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	Kofi Annan blasts Global Failure on Darfur Horror by Human Rights Watch   December 2006   The outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today delivered a ringing condemnation of the world’s failure to halt the bloodshed in Darfur, Human Rights Watch said today.   He also warned against violating human rights in the fight against terror, saying governments that abandon the moral high ground play into the hands of terrorists. In a speech to 500 guests organized by Human Rights Watch, Annan questioned whether he had succeeded, after 10 years in office, in making the United Nations into an effective defender of human rights.   “To judge by what is happening in Darfur, our performance has not improved much since the disasters of Bosnia and Rwanda,” Annan said. “Sixty years after the liberation of the Nazi death camps, and 30 years after the Cambodian killing fields, the promise of ‘never again’ is ringing hollow.”   Annan’s speech, in honor of International Human Rights Day on Sunday December 10, 2006, marks his farewell to the post he has held for two terms. He used the occasion to set out steps that UN members and the incoming secretary-general should take to improve the situation, starting with the need to build upon the “momentous doctrine”, agreed by world leaders last year, of the responsibility to protect against crimes against humanity.   “We must develop the responsibility to protect into a powerful international norm that is not only quoted but put into practice, whenever and wherever it is needed,” Annan said.   The doctrine has yet to be applied to the horror in Darfur, he noted. “There is more than enough blame to go around,” Annan said. “It can be shared among those who value abstract notions of sovereignty more than the lives of real families, those whose reflex of solidarity puts them on the side of governments and not of peoples, and those who fear that action to stop the slaughter would jeopardize their commercial interests.”   Annan was critical, too, of countries “in the global south” for “caricaturing responsibility to protect as a conspiracy by imperialist powers to take back the hard-won national sovereignty of formerly colonized peoples.” This, he said, was “utterly false.”   It is vital, Annan said, to take action before a genocide is underway. He urged UN members and his successor, Ban Ki-Moon, who will be inaugurated next week, to push through an action plan for the prevention of genocide.   The secretary-general dismissed the suggestion – often cited now, for example, in the context of northern Uganda – that peace can trump justice. Sierra Leone and the Balkans showed that “justice has often bolstered lasting peace, by de-legitimizing and driving underground those individuals who pose the greatest threat to it,” Annan said. “That is why there should never be an amnesty for genocide, crimes against humanity and massive violations of human rights. That would only encourage today’s mass murderers – and tomorrow’s would-be mass murderers – to continue their vicious work.”   In his speech, Annan was sharply critical of the methods used by Washington to conduct its “war on terror”, and warned against “abandoning the moral high ground and playing into the hands of the terrorists.”   “We need an anti-terrorism strategy that does not merely pay lip-service to the defense of human rights but is built on it,” Annan said. “That is why secret prisons have no place in our struggle against terrorism, and why all places where terrorism suspects are detained must be accessible to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Leading promoters of human rights undermine their own influence when they fail to live up to these principles.”   As part of its “war on terror,” the US government has repeatedly “disappeared” those it accuses of terrorism and held them in secret prisons without access to Red Cross representatives as part of its “war on terror.” It has also flouted the international ban on torture by authorizing certain abusive interrogation techniques.   In a parting shot clearly directed at the Bush administration, Annan warned, too, against making exceptions to the rules on torture. “Once we adopt a policy of making exceptions to these rules or excusing breaches of them, no matter how narrow, we are on a slippery slope. The line cannot be held half way down. We must defend it at the top.”   Annan also expressed his dismay at the failures of the new Human Rights Council in Geneva, which he helped bring into existence in the hope that it would reinvigorate the UN’s human rights work. In practice, this has not happened. Annan welcomed the recent decision to address the Darfur crisis, but criticized the council’s one-sided focus on Israel to the exclusion of many other issues, which has damaged the council in its first few months of existence.   Annan noted the continuing importance of addressing country-specific situations, which some on the council want to move away from. Responding to those who want to deprive the council of its most powerful weapon, Annan affirmed that some governments “will continue to merit condemnation.”   He delivered a ringing call, especially to African leaders, to build a Human Rights Council that lives up to its promise. “Unless Africa wholeheartedly embraces the inviolability of human rights, its struggle for security and development will not succeed,” Annan said. “Many African governments are still resisting the responsibility to protect. Many, even among the most democratic, are still reluctant to play their role in the Human Rights Council by speaking out impartially against all abuses. They can, and must, do more.”   Annan praised the role of non-governmental organizations worldwide. “Without the spotlight you shine, abuses would go unnoticed,” he said. “In return, we must do everything to protect you from harassment, intimidation and reprisal, so you can carry on your vital work.”   Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, introduced Annan for the speech at the Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater in New York. “As secretary-general, Annan has placed human rights at the top of the UN’s agenda,” said Roth. “He will be a hard act to follow. But we look to Ban Ki-Moon to continue Annan’s strong, outspoken leadership on human rights.”
	Rights Groups applaud Ethiopian Genocide Conviction by Aaron Glantz OneWorld.net Ethiopia   Dec. 2006   Human rights advocates have applauded the genocide conviction of former Ethiopian leader Mengistu Haile Mariam.   Mengistu and dozens of his military government officials were convicted Tuesday of the killing of thousands of political opponents during a particularly brutal period of the dictator"s 17-year rule.   "This is a man whose regime was marked by some of the worst atrocities of our time." Reed Brody, legal counsel for New York-based Human Rights Watch, told OneWorld. "Thousands of political killings [were carried out and] over 100,000 people died as a result of forced relocations."   Known by some as "the Butcher of Addis," Mengistu"s reign began with the toppling of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and included war, political purges, and the notorious 1984 famine. Mengistu was condemned by the international community for his inability or unwillingness to take action while approximately 1 million Ethiopians died of hunger.   The former dictator, who himself was overthrown in 1991, currently lives in Zimbabwe and was tried in absentia by the Ethiopian government.   The verdict comes as other African dictators find themselves facing justice too. Former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre is set to be brought to trial in Senegal, where he had been living in exile, and Liberia"s warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor was arrested and sent to The Hague. His trial is tentatively scheduled to begin in April 2007. Taylor"s U.S.-born son was arrested in the United States last week and charged with torture.   And Wednesday the top prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague announced that he will bring charges by February against those suspected of masterminding atrocities in Sudan"s Darfur region.   "It is certainly uneven, and they are being dragged along kicking and screaming, but we are definitely seeing a trend in which people who commit mass murder are being brought to account," Brody was quoted as saying Wednesday by Northern Ireland"s Belfast Telegraph.   "We would very much like to see [Mengistu] physically brought to justice--not justice in absentia," said Brody, who put the former Ethiopian leader in the same category as Saddam Hussein and Cambodia"s Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.   In reading the verdict, however, the Ethiopian court"s presiding judge said that Mengistu and his cohorts "conspired to destroy a political group and kill people with impunity."   After seizing power, Mengistu, a Communist, built an alliance with the Soviet Union and massacred political opponents in a two-year wave of killings that came to be known as the "Red Terror."   Fifteen years after Mengistu"s ouster, the average Ethiopian still subsists on about $100 a year and the country"s elected government, once hailed as a model for democracy in Africa, has itself been accused of a litany of human rights abuses.   "The government of Ethiopia continues to violate its citizens" most basic rights," Amnesty International"s Lynn Fredrickson told a Congressional committee in November. "The government and ruling Ethiopian People"s Revolutionary Democratic Front continue to deny leaders and members of political opposition parties, noted human rights defenders, journalists, and others their rights of speech, press, assembly, and association."   A host of activists and intellectuals currently face prosecution in Ethiopia, Fredrickson said, including 14 journalists, a teachers union official, formerly U.S.-based law professor and United Nations Rwanda prosecutor Dr. Yakob Hailemariam, and Mesfin Woldemariam, Ethiopia"s most prominent human rights activist.   "Torture by beating on the feet and electric shocks have reportedly been used against some political prisoners," Fredrickson added.   Amnesty International is supporting a bill that would direct the U.S. Secretary of State to fund local and national human rights groups in Ethiopia, provide legal support to political prisoners there, and help increase the independence of the country"s judiciary. It would also establish a program to strengthen private media and expand programming by the Voice of America in Ethiopia.   The "Ethiopia Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights Advancement Act of 2006" was sponsored by Republican Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey and has 29 co-sponsors from both sides of the political aisle.   The bill would help ensure that members of Mengistu"s regime currently residing in the United States could be identified and extradited to face charges related to gross violations of human rights committed during his reign. It would also establish a mechanism to help the United States "work with other governments to identify and extradite such persons, including Mengistu Haile Mariam."   Mengistu could face the death penalty if forced to return to Ethiopia, though Zimbabwe"s president Robert Mugabe has said he will not honor any extradition requests. Mengistu supported Mugabe"s guerrilla forces in the 1970s when they fought to overthrow minority white rule in Zimbabwe.
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