Suicide Bombers Kill Dozens

By Michael E. Sanchez
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan- A third explosion has struck the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, just hours after suicide bombers killed at least 45 people and injured 100.

Two suicide bomb attacks executed 15 seconds apart tore through the city on Friday, killing at least 39 people and sparking fears of a new wave of militant violence in major cities following a period of relative calm.  The targets of the dual attack were Pakistani military vehicles as they passed through a crowded market known as the RA bazaar.  Lahore police official Chaundhry Shafiq said the bombers detonated explosive filled vests after walking up to the vehicles.

Mohammed Nadeem, an eyewitness to the attack, said he was praying in a mosque when he heard the fire blast and rushed out only to hear a second. Mr. Nadeem, in blood stained clothes said “The second blast took place very near a military vehicle…I sensed real danger and started running.  There were scenes of destruction in nearby restaurants and shops.”  Afzal Awan, another eyewitness, said he had seen wounded people with limbs missing lying in pools of blood.  He told reporters “I saw smoke rising everywhere… a lot of people were crying.”

In total more than 95 people were injured in the explosions, and at least nine soldiers were killed.  No immediate reports were given on the third explosion, but a report has suggested that it occurred near a police station.  No group has claimed responsibility for that attack.

These attacks come four days after a suicide car bomb attack at a building that houses terrorism investigations in Lahore killed at least 13 people and wounded 80 others.

Lahore is Pakistan’s second largest city and its cultural captial.  Lahore has been the scene for some of the deadliest bomb attacks in the country last year, including blasts in December which occurred in a crowded bazaar which killed 48 people, and a raid on the provincial headquarters of Pakistan’s spy agency in May that killed at least 27.

These attacks are carried out by Islamic extremists in retaliation against military offensives that routed Taliban militants from the volatile Swat Valley region and section of the tribal areas along the Afghan border.  The violence has killed more than 600 people.  Although the success of the offensives had recently given Pakistanis confidence that they were gaining the upper hand against the extremists, but a new wave of suicide bombings in Pakistan’s major cities could undermine that momentum.

“The nation and its security forces need to keep morale high,” said Rana Sanaullah, law minister for Punjab province, where Lahore is located.  “We can only win this fight with unity.”

For more information, please see:

LA Times- Suicide Bombers Kill 39 in Pakistan– 12 March 2010
Aljazeera.net- Pakistan Suicide Blasts Kill Dozens– 12 March 2010

Sri Lankan General Stages Hunger Strike

By Alok Bhatt
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – General Sarath Fonseka, a former commander of Sri Lanka’s armof Sri Lanka’s arm and a significant player in Sri Lanka’s war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam, has recently undertaken a hunger strike.  The General’s hunger strike signifies his protest against unfair detention by the Sri Lankan government.  The strike also follows the deprivation of the General’s phone rights to communicate with his wife.  General Fonseka had already invoked numerous concerns regarding his health because he refused to eat anything other than the food his wife delivered to him during allowed visits.

The denial of the General’s telephone rights coincides with what could have been a significant step towards exposing humanitarian violations in Sri Lanka.  The General’s continued denial of rights comes after Sri Lankan government’s vehement rejection of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s idea to establish an expert panel to review alleged human rights violations perpetrated during the quarter-century long war against the Tamil Tigers.  The UN and various human rights groups have consistently accused Sri Lanka of denying the Tamil ethnic minorities, who are regarded internally displaced persons subsequent to  the end of Sri Lanka’s bloody conflict, essential necessities while housing them in derisory, unsanitary refugee camps.  The government was more recently accused of extra-judicial killing of suspected Tamil Tigers, but claimed that the video evidence depicting these illegal executions had been doctored to create false allegations.

General Fonseka’s arrest was suspiciously predicated upon human rights violations during the struggle against the Tamil Tigers.  However, it has become clear that the President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, ordered the arrest because General Fonseka opposed him in Sri Lanka’s post-war elections.  Both men were considered heroes by Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese ethnic majority following the end of the war.  However, General Fonseka’s resignation from Sri Lanka’s army in November 2009 and his subsequent participation in the elections to run against Rajapaksa caused a fall-out between two men.

Initially, General Fonseka had access to his wife, lawyer, and doctor.  However, the Sri Lankan government appears to have become concerned that the General may divulge to the UN information regarding human rights violations and the deaths of over 20,000 civilians.  The government’s actions, however, only raise further suspicions and represents a continuation of Sri Lanka’s history of human rights violations.

For more information, please see:

Al-Jazeera – Fonseka begins hunger strike – 07 March 2010

Sify News – General Fonseka starts hunger strike – 07 March 2010

Times Online – General Sarath Fonseka on a hunger strike… – 07 March 2010

More Witnesses Plan to Testify at Future Hearings for Solomon’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission

By Cindy Trinh
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania

HONIARA, Solomon Islands – The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Solomon Islands says more witnesses have volunteered to testify at future hearings into the ethnic tensions.

The Commission recently held its first public hearing regarding the ethnic tensions. The first hearing’s main concern was the conflict that has left 100 people dead and 20,000 displaced between 1998 and 2003.

The Commission says it will hold seven more public hearings this year, with the next to be held on the island of Malaita on April 10, 2010.

The chairman of the Commission, Reverend Sam Ata, says victims of ethnic tensions are calling on their perpetrators to come forward so they can be reconciled.

Amnesty International has called on the government to protect those who speak publicly because it says there is a “danger of reprisals.”

But Ata says rather than expressing fear of reprisals, the victims have “issued a powerful message of reconciliation to the perpetrators of violence.”

Ata stated: “That’s the message they have put across to the country, that they are willing to forgive them and reconcile with them, so I don’t know if there is a fear there after the victims have made a plea for these people to come forward, then that is something else.”

Ata worries that reprisals would be difficult, but he acknowledged the possibility.

Jo O’Brien, correspondent for a news station in Solomon Islands, reported: “The first hearing into the conflict…concluded yesterday. Nineteen witnesses gave testimony, including a woman who lost her husband, brother and niece, a man whose father was tortured by militants, and a Guadalcanal woman who was attacked because she married a man from Malaita. During the hearing there were calls for perpetrators to come forward and tell their stories, and the Commission’s chairman, Father Sam Ata said it will invite them to testify because they also need to heal.”

The Minister for National Unity, Reconciliation and Peace, Sam Iduri, says the “level of public support and interest in the hearing has far surpassed the ministry’s expectations.”

For more information, please see:
Radio New Zealand International – More volunteers to testify at Solomons Truth Commission – 11 March 2010

Radio New Zealand International – Solomons Truth Commission advocates reconciliation – 11 March 2010

Impunity Watch – Solomon’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission Plans to Have its First Hearing – 07 March 2010

Growing Concern Over Disappearance of Fiji Politician

By Cindy Trinh
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania

SUVA, Fiji – The Fiji Democracy and Freedom Movement, based in Australia, has expressed its concern about a former parliamentarian, Peceli Rinakama, who has not been seen in almost a week.

Reports from Fiji say the whereabouts of Rinakama are unknown. He was reportedly seized by the military and it is not know where he has been taken.

Attempts to get information from the interim government have been unsuccessful. The military and the interim government have declined to comment on the matter.

During the recent trial of eight men accused of plotting to kill the Fiji Prime Minister, a witness stated that Rinakama was gathering ex-military personnel for the case.

Rinakama was accused of being involved in the plot back in 2007, when the conspirators were first arrested. However, Rinakama was released and the charges against him were dropped. The other conspirators were recently convicted.

As Rinkama’s whereabouts remain unknown, a representative from the Fiji Democracy and Freedom Movement, Usaia Peter Waqatairewa, has accused the interim regime of failing to guarantee the safety of its citizens.

Wagatairewa states: “We are very concerned that this politician has disappeared for five days going on to six days now, and we have not had any word from anybody.”

He further expressed his concerns about the military’s actions. He stated: “They can’t guarantee the safety of the people. This regime has failed in its duty as the government of Fiji under the International Declaration of Human Rights to guarantee the safety of its citizens.”

For more information, please see:
Solomon Star – No trace of Fiji politician Rinakama seized by military – 11 March 2010

Radio New Zealand International – As Fiji regime stays silent, concern grows over politician seized by soldiers – 11 March 2010

Radio New Zealand International – Fiji Freedom Movement concerned about politician not seen for six days – 11 March 2010

Radio New Zealand International – No trace of Fiji politician Rinakama seized by military – 10 March 2010

Church Abuse Allegations Rock Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands

By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe Desk

AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands – Dutch Roman Catholic bishops have ordered an independent inquiry into over 200 reported cases of alleged sexual abuse of children by priests, with investigations slated to begin “as soon a possible.”  The Dutch Catholic Church also issued a statement offering its apologies to the victims. The allegations, which first centered on a monastery school in the eastern part of the Netherlands, soon sparked dozens more allegations across the country. 

New allegations of abuse have not been confined the the Netherlands; on Tuesday it emerged that Bruno Becker, head of a monastery in Salzburg, Austria, confessed to having abused a boy forty years ago when he was a monk. Church authorities quickly accepted his resignation on Monday.

Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said that the sexual abuse scandals were particularly reprehensible in light of the educational and moral responsibilities of the Catholic Church. He also said that Church institutions in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands have “demonstrated their desire for transparency and, in a certain sense, accelerated the emergence of the problem by inviting victims to speak out, even when the cases involved date[s] many years ago.”

Father Lombardi also denied that the Vatican has tried to erect a “wall of silence” around the scandals.

On Monday, German justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger accused the Vatican of erecting the “wall of silence” surrounding abuse cases, and said that the Vatican secrecy rules were complicating German efforts to investigate the claims of abuse. Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger also cited a 2001 rule from the Vatican requiring abuse cases to be investigated internally as having hindered investigations.

There are currently investigations into abuse allegations underway in eighteen of Germany’s twenty-seven Roman Catholic dioceses. In January, pupils at the Jesuit-run Canisius College in Berlin were the first to come forward with allegations of abuse, prompting many others to come forward in subsequent weeks.

Allegations that abuse occurred at a church choir in the Regensburg Diocese have made the Vatican particularly uneasy. The choir was run from 1964-1993 by Pope Benedict XVI’s elder brother, Father Georg Ratzinger.  The abuse, however, is alleged to have occurred before Father Ratzinger took charge of the choir. Although he has denied any knowledge of the sex abuse cases, he admitted that he knew discipline was strict, and said that he had, himself, sometimes slapped students in the face.  He told the Passauer Neue Presse:

“Pupils told me on concert trips about what went on. But it didn’t dawn on me from their stories that I should do something. I was not aware of the extent of these brutal methods.” He added: “At the start, I also slapped people in the face, but I always had a bad conscience.”

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the head of the German Bishops, has apologized for the abuse, and is scheduled to meet with the Pope later this week to discuss the scandal. The German Catholic Church has pledged to investigate all 170 allegations of abuse and to investigate whether Pope Benedict XVI knew about the sex scandals when he was a bishop in Bavaria between 1977 and 1994. Father Karl Jüsten, spokesman for the Bishops’ Conference in Germany, said:

“We do not know if the Pope knew about the abuse cases . . . However, we assume that this is not the case.”

The abuse cases have  prompted German legislators to discuss the possibility of changing Germany’s statute of limitations to allow for the prosecution of priests.

 For more information,  please see:

The Times Online – German Catholic Church pledges to investigate all 170 allegations of abuse – 11 March 2010

BBC – Dutch Bishops order abuse inquiry – 10 March 2010

Deutsche Welle – Archbishop will report to Pope on abuse in German church schools – 10 March 2010

Radio Netherlands World Wide – Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal widens – 10 March 2010

BBC – Vatican accused over German sex abuse allegations – 8 March 2010