Prosecuting Those Who Torture

Prosecuting Those Who Torture

What is so Difficult about Catching Torturers?

'Serbia: Torture or Therapy? '
by Sinisa Boljanovic, Global Voices

Last week, on May 21, a short film about torture in the Spiritual Rehabilitation Center "Crna Reka", located in south-western Serbia, was shown on the web site of the Time (Vreme), a Serbian weekly magazine. The patients of this center are drug addicts and its head is Branislav Peranovic, a Serbian Orthodox priest.

Nearly all Serbian media have shown the horrible scenes from the short film, in which Peranovic is shown beating one of the patients brutally with a spade and with his fists.

Ombudsman of citizens, Sasa Jankovic, is one of the officials who reacted very quickly. According to the Vreme web site, Jankovic said that he had brought criminal charges against nine identified persons from the Spiritual Rehabilitation Center "Crna Reka" near Novi Pazar because of quackery and committing assault and battery. Jankovic also said that, according to the video, it was obvious that the patients of the center had been injured very seriously and that could not be a treatment or therapy.

Serbian bloggers reacted to the report very quickly, too, and so did representatives of the Spiritual Rehabilitation Center "Crna Reka" and the Serbian Orthodox Church.

What is the Serbian magic for cleaning up a den of torture? It's called community action. The magazine showed the torture film on its web site. The Serbian national media showed it nationally. The Ombudsman quickly brought to nine perpetrators to book. The Rehabilitation Center officials and the Serbian Orthodox Church hastened to help the abused patients. In one week they have ended the horrible story.

Why has it taken six years since the torture at Gitmo first became known? The Americans still haven't got it right. Here's a distinguished panel to discuss the delay.
[[TORTURE1]]

The panel in this first video interacted freely. Unlike American talk shows the panelists disagreed, but with polite respect. Oh, I forgot to mention the show is on the Aljazeera/English network.

In the second installment below we will see the results of the discussion.

[[TORTURE2]]

Well, I hope you weren't too disappointed. It seems that many government Agencies were involved in torture. Apparently, no whistle blowers emerged. The guilty parties have covered this sordid affair with a large national security blanket. Did you expect differently?
You see; our so-called national security conducts CYA activities to keep their nefarious acts from our view. They used torture for their amusement and our entertainment. This is only to delude us to distract us from the real business.
Sadly for them, they assumed I wouldn't find the Serbian story. With it, you know how to imprison your local corrupt officials through grassroots efforts.

To reward you for your kind attention, I present a wonderful interlude from Burma.

Burma VJ

Going beyond the occasional news clip from Burma, the acclaimed filmmaker, Anders Østergaard, brings us close to Burma’s video journalists who insist on keeping up the flow of news from their closed country despite risking torture and life in jail. Armed with small handycams they make their undercover reportages, smuggle the material out of the country, have it broadcast back into Burma via satellite and offered as free usage for international media.
[[BURMAVJ]]
”Joshua”, age 27 and one of the undercover VJs, is suddenly thrown into the role as tactical leader of his group of reporters, when Buddhist monks in September 2007 lead a massive uprising. Foreign TV crews are banned from entering the country, so it is left to Joshua and his crew to document the events and establish a lifeline to the surrounding world. It is their footage that keeps the revolution alive on TV screens all over. As government intelligence agents understand the power of the camera, the VJs soon become their prime target. During the turbulent days of September, Joshua finds himself on an emotional rollercoaster between hope and despair, as he frantically tries to keep track of his reporters in the streets while the great uprising unfolds.

With Joshua as the psychological lens, high-risk journalism and dissidence in a police state is made tangible to a global audience.
[[BURMA]]

Happy Birthday Ayung San Soo Kyi

Will you show support for Myanmar opposition leader and global democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi? A new website came into being last week where anyone from around the world can leave a 64-word message of solidarity for imprisoned leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The website 64forSuu.org is named as such to mark Suu Kyi’s 64th birthday on June 19.
Supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi can leave and view video, text, twitter and picture messages on the website. A sample of 64-word message of support:

“Nineteen years ago, the Burmese people chose Aung San Suu Kyi as their next leader. For most of those 19 years she has been kept under house arrest by the military junta that runs the country. We must not stand by as she is silenced again. Now is the time for the international community to speak with one voice: Free Aung San Suu Kyi.”

This brief statement was signed by many personalities and other famous names which included George Clooney, Sec. Madeleine Albright, Drew Barrymore, David Beckham, Bono, Matthew Broderick, Sandra Bullock, John Cusack, Matt Damon, Robert De Niro, Václav Havel, Helen Hunt, Anjelica Huston, Scarlett Johansson, Nicole Kidman, Ashton Kutcher, Madonna, Sarah Jessica Parker, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Naomi Watts.
Twitter is an integral part of the campaign:
It is the first political campaign to use twitter with an integrated website to harness the reach and influence of some of the world’s most influential celebrities. Through replies and re-tweets, the campaign message reached an estimated 5 million people through Twitter alone in its first five days.
[[AUNG]]
Human beings the world over need freedom and security that they may be able to realize their full potential.
Aung San Suu Kyi

I think I should be active politically. Because I look upon myself as a politician. That's not a dirty work you know. Some people think that there are something wrong with politicians. Of course, something wrong with some politicians.
Aung San Suu Kyi

It is often in the name of cultural integrity as well as social stability and national security that democratic reforms based on human rights are resisted by authoritarian governments.
Aung San Suu Kyi

Peace as a goal is an ideal which will not be contested by any government or nation, not even the most belligerent.
Aung San Suu Kyi

The democracy process provides for political and social change without violence.
Aung San Suu Kyi

The history of the world shows that peoples and societies do not have to pass through a fixed series of stages in the course of development.
Aung San Suu Kyi

The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity. It is a struggle that encompasses our political, social and economic aspirations.
Aung San Suu Kyi

The value systems of those with access to power and of those far removed from such access cannot be the same. The viewpoint of the privileged is unlike that of the underprivileged.
Aung San Suu Kyi

All quotes from Brainy Quote

United Nations Pursues Burmese Mass Murderers

The UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon came out of his meeting this morning with Burma's top general, Than Shwe, bearing news that the junta is finally prepared - after three fateful weeks of prevaricating - to allow "all" foreign workers into the country, writes Edward Loxton for The First Post.

However, it was not clear whether Than Shwe had agreed to give visas to foreign aid workers or let them into the devastated Irrawaddy delta region to deliver aid. As a result, Ban Ki-moon was only able to say that he "thinks" the general's agreement is a breakthrough. Nor was it clear whether Than Shwe was referring only to relief workers from partner countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).

The UN leader's meeting with Than Shwe came after an extraordinary day during which he was given a carefully orchestrated helicopter tour of the delta region by the military government, including a visit to a "show camp" where Burmese made homeless by cyclone Nargis lined up to greet him outside pristine blue tents (pictured above), many of which were empty.

And whatever Than Shwe may have said this morning to pacify Ban Ki-moon, the reports that continue to emerge from the delta region only reinforce the ugly truth: that in denying the enormity of the destruction wrought by Nargis, the four generals who run this country, Than Shwe, Maung Aye, Shwe Mann and Thein Sein, and their accolytes, are nothing less than mass murderers.

One of the worst reports to emerge from the delta since the cyclone hit 21 days ago concerns 70 homeless refugees who attempted to disembark from their four flimsy boats near Bogalay. Local government officials refused them permission to land and told them to return to their ruined villages. "They were caught in a sudden storm, the boats capsized and all drowned," said a witness.

This sort of cold-hearted behaviour, typical of the regime, is not what was being reported to Ban Ki-moon yesterday by his Burmese guides. Indeed, at the "show camp" and elsewhere, it transpires that the survivors of Nargis were instructed to "show discipline" and refrain from any complaints about their plight.

Some local authorities reportedly accused destitute rice farmers and their families of "damaging Burma's image" by begging for food at the roadside. Four Burmese journalists reporting from the region for independent Rangoon publications were arrested, held overnight and told the next day to leave the region.

Before Than Shwe’s change of heart this morning, UN agencies and international relief organisations were saying that aid has so far reached only a quarter of the people who desperately need it. Relief workers travelling in the delta region give harrowing first-hand reports of thousands of starving people lining the roads and living among the ruins of remote, flattened villages, scavenging in the flooded fields for any food they can find.

In an email to friends in Thailand, one Burmese relief worker said around 10,000 people lined the roadside as he drove to Bogalay, one of the worst-hit delta towns. "These people previously lived in the paddy fields on the left and right side of the road. Now their homes were destroyed and the fields were flooded. So they moved to the roadside. Some could build small tents, but others have to sleep on the open ground. Most of them are women and children. I saw six or seven family members sitting tightly together under a roof of plastic sheeting held up by four posts."

The relief worker witnessed government officials driving refugees out of a monastery where they had sought shelter. The abbot angrily challenged the expulsion order but was ignored. Like the 70 trying to land their boats at Bogalay, the refugees were ordered to return to their destroyed villages.

FIRST POSTED