PressInfo 2005

Den serbiske provins Kosovo, er befolket af en albansk separatist-sindet befolkningsmajoritet, og har ikke imødekommet de krav om at opfylde grundlæggende menneskerettigheder og politiske standarder, som det internationale samfund satte som forudsætninger for statusforhandlinger. Alligevel begynder i de kommende måneder forhandlinger om provinsens fremtidige status. Denne grundlæggende konklusion findes i den længe ventede rapport fra FNs særlige udsending Kai Eide, som blev godkendt af Kofi Annan og som støttes fuldt ud af EU og USA – men rapporten afmystificerer ikke paradokset. For kun to et halvt år siden bestemte det internationale samfund, at forhandlinger om provinsens status ikke kunne begynde før, der var opnået et bestemt niveau af menneskerettigheder. Siden da er det kun blevet klarere, at Kosovos albanske flertal var uvilligt til at imødekomme kriterierne og at FN ikke var i stand til at gennemtvinge dem. Der har været en permanent udvanding af forudsætningerne indtil man nu med hr....

  1,103 words   Get free articles & updates Få gratis artikler og info fra TFF © TFF and the author 2005     Tell a friend about this article Send to: From: Message and your name    You are welcome to reprint, copy, archive, quote or re-post this item, but please retain the source.   Would you – or a friend – like to receive TFF PressInfo by email?         S P E C I A L S & F O R U M S Iraq Forum Gandhi & India Burundi Forum Photo galleries Nonviolence Forum TFF News Navigator Become a TFF Friend TFF Online Bookstore Reconciliation project EU conflict-management Make an online donation Foundation update and more TFF Peace Training Network Make a donation via bank or postal giro Basic menu below  

The UN International Day of Peace One half of the population, here and in the Middle East, is barely being used when it comes either to causing terror or preventing it. Ninety seven percent of bombers and suicide bombers are male, as are over ninety percent of those conducting the so-called ‘war on terror’. Maybe it is time to consider what women would do. In fact, most governments have signed up to United Nations Resolution 1325, which is a worldwide agreement that we will include women in preventing and resolving violence. Why? Because all over the world women have shown that they’re good at it. Dekha Ibrahim Abdi is a Muslim woman from the borders of Kenya and Somalia. In 1992 she managed to stop a clan war that had cost 1,500 lives, by getting together with women from the opposing clan. This was not sewing circle stuff. She said...

And ignored is the relation between the then Bosniak political and military leadership on the one hand and Al Queda and Islamist networks on the other. Are we really to believe that the West has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi Muslims the last 14 years, but have such passion for and solidarity with Bosnian Muslims? Hardly, it’s more likely that they have to still demonize Serbs because any other attitude and an open recognition of Balkan complexities would place in doubt the simplified black-and-white image of the conflict on which that international community has operated in ex- Yugoslavia since 1991. Thus, the complicity of the United States and European countries in making the massacre possible politically and militarily is ignored – because it has to be ignored. The rampant violations of the UN arms embargo and the secret arming of the Muslims by the U.S. is another aspect...

Ignoreret bliver også relationen mellem det daværende bosniske politiske og militære lederskab til på den ene side og Al Queda og islamiske netværk på den anden side. Skal vi virkeligt tro, at vesten har dræbt hundrede af tusinder af uskyldige irakiske muslimer i de sidste 14 år men samtidigt har stor lidenskab for og solidaritet med bosniske muslimer? Næppe, det er mere sandsynligt, at de stadigt må dæmonisere serberne, fordi enhver anden holdning og åben erkendelse af kompleksiteterne i Balkan ville så tvivl om det simplificerede sort/hvide billede af konflikten, som det internationale samfund har opereret på baggrund af i Eks-Jugoslavien siden 1991. Således bliver USA og europæiske nationers medskyld i at gøre massakren politisk og militært mulig ignoreret – fordi det må ignoreres. De uhæmmede brud på FN’s våbenembargo og den hemmeligholdte bevæbning af muslimer af USA er et andet aspekt, der belejligt udelades under dækningen af Srebrenica. Se...

Der er al grund til at mindes massakren udført af serbiske soldater på uskyldige muslimske civile i Srebrenica for 10 år siden. Men med mindre det betragtes som acceptabelt at kvantificere forbrydelser og at misbruge menneskelig lidelse politisk, er der ingen gyldig begrundelse for at glemme eller fortie andre massakrer, etniske udrensninger og terrorbombninger, i hvilke andre uskyldige civile mistede livet. Andre forbrydelser fortiet I september 2003 glemte mainstreammedier verden rundt at mindes 10-års jubilæet for den kroatiske hærs mord på civile serbere i Medak-lommen i Kroatien. I maj 2005 glemte de at mindes 10-års jubilæet for Operation Flash i Kroatien og d. 5. august forblev de tavse om Operation Storm i Kroatien. Her er hvad Amnesty International har at sige om civile serberes skæbne i Kroatien i årene 1991-95, hvor 300.000 serbere blev tvunget til at forlade og/eller aktivt blev fordrevet med vold fra deres land. Nutidens kroatiske ledere er stolte af dette – og var selvfølgelig tilstede...

There is every reason to commemorate the massacre by Serb soldiers on innocent Muslim civilians in Srebrenica ten years ago today. But unless it is considered acceptable to quantify crimes and politically misuse human suffering, there is no plausible reason to forget or silence other cases of massacres, ethnic cleansing and terror bombings in which other innocent people lost their lives. Other crimes silenced In September 2003, mainstream media around the world forgot to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the Croatian Army’s killing of civilian Serbs in the Medak Pocket in Croatia. In May 2005, they forgot to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of Operation Flash in Croatia and in August this year they are likely to remain silent about Operation Storm in Croatia. Here is what Amnesty International has to say about the fate of civilian Serbs in Croatia in the years 1991-95 during which 300.000 Croatian Serbs were forced to leave and/or actively driven out...

  Get free articles & updates Få gratis artikler og info fra TFF © TFF and the author 2005     Tell a friend about this article Send to: From: Message and your name    You are welcome to reprint, copy, archive, quote or re-post this item, but please retain the source.   Would you – or a friend – like to receive TFF PressInfo by email?         S P E C I A L S & F O R U M S Iraq Forum Gandhi & India Burundi Forum Photo galleries Nonviolence Forum TFF News Navigator Become a TFF Friend TFF Online Bookstore Reconciliation project EU conflict-management Make an online donation Foundation update and more TFF Peace Training Network Make a donation via bank or postal giro Basic menu below  

On September 11, 2001, nineteen men turned 4 commercial airplanes with passengers into weapons of terror attacking cities in the US, killing more than 3,000 people. “That crystal blue morning,” Craig R. Whitney wrote in the introduction to The 9/11 Investigation (2004), “changed the world, shocking the United States into realizing that it had been drawn into a global war with brutal suddenness.” The US attacked Afghanistan to root out “Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime”, and then went into Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, claiming that his regime possessed weapons of mass destruction, among other things. The Taliban were ousted, Saddam Hussein arrested, and no weapon of mass destruction were found in Iraq, yet “the larger war and the terrorist threat to the American homeland continued unabated.” In a way, all this is because at the time of the horrible attack, the US was, and presently continues to be, “led by...

Yet this tragedy only foreshadows much worse future catastrophes if the world continues on its current course. Tricycle and helmet found 1,500 m from hypocenter Hiroshima Memorial Museum © Jan Oberg 2004   The trappings of nuclearism As long as the big powers insist on maintaining nuclear weapons, claiming they need them to protect their security, they cannot expect to prevent other countries and terrorist organizations from acquiring such weapons–and some day using them. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed over 200,000 people.Today’s nuclear bombs are vastly more powerful. If even one nuclear device had been detonated in a parked car or a boat on the Thames, the Center of London would be strewn with smoking, radioactive rubble and over a million people might have been killed outright, and scores more would die slowly from radiation disease. The double standard, “Nuclear weapons are good for us, but bad for...

2005 PressInfo 231, December 9, 2005Is the European Union pro-peace?Read the Constitution/Treaty text and you are in for a surprise! Contrary to what you have heard repeatedly, there is no hope for real conflict-resolution and peace there. In this field, the EU is more in need of reform than the United Nations. This PressInfo also includes information about TFF’s work concerning the EU, not the least Johan Galtung’s analysis and Erni & Ola Friholt’s constructive re-formulations of the Treaty. By Jan Oberg. PressInfo 230, December 4, 2005Ending the war on IraqThe solutions proposed in the American political mainstream are not convincing: wait until the Iraq military can bring stability to the country seems like waiting for Godot. We should have learned better from our Vietnam experience. Mobilise the U.S. anti-war opinion, help Iraqi reconciliation and consider the 8 balanced steps that must be taken now to get us out and...

Denna PressInfo finns också på engelska och danska – svenska versionen är lätt förkortad. Allt fler talar om bojkott av amerikanska produkter. Särskilt i Tyskland och Frankrike förefaller många vara mycket mindre intresserade av att köpa amerikanska produkter efter USA:s illegala invasion av Irak. Bakgrunden är de framgångsrika bojkotterna av den sydafrikanska apartheidregimen, av Deutsche Shell i Nordsjön och mot franska kärnvapenprov i Polynesien. Det finns nu skäl för att återuppliva metoden. Några faktorer att överväga En total bojkott skulle gälla alla amerikanska konsumtionsvaror, från filmer, Coca-Cola och Mc Donald till bilar och bränsle, kapitalvaror av alla slag och särskilt militära produkter. Den skulle också innebära att man inte använder dollar utan hellre t ex Euro, att man undviker amerikanska kreditkortföretag och inte köper amerikanska värdepapper. Krav ställs på regimer och företag att undvika amerikanska företag, särskilt de mest kritiserade. En partiell bojkott kan fokusera på någondera av ovanstående. En bojkott kan rikta sig...