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	Secret campaign of mass hangings at Syrian Prison by Amnesty International, agencies Syria   A chilling new report by Amnesty International exposes the Syrian government’s calculated campaign of extrajudicial executions by mass hangings at Saydnaya Prison. Between 2011 and 2015, every week and often twice a week, groups of up to 50 people were taken out of their prison cells and hanged to death.   In five years, as many as 13,000 people, most of them civilians believed to be opposed to the government, were hanged in secret at Saydnaya.   The report also shows that the government is deliberately inflicting inhuman conditions on detainees at Saydnaya Prison through repeated torture and the systematic deprivation of food, water, medicine and medical care. The report documents how these extermination policies have killed massive numbers of detainees.   These practices, which amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, are authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government.   “The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population,” said Lynn Maalouf, Deputy Director for Research at Amnesty International’s regional office in Beirut.   “We demand that the Syrian authorities immediately cease extrajudicial executions and torture and inhuman treatment at Saydnaya Prison and in all other government prisons across Syria. Russia and Iran, the government’s closest allies, must press for an end to these murderous detention policies.   “The upcoming Syria peace talks in Geneva cannot ignore these findings. Ending these atrocities in Syrian government prisons must be put on the agenda. The UN must immediately carry out an independent investigation into the crimes being committed at Saydnaya and demand access for independent monitors to all places of detention.”   The report reveals a routine of mass extrajudicial executions by hanging inside Saydnaya prison that was in place between 2011 and 2015. Every week – and often twice a week – victims were hanged in groups of up to 50 people, in the middle of the night and in total secrecy. There are strong reasons to believe that this routine is still ongoing today.   Large numbers of detainees have also been killed as a result of the authorities’ extermination policies, which include repeated torture and the systematic deprivation of food, water, medicine and medical care. In addition, detainees at Saydnaya Prison are forced to obey a set of sadistic and dehumanizing rules.   The findings of the report are based on an intensive investigation, which was carried out over the course of one year, from December 2015 to December 2016. It involved first-hand interviews with 84 witnesses that included former Saydnaya guards and officials, detainees, judges and lawyers, as well as national and international experts on detention in Syria.   A previous report published in August 2016, for which Amnesty International partnered with a team of specialists at Forensic Architecture, University of Goldsmiths to create a virtual 3D reconstruction of Saydnaya prison, estimated that more than 17,000 people have died in prisons across Syria as a result of the inhuman conditions and torture since the Syrian crisis began in 2011. This figure does not include the estimated 13,000 additional deaths as a result of the extrajudicial executions exposed in this report.   * Access the report: http://bit.ly/2ldshq3   Remarks by Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch at the 2017 Nuremberg International Human Rights Award   The Syrian war has been especially horrendous because the government of Bashar al-Assad has chosen to fight it by attacking civilians in opposition-held areas. The basic premise of the Geneva Conventions is that wars are supposed to be fought by combatants targeting combatants. That is the best way to minimize the dangers and cruelty of war for civilians.   Assad has turned that rule on its head. He has deliberately targeted civilians, as well as civilian institutions such as hospitals, schools, and markets, in parts of the country held by the armed opposition. His strategy is a return to the concept of “total war”—war without constraints—that the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law were supposed to have put behind us.   The most visible elements of this strategy have been bombing and besieging. Assad’s barrel bombs—improvised weapons that were so inaccurate they were good only for targeting neighborhoods or large institutions—were the paradigmatic weapon of this war on civilians. Assad’s repeated use of chemical weapons only reinforced this strategy.   Similarly, Assad has used starvation and deprivation of civilians as a strategy of war, in places like eastern Aleppo last year and eastern Ghouta today.   The aim of these strategies is to render life unlivable in opposition-held areas—to leave civilians with no choice but to flee, and to leave opposition forces bereft of their friends and families as well as any functioning economy.   This war-crime strategy of targeting civilians is why today there are more than five million Syrian refugees as well as more than six million people who have been forcibly displaced within the country.   We have gathered here today in recognition that there was another, hidden element of the Assad government’s atrocities that was in place even before the conflict began. Beyond bombing and besieging people, the government also detained, tortured and executed them.   Other detainees died from starvation and rampant disease. Those atrocities took place behind prison gates, often in detention facilities run by the notorious security agencies, the mukhabarat.   Human Rights Watch, my organization, has documented 27 separate detention facilities run by the mukhabarat. These are located around the country but many are in Damascus, the capital. Thousands upon thousands of people have disappeared into the hellish existence of these detention centers.   Some have been released to tell of the horrors inside, but the Assad government tried to cover up as much as it could, so the scale of these atrocities remained for a long time largely unknown.   One irony of the Syrian war is that while the Assad government flouts the most basic rules of international humanitarian law, it never openly admits doing so. It denies that it barrel bombs or gasses civilians. It pretends that it lets necessities reach people in besieged areas. And it bars independent access to the worst of its detention facilities where the bulk of the torture and execution takes place.   It is in that context of denial that the Caesar photos are so important. No one seeing the photographs of more than six thousand brutalized corpses can deny that something utterly inhumane has been taking place inside that closed prison system. Survivors can describe that hell on earth, but the photographs speak with an unimpeachable directness that compels us to understand the utter cruelty of the Syrian detention system.   The photographs were mostly taken on the grounds of two military hospitals in Damascus. There were so many bodies that the morgue overflowed, so many of the photographs were taken in a hospital garage.   It took an act of immense courage for the photographer, the man known by the pseudonym Caesar, an official forensic photographer for the Military Police to sneak these photographs out of the country. As a daily witness to these atrocities, he knew all too well how quickly he would join the corpses he photographed should anyone ever catch wind of his plans. His photographs leave no doubt about the magnitude of Assad’s crimes.   And these photographs represent the dead from just some of Assad’s detention victims. Others were killed beyond the roughly two years represented in the photographs, or were sent to hospitals other than the two where Caesar took his photos.   Syrian activists have documented well over 100,000 detainees since the March 2011 peaceful uprising that sparked today’s repression and war.   Still, in its inimitable fashion, the Assad government denied that the photos showed what they showed. Maybe these were random battlefield deaths. Maybe they were a macabre collection. Maybe they were someone else’s torture and execution victims.   Because of the importance of shutting off such potential cover stories, Human Rights Watch undertook an investigation to try to understand who the people were in the photographs and under what circumstances they died. We interviewed 37 former detainees who saw people die as well as four defectors who worked in Syrian government detention centers or the military hospitals where most of the photographs were taken.   We also used satellite imagery and geolocation techniques to confirm where the photographs had been taken. Finally, we tracked down 27 families of the victims who were able to identify their loved ones in the photographs and describe how they had last been seen being arrested or led into detention. All of this evidence provided important corroboration for the account that Caesar provided for his photographs.   Notably, all of the 27 families we interviewed said they had spent months or years searching for news of their loved ones, in many cases paying huge sums to contacts and middlemen employed in various government or security agencies. Only two eventually received death certificates which said the deceased had died of heart or respiratory failure, a typical excuse, according to Caesar. None received the bodies of their relatives for burial. That was an added cruelty of the Assad prison system.   All evidence by its nature is backward looking but the Caesar photos compel us to act in the future. First, and most important, they highlight the importance of opening Assad’s prisons and releasing his prisoners, since we must assume that these prisons continue to produce more corpses that Caesar’s replacement may now be photographing.   Sadly, Assad’s prisoners have received relatively little global attention. The “de-escalation zones” now being negotiated are reducing the killing in at least some parts of Syria. The besieged areas have many humanitarian agencies trying to overcome the obstacles erected by the Syrian government and other armed groups.   But who is looking out for the prisoners? Their fate seems to be little more than a footnote as negotiators convene in Astana or Geneva. We should be shining the Caesar photos on the White House and the Kremlin, on UN headquarters in New York and the Palais des Nations, until the fate of today’s prisoners moves to the center of international concern. Today’s ceremony helps in that spotlighting process.   The Caesar photos also compel us to think of justice. That is why Caesar was such an appropriate recipient of a human rights award from this city, Nuremburg, which has become a global symbol of justice for the worst human rights crimes. The sheer magnitude of the horrors photographed by Caesar serve as a declaration that war crimes—indeed, crimes against humanity—have been committed, and that justice must be done.   We don’t yet know exactly what mechanism will be in place to secure that justice. Because Russia has blocked UN Security Council efforts to give the International Criminal Court in The Hague a mandate on Syria, the UN General Assembly, where there is no veto, did something unprecedented last December. It voted overwhelmingly by a vote of 105 to 15 to circumvent the Russian veto and establish an investigative body, the so-called IIIM, to gather evidence for ultimate prosecution. The Caesar photos will likely be a central part of that dossier.   I met last week in New York with Catherine Marchi-Uhel, the French prosecutor who is heading the IIIM. I have great confidence in her dedication and ability, but strong political and financial support to the IIIM will be essential for it to succeed.   Some national prosecutions of lower-level offenders have already taken place in several countries including Germany and Sweden under the concept of universal jurisdiction.   Theoretically, a future Syrian government might still consent to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, or Russia might refrain from using its veto. One possible route to justice at the highest official levels could again run through the UN General Assembly, with it taking the novel step of launching a tribunal for Syria, much as it already established a team of investigators.   Whatever the mechanism, the Caesar photos will help to ensure that senior figures of the Assad government and others in the chain of command are prosecuted not only for bombing, gassing, and besieging civilians but also for the horrors they visited on those held in detention.   We all owe Caesar our deepest respect and admiration for his courageous delivery of this evidence to the outside world. The duty now lies with all of us to see that the crimes he documented are promptly brought to an end, and that the people who ordered them are finally brought to justice. http://bit.ly/2gl6Ouw Visit the related web page
	ICC widens remit to include environmental destruction, land grabbing cases by Reuters, Guardian News, Oxfam, agencies   16 September 2016   Environmental destruction and landgrabs could lead to governments and individuals being prosecuted for crimes against humanity by the international criminal court following a decision to expand its remit.   The UN-backed court, which sits in The Hague, has mostly ruled on cases of genocide and war crimes since it was set up in 2002. It has been criticised for its reluctance to investigate major environmental and cultural crimes, which often happen in peacetime.   In a change of focus, the ICC said on Thursday it would also prioritise crimes that result in the “destruction of the environment”, “exploitation of natural resources” and the “illegal dispossession” of land. It also included an explicit reference to land-grabbing.   The court, which is funded by governments and is regarded as the court of last resort, said it would now take many crimes that have been traditionally under-prosecuted into consideration.   The ICC is not formally extending its jurisdiction, but the court said it would assess existing offences, such as crimes against humanity, in a broader context.   The ICC’s policy paper on case selection and prioritisation declares: “The office [of the prosecutor] will give particular consideration to prosecuting Rome statute crimes that are committed by means of, or that result in, inter alia, the destruction of the environment, the illegal exploitation of natural resources or the illegal dispossession of land.”   Land-grabbing has become increasingly common worldwide, with national and local governments allocating private companies tens of millions of hectares of land in the past 10 years.   The anti-corruption campaigners Global Witness say this has led to many forced evictions, the cultural genocide of indigenous peoples, malnutrition and environmental destruction.   “Land-grabbing is no less harmful than war in terms of negative impacts on civilians”, said Alice Harrison, an adviser at Global Witness. “Today’s announcement should send a warning shot to company executives and investors that the environment is no longer their playground.   “The terrible impacts of land-grabbing and environmental destruction have been acknowledged at the highest level of criminal justice, and private sector actors could now be put on trial for their role in illegally seizing land, flattening rainforests or poisoning water sources.”   International lawyers said broadening the priority cases to include land-grabbing would recognise that mass human rights violations committed during peacetime and in the name of profit could be just as serious as traditional war crimes.   “It will not make land-grabbing per se a crime, but mass forcible evictions that results from land-grabbing may end up being tried as a crime against humanity,” said Richard Rogers, a partner in the international criminal law firm Global Diligence.   Rogers has lodged a case with the ICC on behalf of 10 Cambodians alleging that the country’s ruling elite, including its government and military, has perpetuated mass rights violations since 2002 in pursuit of wealth and power by grabbing land and forcibly evicting up to 350,000 people.   “Cambodia is a perfect example for this new ICC focus. It fits in to the new criteria,” he said.   He predicted it could have a bearing on the way business is done in certain countries. “Companies who want to invest in [some] places risk being complicit in crimes against humanity. Tackling land-grabbing will also help address some of the causes of climate change, since deforestation is very often a result of land-grabbing.”   The new ICC focus could also open the door to prosecutions over climate change, Rogers said, because a large percentage of CO2 emissions had been caused by deforestation as a result of illegal land-grabbing.   The ICC can take action if the crime happens in any of the 139 countries that have signed up to the Rome statute, if the perpetrator originates from one of these countries, or if the UN security council refers a case to it. Crimes must have taken place after the Rome statue came into force on 1 July 2002.   Reinhold Gallmetzer, a member of the ICC working group who drew up the policy document, said: “We are exercising our jurisdiction by looking at the broader context in which crimes are committed. We are extending the focus to include Rome statute crimes already in our jurisdiction.   “Forcible transfer of people can already be a crime against humanity, so if it is committed by land-grabbing – whether as a result or a precursor – it can be included.”   The ICC paper also lists other crimes, such as arms trafficking, human trafficking, terrorism and financial crimes, in which it intends to provide more help to individual states to carry out national prosecutions.   Sep 2016   Global land rush enters new more violent phase. (Oxfam, agencies)   Millions of people face being displaced from their homes as new data shows land sales covering an area the size of Germany are now under contract, warns Oxfam.   Seventy-five percent of the more than 1500 land deals sought over the last sixteen years now have contracts and their intended projects are getting up and running, according to new research shared with Oxfam by the watchdog group Land Matrix Initiative.   Of these deals, up to 59 percent cover communal lands claimed by indigenous peoples and small communities, whose traditional ownership is rarely formally recognized by governments. Only a small fraction involved real dialogue with communities. Murder and the aggressive eviction of entire villages are an ongoing issue, and it is getting worse.   Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam International Executive Director, said: “We’re entering a new and even more dangerous stage of the global land rush. The frenzied trade in millions of hectares of forests, coastlines and farmlands has led to murder, eviction and ethnocide. Land contracts are being signed and projects are breaking ground without the full consent of the communities living there. Conditions are ripe for increasing conflict in the years ahead if land rights are not better protected now.”   Half the world''s land is inhabited by 2.5 billion women and men belonging to indigenous groups or local communities, but they formally own just one fifth of it.   “Depriving millions of their ancestral and community lands is the single biggest assault on people’s identity, dignity, safety, and the environment today. Securing their land is vital to tackling hunger, inequality and climate change. We need political leadership now,” Luca Miggiano, Oxfam''s land rights expert said.   In a new report, "Custodians of the land, Defenders of our future," Oxfam reveals fresh data on the global land rush and profiles six cases where lives have been shattered by threats to their land.   Despite the brutal murder of the indigenous leader Berta Caceres in Honduras in March, the country’s authorities have done little to push forward her cause. In Peru, the Quechuas of the Amazon are waging a legal war to regain control of their lands that have been wrecked by years of oil drilling. In Sri Lanka, hundreds of people have been internally displaced after the government evicted them to make way for beach-front hotels.   Oxfam’s report also details what governments must do to protect these and other people, and the environment. Defending land rights is inextricably linked to protecting the earth’s natural diversity and the fight against climate change. Oxfam’s report is part of the ongoing Land Rights Now campaign, supported by hundreds of civil society organizations. The campaign is calling for the amount of land these communities own to double by 2020.   http://www.oxfam.org/en/research/custodians-land-defenders-our-future http://www.landmatrix.org/en/ http://bit.ly/2dADE3K http://www.landrightsnow.org/en/home/ http://www.iied.org/law-natural-resource-squeeze-land-grabbing-investment-treaties-human-rights Visit the related web page
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