Facebook photos depicting Israel Defense Forces soldiers pictured alongside handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainees represent the norm, not the exception, in IDF conduct, an Israeli human rights group said on Tuesday, thus refuting an official army statement claiming the opposite.

Photographs uploaded by Eden Abergil released earlier this week and labeled “IDF – the best time of my life,” sparked massive public outrage. The photos depicted Abergil smiling next to Palestinian prisoners with their hands bound and their eyes covered.

A comment attached to one of the photos of the soldier smiling in front of two blindfold men and posted by one of Abergil’s friends read “That looks really sexy for you,” with Abergil’s response reading: “I wonder if he is on Facebook too – I’ll have to tag him in the photo.”

An IDF spokesman had issued a response on Monday, saying that “on the face of it the behavior exhibited by the soldier is base and crude.”

In a statement released Tuesday by Breaking the Silence, an organization that collects testimonies of Israeli soldiers on alleged abuse of Palestinians in the territories, the group said that while the IDF claimed to be “shocked” by Abergil’s photos, it did not represent “the ugly behavior of just one person.”

The statement released in a Facebook page called “The Norm that IDF Spokesman Avi Benayahu Denies,” also included several graphic photos depicting soldiers posing next to the bodies of suspected militants as well as next to handcuffed detainees [viewer discretion is advised].

Read more here.

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The remains of a French national murdered under Argentina’s military dictatorship have been identified after 34 years. High school students helped crack the case involving Frenchman Yves Domergue and his Mexican girlfriend Cristina Cialceta who were killed in 1976.

The students helped identify the remains which had been buried in unmarked public graves. Their work forced the regional human rights secretariat to open an official probe in 2008.

The bodies were then exhumed and it was determined that there were similarities to the Domergue case, leading to a DNA match.

Juliana Cagrandi, the students’ teacher, had encouraged the pupils to investigate the case in 2003. A farmer had found the remains in September 1976 and a judge ordered an inquiry, which failed to identify the victims.

A retired legal officer then hid the official files, and helped the students, as did a  lawyer and other residents of the town of Melincue.

Domergue and Cialceta were killed at the start of the 1976-1983 military regime. He was a member of the left-wing Revolutionary Workers Party and met Cialceta in the town of Rosario.

Eighteen French citizens vanished without trace during the junta’s rule or the coup that gave rise to it. Léonie Duquet, a nun, is the only other one to have been identified by her remains.

Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner will be paying her respects to Domergue and Cialceta in a ceremony on Wednesday alongside the French ambassador.

Read more here.

With renewed violence in Jalal-Abad this evening as gangs torch homes and exchange gunfire with police, tens of thousands of ethnic Uzbeks are continuing to flee from Kyrgyzstan, but Uzbekistan announced tonight that it is closing the border after registering 45,000 adult ethnic Uzbek refugees from Kyrgyzstan, lenta.ru and AFP reported. The death toll after days of attacks on ethnic Uzbeks is at 138 and rising, with 1,622 injured and seeking medical attention and others said to fear approaching hospitals due to blocked roads and gunfire.

Yesterday the Uzbekistan Emergencies Ministry cited 75,000 refugees; it has been difficult to count all the infants and children. Uzbek NGOs have estimated the number of ethnic Uzbeks pouring into the Ferghana Valley border areas at 150,000 or more, although EurasiaNet has not been unable to verify these figures. After initially failing to find enough tents and redirecting refugees to local home stays, Tashkent appears to have quickly organized lodging in numerous schools in towns along the border. Relief workers say it has also been difficult to count people because many are crossing the border informally in addition to checkpoints that have been opened officially.

Human rights groups are beginning to report on brutal atrocities that they say are committed by Kyrgyz gangs, and in some cases, uniformed Kyrgyz forces. Al-Jazeera has published videos showing Kyrgyz army men riding around on armored vehicles and shooting, with gangs of armed civilian supporters cheering.

Officials are concerned that many more than 138 have been killed, because families are either burying their own dead quickly or unable yet to come out of hiding. While the Kyrgyz authorities appear to have carefully documented every wounded person or dead body that has been brought to a hospital or morgue, the International Committee of the Red Cross, which witnessed the burial of at least 100 people, is concerned that burials are too hasty and relatives have not been informed.

Calls for outside intervention to stop the violence have continued, with appeals by Kyrgyz NGOs to Russia or the UN; from Human Rights Watch to the UN; from Uzbek NGOs to the Uzbek government or the UN. All of these appeals have cited the inability of the interim Kyrgyz government to cope.

Read more here.

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Vladimir Putin has examined papers on issues that concern the Russian intelligentsia, passed to him over a charity dinner, his press secretary has said. The Premier is also aware of the dissolution of a protest rally.

On Monday, the opposition and human rights activists – for the ninth time in a row – attempted to hold an unauthorized meeting in support of Article 31 of Russia’s constitution, which provides for freedom of assembly. The protesters were dispersed by police, who, according to witnesses including Russia’s human rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, acted extremely brutally. Officials maintain that various venues were offered to the organizers of the march. However, they still attempted to hold it on Triumfalnaya Square, where the gathering was banned.

Rights activists argue that city authorities and police violated the law by not permitting a peaceful gathering and then by violently breaking it up.

On Wednesday, human rights activists issued a statement demanding Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov’s resignation for “continually denying permission for undesirable mass rallies, thus provoking clashes, detentions, beatings and arrests.”

According to the Russian ombudsman, “no one is allowed to ban a meeting if it is peaceful – and that was exactly the case on May 31.”

“Russian laws say that such rallies do not require a permit, but only need to be announced,” Lukin said in an interview with Russian “MK” daily. Authorities, he went on, must register the application and provide normal and secure conditions for the meeting.

Read more here.

El País reports that High Court judge Baltasar Garzón will be suspended indefinitely, for his part in investigating crimes against humanity during the Franco era in Spain. He departed from the court at 2pm on May 13th, surrounded by tearful colleagues and supporters, some chanting ‘Garzón, stay calm, the people are with you.’ The government stated their support of the decision by the courts, with Vice President María Teresa Fernández de la Vega commenting that ‘the process is not over,’ and that the ‘presumption of innocence’ should be respected in regard to Garzón.

On Wednesday, president of the Board of Judicial Power, Carlos Dívar officially announced a permanent commission to deal with reports in support of sending Garzón to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. However, with the suspension in place it remains to be seen if this can go ahead. Today, the prosecutor of the Court of Justice, Luis Moreno Ocampo sent a report requesting Garzón’s presence as an outside assessor of the court and as an international expert on human rights.

Garzón’s lawyer is challenging the legitimacy of the accusations made by the right wing trade union Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), who filed against Garzón for his alleged breach of Spain’s 1977 Amnesty Law that prevents the prosecution of crimes committed during and after the Spanish Civil War.

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China is now viewed by the US military as a potential, and fast-growing, military threat not just in waters closer to home but also in those farther away,  stretching even to the Middle East, whose vital supplies of oil China must now have in ever-increasing quantities if she is to continue to evidence  her spectacular (and seemingly unstoppable) economic growth. China now views any part of the globe in which she has an economic interest , worth defending militarily. Her Asian neighbors, naturally enough, are also alarmed—even  to the point where Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaysia have bought, or are ordering, new submarines.

All this is happening right now, and China is not even supposed, by one estimate at least, to surpass the US economically for another twenty years. So, what can one reasonably expect will occur when she will possess the world’s most powerful economy and can thus spend proportionately more money on her military than she does now, as well as afford a world-wide military presence wherever she believes her economic interests lie? For if the tiger cub is roaring now—what then when her might is economically and militarily far beyond her present state? Do we reasonably believe the world will be a safer place, or less safe?  And does the US believe it can then better contain a full-grown tiger when it can not even contain a cub now?

And to whom do we thank for this emerging threat to world peace, not to mention American strategic interests? To American corporations first and foremost—and the politicians they have bought and paid for, both Republicans and Democrats.

American corporations have a sordid history of always being on the wrong side of the political fence, even when that means—like now in China—supporting a regime we already know is totalitarian, brutal, and hostile to human rights. During the rise of Soviet Communism we have learned how “capitalist giants” like J P Morgan and the Du Ponts, inter alia, helped Lenin ascend to and remain in power, or how Henry Ford, even though an  avowed admirer and supporter of Fascism (Adolf Hitler called him “mein freund Heinrich Ford”, and placed his picture on the wall in his office) set up under Stalin the first automated car factory in the Soviet Union, justifying it by saying “even they need to have a job.”  Or, one can now read the “list of shame” of American corporations supporting the rise of Nazism, and even continuing to support Nazi Germany throughout the war. Indeed, without Ford, GM, IBM, eg, Hitler could not have had a formidable Panzer tank and truck corps, or have built and used its V2 rockets against England.

The sad fact of the corporate world is this:  profit comes first—not concern for democracy, not concern for human rights, not concern for the faith of the Bible and the ethics it demands; nothing matters in the end but profit.  One may go to church, like Henry Ford did, but the proof is in the pudding, isn’t it?

On top of aiding China to become the new behemoth, American corporations have (to balance things out) nearly destroyed America’s industrial might by relocating jobs, factories, and hugely-expensive high-tech research centers in China itself. This in turn means a brain-drain from the US. And no country can for long remain strong, let alone secure, without retaining its best and brightest. Let us now thank the American corporate world not just for bringing another Great Depression to our very doorsteps, but for enabling our economic power to enter its long decline,  and so  to make our own future, economic and military both, less secure and even at risk. Blind greed we all know is bad—why then do we believe that corporate greed is acceptable? When our country enters its weakened state in the near future—if things remain as they are—let us also remember the path that got us here.

Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, faced the Supreme Court in Madrid again yesterday, accused of bribery and corruption, reports El Mundo.

The judge, who sits in Spain’s High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, is known for his investigation into crimes against humanity in the Spanish Civil War, ordering exhumations of mass graves of victims of the Franco regime and attempting to prosecute war criminals despite the amnesty granted to both sides in 1977. He has been accused of exceeding his power in relation to this campaign and faces a twenty year suspension if found guilty. Garzón first came to international attention when he issued an international arrest warrant for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, but failed to have the dictator extradited to Spain to stand trial for his crimes against Spanish citizens.

However, the current proceedings involve payments allegedly made to Garzón by the then president of Banco Santander, Emilio Botín, in return for the judge’s archiving of a case taken against the bank. Garzón attended courses in New York University that were sponsored by the bank, and is accused of accepting $302,000 from the Santander group between 2005 and 2006.

Yesterday in Madrid, over 200 people came out into the streets in support of Garzón. Many famous Spaniards, including actresses Pilar Bardem and Marisa Paredes Supporters held placards bearing messages such as ‘Universal justice, more judges like Garzón’ outside the High Court, while chants of ‘Garzón, friend, the people are with you’ filled the air. Meanwhile, in Chile, Isabel Allende, senator, author and daughter of former Chilean president Salvador Allende stated on behalf of her people; ‘we want to express all our support to someone who has been a bastion in the search for justice and in the respect of human rights around the world.’

Garzón faces a third lawsuit, in relation to the Gurtel case, involving the Partido Popular, the centre right opposition party in Spain. The judge is contesting evidence used in the case, retrieved from interviews between prisoners and counsel, which is normally inadmissible in court except for cases involving terrorism.

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For the first time ever, no one was executed anywhere on the continent of Europe last year, according to Amnesty International’s annual executions report, a human rights record that was undone just a few days ago when Belarus executed two individuals some time around 18 March.

While the European Union outlaws capital punishment from Lapland to Lisbon and campaigns for its universal abolition, and a total of 48 out of 50 European states have abolished the practice, Belarus is the last European country to retain the death penalty.

Latvia, as an EU member, has also abolished capital punishment but retains the theoretical possibility of imposing the ultimate sanction in times of war. Portugal was the first European country to abolish capital punishment, in 1867.

In a letter to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, early Tuesday (30 March) the human rights watchdog called on her to condemn the Belarussian executions, in which two men were shot, and to step up the campaign for an international moratorium on the death penalty.

“The death penalty has not been mentioned on a regular basis in high-level [EU] political statements and the deafening silence after the executions in Belarus has made the issue of the death penalty look even less like a priority,” said Nicolas Beger, the director of Amnesty International’s EU office.

The group said that hoped Ms Ashton would make abolition of the death penalty one of “top priorities” of the External Action Service, the EU’s new diplomatic corps.

Read more here.

A human rights organisation yesterday released a chilling report indicating that the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) killed at least 321 civilians during a previously unreported four-day rampage in northeastern Congo in December, reports Uganda’s The New Vision.

The rampaging rebels, according to the report by Human Rights Watch, also abducted 250 villagers, including at least 80 children.

The massacre was perpetrated by rebel commanders Binansio Okumu, also known as Binany, and Obol.

The two, the report said, report to Dominic Ongwen who commands the LRA forces in Congo and is among those indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

“The Makombo massacre is one of the worst ever committed by the LRA in its bloody 23-year history, yet it has gone unreported for months,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch.

The report is based on a fact-finding mission to the massacre area in February. It documents the brutal killings during the well-planned LRA attack from December 14 to 17 in the remote Makombo area of Haute Uele district.

Dressed in military uniforms, the rebels pretended to be Congolese soldiers who had spent months in the forests and asked local people for food and other goods.

They then asked people to carry the goods back to where they had crossed the Uele River, and when the villagers refused, the rebels turned on them.

Survivors of the attack narrated nasty accounts of their ordeal in the hands of the LRA.

They said the vast majority of those killed were adult men who were tied and hacked to death with machetes, or had their skulls crushed with axes and wooden sticks.

The dead also included at least 13 women and 23 children, the youngest a 3-year-old girl who was burned to death. When moving to the next village, the rebels killed more people among those they had abducted.

Anyone who was unable to keep up with the pace of the forced march was ‘left behind’ – a euphemism for being tied up and battered to death with wooden stakes or killed with machetes and axes. Those who refused or tried to escape were also brutally killed.

Many of the children captured by the LRA were forced to kill other children who had disobeyed the LRA’s rules.

Read the full report here.

Novaya Gazeta journalist Anastasia Baburova

Despite President Dmitry Medvedev’s promises, the life of the country’s human rights workers is growing increasingly dangerous, making Western protection necessary, activists said Tuesday.

“Our people are being killed and injured and none of us knows who will be next,” veteran human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva told a European Union conference in Moscow.

She said the fastest and most effective outside help was to give visas and political asylum to those whose safety was at risk. “We very much ask for such a mechanism to be set up,” she said.

Alexeyeva, who chairs the Moscow Helsinki Group, recalled that last year there were killings of a number of activists, including lawyer Stanislav Markelov, Novaya Gazeta journalist Anastasia Baburova and Ingush opposition leader Maksharip Aushev.

She also said it was important that the Russian government be pressed into implementing decisions by the European Court of Human Rights. She complained that Russia pays compensation to victims but rarely enacts changes to prevent future violations.

Conference participants accused the government of not fulfilling its obligation to protect human rights workers.

“The only protection they get is from society and from parts of the media,” said Andrei Vyurov, a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group.

Yury Dzhibladze, head of the Center for Development of Democracy and Human Rights, said nothing has improved since President Medvedev first acknowledged a year ago that a new policy toward human rights activists was needed. “Everything has just gotten worse,” he said.

Read more here.