Author: Mick Hartley

le difference now that refugee camp conditions have returned to the headlines. As before, Annan has delivered vague statements but prosecuted no one. It appears that the status quo reigns and that those perpetrating all sorts of abuses in refugee camps may continue undisturbed. The United Nations is a vital institution that needs a housecleaning.

The Tanuki Ramble looks at the current Chinese demands for Japan to “face up to history”, and wonders…anybody remember Tibet? A useful summary of Chinese crimes (via Simon’s World).

From the (North) Korean Central News Agency:

Curative plastic sheets Nos. 1 and 2 have been developed by scientists in the textile field of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. They are polypropylene and polyethylene sheets treated in an electronic way. With the sheets one can cure various diseases by oneself in any places without medical apparatuses and medicines.

When they are pasted to the points to be treated, it helps recover the function of abnormal minute electric current, damaged cells and tissues in human body and activate metabolism.

Sheet No.1 is for external wounds such as gash, abscess and burn and sheet No. 2 for internal diseases such as contusion, bone fracture, neuralgia, indigestion, stomach cramps and inflammation.

The years of clinical test shows that patients who had long suffered from sore finger and tympanitis recovered health with one-time use of the sheet and obstinate simple necrosis patients with six-time use. And babies under six months cured pneumonia with the help of the sheets.

Now that is impressive.

ilants dragged the young woman’s body out of the car, pouncing upon it mercilessly with clubs and iron bars.

“It was the most horrific crime I’ve seen in my life,” said a university student who witnessed the attack. “What they did to the body while it was lying on the ground was barbaric. This does not represent Islam.” The student, who asked not to be named, said he and several other people at the scene were too afraid to interfere. “We waited until the gunmen left the area before we called the police and an ambulance,” he added. The Palestinian Authority police, who have since arrested two suspects, confirmed that the attack was carried out by Hamas vigilantes who have been waging a campaign of intimidation against people exhibiting un-Islamic behavior.

ish women’s rights, classify them as having only partial sense, denigrate their importance, doubt their capabilities, permit beating and banishing them, permit their caging within four walls, allow their husbands to treat them as they see fit, and allow them to be bought and sold according to legal agreements. When women fail [in matters forbidden by religious law], the laws welcome their barbarous execution.

“These laws are clearly no longer suited to an era in which cats and dogs in the developed world have more rights than Arab women…

o defeat it.

I say to you: Wait two or three years and you will be pleasantly surprised.

solution condemning violations of human rights in North Korea, where hundreds of thousands are imprisoned in concentration camps, mass starvation is a recent memory and political repression is absolute. WonsanGhetto at NK Zone is not impressed:

The South Korean government is on full notice of the suffering of the North Korean people; yet for reasons that are almost certainly related to domestic politics, it chooses to focus its attention elsewhere. History will record this as a betrayal. The forgiveness of the North Korean people will be neither warranted nor forthcoming.

Interesting article in the Scotsman:

Tony Blair has secretly promised Gordon Brown that he will change Labour’s rules for electing a new leader to smooth the Chancellor’s path to Number 10.

Blair’s move is certain to infuriate his most loyal supporters. He has pledged to “actively endorse” Brown’s bid to succeed him, making it virtually impossible for anyone else to challenge the Chancellor.

The agreement – which amounts to capitulation on Blair’s part aimed at gaining Brown’s full support during the general election – has been confirmed by senior government sources and will ‘raise the bar’ for would-be challengers hoping to take on Brown.

Even to stand against him rivals will have to amass the backing of a fifth of backbench Labour MPs – the figure is currently one-eighth.

Brown would easily garner such a level of support, but the rule change will make it all but impossible for ‘Stop Brown’ candidates such as John Reid, Jack Straw and Charles Clarke to stand in the Chancellor’s way. The deal, struck to guarantee Brown’s badly-needed support in returning Labour to power on May 5, comes amid further evidence of the party’s need to turn its fortunes around.

Amnesty International has called on Syria to release Kurds detained during violent riots last month:

“Hundreds” of Kurds are being held at unknown locations, incommunicado and without charge, Amnesty said.

It called for an independent inquiry into the riots which left 25 dead and injured hundreds in five days.

The unrest was sparked by a soccer match brawl on 12 March, between fans of teams supported by Arabs and Kurds.

It spread quickly from the northern town of Qameshli, near the border with Turkey and Iraq, to other towns. […]

In its statement on Tuesday, Amnesty International said: “The incommunicado detention at unknown locations of many hundreds of Syrian Kurds is of serious concern, not least as it puts detainees at greater risk of torture or ill-treatment.”

If this is correct, fears of torture are well-founded (via Medienkritik):

Syrian security forces tortured to death 13 people last year, most of them Kurds, an independent human rights watchdog claimed yesterday.

The Association for Human Rights in Syria said that some of the alleged victims died in custody after unrest in the mainly Kurdish north-east in March last year.

“Five Kurds died under torture after the demonstrations in Qamishli,” the group reported. “Six more Kurds died in suspicious circumstances while performing their national service and two [Arab] Syrians died in offices of the interior ministry’s security branch.”

The orchestration of nationalist feeling in China continues:

A massive anti-Japanese rally was due to take place in the Chinese capital Beijing today amid fears that it could turn violent.

In what could be the largest demonstration against Japan in recent years, organisers called for 20,000 “patriots” to protest against Japan’s “historical actions” – a reference to the invasion during the Second World War.

Meanwhile South Korea’s president Roh Moo-hyun stepped up his criticism of Japan’s failure to repent its past crimes, calling Japan a “misfortune” to the world (via The Marmot’s Hole):

“It is a grave global misfortune to coexist with a nation anxious to glorify its history of aggression and cruelty,” Roh said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a leading German newspaper.

“The fundamental problem is that the Japanese are looking to distort and justify their past aggressions. They have occasionally apologized, but their latest behaviors invalidated those apologies.”

Repeated visits (by Japanese prime ministers) to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Class A Japanese war criminals, for instance, is a grave insult to both South Korea and China, Roh said.

“The Japanese attitude does not fit with mankind’s universal values,” said the president.

Which all ties in nicely with the constant stream of anti-Japanese sentiment pushed out by North Korea’s Central News Agency. For instance:

The U.S. and Japan are chiefly to blame for the moves to drive our nation into disasters of a war. “South Korea-U.S. cooperation” is not practical diplomacy but diplomacy inviting national ruin. In order to protect the life and dignity of the nation we should not cooperate with the U.S. but with our compatriots.
National cooperation alone is a practical way of checking Japan’s moves to revive militarism and removing the threat of a war.

How nice that there’s something they can all agree on.