Iraqi Panel Moves to Disqualify Candidates

By Bobby Rajabi

Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The committee in charge of vetting candidates in Iraq has found that six of the winning candidates in the March 7 general election should be disqualified for their alleged ties to the former Baath government. If the move by the panel is upheld, it would alter the election result, which resulted in former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s Iraqiyya coalition winning by two seats. Iraqiyya, however, lacks to the seats to form a government.

Iraq’s Accountability and Justice Commission found that six of election winners were members of the Baath political party. This was the party of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and is banned under Iraqi law. The Committee, sometimes referred to as the De-Baathification Committee, was formed to prevent people associated with Hussein’s party from standing for elected office. Officials from the Committee, who chose to remain anonymous, told the Associated Press that of the six winners, four of them belonged to former Prime Minsters Allawi’s coalition.

Officials from the Justice and Accountability Committee told the AP that they had originally submitted fifty two names to barred from the standing in the election. However, according to the officials, Iraq’s Independent High Election Commission did not act on the recommendations of the committee. Six of the fifty two candidates subsequently went on the win their elections.

Allawi’s Iraqiyya bloc has rejected to moves of the Justice and Accountability Committee. Hamid al-Mutlaq, a winning candidate that is a member of Iraqiyya, insisted that “those six winning candidates have the approval of the election commission and this decision is a political one, not a legal one.” The Independent High Election Commission, despite ignoring the fifty two names referred to them by the Justice and Accountability Committee, ultimately barred close to fiver hundred candidates from standing for election.

The State of Law coalition leader, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, is currently mounting a legal challenge to the election. Despite this challenge, both United Nations and United States envoys to Iraq have said the the March 7 election was credible.

For more information, please see:

BBC – Call to Bar Iraq Election Winners ‘Connected to Saddam’ – 31 March 2010

New York Times – Panel in Iraq Moves to Disqualify 52 Candidates – 29 March 2010

Associated Press – Iraq Panel Wants to Bar 4 Elected on Winning List – 29 March 2010

Renewed EU Sanctions Will Impact Fiji’s Sugar Industry

By Eileen Gould
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania

SUVA, Fiji – The European Union extended its sanctions against Fiji for six more months as a result of the post-coup government’s failure to respect human rights.

The EU implemented these sanctions in 2007 after Fiji failed to follow up on its commitments on human rights, the constitution, and the postponement of parliamentary elections.

The sanctions were extended to pressure the Fiji government to restore democracy and respect human rights.

According to the advisor to the delegation of the EU in New Zealand, the European Development Fund will withhold funds as long as Fiji refuses to honor human rights and the rule of law.

A large number of the measures aimed at stopping EU development funding for the Fijian government.   The sanctions also impacted Fiji’s sugar industry.

Economists and academics alike say that the sugar sector will suffer immensely as a result of the sanctions.

Between 2006 and the present year Fiji would have received 86 million dollars of aid. However, all of the funding has expired, with the exception of 38 million US dollars available for the upcoming year.

A professor at the University of the South Pacific noted that “[b]efore the 2006 coup the European Union fund was going to be a major injection into the industry which would have supported not only the efficiency within the industry but would have rehabilitated and supported production and efficiency at the farm level.”

The foreign aid would have made the sugar industry more competitive.

The 27 countries comprising the EU were not the only ones to impose sanctions on Fiji after the December 2006 military coup.  The international community at large condemned the coup, and Australia, the United States, and New Zealand also sanctioned Fiji.

The EU claims that humanitarian aid and other support to the general public can continue.

For now, the sanctions will be in effect until at least October 1.

For more information please see:
Radio New Zealand International – Continued EU sanctions against Fiji a blow to sugar industry, says academic – 02 April 2010

Australia Network News – Europe extends Fiji sanctions – 30 March 2010

Radio New Zealand International – Fiji loses millions in EU aid with extension of sanctions against Suva – 30 March 2010

Business Day – EU extends sanctions against post-coup Fiji – 29 March 2010

Belarusian Journalist, Critic of Lukashenko Government, Stripped Of Citizenship

By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

MINSK, Belarus – A prominent Belarusian journalist and critic of the national government was stripped of his citizenship earlier this week.

Pavel Sheremet was informed by officials from the Belarusian Embassy in Moscow, where he is currently living, that his citizenship had been revoked.

The Belarusian government pointed to 2002 legislation which attached new requirements regarding Belarusian citizens who reside in other countries.  Those citizens face a possible revoking of their citizenship if they join a military, law enforcement or intelligence unit of that foreign nation.  The final order to take action against Sheremet was made by national Belarusian Security Council.

In response to the notification regarding his citizenship, Sheremet declared that he had done nothing to violate the 2002 legislation.  Since living in Moscow, he stated that he had not joined a Russian government agency of any kind.  He also questioned why, after he had been openly living in Russia for over a decade, the Belarus government decided now to take this action.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, an international non-governmental organization that attempts to protect the rights of journalists, was quick to criticize the actions of the Belarusian government and call for the re-establishing of Sheremet’s citizenship.

“Sheremet has long been critical of the regime of Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko and has been jailed, attacked, and harassed for his work in the past.  This latest official move appears as yet another act of official retaliation.  It must be stopped at once.”

Sheremet noted that “the desire to take away my Belarusian passport [was] a manifestation of aggravation of the Belarusian special services’ hysteria.”  He went to conclude that the action of Belarus was “revenge for [his] professional activities.”

Sheremet has been detained and jailed a number of times by both Belarusian and Russian authorities.  During the 2006 Belarusian Presidential election, Sheremet was jailed while covering protests that arose in its aftermath.  In 2004 Sheremet was attacked in Minsk and subsequently charged with disturbing the peace following his publishing of a biography critical of the Lukashenko government.

For more information, please see:

CHARTER 97 – Committee to Protect Journalists has called upon returning citizenship to Sharamet – 31 March 2010

CHARTER 97 – Paval Sharamet deprived of Belarusian citizenship – 31 March 2010

RADIO FREE EUROPE – Belarusian Journalist ‘Loses Citizenship’ – 31 March 2010

CPJ – More than two dozen journalists jailed in Belarus – 28 March 2006

Prisoners Escape After Yemen Jail Blast

By Ahmad Shihadah

Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

ADEN, Yemen – About 40 southern separatists escaped from a prison in Yemen after a guard lobbed a hand grenade to disperse an inmates’ protest at the facility, officials said Thursday.

The men escaped amid a melee that erupted when the grenade exploded in the prison in the southern town of Dali, the officials said. Authorities immediately imposed a curfew on the town and launched a manhunt to track down the escaped inmates.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the media, said four prisoners were wounded in the blast. The inmates were protesting their detention without trial.

Southerners in Yemen complain of neglect and discrimination by the north, and an increasingly vocal southern separatist movement has been coming to blows with the central government. The two parts of the country were separate nations before they united in 1990.

Yemen’s interior ministry on Thursday denied the police report that around 30 recently arrested prisoners had made a run for it after a bomb exploded outside a jail in the south of the country. “Information about prisoners fleeing is completely false,” the ministry said in a statement of an earlier police report that sympathizers of a southern secessionist movement had escaped from outside prison.

Also Thursday, police fired tear gas to disperse protesters in Dali and several other southern towns. The demonstrators were protesting the government’s ongoing crackdown against southern pro-secession activists.

Police officials said scores of protesters were detained. Pro-independence protests have multiplied in the south, especially on Thursdays, the start of the Muslim weekend, amid a worsening economic situation in Yemen and charges of discrimination in favor of northerners.

Elsewhere in Yemen’s south, an activist was shot dead and three others were injured when security forces dispersed a protest in the town of Radfan in Lahej province, the local official and media reports said.

Western countries and neighboring Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, fear al Qaeda is exploiting instability in Yemen to launch attacks in the region and beyond.

For more information, please see:

Reuters – Mass Escape From Yemen Jail After Blast – 1 April 2010

AP – 40 Activists Bust Out Of Yemen Prison After Blast – 1 April 2010

AFP – Yemen Denies Prisoners Fled After Bomb Blast – 1 April 2010

BBC – Prisoners Escape From Yemen Jail – 1 April 2010

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Says It Is Time for Young Politicians To Take Over

By Cindy Trinh
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania

HONIARA, Solomon Islands – The Solomon Islands’ Prime Minister, Derek Sikua, says that long-serving politicians have nothing new to offer the country and it is time to make way for the young politicians to take over the running of the country.

Sikua says that he hopes the upcoming elections will bring “a new style of politics that will help shape the Solomons’ future.”

In a report to Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat Programme, he believes that a younger generation of politicians is the answer to the long battle for democracy and peace within the country.

He stated: “Being in politics for the last four years, what I have learnt is that it’s time for change…It’s time for young people and I will be encouraging young people to come in and be in politics here.”

Sikua believes that the politicians who have served the country for a long time now have nothing new to offer the country. In fact, according to Sikua, long-standing politicians have only added to the corruption and furthered the struggle for democracy.

“Stamping out corruption is shaping up to be one of the most important election issues. Recent foreign aid has allegedly disappeared, and there are concerns that a lot of aid has been used by politicians to buy votes, rather than to improve services to the provinces.”

Sikua would like to see new guidelines put in place to ensure better accountability. He emphasizes that there needs to be more “transparency” in what is happening with foreign aid.

Sikua hopes for a better future for the Solomon Islands. Since he took office as Prime Minister, Sikua has been determined to bring change to the Solomon Islands. He stated: “I want to see a new Solomon Islands that is united, strong and God-fearing – a Solomon Islands that is secure and prosperous…[this] can only be realized though good leadership…political leadership that is honest, visionary, inclusive and consultative.”

For more information, please see:
Islands Business – Solomon Islands’ call to young politicians – 30 March 2010

Australia Network News – Solomon Islands’ call to young politicians – 29 March 2010

Islands Business – Solomon Islands: Sikua’s Vision