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U.S. Submits Draft Resolution on North Korea to the U.N.
By Christine Khamis
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia
PYONGYANG, North Korea –
The United States has submitted a draft resolution to the Security Council which imposes more strict sanctions on North Korea due to its recent nuclear weapon test and missile launch. The United States is backed by China on the resolution and a vote is expected to take place within the next several days.
The draft resolution calls for U.N. member states to inspect all cargo shipping to or from North Korea. Previously, states only had an obligation to inspect cargo passing through their territories if they had reasonable grounds to suspect that there was any illegal cargo. Any ships under suspicion of transporting illegal goods will be blocked from using ports worldwide.
Additionally, the draft resolution proposes a ban on the transfer of any item to North Korea that could strengthen the capabilities of its armed forces. The supply of fuel for aviation programs will also be banned under the resolution, among other sanctions.
The United States and China held negotiations on the draft resolution for several weeks, followed by talks in Washington this week between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
North Korea has been under sanctions by the United Nations since 2006 due to its continued nuclear tests and rocket launches. It currently is banned from importing and exporting nuclear and missile equipment.
North Korea’s recent missile launch and nuclear test are viewed among the international community as a violation of U.N. resolutions. If the resolution is approved, it will include the strongest sanctions instituted by the Security Council in over two decades.
China previously seemed reluctant to take measures against North Korea as its neighbor and it has differed from the United States in its opinions on what measures to take against North Korea. The United States has argued for punitive measures, while China has caked for more tempered measures. North Korea’s missile launch and nuclear test may have been a factor in China’s newly hardened resolve against North Korea.
North Korea currently does 90% of its trade with China. The draft resolution’s proposed sanctions would not prohibit trade between North Korea and China.
For more information, please see:
BBC News – North Korea: US Submits Tougher Sanctions to UN – 26 February 2016
Reuters – U.S., Backed by China, Proposes Tough N.Korea Sanctions at U.N. – 26 February 2016
The New York Times – U.S. and China Agree on Proposal for Tougher North Korea Sanctions – 25 February 2016
Voice of America – U.S., China Agree on Sanctions Against North Korea – 25 February 2016
Obama Introduces Plan to Close Guantanamo Bay
By Samuel Miller
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America and Oceania
WASHINGTON, D.C., United States of America — President Obama on Tuesday sent Congress a long-awaited plan for closing the Guantánamo Bay prison, kicking off a final push to fulfill a campaign promise, as well as one of his earliest national security policy goals. The proposal comes seven years after Obama made a vow to permanently close the prison for enemy combatants, but the proposal already faces objections and legal obstacles in place for transferring Guantanamo detainees to U.S. prisons.
The proposal sets up a final battle with Congress as the president works to move dozens of Guantánamo detainees before he leaves office next year.
“The plan we’re putting forward today isn’t just about closing the facility at Guantanamo. It’s not just about dealing with the current group of detainees, which is a complex piece of business because of the manner in which they were originally apprehended and what happened. This is about closing a chapter in our history,” said Obama in a White House Press Conference.
President Obama’s plan has four primary elements, including transferring to other countries detainees who are already designated for transfer. The plan aims at accelerating periodic reviews of authority to detain an individual, prosecuting detainees who are facing charges, and working with Congress to establish a location in the homeland to securely hold detainees who cannot be transferred.
Lastly, the president wants to move all remaining detainees to the United States. The White House claims moving the detainees to a new or modified facility in the U.S. would save as much as $85 million, compared to the current cost of $445 million per year to maintain the facility at Guantánamo.
A governmental planning group has for months surveyed a series of sites around the country, including a federal Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado, the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina, as potential options to hold such inmates. The plan released Tuesday cites 13 unspecified locations it says it could house between 30 and 60 detainees.
The president’s plan faces steep obstacles, however. Congress has enacted a statute that bars the military from transferring detainees from Guantánamo to domestic soil for any purpose, and Congressional Republicans have shown little interest in lifting that restriction.
“Congress acted over and over again in a bipartisan way to reject the president’s desire to transfer dangerous terrorists to communities here in the United States,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said. “The president signed all these prohibitions, and his attorney general recently confirmed that it is illegal for the president to transfer any of these terrorists into the United States.”
Obama has reportedly threatened executive action to transfer the detainees to the U.S. if Congress tries to hamstring that process, under the argument that restricting his decision-making powers as commander-in-chief is unconstitutional.
“We’re not entirely clear on how the conversation will play out,” a senior administration official said. “We hope that meeting the deadline of presenting this plan itself will be a key step. We’re delivering what they asked for, and we’re hoping Congress will continue the conversation from that point forward.”
For more information, please see:
ABC News – Obama Sends Plan to Congress to Close Guantanamo Bay Prison – 23 February 2016
BBC News – Guantanamo Bay: Obama in prison closure push – 23 February 2016
CNN – Obama gives Congress Guantanamo closure plan – 23 February 2016
NY Times – Obama Sends Guantánamo Closing Plan to Congress – 23 February 2016
Politico – Obama announces plan for closing Guantanamo Bay prison – 23 February 2016
US News & World Report – Obama Unveils Plan to Close Guantanamo Bay Prison – 23 February 2016
USA Today – Obama takes last chance to close Guantanamo Bay – 23 February 2016
Colombia Investigating Disappearances at Notorious Prison
By Kaitlyn Degnan
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America
BOGOTA, Colombia — The Colombian government has launched an investigation into disappearances in Colombian prisons between 1999 and 2001. The investigation is focusing on La Modelo prison in Bogota. The dismembered remains of at least 100 persons were found in the sewer system of the prison.
La Modela is one of Colombia’s biggest prisons, and significantly overcrowded. During the period in question, the prison was divided and controlled by left-wing and right-wing paramilitary groups. Allegedly, faction leaders bribed prison officials to look the other way while they maintained control over their part of the prison. The paramilitaries allegedly patrolled their so-called “territory” armed with grenades and automatic weapons.
Rumors of disappearances in the prison have spread since the dismembered remains of an inmate was found stuffed in a drain in 2000. He had disappeared eight days earlier. The next day, 17 inmates disappeared during a fight between different factions. Their remains were never found.
Investigators believe that there may be more remains hidden in the sewer systems of other prisons throughout Colombia.
The investigation was prompted by the prosecution of paramilitary leaders Mario Jaimes Mejía, called “El Panadero” (“the Baker”) and Alejandro Cárdenas Orozco. The two face charges of kidnapping, torture, and rape in the attack of Jineth Bedoya. Bedoya, a journalist, was one of the first to bring attention to the disappearances at the prison, after she noticed the numbers of inmates and visitors to La Modelo that went missing.
In 2000, Bedoya was abducted while visiting La Modelo (for the purpose of interviewing El Panadero). She was taken to the countryside where she was tortured and raped. The perpetrators left her tied up in a rubbish pile ten hours later.
Bedoya says she is “grateful for the actions being taken today, but it should’ve happened years ago. El Panadero’s testimony taken more than 15 years ago, his version of the story, which is completely false, was endorsed by a prosecutor (with the Colombian attorney general’s office) and that allowed for the process to stall and the case to remain in impunity.” Bedoya sued the Colombian government in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for “unwillingness to do justice in her case.”
Finding the truth of the disappearances at La Modelo, according to Bedoya, is “a debt that ht estate owes not only to Jineth Bedoya but the hundreds of victims of La Modelo Prison and the paramilitary forces.”
The current prosecutor, Caterina Heyck announced in a press conference on February 17th that El Panadero had confessed to ordering the attack on Bedoya, and that Cárdenas had admitted to being one of her abductors. She has also requested that the two men not qualify for lighter sentences under the Justice and Peace Law. The law allows former paramilitary members to receive lighter sentences for laying down arms and confessing to their crimes.
For more information, please see:
Reuters – Scores of dismembered bodies found in Colombian jails – 17 February 2016
BBC – Colombia probes disappearances from Bogota prison – 18 February 2016
CNN – Remains of at least 100 may have been tossed into sewers under prison – 18 February 2016
Latin Post – Colombian Jails Have Secrets That Can Give Your Nightmares – 18 February 2016
Time – 100 Dismembered Bodies Found Beneath Colombian Prison – 19 February 2016
Syria Justice and Accountability Centre: Documenting Attacks on Medical Facilities in Syria
On February 15, a UN spokesperson reported that at least 50 people were killed in missile attacks that struck four hospitals in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib and a school used to shelter internally displaced people in northern Syria. According to many activists and observers, Russian warplanes were responsible for the attacks. The medical organization Medecins Sans Frointeres (MSF) ran one of the hospitals that was targeted. MSF’s Head of Mission said that the incident appeared to be “a deliberate attack on a health structure” and “leaves the local population of around 40,000 people without access to medical services in an active zone of conflict.”
Attacks on medical facilities in Syria have been ongoing since 2012. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, such attacks (the majority of which are committed by Syrian government forces) intentionally deny medical assistance to those who have been wounded as a result of the war. According to the UN, these continued attacks against Syrian civilians constitute a violation of international humanitarian law that could amount to war crimes. The UN statements are significant because they highlight that the attacks on medical facilities and the denial of basic health care to Syrian civilians constitutes a troubling and consistent trend which breaches international law.
Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention bans deliberate attacks on civilian hospitals. As the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) explains, Article 18 requires military forces “to take special precautions to spare hospitals as far as is humanly possible” when conducting operations. The Rome Statute, which grants the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over serious violations of the Geneva Conventions, explicitly describes intentional attacks against civilian populations and hospitals as types of war crimes.
High quality documentation is crucial to holding perpetrators of attacks on medical facilities accountable. The ICRC provides several considerations that can help human rights defenders refine their strategies when documenting attacks on hospitals. For example, the ICRC states that structures with exterior medical symbols and markings (such as the red cross or red crescent symbols) should not be attacked. Thus, documenters can collect information, pictures, and interviews that help establish that the structure was clearly marked and that the perpetrator knew or should have known of the structure’s medical functions. Another consideration is whether the civilian hospital was far from military objectives and was not being used for military purposes. Documenters can collect interviews and facts to establish the distance between legitimate military targets and the hospital as well as the civilian rather than military use of the facility for treating the sick and wounded.
However, the urban nature of modern warfare, particularly in the Syrian context, presents serious challenges to documenting these types of attacks. Fighting is primarily taking place in populated cities and towns where the line between civilian and military is largely blurred. Moreover, the Syrian government has not been adhering to the principles of the Geneva Conventions or the ICRC guidelines while it wages war. Rather, the government and its allies appear to deliberately target hospitals as a policy to incite fear and intimidate civilians and humanitarian aid workers. Thus, many hospitals intentionally avoid using medical symbols and operate “underground” in order to avoid such attacks. As a result, human rights defenders may not be able to easily demonstrate that the perpetrators knew or should have known that the structure was a medical facility at the time of the attack.
Future transitional justice mechanisms should dedicate special attention to addressing the complex issue of hospital destruction and damage since 2011. In addition to allowing for criminal prosecutions, the post-conflict government or transitional body should rebuild medical infrastructure and prioritize the provision of health care to victims that need treatment for their long-term physical and psychological injuries. Additionally, steps can be taken to memorialize the efforts of Syrian and international health care workers who risked their lives to treat and aid the sick and wounded in their time of need. Without a concerted effort to holistically address the issue, the widespread destruction of hospitals will have devastating impacts for Syrians and their ability to access adequate healthcare for many years after the end of the conflict.
For more information and to provide feedback, please email SJAC at info@syriaaccountability.org.