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	Spain must amend for Civil War Abuses of Franco says Amnesty by Expatica News / Truthout Spain   18/7/2005   Amnesty International has called for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate what happened to those who disappeared during the Civil War and the regime of the former dictator Francisco Franco.   Esteban Beltrán, president of Amnesty International in Spain, presented a report called 'Spain: put an end to the silence and the injustice', in which he said Madrid owed a debt to all those victims of the civil war and the Franco era.   The cover of the report was illustrated with a picture of bones from a mass grave at Villamayor de los Montes, in Burgos, northern Spain.   Beltran said: "Spain has forgotten thousands of people. This country asked for the extradition of Pinochet and carried out the trial of Scilingo (an Argentine officer convicted of war crimes in his country) but has not been capable of offering truth, justice and amends to its own citizens." He said the only way Spain has made up for the abuses during this era has been through tributes to the victims. Instead, AI called for compensation for the victims.   Beltran added: "All the victims have been ignored in major or minor part." He attacked the "discrimination" which had seen compensation to unions or political parties but not for private individuals. Beltran said what was needed was impartial investigation. He said there had been "numerous obstacles" put in the way of families trying to discover details about their loved ones' bodies or getting access to archives which might give some clues as to what happened to them. AI has called for a specialist prosecutor to be employed to investigate what happened to those who disappeared or were the victims of summary executions. ©Expatica News   17 July 2005   "Fighting Fascism Then, and Now", by John Pilger. (TruthOut)   It was the International Brigades' Memorial Day in Jubilee Park beside the Thames in London. It was a hot day with no breeze, "a Spanish day", one of the Brigaders said. Like the others, all in their eighties and older, he took shelter in the shade and rested on his walking stick. He wore his red beret. Twenty yards away, tourists waiting to board the London Eye, the great ferris wheel built for the Milennium, looked bemused at the elderly men in their berets, and the rest of us, without knowing who we were, what the men had done and why we were celebrating them.   Between 1936 and 1939, the International Brigade fought in Spain on the side of the Republican government against the fascist forces of General Franco. There were British, Americans, Irish, Canadians, Australians and others. They were very young and all volunteers, determined to stop fascism in its tracks. They made a difference.   Although the government eventually fell, in February 1937, the 600-strong British Battalion of the XVth International Brigade stopped Franco's advance on Madrid. Four hundred were killed, wounded or captured in four days' bloody battle, Madrid was spared. There were many battles like that. Sam Russell, a Brigader, described eloquently how on the Sierra del Pandols, "there was not enough soil to bury the dead, so we covered them with stones". The poet Martin Green who had written of his father, George Green, stood at the edge of the crowd. George was killed when Martin was four years old. For his father, he wrote:   You had no funeral nor hearse.. No grave except the place you fell.. No dirge but a soldier's curse.. And an explosion tolled your knell… I was a boy too young.. To take the blow that felled.. The tree that was your man.   On this warm Saturday 67 years on, we stood and sang a tribute to them. To the tune of "Red River Valley", we sang the song of their battle for Madrid and to which they marched and rallied:   There's a valley in Spain called Jarama.. It's a place that we all know so well.. It is there that we gave of our manhood.. And so many of our brave comrades fell. We are proud of the British Battalion.. And the stand for Madrid that they made.. There we fought like true sons of the people .. As part of the Fifteenth Brigade.. Now that we've left that dark valley of sorrow.. And its memories we ne'er shall forget.. So before we continue to this reunion.. Let us stand to our glorious dead.   And we stood and remembered them. Jack Jones, the president of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, read out the names of his comrades who had died since their last reunion: Charlie Matthews (who had been reported killed on the battlefield in 1939 and whose obituary had appeared his local paper) and Cyril Sexton, who was wounded at Jarama and went on to fight at Aragon, Belchite, Gandesa and Ebro where he was wounded again. Last April, he died at the age of 91.   I was given the honour of describing the meaning of the Brigaders' heroism today. I thanked David Marshall, an International Brigader who had put my name forward and whose poetry had been an inspiration for what I wanted to say. This is what I said:   I first understood the importance of the struggle in Spain from Martha Gellhorn. Martha was one of my oldest friends. She was one of the greatest war correspondents and is remembered for her dispatches from Spain during the Civil War. In November 1938, she wrote this:   "In Barcelona, it was perfect bombing weather. The cafes along the Ramblas were crowded. There was nothing much to drink: a sweet fizzy poison called orangeade and a horrible liquid supposed to be sherry. There was, of course, nothing to eat. Everyone was out, enjoying the cold afternoon sunlight. No bombers had come for at least two hours. The flower stalls look bright and pretty along the promenade. 'The flowers are all sold, Senores. For the funerals of those killed in the eleven o'clock bombing, poor souls'. It had been a clear and cold day all yesterday …'What beautiful weather', a woman said, and she stood, holding her shawl around her, staring at the sky. 'And the nights are as fine as the days. A catastrophe,' she said … everyone listened for the sirens all the time, and when we saw the bombers, they were like tiny silver bullets, moving forever up, across the sky."   How familiar that sounds. Barcelona. Guernica. Hiroshima. Vietnam. Cambodia. Palestine. Afghanistan. Iraq.   Martha never tired of explaining why people fought for the Republic, "the Causa", and why going to Spain was so important. She wrote of the International Brigade: "Whatever their nationality, whether they were Communists, anarchists, socialists, poets, plumbers, middle-class professional men, or the one Abyssinian prince … they were fighting for us all in Spain."   The enemy then was fascism, out-and-out fascism. Armband wearing, strutting, ranting fascism. The enemy then was a great world power, rapacious, with plans of domination, of capturing the world's natural resources: the oil fields of the Caspian and the Middle east, the mineral riches of Africa. They seemed invincible.   The enemy then was also lies. Deceit. News dressed up as propaganda. Appeasement. A large section of the British establishment saw fascism as its friend. Their voice was a section of the British press: The Times, the Daily Mail.   To them, the real threat was from ordinary people, who were dreamers, many of them, who imagined a new world in which the dignity of ordinary life was respected and celebrated. Some were wise dreamers and some were foolish dreamers, but they understood the nature of fascism, and they saw through the lies ands the deceit and the appeasement.   They also knew that the true enemy didn't always wear arm bands, and didn't always strut, or command great rallies, but were impeccable English gentlemen who supported ruthless power behind a smokescreen of propaganda that appropriated noble concepts like "democracy" and "freedom" and "our way of life" and "our values".   Does all this sound familiar?   I ask that question, because when I read the aims of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, I was struck by a reference to "the historical legacy of the men and women who fought with the International Brigades against fascism …"   The "historical legacy" of the International Brigade, as Martha Gellhorn wrote, is that they were fighting for us all. For me, that means a legacy of truth - a way of seeing through the smokescreen of propaganda, including and especially the propaganda of our own governments: a legacy of confronting great and rapacious power in whatever form it appears.   That legacy is needed today more than ever. Impeccable gentlemen now invade defenceless countries in our name. They speak of freedom and democracy, and our way of life and our values. They don't wear armbands and they don't strut. They are different from fascists. But their goals are not different. Conquest, domination, the control of vital resources.   When the judges at Nuremberg laid down the ground rules of international law following the Second World War, they described an unprovoked, violent invasion of a defenceless country as "a crime against humanity, the paramount war crime."   The world is a very different place from Barcelona in 1938, and from the Sierra del Pandols, and the Valley of Jarama, and all the battlefields of Spain, but the legacy of those who confronted fascism then endures as a warning to us all today.   It is a warning about sinister power behind democratic facades that uses the battle cries of democracy. It is a warning about messianic politicians, apparently touched by God, and about appeasement and truth. And it is about moral courage: about speaking out, breaking a silence. I salute those of you International Brigaders who are here today, who did more than speak out. I thank you and your fallen comrades for what you did for us all, and for your legacy of truth and your moral courage. La Lucha continua!
	Swiss put human rights at center of UN reform by Tom Wright International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights Switzerland   Published: July 1, 2005   Geneva: As Kofi Annan prepares to take his reform plans for the United Nations to the General Assembly this autumn, one country is playing a surprisingly crucial role in the process.   That country, Switzerland, which only joined the UN in 2002, is more known for its neutrality than for pursuing an active foreign policy.   But since last year it has taken on a new mantle: leading an effort to put human rights at the center of UN reform.   While issues like Security Council enlargement take the spotlight, Switzerland's proposal to replace the Human Rights Commission, a discredited UN body, with a more powerful panel has quietly received support, from officials including Secretary General Annan and such countries as the United States.   Switzerland's success in getting its voice heard shows how a small, independent country, one that has long stayed on the sidelines of global affairs, is finding its niche in the UN alongside Security Council members like the United States or China.   "Switzerland can play a role that many larger countries cannot," said Walter Kalin, a professor at Bern University who has worked for the Swiss government on UN reform. "It can be a bridge builder."   Many smaller countries, like Canada and New Zealand, share Switzerland's belief that human rights and international law are important counterweights to power politics, Kalin said by telephone from Kosovo, where he was on a UN mission.   Since it joined the UN, Switzerland has made human rights a central plank of a more active foreign policy. It pressured Nepal this year to accept UN observers and has been a leading critic of U.S. policy at the Guantánamo Bay detention center.   Switzerland waded into the reform debate last year by proposing a human rights council in Geneva to replace the Human Rights Commission, which has become one of the UN's biggest embarrassments.   The commission, based in Geneva, fills its 53 seats by regional rotation, which means countries with poor human rights records like Libya or Zimbabwe often sit in judgment over democratic countries.   Meeting only annually, the commission has also been slow to react to human rights abuses, like the escalation this year of the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, diplomats say.   Switzerland has won widespread support for its idea to establish a council whose members would meet regularly, be selected by a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly and wield greater powers.   Speaking last week to the General Assembly, Anne Patterson, the acting U.S. ambassador to the UN, said Washington backed the plan. Only China, of the major countries, has yet to lend its support, UN officials say.   "When you have a voice like Switzerland's, which is neutral, it always helps" build a consensus, said Eric Tistounet, the secretary of the Human Rights Commission.   In the past few years, Switzerland has begun to throw off its isolation.   Threats like terrorism demanded a more active approach to foreign relations and were a factor in Switzerland's decision to finally join the UN and to commit armed troops to peacekeeping missions.   But the government still follows its 400-year-old policy of neutrality, which means it has refused to join such military alliances as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.   "Foreign countries are more likely to listen to Switzerland as a mediator in UN reform," said René Schwok, a professor at Geneva University. "It is less likely to have a hidden agenda as it is neither a member of the European Union nor of NATO."   Swiss officials say that Geneva's role as a center for humanitarian organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, lends the government credibility on human rights issues.   "We are known as a country with a tradition of defending and promoting human rights," said Ulrich Lehner, who leads UN affairs at the Foreign Ministry.   Still, Switzerland's foreign policy is probably also driven by practical motives, like the hope of burnishing its image abroad, said Jonathan Steinberg, a professor in European history at the University of Pennsylvania.   After bad publicity in recent years, with issues like the scandals over missing Swiss bank accounts of Holocaust victims, "the government is doing what it can to look better," Steinberg said.   Switzerland's role in UN reform goes back to 2003, when it asked Kalin to write a broad report on how to improve the Human Rights Commission.   The idea for a stronger body had been talked about before. But it was Micheline Calmy-Rey, the Swiss foreign minister, who pushed the idea during a meeting with Annan in New York last September, according to UN officials and Swiss diplomats.   The United States favors a smaller rights council of 20 members with solid human rights records. Most developing countries prefer a larger council and oppose strict criteria for membership.   (Published by International Herald Tribune) Visit the related web page
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