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	Uganda war criminal Joseph Kony target of social media campaign by Reuters, Human Rights Watch & agencies USA   Uganda war criminal Joseph Kony, the leader of the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is the target of a social media campaign by a group of documentary filmmakers who go by the name Invisible Children.   KONY 2012, a documentary-style work of interviews with former child soldiers, aims to stop child abduction and the use of child soldiers, and ultimately lead to the arrest of Joseph Kony and other LRA leaders.   Northern Uganda was the centre of a brutal, two-decade insurgency by the LRA that saw 2 million people uprooted from their homes and tens of thousands kidnapped, mutilated or killed. Kony has repeatedly failed to sign a final peace deal, and his rebels are now active in Congo, South Sudan and Central African Republic where they still kill and abduct civilians.   Led largely by young people in the United States they are lobbying US lawmakers to assist in arresting Kony and other human rights violators – to help end the violence in northern Uganda.   The video KONY 2012 has attracted millions of viewers on YouTube. It also became the top trending topic on Twitter. Young Americans, in particular, who may never before have heard of the long, brutal conflict, now know of the atrocities committed by Kony and his LRA.   Joseph Kony is the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) most-wanted criminal, known for being behind abductions of children from their homes, boys being turned into child soldiers and girls into sex slaves.   In the video, Luis Moreno Ocampo, head prosecutor for the ICC, lays out the price of what it means if Kony isn’t caught. “It’s bad for the world if we fail. It’s important for everyone,” he says.   Uganda says it is taking action to capture Kony. (Agencies)   Uganda, says it is making efforts to find the suspected war criminal whose global profile soared after a YouTube video went viral, wants to show the world Kony is not in the country and it is doing all it can to find him.   After founding the Lord"s Resistance Army (LRA) in the 1980s, Kony terrorised large parts of Uganda. However, his reign of terror has somewhat subsided since 2005 and he is now believed to command fewer followers, scattered in remote jungle hideouts in neighbouring countries.   The Ugandag Government said it did not believe Joseph Kony was in Uganda. It announced the creation of a four-nation military force to step up the hunt for Kony. The Government said the LRA had been reduced as a force, split up into groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic.   Nov. 2010   Sudan"s girls enslaved by armed cult.   Zaha Mary was freed by Ugandan troops last week 12 months after being abducted by Africa"s most feared militia, the Lord"s Resistance Army. Mary was found in an isolated LRA encampment in the Central African Republic and later flown to a Ugandan army base near her home in southern Sudan. Not even Mary"s parents knew their 10-year-old daughter was alive.   Ugandan Defence Force officer Lieutenant-Colonel John Damulira told reporters that Mary"s freedom came after a gun battle with the LRA. "This girl was injured slightly but we were able to rescue her," he said.   The LRA snatched Mary last December as she was walking alone along a road near Yei to visit her aunt. She was forced to march more than 800 kilometres to Obo in the Central African Republic and handed over as a gift to a senior LRA warlord.   The LRA, a messianic Christian cult founded in Uganda in the 1980s, has terrorised villagers in southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic since being pushed out of Uganda in 2005.   Notorious for the savagery of its attacks against innocent villagers in its search for food and valuables, the LRA also has a history of forcing children as young as Mary into sexual servitude. "We are rescuing women like Mary every week as part of our operations against the LRA," Colonel Damulira said. "Last week we rescued 13 girls like her."   Working closely with the government of southern Sudan in an effort to rout the LRA, Colonel Damulira believes the core of the LRA and its leader, Joseph Kony, are most likely hiding in Darfur, in western Sudan.   "They have nowhere to go from here," he said. "Incursions into southern Sudan, Congo and Uganda are getting less. Rates of child abduction, looting and murder at the hands of the LRA are also slowly dropping. This is a very brutal group of men. Defeating them will not be easy."   I visited a makeshift camp near Yambio, in southern Sudan, established by men and women who have lost their spouses in LRA attacks. One woman, who did not want her name published, said her village was decimated by the LRA this month.   "My husband was tied to stakes in the ground and beaten to death in front of me," she said. "I managed to flee with my three-year-old son but my two daughters [aged seven and eight] were abducted. I have no way of knowing where they are, and whether they are alive or dead."   Another Sudanese woman living in the same camp for LRA victims is Juliana Bingo, 23, who was freed by Ugandan troops in January. She was abducted from her village of James Diko, near Yambio, when she was 17.   "It is a very brutal way of living," she said. "When you break the rules, you are beaten. Your role is to serve the men, to make sure that everything they tell you to do is done very quickly. Because they are always on the run, you never really know where you will be sleeping the next day, the next week. I still live in fear of the LRA."   *Writer Jason Koutsoukis travelled to South Sudan courtesy of Medecins Sans Frontieres.   Nov. 2010   During its recent investigation of the Lord"s Resistance Army"s (LRA) crimes, Human Rights Watch researchers noticed hundreds of people in the Central African Republic wearing t-shirts bearing Barack Obama"s image. For them, and for LRA victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Obama is a hero. Many even had personal messages for him.   In May, Obama signed into law legislation requiring the US to develop a strategy to protect civilians from the LRA and to stop the rebel group"s violence. The new strategy is due by November 24.   Between May and September, our researchers spoke with hundreds of the rebel group"s victims, taking their testimony, and recording their messages to Obama and other world leaders.   The LRA has carried out horrific atrocities across central Africa. It reinforces its numbers by abducting children, who are then forced to fight and kill. Across northern Congo, southern Sudan, and CAR, the LRA has killed 2,385 people in the past two years and caused more than 400,000 to flee their villages and abandon their fields.   Even in the crush of politics at home, President Obama should respond to the cries of the LRA"s victims. His leadership is needed with other governments to protect civilians and arrest those responsible for the LRA"s war crimes. http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/03/09/how-catch-joseph-kony Visit the related web page
	Deadly Honduras jail fire highlights dangers of overcrowding by AFP, OHCHR & agencies Latin America   16 February 2012   Honduras President Porfirio Lobo has vowed a full inquiry into the causes of the fire that gutted an overcrowded jail, killing more than 350 inmates.   Survivors described wrenching scenes of prisoners pleading for help as they were engulfed by choking smoke and flames, some unable to flee because they were still shackled to the bars of their cells in what is the world"s worst prison fire in a decade.   The enormity of the disaster led President Porfirio Lobo to suspend Honduras"s top prison officials, including the corrections chief, as well as those at the Comayagua penitentiary while an investigation is under way.   Those who were able "tried to save themselves by hurling themselves into the shower, sinks" and any other source of water they could find, one survivor said after the inferno in the prison in the central Honduran city of Comayagua. The inferno took about three hours to bring under control.   Victor Sevilla said he was haunted by the desperate cries for help from his fellow prisoners trapped in their cells and who could not get out in time.   "I woke up with all the screaming from my fellow inmates, who were already breaking the wood and zinc ceiling," Sevilla, 23, told AFP, speaking at Comayagua"s Santa Teresa hospital where he was being treated for a broken ankle after jumping to safety from a wall.   Fabricio Contreras, said he was also woken up by the commotion. The prisoners headed to the main gate, "but nobody opened it," he said. "The prison guards were firing in the air because they thought it was a breakout," he said.   Distraught relatives wept openly, clinging to each other as they mourned the deaths of their loved ones. Many blamed prison authorities for moving too slowly to save them. "My son died of asphyxiation there," said Leonidas Medina, 69, at a local hospital.   "The guards wouldn"t open the door and they (the inmates) burn" to death," he said. "They wouldn"t have died if they had just opened the doors."   Prisons in Honduras -- as is the case throughout Latin America -- are notoriously overcrowded. The prison in Comayagua, held almost double its official inmate capacity. The severe overcrowding in the prison contributed to the death toll. The Organization of American States in Washington said it was launching a probe into the disaster.   Desperate relatives, frustrated at being left in the dark about the fate of their loved ones, clashed with police and then stormed the prison gates early Wednesday. Security forces fired into the air in a bid to stop the unrest, but the relatives burst through a locked gate and flooded into the facility, where they gathered in a front courtyard.   "My brother Roberto Mejia was in unit six," an emotional Glenda Mejia told AFP. "They"ve told me that the inmates from that unit are all dead."   Officials here expressed sympathy with the relatives frustration, but called for patience. "We understand the pain of the families, but we have to follow a process under the law," Bonilla said. "We call for calm. It is a very difficult situation.”   A fire brigade spokesman said they encountered "hellish" scenes as they tried to free about 100 prisoners from locked cells. "We could"t get them out because we didn"t have the keys and couldn"t find the guards who had them," he said.   “The tragic deaths of hundreds of inmates, one of the worst incidents of its kind in the region, are ultimately the result of overcrowding and poor prison conditions, two longstanding problems in Honduras,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Given that Honduras has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, authorities have been locking up convicted and suspected criminals, but failing to address the conditions in which they are being held.”   Local press reports said that the country’s 24 prisons, which have a total capacity of 8,000, currently hold 13,000 prisoners. Local human rights groups say that prisoners in Honduras suffer overcrowding and poor prison conditions, including inadequate nutrition and sanitation.   15 February 2012   UN had warned on overcrowding. (UN News)   A senior United Nations human rights official has called on Latin American countries to tackle the problem of prison overcrowding in the wake of an overnight fire at a jail in Honduras that killed hundreds of inmates.   Antonio Maldonado, human rights adviser for the UN system in Honduras, told UN Radio today that overcrowding may have contributed to the death toll.   “There is a problem of overcrowding in the prison system, not only in this country, but also in many other prisons in Latin America.”   Last week, the South American regional representative of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Amerigo Incalcaterra, cited chronic overcrowding as one of the key causes behind a recent wave of deadly violence in jails across the continent.   Mr. Maldonado said today that international human rights bodies, including the UN Committee against Torture, have recommended to the Honduran Government in the past to reduce overcrowding and to “adopt any appropriate and effective measures” to prevent situations such as the deadly fire from occurring. “Unfortunately this seems not to be the case,” he added.   9 February 2012   Wave of prison deaths in South America sparks alarm from UN human rights office.   A senior United Nations human rights official has voiced concern over a wave of violence inside prisons in South America, where at least eight inmates have been killed in the past two weeks in four separate countries.   Three prisoners died in Uruguay, two in Argentina, two in Venezuela and one in Chile, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported yesterday. A video has also emerged showing a handcuffed female prisoner in Brazil who had just given birth.   Amerigo Incalcaterra, OHCHR’s regional representative for South America, issued a statement expressing concern about the situation in a region where the rate of prison overcrowding ranges from 30 per cent to 70 per cent.   “These events reflect an alarming pattern of prison violence in the region, which is a direct consequence of – or is aggravated by – among others, poor conditions of detention, including chronic prison overcrowding, the lack of access to basic services such as adequate floor space, potable water, food, health care, and lack of basic sanitary and hygienic standards,” he said.   “These conditions are exacerbated by judicial delays and excessive resort to pre-trial detention,” Mr. Incalcaterra added. He noted that UN human rights rapporteurs, treaty bodies and the Human Rights Council have all repeatedly criticized the state of prison conditions across the continent.   “Humane treatment is a basic standard of universal application which cannot depend entirely on material resources, and which must be applied without discrimination,” he said, citing the guidelines of the Human Rights Committee on the treatment of persons deprived of their liberty.   Mr. Incalcaterra voiced concern that none of the countries that his office covers has established a national preventive mechanism against torture, as required under the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture.   He also called for prompt investigations into all of the recent deaths, “with a view, where applicable, to identifying those responsible and to obtain redress for the victims and their families.”   * Penal Reform International offers a 10-Point Plan to address Prison Overcrowding, see link below. 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