24 Jan 2015
Blair kidnapped disidents and shipped them to Libya for Gaddafi to torture
Tony Blair wrote to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to thank him for the “excellent cooperation” between the two countries’ counter-terrorism agencies following a period during which the UK and Libya worked together to arrange for Libyan dissidents to be kidnapped and flown to Tripoli, along with their families.
The letter, written in 2007, followed a period in which the dictator’s intelligence officers were permitted to operate in the UK, approaching and intimidating Libyan refugees in an attempt to persuade them to work as informants for both countries’ agencies.
Addressed “Dear Mu’ammar” and signed “Best wishes yours ever, Tony”, the letter was among hundreds of pages of documents recovered from Libyan government offices following the 2011 revolution and pieced together by a team of London lawyers.
The lawyers are bringing damages claims on behalf of a dozen Gaddafi opponents who were targeted by the two countries’ agencies during the covert cooperation. The claimants were variously detained and allegedly mistreated in Saudi Arabia, rendered from Mali to Libya, or detained and subjected to control orders in the UK.
21 Jan 2015
European PR firms whitewashing brutal regimes
New research exposes companies behind Europe's multi-million Euro image-laundering business.
A report released today by research and campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) sheds light on how dictators and repressive regimes are paying European PR firms and lobbyists to push their agenda and mask their dire human rights records.
“Spin doctors to the autocrats: how European PR firms whitewash repressive regimes” lifts the lid on the murky world of spin carried out on behalf of some of the world's most brutal regimes. CEO is calling on EU institutions to urgently establish a mandatory lobbying register as a step towards bringing some much needed transparency to the sector. Transparency rules should include a specific clarification that lobbying for non-EU governments and states is required to be reported.
3 Sept 2014
Turkmenbashi's Reign of Terror
President for Life (1940-2006): President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan was the dictator famous in the West for his crazy decrees and bizarre personality cult. But for his people, there was nothing comical about his rule.
27 Aug 2014
9 Jun 2014
Belarus: 20 years under dictatorship and a revolution behind the rest of Europe
Tucked away behind the vast, charmless apartment blocks and broad thoroughfares so beloved of Soviet town planners, the Minsk History Museum boasts Belarus’s best exhibition of the summer. Back in the BSSR (the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, as it was then known) is a showcase of Soviet memorabilia and propaganda that takes visitors back a generation to a time when this was one of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics.
Or is it? Some would argue you don’t have to enter the exhibition to be Back in the BSSR. Streets in the capital are still named after Marx and Engels. A statue of Lenin dominates a city centre square. There’s even a bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the original Soviet secret policeman and the first statue toppled in Moscow when the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991. A metro ride costs 20p. People smoke indoors. Almost no one has tattoos. This feels like a place that is at least one revolution behind the rest of us, maybe more.
And then there is the leader. This summer, Europe’s longest-serving ruler - the only post-Soviet president that Belarus has known - marks 20 years in office. Since Alexander Lukashenko came to power in 1994, parliament has been emasculated, political opponents driven into exile or disappeared, and the media have been silenced. This is a country where the KGB is still called the KGB. It is the last European country to use the death penalty – a bullet to the back of the prisoner’s head. Last month, Lukashenko announced he intended to bring back “serfdom” to “teach the peasants to work more efficiently”.
4 May 2014
14 Apr 2014
8 Mar 2014
20 Feb 2014
13 Dec 2013
Kim Jong-un orders execution of uncle - now it emerges that victim's wife was involved in decision to execute him
The final decision to execute Jang Song Thaek, last seen publicly being frog-marched by armed guards from a special party session last week, was probably made by Kim, his nephew, and Kim Kyong-hui, his wife, according to several sources.
News of Jang's execution was accompanied by a string of extraordinary insults, branding him a "traitor for all ages" and "despicable human scum" who was "worse than a dog." A 2,700-word state media report of his trial in a special military tribunal on Thursday said he had admitted to plotting insurrection and a string of other crimes. "He let the decadent capitalist lifestyle find its way to our society by distributing all sorts of pornographic pictures among his confidants since 2009." The report said Jang led a "dissolute, depraved life" and had squandered at least 4.6 million euro from state coffers on gambling. He was executed, probably by firing squad, immediately after the tribunal.
Jang's killing is the highest-level purge since Kim Jong-un inherited power from his father Kim Jong-il in 2011 and has left opinion divided on what it means. Many experts say Kim had no choice but to remove his powerful but corrupt uncle if he wanted to graduate from young pretender to dictator "He had to go," says veteran Pyongyang watcher Andrei Lankov. "To really start running the country Kim must get rid of the old guard. They are so much older; they are in their sixties and seventies and he is in his thirties."
But even if Jang's removal was operationally logical, the violence of his public humiliation and disposal was highly unusual, accepts Lankov. "One possibility is that he wanted to terrify everyone, to show that he is young but someone to be afraid of, to show that nobody is immune," he says. "It might also reflect his personal animosity to Jang. He did not like the man, who probably bossed him around."
22 Jul 2013
Putin Declares Himself Dictator
Putin’s actions are those of a dictator, who substitutes repression for lost popular support. In his first two terms, he enjoyed high popularity ratings and could tolerate a moderately free press. His 2011 imperious declaration that he would return to the Presidency and the demonstrations that followed revealed that the Russian people simply want him gone. As a leader with failing public support, he can only remain in power by using force and repression that gets worse by the day.
The amount of political repression in Russia today is about equal to that in Myanmar under military rule. The United States and other countries ostracized Myanmar and imposed sanctions. Although Ambassador McFaul expressed his regrets after the Navalny ruling, the Obama administration, in its ludicrous hope for Russian “reset” concessions, avoids any statements that might upset Vova, or “Little Vladimir” as the Russians derisively call Putin.
Is it not time, for the Obama administration to speak up? What more is needed? I guess we should keep quiet. Any day now Vova will help out on Iran, Syria, North Korea, or even not rub our face in it with Snowden. In the meantime, capital and its best people flee Russia. The goal of Russia’s best and brightest is to get themselves and their families out of repressive Russia before it is too late.
22 May 2013
Abuse of prison regulations against imprisoned human rights defender in Belarus
On 16 May 2013, the wife of Belarus human rights defender Mr Ales Bialiatski went to the Bobruysk colony No.2, where her husband has been held since February 2012, in order to bring him a food parcel. However, the food parcel was refused by prison officials, who informed her that in March 2013 Ales Bialiatski's right to receive food from visitors had been suspended for six months.
Ales Bialiatski is the Chairman of Human Rights Centre Viasna. On 24 November 2011, he was found guilty of tax evasion on a large scale by the Pervomayski District Court of Minsk following an unfair trial, and was condemned to four and a half years imprisonment as well as the confiscation of all property including belongings registered in the name of other persons. The court also fined the human rights defender 721 million Belarusian Rubles (approx 82,700 USD) for alleged unpaid taxes and 36 million Belarusian Rubles (approx 4,100 USD) for state costs.
This incident is not the fist time that disciplinary measures have been used against Ales Bialiatski. Between March and June 2012, he received three reprimands, one of which resulted in the loss of visitation rights. Following the three reprimands, in June 2012 the human rights defender was named a 'malicious disturber', which resulted in his exclusion from the 2012 amnesty for economic crimes.
More on Front Line and on Viasna
17 May 2013
Videla is dead
Jorge Rafael Videla; born 2 August 1925 - died 17 May 2013) was a former senior commander in the Argentine Army who was the de facto President of Argentina from 1976 to 1981. He came to power in a coup d'état that deposed Isabel Martínez de Perón. After the return of a representative democratic government, he was prosecuted for large-scale human rights abuses and crimes against humanity that took place under his rule, including kidnappings or "forced disappearance", widespread torture and extrajudicial murder of activists, political opponents (either real, suspected or alleged) as well as their families, at secret concentration camps.
Some 10,000 of the disappeared were guerrillas of the Montoneros (MPM), and the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP). The accusations also included the "theft" of many babies born during the captivity of their mothers at the illegal detention centres. He was under house arrest until 10 October 2008, when he was sent to a military prison. In his defence, Videla maintains the female guerrilla detainees allowed themselves to fall pregnant in the belief they wouldn't be tortured or executed. On 5 July 2010, Videla took full responsibility for his army's actions during his rule. "I accept the responsibility as the highest military authority during the internal war. My subordinates followed my orders," he told an Argentine court. On 22 December 2010, Videla was sentenced to life in a civilian prison for the deaths of 31 prisoners following his coup d'état. On 5 July 2012, Videla was sentenced to 50 years in prison for the systematic kidnapping of children during his tenure.
3 Nov 2012
The Great Dictator Speech
From The Great Dictator by Charles Chaplin - Music by The Dead Fish Orchestra
24 Sept 2012
Opposition shut out in Belarus election
Official results in Belarus' parliamentary election have delivered an overwhelming victory to parties allied to President Alexander Lukashenko, fulfilling a prediction by opposition groups that boycotted the vote amid claims it would again be rigged for the president.
Central Elections Commission Chairwoman Lidiya Yermoshina said on Monday that she had received a preliminary turnout figure of 74.3 per cent and downplayed more sceptical assessments by independent election observers, saying that only official turnout tallies would be considered.
There were no runoffs, and Yermoshina said that all but one of the 110 seats in parliament had been assigned. The vote was held on Sunday without the main opposition parties, which boycotted to protest the detention of political prisoners and election fraud.
19 Sept 2012
Activists and Journalists beaten and detained in Belarus
Several people were detained and beaten in the Belarusian capital Minsk on Tuesday as they attempted to hold a rally calling for a nationwide boycott of this weekend's parliamentary elections in the former Soviet republic.
"Opposition activists were going to hold another picket near the Frunzensky store in Minsk calling on people not to vote in the elections to the Chamber of Representatives of the National Assembly," the opposition Charter 97 group said on its website. (RIA Novosti)
Agents in plainclothes repeatedly hit several journalists covering an opposition protest organized by activists calling for a boycott of Sunday's parliamentary vote, according to news reports. Sergei Grits, a photographer for The Associated Press, said his face was covered with blood after one of the assailants punched him and broke his glasses, according to AP.
All of the journalists were shoved into a minivan with no license plates and driven to a police station where their equipment and documents were confiscated with no explanation, news reports said. Police held the journalists without charge for two hours and then released them, the AP reported. The officials also deleted the images and video recordings from the journalists' cameras before returning the equipment, Reuters reported.
27 Jul 2012
Wife of the Disgraced Chinese Leader Bo Xilai Is Charged With Murder
In a nation that prefers the wives of political leaders to be bland adornments, Gu Kailai was positively fluorescent. Married to Bo Xilai, the Politburo member whose downfall earlier this year is still shaking the Communist Party, she reveled in her brash, ambitious ways. "This public announcement is just to further discredit Bo, to ensure that he will not rise from the ashes, which is still a possibility." Admirers bragged that Ms. Gu, a pioneering lawyer who spoke fluent English, was China’s answer to Jacqueline Onassis.
But in formally charging her on Thursday with the poisoning death late last year of a British businessman, the Chinese government, almost certainly intentionally, has placed the larger-than-life Ms. Gu into a familiar Chinese framework: the conniving, bloodthirsty vixen whose hunger for money derailed her husband’s promising career.
Although no one has presented any compelling evidence to rebut the official narrative that Ms. Gu, 53, played a role in the death of the businessman, many wonder if party leaders are using her case to deflect public disgust over the kind of corruption and abuse of power that critics say was embodied by her husband. Mr. Bo, who was suspended last April from the Politburo and has not been heard from since, has so far remained in a parallel justice system reserved for the party elite. His fate was not mentioned in the brief statement announcing his wife’s trial.
9 Jul 2012
What Did Reagan Know About the Argentine Dictatorship's Baby Thefts?
An Argentine court has convicted two of the nation’s former right-wing dictators, Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, in a scheme to murder leftist mothers and give their infants to military personnel often complicit in the killings, a shocking process known to the Reagan administration even as it worked closely with the bloody regime.
Testimony at the trial included a videoconference from Washington with Elliott Abrams, then-Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, who said he urged Bignone to reveal the babies’ identities as Argentina began a transition to democracy in 1983.
Abrams said the Reagan administration “knew that it wasn’t just one or two children,” indicating that U.S. officials believed there was a high-level “plan because there were many people who were being murdered or jailed.” Estimates of the Argentines murdered in the so-called Dirty War range from 13,000 to about 30,000, with many victims “disappeared,” buried in mass graves or dumped from planes over the Atlantic.
11 Jun 2012
Opposition crackdown in Moscow
A wave of police raids searching through the homes of opposition figures has been taking place in about 10 different locations in Moscow. Police say they are investigating acts of violence that took place on the eve of President Putin’s inauguration on May 7th.
“The police are doing this not only to crack down ahead of Tuesday’s demo, but also to “calm” opponents and discourage them from taking action by searching them and their homes. We don’t know what will happen subsequently,” said lawyer Vadim Prokhorov.
The raids are just the latest example of how the authorities are cracking down on protest. Last week a bill massively increasing fines for those found guilty of illegal demonstrations or accused of violence during them came into law, and leaders due to lead tomorrow’s march now have to report in to police stations, lessening their effectiveness.