German Court Bans Religious Circumcision Procedures

By Alexandra Sandacz
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

BERLIN, Germany – On Sunday, September 9, 2012, a rally of Jewish and Muslim Germans protested in Germany’s capital, Berlin, to demand their religious freedom.

Protestors hold up signs in Berlin, Germany. (Photo Courtesy of Reuters)

Over 50 Jewish and Muslim organizations staged a protest over a court ruling that was handed down in June. The protest commenced when news surfaced that a rabbi in Bavaria was investigated over the religious practice of circumcision.

The Cologne court determined that the ritual practice of circumcision of young boys constituted “bodily harm” and could not be performed regardless of family religious practices. However, the court noted that the medical procedure could be preformed on older males with their consent. As a result of the local court’s decision, the German Medical Association advised doctors across the country to stop performing circumcisions.

According to the Jewish religion, boys are required to be circumcised by  religious leader at eight days old.  For the Muslim religion, the age at which the ritual is carried out differs according to family, country and branch of Islam.

One protester stated, “I’m here to stand for the freedom of religious rights.” Dieter Graumann, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called it “unbearable that we, Jews, are being branded as child tormenters and that Jewish life is being presented as illegitimate in some way.” Furthermore, another Jewish community member stated the court’s decision was a “flagrant intervention in the over-3,000-year tradition of Judaism.”

Despite the Cologne court’s controversial decision, the German government announced their intentions to legislate to overrule the Cologne court’s decision and to legalize circumcision. However, until further legislation is passed, circumcision will continue to be criminalized unless preformed by a doctor, and the state must advise the parents of the risk associated with male circumcision.

The former head of Berlin’s Jewish Community stated, “We were getting sick and tired of all the heated and incompetent gibberish on circumcisions. So today, we want to clarify a few things through our rabbi … what circumcision really is and what circumcision means to our religion.”

For further information, please see:

BBC — Germany Jews and Muslims Protest at Circumcision Ruling – 9 September 2012

The Huffington Post — Muslims And Jews Protest Circumcision Law In Germany After Police Investigate Rabbi – 9 September 2012

Reuters — German Jews, Muslims Unite to Protest against Circumcision Ban – 9 September 2012

The Jerusalem Post — Berlin Jews reject Germany Restrictions on Brit Mila – 7 September 2012

Youths’ Deaths Fuel Crackdown on Favela Drug-lords

By Margaret Janelle R. Hutchinson
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BRASÍLIA, Brazil – Upwards of 250 military police, backed by armored vehicles, descended on the Chatuba favela (shanty-town), located in the town of Mesquita, north of Rio de Janiero, early this morning.

Military Police storm the Chatuba favela in response to a series of vicious crimes committed over the weekend. (Photo courtesy iol news)

The crackdown came in the wake of the gruesome discovery, Monday, of the bodies of six youths left on a street in the vicinity of Chatuba.  Police report that the boys, ages 16 to 19, had been tortured, stabbed and shot before being left naked in the road, only covered by bed-sheets.

Police blame drug traffickers, who dominate the Chatuba favela, for the deaths of the boys. The traffickers are also suspected of being behind the murders of a police cadet and an evangelical minister on Saturday, as well as the disappearance of the minister’s companion.

No shots were fired and officers launched a search for the members of the gang suspected of being behind the weekend’s violence.

Luis Ferreira de Oliveira, a suspected drug trafficker, was arrested and officers found drugs and 15,000 reais (about $7,500) at his residence, the Rio de Janeiro Public Safety Secretariat said.

The slain young men, who did not have criminal records, were heading to a waterfall near their homes and never made it there.  Their families reported them missing on Sunday.

Investigators suspect that the gang from Chatuba may have murdered the teenagers because they came from a neighborhood where a rival gang operates.

“They were tortured. It was a barbaric crime. I think that the criminals killed them in that manner to show how powerful they are,” Sandra Ornelas, a police officer in the neighboring town of Nilopolis, told reporters on Monday.

Police and the army have occupied many of Rio’s biggest favelas as part of a “pacification program” ahead of the 2014 football World Cup and the Olympics.

The authorities say their “pacification program” has managed to reduce violence and restore the dignity of hundreds of thousands of people who live in the city’s poorer quarters.

But in many cases the drug lords have moved from the wealthier central areas of the city to the outskirts, where violence was already rife.

A permanent force of 112 militarized police officers will eventually set up a permanent post in the Chatuba favela, like in other slums in Rio.

Some 5,500 police officers have been deployed in 144 Rio favelas so far.

The next level in the crackdown on favela crime may involve the use of drones to monitor criminal activity.

Reports indicate that the Brazilian government recently started testing the drones, which were manufactured using Israeli technology.  Drones could be used to support security forces operations in favelas controlled by drug gangs.

The “VANTS,” the Portuguese acronym for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), would “see what soldiers can’t see,” according to Montenegro Magalhaes Neto, from the Military’s Engineering Institute.

For more information, please see:

 iol news – Brazil slum stormed after bodies found – 12 September 2012

BBC News – Rio police occupy slum in hunt for teenagers’ killers – 11 September 2012

Fox News Latino – Brazilian police occupy shantytown after massacre – 11 September 2012

In Sight Crime – Brazil Tests Drones to Monitor Rio Favelas – 11 September 2012

Merco Press – Rio police begins to use drones to control drugs and crime in the city’s shanty towns – 10 September 2012

inforsur hoy – Six missing youths found dead in Brazilian slum – 9 September 2012

 

Syrian Revolution Digest – Monday 10 September 2012

Falling Apart!

Syrian Revolution Digest – September 10, 2012 

The only strategy at play in Syria is succeeding in tearing the country apart. Guns speak louder than God, and the international community.

Monday September 10, 2012

Today’s Death toll: 136. The Breakdown: The toll includes 8 women and 2 children. 73 were killed in Damascus and Suburbs (including 36 who were field-executed in Tadamon, 17 whose bodies were found in Zamalka and 3 who were field-executed in Moadamia), 16 in Aleppo, 10 in Hama, 4 in Daraa, 4 in Idlib, 2 in Homs, 2 in Lattakia, and 1 in Deir Ezzor. (LCC)

* Syrian Author, intellectual and activist, Yassin Al-Haj Saleh, AKA the Wise Man of the Syrian Revolution, isamong ten recipients of the 2012 Prince Claus Fund Award.

* Syrian filmmaker, Tamer Al-Awam, died on Saturday of shrapnel wounds received while filming a new documentary in Al-Itha’ah Neighborhood in Aleppo City.

 

News

Syrian Rebel Video Appears to Show 20 Executed Soldiers

Egypt to host regional meeting over Syria crisis

Syria general Tlas opposes foreign intervention

Syria defector Manaf Tlas hints at French intelligence aid

Russia says Syria’s Assad “still solid”

Angelina Jolie in Jordan to visit Syrian refugees

Syrian couple gets married at refugee camp in Jordan

 

Op-Eds & Special Reports

In Syria’s countryside, vital support for rebels

Syria’s rebels counting on captured anti-aircraft guns to defeat air force

Turkey’s ‘Free Syrian Army’ troubles

 

Video Highlights

Aleppo

Rebels in Aleppo City have reportedly perpetrated a massacre against recruits in the Hanono Military Compound. According to local eyewitnesses, the recruits, 20 in all, were mostly Kurds, and did not take part in any recent battle. The rebels, we are told, knew this but wanted to send a message to all pro-Assad militias. Some say that the killers were mostly Egyptian and Libyan Jihadis, though we don’t see any evidence of that in the videos that came out of the attack. This marks the first documented incident of a massacre on this scale perpetrated by rebels. All videos below were made by the rebels  http://tinyurl.com/ckba5r4

Rebels gather up for the attack http://youtu.be/Ut1Rb9hdRKk Scenes from the battle http://youtu.be/oA36IBLsb5s, http://youtu.be/rtlCcc9dPTM , http://youtu.be/80BH0QNIK5g Storming in http://youtu.be/reiQfH-7dDw This is the scene moments after the rebels took over the compound http://youtu.be/klh-AqZP468 Moments later, Assad’s jets bombard the
compound http://youtu.be/A44nQpcOQmE Close-up look of a MIG in action http://youtu.be/xFAWtu_4YHo

Elsewhere in the city, people live in constant anxiety over the exact spots were the bombs will fall. People used to play cat-and-mouse with snipers, now they have to play the game with MIGs http://youtu.be/1ipW-RItIbw

Earlier, some rebels found an old copy of the Alawite Holy Book, Al-Jifr, in the house of an Alawite officer. They read passages of it to showcase the heterodox nature of Alawite faith from the point of view of Sunni doctrinehttp://youtu.be/wlmQeoe4pU0

Elsewhere:

In Houleh, this little girls who had survived the infamous massacre, did not survive the merciless shellinghttp://youtu.be/qXHA5OH7JS

In Qusayr, the few civilians who remain try to go on with their lives as the aerial bombardment of their town proceedshttp://youtu.be/WbnKBFeUnHA

This leaked video shows pro-Assad militia torturing a mentally handicapped young man, reasons unknownhttp://youtu.be/DaBV64jwWYE

Documents Released Show U.S. Covered up Soviet Guilt in Katyn Massacre

By Emilee Gaebler
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

WARSAW, Poland – After over 70 years of silence regarding Soviet culpability in the Polish Katyn massacre of 1940, the United States has indirectly acknowledged the cover up they participated in.  Documents released on Monday show that the United States was aware, at a very early point, that the Soviet claim of the massacre being the work of the German Nazi’s, was false.

A Polish soldier testifying during the 1950-1951 Congressional hearings for the Katyn massacre. (Photo Courtesy of The Moscow Times)

In May of 1943, British and American POW’s were taken into the Katyn forest by their German captors and shown a mass grave site in a clearing.  The grave contained the bodies of close to 22,000 Polish high-ranking officers.  The men had been the educated elite of Poland in their civilian lives: doctors, lawyers, teachers and other professionals.  They had all been shot in the back of the head and dumped into the mass graves.  Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, had killed them to eliminate public challenges to Stalinism.

Objects, like correspondence, ID cards, and newspaper clippings that were recovered from their bodies were dated from 1940 and earlier.  The uniforms that were still on the corpses were in new condition, hardly worn or used at all.  The bodies were in a partly mummified state and showed signs of advanced decay; all of this pointing to the reality that these bodies had been in the grave since 1940 or earlier

The Katyn forest was in the control of the Soviets until the Germans were able to gain control of it in 1941.  American officers, Captain Donald B. Stewart and Lieutenant Colonel John H. Van Vliet Jr., were among the POW’s taken to the site of the Katyn massacre.  Included in the roughly 1,000 documents released on Monday are coded messages sent by the two men, while still in captivity, that state their belief that the German claim that the massacre was done by the Soviets was true.

In 1951-1952 Congressional hearings were held regarding the Katyn massacre.  Both Stewart and Van Vliet testified at these but the record of the hearings does not reflect these coded messages from 1943, suggesting they were deliberately excluded.  As well, Van Vliet wrote two reports on the massacre, one in 1945 and one in 1950 but neither of them were part of the hearings or released by the United States government at any point.

Experts believe that the truth regarding responsibility for the Katyn massacre was deliberately withheld in 1943 by President Theodore Roosevelt to maintain the alliance between the two countries against Germany.  Following the end of the war the truth remained hidden to keep Cold War tensions down.

In 1990, during the fall of the Iron Curtain, the last head of state of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, finally admitted to the Soviet guilt in the massacre.  Even then, the United States government refused to admit to their participation in the cover-up.  United States historian and author of a Katyn massacre book, Paul Allen, believes that a public apology to the Polish people is required as Katyn remains a wound on the Polish psyche that to this day affects Polish and Russian relationships.

 

For further information, please see:

BBC News – US “Hushed up” Soviet Guilt Over Katyn – 11 September 2012

The Moscow Times – Secret Memos Show U.S. Hushed up Katyn Crime – 11 September 2012

Polskie Radio – Veterans Attend Release of US Katyn Documents – 11 September 2012

The Telegraph – US “Hushed up Katyn Massacre” – 11 September 2012

Associate Press – AP Exclusive: Memos Show US Hushed up Soviet Crime – 10 September 2012

Thousands In Chile March In Memory Of The Disappeared

By Brendan Oliver Bergh
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

SANTIAGO, Chile – While 3,500 Chileans marched on Sunday in memory of the estimated 40,000 casualties of the Pinochet dictatorship, a hundred masked figures used the opportunity to riot.

Imagen
Chileans March in Support of Former President Allende. (Photo Courtesy of Cooperativa)

On the 39th anniversary of the military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende in 1973 and installed General Pinochet; thousands marched through the streets of Santiago. Beginning in in the Hero’s Square in the center of Santiago, marchers placed lit candles to places that were used as detention centers by agents of the Pinochet dictatorship. Many of the marchers carried photos of missing relatives who disappeared during the 17 year reign of the dictatorship. Officials estimate that more than 3,000 people were killed during the 17 years of military occupation, and another 37,000 were detained as political prisoners, or were the victims of torture or exile.

General Augusto Pinochet was eventually arrested and kept under house arrest for two cases of human rights violations, but died in 2006 before receiving any conviction for the thousands of victims who died under his dictatorship. Today more than 700 retired military officers face trial for human rights violations and some 70 have been convicted and 67 of them have been incarcerated for their compliance with the military dictatorship. The Chilean courts still have over 350 open cases of concerning the disappearance of political opponents, and incidents of torture dating back to the period of the dictatorship.

Lorena Pizarro, president of the Association of Relatives of the Disappeared used the opportunity to lay a wreath on the grave of Salvador Allende and criticize the current ruling party and in light of reports of police repression, demand an “end impunity and advance truth and justice.”

While overwhelmingly a peaceful rally, there were incidents of hooded and masked individuals who rioted. There are reports of vandalized public offices and community property as rioters clashed with police and barricaded intersections and lit fires near the general cemetery. Police met the rioters’ stones and firebombs with water cannons and gas canisters.

The riots resulted in eight arrests for the destruction that occurred in the building that housed the regional secretary for education, the looting of a bank, and for the possession of Molotov cocktails.

The march ended peacefully at the general cemetery where marchers laid wreaths on the graves of the executed and disappeared. The general cemetery houses the Memorial of the Disappeared, which stands in remembrance of the victims of the dictatorship.

 

 

For further information, please see:

Univision Noticias – Chile recordara a Salvador Allende – 9 September 2012

Cooperativa – More than five thousand people marched through the disappeared – 9 September 2012

Fox News Latino – Procession by relatives of Chile dictatorship victims ends w/ incidents – 9 September 2012

Google – Thousands march in Chile in memory of victims of the Pinochet dictatorship – 9 September 2012

Terra – Thousands march in Chile in memory of victims of the Pinochet dictatorship – 9 September 2012

Cooperativa – With eight detainees ended up in memory of the disappeared – 9 September 2012