about two-thirds of Benin.

Cholera is a water born disease marked by symptoms of abdominal pain, leg cramping, severe diarrhea and vomiting.  Death can occur within hours as the result of severe dehydration and shock if left untreated.  Outbreaks occur when a water source becomes contaminated, usually from the feces of an infected individual.  The floods this year in Nigeria and the surrounding region have only compounded the sanitation and drainage problems present throughout so much of the country.

Local officials have been working to remedy the situation.  Working in their communities, officials have chlorinated water supplies including rural wells and are providing education on the causes of cholera.  Many hope that this, coupled with the coming dry season, will lessen the severity of the outbreak soon.  For the time being, the outbreak is being labeled as the worst since the 1991 outbreak that killed over 7,500 people in Nigeria alone.

For more information, please see;

UK Guardian- Cholera Kills More Than 1,500 in Nigeria– 26 October, 2010

The Canadian Press- Cholera Deaths in Nigeria Rise to More Tan 1,500 as Disease Threatens Flooded Benin– 25 October, 2010

CNN- Cholera Kills 1,555 in Nigera, Says U.N.– 26 October, 2010

US: Khadr Sentencing Should Reflect Juvenile Status

Human Rights Watch

NEW YORK, New York, United States – The military commission sentencing jury at Guantanamo should fully take into account Omar Khadr’s status as a former child soldier captured when he was 15, Human Rights Watch said today. According to media reports, Khadr accepted a plea deal on October 25, 2010, to purported war crimes and other charges, making the US the first Western nation since World War II to convict someone for acts committed as a child in a war crimes tribunal.

“The US treatment of Omar Khadr has been at odds with international standards on juvenile justice and child soldiers from the very beginning,” said Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “As the military jurors consider sentencing this week, they need to take Khadr’s status as a child offender into account.”

Khadr, a Canadian citizen, has already spent more than eight years in US military custody. The terms of the plea deal have not yet been made public. Khadr was facing life in prison on the charges against him, which included murder and attempted murder in violation of the laws of war, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism, and spying.

A sentencing hearing, which is scheduled to begin on October 26, 2010, will still take place, and a lesser sentence could be imposed. During the hearing, prosecutors plan to put forward 10 sentencing witnesses and the defense four. A military jury of seven will listen to sentencing evidence and then decide upon a sentence, which will be imposed if it less than that reached by the plea agreement.

“The US government’s failure to taken into account Khadr’s age should not persist at his sentencing,” Becker said. “The US Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that adolescents lack the experience, perspective, and judgment of adults and should be treated differently.”

Khadr, now 24, was prosecuted for the killing of US Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer. Speer was killed on July 27, 2002, after US forces entered a compound in Afghanistan where Khadr and others were located and a firefight ensued. Prosecutors alleged that during the firefight, Khadr threw the grenade that killed Speer and wounded others. Khadr was also seriously wounded in the firefight with two bullet wounds in his chest.

After Khadr was captured, he was taken to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. While there he was forced into painful stress positions, threatened with rape, hooded, and confronted with barking dogs. The government’s own witnesses confirmed some of this treatment when they testified that Khadr was interrogated while strapped down on a stretcher just 12 hours after sustaining his life-threatening injuries. They also testified he was threatened with rape if he did not cooperate.

In October 2002, Khadr was transferred to Guantanamo where the abuse continued. He told his lawyers that he was shackled in painful positions, told he would be sent to Egypt, Syria, or Jordan for torture, and used as a “human mop” after he urinated on the floor during one interrogation session.

He was deprived of all access to legal counsel until November 2004, more than two years after he was first detained. At some point during his interrogations, Khadr confessed to throwing the grenade that killed Speer, although up until today he had recanted that confession on the basis that it was coerced.

While child offenders may be prosecuted for war crimes, the US has failed throughout Khadr’s detention to afford him the protections provided to children under international law. Under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (Optional Protocol), which the United States ratified in 2002, the US is obligated to recognize the special situation of children who have been recruited or used in armed conflict.

The Optional Protocol requires the rehabilitation of former child soldiers within a state party’s jurisdiction, mandating that states provide “all appropriate assistance for their physical and psychological recovery and their social reintegration.” Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the US is a signatory, governments should ensure that the imprisonment of a child offender “shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.”

“The recruitment and use of child soldiers is regarded as a serious human rights abuse and international standards for dealing with former child soldiers emphasize rehabilitation, not punitive approaches,” Becker said.

Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, is currently in Guantanamo Bay and will be monitoring the sentencing proceedings.

For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Guantanamo, please visit:
http://www.hrw.org/en/category/topic/counterterrorism

For more information, please contact:
In Guantanamo Bay, Andrea Prasow (English): prasowa@hrw.org; follow tweets at http://twitter.com/andreaprasow
In New York, Jo Becker (English): +1-212-216-1236; or +1-914-263-9643(mobile); or beckerj@hrw.org
In New York, Joanne Mariner (English): +1-212-216-1218; or +1-917-647-4588 (mobile); or marinej@hrw.org
In New York, Laura Pitter (English): +1-212- 216-1897; or +1-917-450-4361 (mobile); or pitterl@hrw.org

WHISTLEBLOWER SITE WIKILEAKS REPORTS MASS KILLING OF IRAQI CIVILIANS WHILE U.S. IGNORED ABUSE

By Erica Laster                                                                                                                                    Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

WASHINGTON, United States – Nearly 400,000 classified military documents have been leaked via the whistleblower website Wikileaks on Friday, the largest security breach in U.S. military history.  Despite the Geneva conventions protocols, the reports indicate that  unwarranted attacks on unarmed Iraqi civilians have taken place over the last several years and that Iraqi military and police forces abuse of power is the main contributor to the mass killing of civilians, torture and prison abuse. 

Wikileaks Show Massive Civilian Death and Murder By Iraqi Forces as U.S. Turns A Blind Eye
Wikileaks Show Massive Civilian Death and Murder By Iraqi Forces as U.S. Turns A Blind Eye

An additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions on the protection of victims of international armed conflicts states that a person who ‘clearly expresses an intention to surrender’ is ‘hors de combat’ and therefore ‘shall not be made the object of attack,” notes German paper Der Spiegel.

Many of the documents also implicate Iran, detailing their role in supporting the war by supplying Iraqi militia with deadly roadside bombs and other lethal weapons.  According to the Times, Iran voluntarily trained Iraqi militia as snipers and the use of explosives.  The Times further reported that the Quds Forces of Iran urged extremists to kill Iraqi officials.

The International community is considering the imposition of war crimes against the perpetrators with the surfacing of the reports.  Soldiers and marines who have testified over the past several years regarding atrocities and war crimes in Iraq have largely been ignored. By the media which refuses to tell their stories and politicians who use “troops” to gain support from voters and to cynically promote their ‘patriotism’ despite ignoring veterans upon their return.  Despite the fact that the public remains largely ignorant and misinformed, soldiers, civilians and those courageous enough to speak now have 400,000 leaked, classified military documents to support their stories.

Disturbing recounts from veterans, current serviceman and the leaked report confirm that Iraqi citizens have been killed at an alarming rate.  One event involved an older couple speeding past a poorly marked checkpoint.  One soldier notes that “the guys got spooked and decided it was a possible threat, so they shot up the car. And they literally sat in the car for the next three days while we drove by them day after day.”  The couple was eventually buried by the townspeople and troops admitted to journalist Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian that these were common events.   

In December of 2006 alone, over 3,800 civilians were reported killed by Iraqis and sometimes, by U.S. forces at various checkpoints, from helicopters and during operations in the country.  One instance in which a U.S. Apache helicopter sustained fire from Iraqi forces is most revealing.  Upon their surrender, the U.S. pilots made a phone call to an attorney who informed them that enemies could not surrender to air units and the pilots opened fire, killing the Iraqis despite their surrender.  

The Pentagon denied all charges of abuse.  “We vetted every single one of the documents, word by word, page by page,’ U.S. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told CNN, indicating that if there were any indication of war crimes “we would have investigated it a long time ago.’

The reports go onto indicate that orders were given to U.S. soldiers prohibiting the investigations of the torture of Iraqis.   The publication of the reports is the largest security breach in U.S. military history and the Pentagon widely criticized their release.  The release comes at a time when the Iraqi government is at its most vulnerable.  Under a 2009 bilateral contract, the U.S. lost the right to detain Iraqis in 2009, leaving Iraqi forces in charge. 

Iraq Body Count, a group based in Britain tracking civilian deaths found 15,000 previously unreported deaths, raising the count to over 122,000 civilian deaths since the start of the war. 

Photo Courtesy of the Huffington Post – For More Information Please Visit:

Raw Story – Spiegel: WikiLeaks Logs May Reveal War Crimes – 22 October 2010

Huffington Post – Before Wikileaks, Iraq War Vets Revealed War Crimes – 22 October 2010

India Talkies – Compelling Evidence of War Crimes In Leaked Iraq Documents – 23 October 2010

PushPi Live News – Compelling Evidence of War Crimes In Iraq: Wikileaks  – 23 October 2010

Journalist’s Murder May Be Linked to Drugs-for-Votes Scheme

By Patrick Vanderpool
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Francisco Gomes de Medeiros, a Brazilian crime journalist, was gunned down in front of his home in northeastern Brazil.  The murder occurred last Monday and the police have since apprehended a man they believe to be responsible for the shooting.  Officials report that Gomes died instantly from five gunshot wounds.

Gomes, who routinely received death threats as a result of his criminal reporting,  recently claimed that political candidates were trading drugs for votes in Rio Grande do Norte.  Gomes declined to give specific political candidates’ names, and said that the cocaine-for-votes scheme was the work of people running for seats in the state legislature.

Only days after the arrest, police arrested João Francisco dos Santos, claiming that Santos committed the murder.  According to the police officials, Santos held a grudge against Gomes because Santos felt that Gomes’ coverage of a robbery that Santos had committed in 2007 convinced the judge to sentence him to eighteen months in jail instead of the seven months that Santos expected.

Although Santos has admitted to the shooting, police are not ruling out that the murder is connected to Gomes’ reports about the political drug trading scandal.

Emanuel Soares Carneiro, president of the Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Stations said in a statement, “[Gomes] is one more victim of the violence committed against journalists that seek to tell the truth to society.”

Gomes’ murder is just one of many in an ongoing battle between the media and Brazilian criminals who wish to silence the truth.  One day before Gomes was killed, three men broke into the home of the owner of a small newspaper in Sao Paulo state and shot and killed him.  Police were unable to identify any suspects in the shooting.

According to media watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists, 20 Brazilian journalists, most of whom exposed cases of corruption, have been murdered between 1994 and 2009.  Sidney Silva, who worked with Gomes at Radio Caico, believes that the murder is directly linked to Gomes’ journalistic work.  Silva described Gomes as “an excellent person and professional who will be missed.”

For more information, please see:

Radio-Info.com – A Radio Crime Reporter is Gunned Down in Brazil – 22 October 2010

Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas – Journalist’s Confessed Killer Arrested in NE Brazil – 21 October 2010

Latin American Herald Tribune – Journalist Slain in Brazil – 20 October 2010

The Washington Post – Crime Reporter Murdered on Northeastern Brazil – 20 October 2010

Ethiopia Accused of Using International Aid to Silence Opposition

By Daniel M. Austin
Impunity Watch Reporter,  Africa

 

Ethiopian government official at a food distribution center in Jijiga, Ethiopia (Photo Courtesy of Barry Malone, Reuters).
A government official monitoring supplies at a food distribution center in Jijiga, Ethiopia. (Photo Courtesy of Barry Malone, Reuters).

 

NAROBI, Kenya – The Ethiopian government is denying claims it used international aid as a weapon against opposition groups. A recently published report from the Human Rights Watch (HRW) finds the Ethiopian government withheld international aid, including food and micro-loan payments, from political opponents. HRW believes international aid was withheld to suppress opposition groups ahead of the country’s May 2010 election.

During these elections, the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, won all but one of the 536 seats in Ethiopia’s parliament. This result stands in sharp contrast to the last election cycle in 2005, when 170 seats of parliament were captured by opposition groups. After the May elections, opposition groups took to the streets to protest. The government moved to crush these protests, ultimately killing over 200 people in the process.

In response, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs insists the HRW report is inaccurate. To substantiate their claim, the government points to an investigation carried out in January 2010 by the Development Assistant Group that investigated similar claims of corruption. This investigation found the distribution process of international aid was adequate, and the appropriate safeguards were in place to allow for equitable allocation of aid. The Ministry believes these accusations are an attempt to blackmail the Ethiopian government as part of HRW’s personal vendetta against them.

Human Rights Watch claims this report was based on an extensive six month investigation, which included interviews with over 200 people in 53 villages across three regions of Ethiopia. The findings across the nations were consistent; people had been denied aid or loans because they either supported an opposition party or had views that opposed the sitting government. Consequently, food, housing, fertilizer, seeds, and micro loans were denied to opposition group supporters. Furthermore, some sources claim that disagreeing with the ruling government can also limit admission into the country’s university and even the type of employment opportunities available.

Since Ethiopia is a strategic western ally in the troubled Horn of Africa, it has been receiving generous amounts of international aid. Specifically, the amount of international aid the government receives has doubled between 2004 and 2008. In 2008, Ethiopia received over $3 billion dollars (U.S.) from the international community.

For more information, please see:

BBC Africa — Ethiopia used aid to bribe voters – Human Rights Watch – 19 October 2010.

Ezega — Ethiopia Rejects Human Rights Watch Allegations – 20 October 2010.

AFP — Ethiopia using aid to suppress dissent: rights group – 19 October 2010.

Macon — Rights group: Ethiopia denying opposition aid – 19 October 2010.

The Globe and Mail — Ethiopia using Canadian aid as a political weapon, rights group says – 19 October 2010.