Karadzic doesn’t want reporters as witnesses

Sarajevo, 19 May 2009

Radovan Karadzic filed a motion to the International War Crimes Tribunal, calling on it not to allow the prosecution to invite wartime reporters as witnesses during his trial.

Among other witnesses, the prosecution plans to invite some reporters who were correspondents from Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war.

Karadzic argues that such reporters should not be allowed to give evidence at the Tribunal unless  the party calling them demonstrates that they could provide “evidence that is direct and important to the core issue of the case” or that the evidence they can provide cannot be obtained from any other sources.

Karadzic referred to a decision rendered by the Appellate Chamber in the trial of Radoslav Brdjanin at the Hague Tribunal, which stated that reporters “must be perceived as independent observers rather then as potential prosecution witnesses”, if they want to perform their job in an efficient manner.

Brdjanin was sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment in April 2007. He is currently serving his sentence in Denmark. During the war he was a leading political official in the Krajina Autonomous Region. For a period of time he was the acting Vice President of the Republika Srpska Government.

“The Appellate Chamber pointed out that if war correspondents were to be perceived as potential witnesses for the prosecution, two consequences may follow. First, they may have difficulties in gathering significant information because the interviewed person, particularly those committing human rights violations, may talk less freely with them and may deny access to conflict zones. Second, war correspondents my shift from being observers of those committing human right violations to being their targets, thereby putting their own lives at risk,” Karadzic’s motion reads.

Karadzic notes that wartime reporters’ work is dangerous in itself. He refers to data published by the International Press Institute stating that 66 reporters were killed in the course of 2008.

“Dr Karadzic urges the Trial Chamber not to further exacerbate this danger by allowing an individual war correspondent to waive the privilege that exist for the protection of other correspondents,” the motion reads.

The wartime President of Republika Srpska was arrested in Belgrade in July 2008 after having been on the run for more than a decade. He is currently being held in a detention unit in Scheweningen, where he is awaiting the start of his trial before the Hague Tribunal.

Font: Balkan Insight

The most universal human characteristic

“There are two kinds of sufferers in this world: those who suffer from a lack of life and those who suffer from an overabundance of life. I’ve always found myself in the second category. When you come to think of it, almost all human behavior and activity is not essentially any different from animal behavior. The most advanced technologies and craftsmanship bring us, at best, up to the super-chimpanzee level. Actually, the gap between, say, Plato or Nietzsche and the average human is greater than the gap between that chimpanzee and the average human. The realm of the real spirit, the true artist, the saint, the philosopher, is rarely achieved.

Why so few? Why is world history and evolution not stories of progress but rather this endless and futile addition of zeroes. No greater values have developed. Hell, the Greeks 3,000 years ago were just as advanced as we are. So what are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential? The answer to that can be found in another question, and that’s this: Which is the most universal human characteristic - fear or laziness?”

From the film Waking Life (Richard Linklater, 2001)

“Chechens have so many problems that they aren’t interested in spending time asking for freedom”

Some weeks ago the Freedom House Organization published a report on the freedom or lack of it in some countries and territories. Chechnya was classified as a territory without any kind of freedom. Asmik Zakaryan collaborates with a NGO specialized in the Caucasus conflicts. She didn’t want her name to appear because she feels frightened of having problems with the Kremlin so we’re using her nickname.

What’s the situation in Chechnya now?
It’s a peaceful country but just in terms of war because there isn’t one but I don’t think it’s really stable. The republics like Ingushetia or North Ossetia have a lot of problems with people being tortured or kidnapped. Chechnya as well but there it’s like a huge wave of this disaster.

The current president, Ramzan Kadyrov, appears to have a good image on some citizens.
He is the result of a friendship between Chechnya and the Kremlin, he does anything he wants with the country if he makes sure the citizens don’t bother the Kremlin. It’s true that he is constructing new buildings but there’s a lot of corruption. Some foundations give money for the reconstruction but a lot of people take advantage of it and don’t spend it on the good purpose. There are cases in which flats are given to people who paid some money to the public agency that is distributing them.

How do people react to this situation?
There are a lot of people who feels comfortable with this system because they just have to pay to get anything they want, they aren’t interested in living in a democratic country.

What about people who don’t have enough money?

We’re talking about people who get fifteen Euros a month. These people have so many problems that they aren’t really interested in wasting time asking for freedom.

A chechen woman stands outside her home in Chechnya / Eddy van Wessel

I suppose fear plays a big role in their decision as it’s known that critical voices tend to disappear.

If you don’t act in line with the government you can’t live there and if you have some relationship with a liberal view person you’ll have a lot of problems. You can’t go to the police because nobody will help you, it’s a lawless country.

How did people in Russia react to the murder of the lawyer and the journalism student?

There were some protests in Moscow and Chechnya but it’s not like here. There won’t be thousands of people protesting in the street. They think it’s not worth it.

What’s the situation of the media there?

There are a lot of journalists who leave their country because they can’t understand the way things are going on. Furthermore, they might get killed. There’re a lot of TV programs that used to criticize the government that have been closed and the rest can only be seen at 2 o’clock in the night.

We don’t get a lot of information coming from there. It seems like our media aren’t really interested in this issue.

I think that they aren’t interested in spreading out this kind of information about Russia because there’re so many economic and political interests. Chechnya was interesting some years ago with its’ two wars but what about now? You know, there’s “just” corruption, people disappearing and suffering… and that’s not interesting anymore.

Is it difficult for a foreign journalist to get to Chechnya?

You have to explain exactly why you want to go there, you need various permissions from the Russian government. There’re cases of journalists who had to pay around 6.000 Euros because they didn’t have the correct papers.

Do they feel presured when they’re in?

They’re controlled for sure but Russian journalists are under double pressure because they could be killed, while they can’t do so to the foreign ones if they have all the permits. They know that newspapers will have its’ own filters.

But, assuming that those filters won’t let critic visions about the Kremlin make it through, what about freelancers?
They probably won’t be allowed in and, if they’re, they’ll find it really difficult to work on proper conditions. Once the government invited international journalists to visit the country and what it did was to give away a great vision of the “reconstruction” of Chechnya and the way it was growing.

Success

For years he hung his pictures without success, just when in a moment of lucidness he hung himself, the art market noticed him.

“We’re all gonna die - 100 meters of existence”

One of the things I enjoy the most is watching people pass by, trying not to be noticed. In a big city as Barcelona I often find myself staring at people’s faces, gestures and movements while I make up their life history, their thoughts or their ambitions. Usually, I end up wondering what vision they might have on life, are they aware of our fragile but powerfull existence?

The photographer Simon Hoegsberg has been able to capture these fleeding moments in the course of 20 days at the railroad bridge on Warschauer Strasse in Berlin in the summer 2007. He’s merged 178 unknown people in a photograph that’s 100 meters long. Most of them didn’t notice that they were being photographed.

Visit his website to take a long look at this amazing project, presented in an original slideshow.

And there lie the bodies (Haaretz - Gideon Levy’s article)

The legend, lest it be a true story, tells of how the late mathematician, Professor Haim Hanani, asked his students at the Technion to draw up a plan for constructing a pipe to transport blood from Haifa to Eilat. The obedient students did as they were told. Using logarithmic rulers, they sketched the design for a sophisticated pipeline. They meticulously planned its route, taking into account the landscape’s topography, the possibility of corrosion, the pipe’s diameter and the flow calibration. When they presented their final product, the professor rendered his judgment: You failed. None of you asked why we need such a pipe, whose blood will fill it, and why it is flowing in the first place.

Regardless of whether this story is legend or true, Israel is now failing its own blood pipeline test. As Israel has been preoccupied with Gaza throughout the entire week, nobody has asked whose blood is being spilled and why. Everything is permitted, legitimate and just. The moral voice of restraint, if it ever existed, has been left behind. Even if Israel wiped Gaza off the face of the earth, killing tens of thousands in the process, as a Chechnyan laborer working in Sderot proposed to me, one can assume that there would be no protest.

They liquidated Nizar Ghayan? Nobody counts the 20 women and children who lost their lives in the same attack. There was a massacre of dozens of officers during their graduation ceremony from the police academy? Acceptable. Five little sisters? Allowed. Palestinians are dying in hospitals that lack medical equipment? Peanuts. Whatever happened to the not-so-good old days of Salah Shahadeh? When we liquidated him in July 2002, we also killed 15 women and children. At least back then, moral qualms were raised for a moment.

Here lie their bodies, row upon row, some of them tiny. Our hearts have turned hard and our eyes have become dull. All of Israel has worn military fatigues, uniforms that are opaque and stained with blood and which enable us to carry out any crime. Even our leading intellectuals fail to speak out on what havoc we have wreaked. Amos Oz urges: “Cease-fire now.” David Grossman writes: “Hold your fire. Stop.” Meir Shalev wants “a punitive operation.” And not one word about our moral image, which has been horribly distorted.

The suffering in the south renders everything kosher, as if the horrible suffering in Gaza pales in comparison. Everyone is hungry for revenge, and that hunger is excused by the need for “deterrence,” after it was already proved that the killing and the destruction in Lebanon did not achieve it.

Yes, I know, war is war. After all, they brought this on themselves. They are a terrorist organization and we are not. They want to destroy us and we seek peace. Still, is there nothing here that will stop this blood pipeline? Even those whose hearts are hardened by “moral righteousness” will have to momentarily halt the bombing machine and ask: Which Israel do we have before us? What will become of its standing in the world, which is now watching the events in Gaza? What are we inflicting on the moderate Arab regimes? And what of the simmering popular hatred we are sowing throughout the world? What good will emerge from this killing and destruction?

It is doubtful whether Hamas will be cut down to size as a result of this wretched war. Yet, the face of the state has been cut down to size, as have civilian elites who are apathetic and scared. The “peace camp,” if it ever existed, has been cut down to size. Attorney General Menachem Mazuz authorized the Ghayan killing, regardless of the cost. Haim Oron, the leader of the “new left-wing movement,” supported the launch of this foolish war.

Nobody is coming to the rescue - of Gaza or even of the remnants of humanity and Israeli democracy. The statesmen, the jurists, the poets, the authors, academe, and the news media - pitch black over the abyss. When the time comes for reckoning, we will need to remember the damage this war did to Israel: The blood pipeline it laid has been completed.

Gideon Levy / Haaretz

Direct link to the article

Powerlessness

A man prays at the demonstration against the situation in Gaza. Barcelona, 10/1/09. (Carme Riera)

Explaining Twitter to journalists

Have you heard about Twitter? I’m sure you’ve thought that’s not for you. 140 words for each post? What can I do with that? That’s what I thought the first time I heard about it. I decided to give it a try, just for the sake of trying everything related to web 2.0. It’s been some months since then and I’m amazed by the huge posibilities it offers, specially to journalists.

I encourage you to give it a chance. If you’re not sure about it, take a look at this explanation from Steve Yelvington’s blog, specially directed to journalists.

By the way, you can follow my updates on twitter here.

An “official voice” talks about Gaza

Israel’s Consulate in New York made a “Citizen press conference” on Twitter last Tuesday (30th December) to answer the questions people might have about the situation in Gaza. David Saranga, Consul of Media and Public Affairs in New York, said the Consulate decided to put an official voice in Twitter about the issue, since they had seen some unreliable information on the network.

I decided to read the questions and answers since I was really interested in the explanations the Consulate would give to what’s happening in Gaza. I’ve selected some of the Q&As, you can find the rest here.

theresaway: International law criminalizes targeting civilians. Are Israeli leaders scared they will be charged with war crimes for killing so many civilians?

israelconsulate: Hamas is the real violator of international law according to Human Rights Watch: http://tinyurl.com/9osg3g

Now I’ll ask you to follow the link the Israel Consulate gave. The title says “Hamas: end military groups attacks against civilians”. Note the date: March 23, 2007. If you visit Human Rights Watch’s website you’ll find this article highlighted: “Israel/Hamas: Civilians must not be targeted”. Check the date now: December 30th, 2008. The Consulate was talking about “unreliable” information on Twitter and this is what the “official voice” had to say.

eastmad: If everyone in Gaza holds a bit of a Qassam, will you try to kill them all?
israelconsulate: As you can see on CNN a Hamas rocket brigade is pretty easy to spot. Unfortunately, they use civilians as human shields.

I suppose that by “human shields” they also mean the fact that Gaza is one of the most densely populated tracts of land in the world, with a separation of few centimeters between buildings. Those accidentally near to their targets might be included on the Consulate’s idea of “human shields”.

rafaelprince: Isn’t such a harsh, intense and merciless strike on Gaza a form of collective punishment? (4Geneva Conv, Art. 33)

israelconsulate: Israel targets Hamas installations, which are, unfortunately, located within civilian areas. Our war is with Hamas, not with Gaza civilians.

“Unfortunately”, I guess the dead civilians are “collateral damage”.

anotherpundit: What is your definition of “terrorism”?

israelconsulate: We have the same definition as the rest of the international community: targeting civilians.

didgeman: Will Israel finally do what needs to be done to end the terrorism once and for all or bow to world pressure?

israelconsulate: Our main goal is to protect citizens from missiles. We hope the international community will pressure Hamas, not Israel.

I think it’s quite obvious by now that the “we are not targeting civilians” justification doesn’t stand anymore. Quite a great example of what I’m defending comes from the last piece of news: a senior member of Hamas was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home today with members of his family.

“Eye for an eye makes the world go blind.” (Mahatma Gandhi) I can’t think of a better quotation to end this post.

Happy New Year

“Happy 2009″ / El roto (El País)