Netherlands taken to European Court over Srebrenica

Balkan Insight carried a story on 26 October saying that victims’ families filed a complaint to European Court of Human Rights against the Netherlands for failing to investigate whether its peacekeeping commanders in Srebrenica allowed Bosniaks to be killed. The appeal to Strasbourg comes after a military court in the Netherlands ruled in April that the commander of the Dutch UN battalion, Thomas Karremans, and his two officers could not be held responsible for not safeguarding Bosniak civilians who took refuge at their headquarters in Potočari near Srebrenica but instead handed them over to Bosnian Serb forces. The appeal was brought by Hasan Nuhanović, a Srebrenica survivor and former translator for the UN peacekeepers, and the family of Rizo Mustafić, who was killed by Bosnian Serb forces. Their lawyer said that the Dutch authorities should have opened a criminal investigation. The complaint was…

Kenya: Muslim leaders ask UN to probe extrajudicial deaths and disappearances

The Star, a daily from Kenya, reported today that Muslim leaders want the UN to probe the national government over alleged extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances by security agencies. The leaders said the government should credibly investigate killings of Muslim youth. “We are perturbed by the continued disregard of the law, especially when it comes to dealing with terrorism,” the leaders said in a statement. The leaders drawn from 14 Muslim organizations from the 47 counties, said the government should investigate cases of human rights violations and bring the responsible officers to justice. The leaders have petitioned the UN Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions perpetuated by the government security machinery. They said the security agents have become “accusers, judges, juries and executioners”. http://bit.ly/1LQL6BJ

Indonesia’s official calls for resolution of Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict

Azer News, a daily from Azerbaijan, carried a story today…

Enforced disappearances are not an issue of the past

Prothom Alo, a daily from Bangladesh, reported today that the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has called on states to put on the top of their agenda the eradication of enforced disappearances. It also urged governments to address the changing nature of the problem due to new patterns of enforced disappearance, the growing activity of non-state actors and new types of victims. “We can’t pretend anymore it is just an issue of the past. Enforced disappearances continue to occur while we speak,” the Vice-chair of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, Bernard Duhaime, told the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. The group said that disappearances have to be recognized as a modern-day issue in order to develop effective measures for its eradication. Since the beginning of the year, they have been working on 150 cases of enforced…

Iraq: 365 bodies found in 19 different mass graves

Daily Pakistan reported today that Iraqi forces found 19 different mass graves containing the bodies of 365 fighters from the Islamic State group in the reconquered town of Baiji. An army officer confirmed a large number of bodies had been discovered in mass graves, but could not say how many and mentioned that some had also been found in another neighborhood. In a statement, the security forces said that the total number of discovered graves is 19. It said the mass graves were found in the Asri neighborhood of Baiji, 200 kilometers north of Baghdad, and contained a total of “365 bodies of Daesh terrorists”. It was not clear how long the bodies had been buried there, nor how all of them were identified as fighters. Baiji has been the scene of almost uninterrupted fighting in the past 16 months. Iraqi…

Sri Lanka judge says war crimes claims are ‘’credible’’

The BBC reported today that a government-appointed Sri Lankan judge says allegations the army committed war crimes during the long conflict with Tamil Tiger rebels are “credible”. Judge Maxwell Paranagama led the first government inquiry into atrocities during the conflict. Paranagama’s presidential commission was widely criticized for limitations in its mandate. He has called on the government to set up an internationally-backed judicial inquiry, which was also recommended in a UN report released in September. The UN’s long-awaited report accused both sides of atrocities, especially during the final stages of the war in 2009.  Its main findings include: numerous unlawful killings between 2002 and 2011, allegedly by both sides; enforced disappearances affecting tens of thousands over decades; “brutal use of torture” by security forces, in particular during the immediate aftermath of the conflict; extensive sexual violence against detainees by the security…