Exporting trauma: can the talking cure do more harm than good?

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civil war, community, coping strategies, counsellors, crisis, cultural insight, cultural practices, culturally sensitive, culture, Depression, Genocide, group therapy, interventions, mental health issues, NGOs, post traumatic stress disorder, psychological therapy, psychosocial, PTSD, rape, talking therapy, traditional, trauma, treatment, tsunami, well-being, western

Exporting trauma: can the talking cure do more harm than good?

A few years ago Andrew Solomon had to get into a wedding bed with a ram. An entire village, taking a day off from farming, danced around the unlikely couple to a pounding drumbeat, draping them both in cloth until Solomon began to think he was going to faint. At this point the ram was slaughtered along with two cockerels, and Solomon’s naked body was drenched in the animals’ blood, before being washed clean by the village women spitting water onto him.

Solomon had been taking part in a traditional Senegalese ceremony to exorcise depression as research for his book The Noonday Demon. “I discovered that depression exists universally, but the ways that it’s understood, treated, conceptualised or even experienced can vary a great deal from culture to culture,” he says now. He describes being the subject of the ceremony as “one of the most fascinating experiences of my life”.

When in Rwanda, interviewing women raising children born of rape for another book, Solomon mentioned his experience in Senegal to a Rwandan man who ran an organisation helping these women. The Rwandan told Solomon they had similar ceremonies in his country and that the disconnect between the western and traditional approaches to treating mental health had caused problems in the immediate aftermath of the genocide. “Westerners were optimistically hoping they could heal what had gone wrong,” says Solomon. “But people who hadn’t been through the genocide couldn’t understand how bad it was and their attempts to reframe everything were somewhere between offensive and ludicrous. The Rwandan felt that the aid workers were intrusive and re-traumatising people by dragging them back through their stories.”

As the Rwandan, paraphrased by Solomon, puts it: “Their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you begin to feel better. There was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again. There was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy. Instead they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave.”

The best way to improve mental health after a crisis is something NGOs working in Ebola-hit countries are currently considering. International Medical Corps (IMC) recently released a report assessing the psychological needs of communities affected by the disease. IMC’s mental health adviser Inka Weissbecker is aware that they must avoid previous mistakes by international NGOs. “Whenever there is a humanitarian crisis agencies flood in,” she says. “Though with good intentions, counsellors turn up from the UK [for example] and often create more problems … It’s a very foreign concept in many countries to sit down with a stranger and talk about your most intimate problems.”

During the recovery from Haiti’s earthquake five years ago mental health researcher Guerda Nicolas was even stronger in her message to American counsellors who wanted to ease the trauma of survivors. “Please stay away – unless you’ve really, really done the homework,” she said. “Psychological issues don’t transcend around the globe.”

The fact is that different cultures have different views of the mind, says Ethan Watters, the author of Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche. “In the west a soldier coming home might be troubled by their battlefield trauma. They think of the PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] as a sickness in their mind and they take time away from responsibilities to heal. That makes sense to us and it’s neither wrong nor right but conforms to our beliefs about PTSD. For a Sri Lankan, to take time away from their social group makes no sense because it is through their place in that group that they find their deepest sense of themselves.”

While researching his book Watters spoke to anthropologists who had in-depth knowledge of Sri Lanka’s culture and history. They said that western approaches after the tsunami had done real damage in the country where there were certain ways to talk about violence due to the long-running civil war. He says: “Into that very delicate balance came western trauma counsellors with this idea that the real way to heal was truth-telling, where you talked about the violence and emotionally relived it. That’s a western idea, it makes sense here, but it does not make sense in these villages. It had potential to spark cycles of revenge violence.”

International NGOs describe dealing with the mental health of a community after a disaster as the “psychosocial” response – meaning caring for individual and collective psychological wellbeing. The UN advertises dozens of jobs under this keyword and the American Red Cross says that since the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami there has been “increasing recognition of the need for psychosocial responses”. It also says – perhaps implicitly acknowledging that mistakes have been made in the past – “we are still in the process of identifying and documenting good practices”.

As awareness has grown that the western talking cure is not always the answer, global organisations have tried to find better ways to help. In 2007 WHO issued guidelines to advise humanitarians on their work to improve mental health and psychosocial wellbeing in emergencies. Coordination between the organisations working in the post-disaster zone as a key recommendation. Weissbecker says that this is crucial. “We reach out to organisations who might not know about the guidelines to coordinate,” she says. “It’s part of every agency’s job to watch out for other organisations doing this kind of work.”

The guidelines also stress learning local cultural practices. IMC now always start with an initial assessment that looks at the understanding and treatment of mental health that exists in that country before putting any programmes in place. “We usually don’t provide direct mental health services to the affected population because we feel that most of the time that’s not culturally appropriate and not sustainable,” says Weissbecker. In many communities, she has been impressed with indigenous coping strategies. “In Ethiopia people say depression is related to loss,” she says. “So the community takes up a collection and they all give them something. This is very positive.” IMC meets with traditional healers and builds up relationships with them.

Many argue that for some mental illnesses western expertise can be genuinely helpful. In Ethiopia Weissbecker’s team discovered a man with schizophrenia who had been tied up in a goat shed for seven years. “Once this family was connected to our services he started taking medication was unchained and participating in family life,” she says. “The father held up the chains to the community and said, ‘look I used these chains on my son and now he’s part of the family again’. People will throw stones because they are understandably frightened [of people with severe conditions].”

The Rwandan that Solomon met questioned whether talking therapy helped survivors of the Rwandan genocide. “His point of view was that a lot of what made sense in the west didn’t make any sense to him,” says Solomon. But Survivors Fund, a British NGO that works in Rwanda, has found that western-style group therapy sessions have really helped women who were raped. “It’s 20 years since then but many of the women our groups have never told their story before,” says Dr Jemma Hogwood who runs counselling programmes for the charity. “A lot of women say it’s a big relief to talk,” she says.

Hogwood has been working in Rwanda for four years but hasn’t heard of traditional ceremonies like the one described by Solomon. The group therapy sessions incorporate local practices such as praying before and after, as this is something the women wanted to do. Weissbecker adds that one-on-one therapy with expats can help people who have experienced extreme violence, rape or torture. “Some of them want to talk to foreigners because they don’t trust people in their communities,” she says. “So then it’s also important for them to have that one-on-one option.”

Some feel that aid should be focussed on food, medicines, shelter, and stay away from mental health. International relations academic Vanessa Pupavac has researched the effect of the war in former Yugoslavia, and has argued that “trauma is displacing hunger in western coverage of wars and disasters … Trauma counselling, or what is known as psychosocial intervention, has become an integral part of the humanitarian response in wars.” The problem with this, she believes, is that blanket-defining a whole population as traumatised becomes “a reinforcing factor that inhibits people from recovery”. Her recent work with Croatian veterans found that the PTSD label stops them from moving on with their lives and contributing to society.

“There are more Croatian veterans on post-traumatic stress disorder pensions now than there were ten years ago,” she tells me. “The international-PTSD-framing of people’s experiences has not only inhibited recovery but has also created social, economic and political problems for postwar Croatia.” She believes NGOs should stop psychosocial programmes altogether because they disrupt communities’ own coping strategies.

But this point of view is rejected by Weissbecker and her colleagues, who don’t accept “the romantic idea that without intervention everything will be fine”. The response to mental illness in many countries is often harmful, she says: “Psychotic patients are chained. Children with developmental disorders are at risk of abuse. Mothers with depression have a higher risk of malnourished children. People with anxiety are often given benzodiazepines which can be very addictive.” The solution, Weissbecker says, is to bring together global and local expertise.

The best experts to bridge the gap between international and local experience are those who might not have a health or psychology background, but have deep knowledge about cultural differences: anthropologists. Since the Ebola outbreak there is a growing recognition of this discipline’s role in emergencies. The American Anthropological Association has asked its members to become more involved in the west African countries hit by the disease. It argues that if anthropologists had been more involved from the start of the outbreak more people wouldn’t have caught the disease due to misunderstandings over traditional burials and conspiracy theories about westerners spreading the illness.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has employed anthropologists to inform their work for years but one of them, Beverley Stringer, says there’s been a “surge” in interest in what they can offer humanitarian work. “I was at a seminar at the Royal Anthropology Institute recently where they said ‘finally the humanitarian world is interested in our perspective’,” she says. “They’re quite excited about that.”

But Stringer warns that getting anthropologists to work for NGOs should not just be a case of parachuting in an expert; aid workers and volunteers on the ground need to recognise that their own experience gives them insight. “If mums aren’t coming to get their kids vaccinated you don’t need to be an anthropologist to work out why,” she says. “My work is to encourage curiosity and to equip teams with the skills to be able to understand.”

Whether it’s through working more with locals and anthropologists – or ideally both – there is recognition that cultural insight is essential for preventing aid workers from causing damage when they are trying to do good.

“I think enlisting the anthropologists in this process – people who truly know about how to go into other countries and be culturally sensitive – is very important,” says Watters.

“One anthropologist asked me to imagine the scenario reversed. Imagine that after 9/11 or Katrina these healers come from Mozambique to knock on the doors of family members of the deceased to say ‘we need to help you through this ritual to sever your relationship with the dead’. That would make no sense to us. But we seem to have no problem doing the reverse.”

Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal releases former Khmer Rouge leader

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age, Alzheimer's, Cambodia, Genocide, healthcare, justice, Khmer Rouge, massacre, Torture, Tribunal, War Crimes

Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal releases former Khmer Rouge leader

Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal set free a former leader of the Khmer Rouge on Sunday, upholding a decision that has outraged survivors seeking an explanation of the mass killings committed more than 30 years ago.

Ieng Thirith, 80, who has been declared mentally unfit for trial, was driven out of the UN-backed tribunal’s compound by family members. She made no comment to reporters.

The Sorbonne-educated Shakespeare scholar served as social affairs minister during the Khmer Rouge’s rule from 1975-79, during which an estimated 1.7 million people died of execution, medical neglect, overwork and starvation.

The tribunal initially announced its decision to free Ieng Thirith on Thursday, saying medical experts had determined there was no prospect for her to be tried due to a degenerative mental illness that was probably Alzheimer’s disease.

Prosecutors then delayed her release by filing an appeal demanding that conditions be set to restrict her freedom.

On Sunday, the tribunal’s supreme court said it had accepted the appeal, which is expected to be heard later this month. In the meantime, it set three provisional conditions on her movement.

The tribunal said Ieng Thirith must inform the court of her address, must turn in her passport and cannot leave the country, and must report to the court whenever it summons her.

Ieng Thirith was the Khmer Rouge’s highest-ranking woman and also a sister-in-law of the group’s top leader, Pol Pot, who died in 1998.

She is accused of involvement in the “planning, direction, co-ordination and ordering of widespread purges,” and was charged with crimes against humanity, genocide, homicide and torture.

Three other senior Khmer Rouge leaders are on trial, including her husband, 86-year-old Ieng Sary, the regime’s former foreign minister; 85-year-old Nuon Chea, its chief ideologist and second-in-command; and 80-year-old Khieu Samphan, a former head of state.

The tribunal said earlier that Ieng Thirith’s release did not mean the charges against her were being withdrawn and was not a finding of guilt or innocence. It plans to consult annually with experts to see whether future medical advances could render her fit for trial, although that is considered unlikely given her age and frailty.

Survivors of the Khmer Rouge called Ieng Thirith’s release shocking and unjust. They said they had waited decades for justice and found it hard to feel compassion for her suffering.

“It is difficult for victims and indeed, all Cambodians, to accept the especially vigorous enforcement of Ieng Thirith’s rights taking place at the [tribunal],” said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a group that researches Khmer Rouge atrocities.

In a statement on Sunday,, he noted the irony of Ieng Thirith receiving “world class health care.” As social affairs minister she was “personally and directly involved in denying Cambodians even the most basic health care during the regime’s years in power,” he said.

The tribunal began in 2006 – nearly three decades after the fall of the Khmer Rouge – following years of wrangling between Cambodia and the UN. The lengthy delays have been costly and raised fears that the former leaders could die before their verdicts come.

Guatemalan war rape survivors: ‘We have no voice’

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femicide, Genocide, Guatemala, human rights abuses, international courts, Mayan, rape, Sexual Violence, soldiers, Spain, stigma, Torture

2011:

Guatemalan war rape survivors: ‘We have no voice’

“When the soldiers found me they grabbed me, took me to the river, and raped me. ” Teresa Sic recalls. “On the same day, they raped other women in the village. They burned everything. They tied me up, but I freed myself aided by my five-year-old daughter. I went to seek help. I was hungry and afraid, but nobody would take us in.”

Horrific as it sounds, the 58-year-old’s story is not a one-off. Between 1960 and 1996 more than 100,000 women were victims of mass rap in the Guatemalan civil war, between CIA-backed rightwing generals and leftwing insurgents, that evetually left 200,000 dead. After General Jose Efraín Ríos Montt grabbed power in a 1982 coup, it reached fresh peaks of brutality.

Many victims, such as Sic, were indigenous Mayans, who were caught in the crossfire, accused of collaborating with the guerrillas or targeted simply because their ethnic group became seen as the enemy. More than a decade ago Spain’s national high court, which has a long history of taking on international human rights cases – including pursuing Augusto Pinochet and jailing Argentine military officers involved in death squads – began investigating claims of genocide. Yet Guatemala not only refuses to try or extradite Ríos Montt, despite an international arrest warrant issued in Madrid, but he is now a congressman.

As for the rapes, the state refuses to acknowledge them – leaving the attackers to walk freely through the streets and live in the same villages as their victims. “We want the state to acknowledge the truth. We have no voice, and officially the rapes during the conflict never happened,” says Feliciana Macario, one of a group of women who have worked for 20 years to bring the rapes into the public arena. Patricia Yoj, a native Mayan lawyer, says that “even the representative of the National Indemnity Programme that was established to make reparations to victims of the conflict has said that he doesn’t believe in the rapes”.

But many of the women have refused to be silenced – giving evidence to the genocide trial in 2008, and now, for the first time, their voices will be heard; Spain’s national court has agreed to investigate the mass rapes and gender violence as part of the generals’ alleged strategy to wipe out a large part of the Mayan population. The investigating magistrate Santiago Pedraz said on Wednesday the rapes appeared to be part of a campaign of terror designed to destroy Mayan society – with soldiers instructed to carry them out.

Campaigning lawyer Almudena Bernabeu, of the US-based Center of Justice and Accountability, says rape, mutilation, sexual slavery and the killing of foetuses were all part of a plan to eliminate the Mayan people. “Gender violence has been used as a weapon to eliminate ethnic groups, and that’s genocide,” she says. The army and the members of the paramilitary “civil self-defence patrols” tortured the women they didn’t kill in order to stigmatise them. Teresa tells how days after she was raped, she was forcibly taken to a military barracks, raped for 15 days by countless soldiers and given bulls’ blood and raw meat to eat.

“To eliminate all the Mayans is a very difficult task, but if you destroy the women you make sure that the population is reduced and eventually disappears – it’s one of the cruellest ways of getting rid of an entire people,” says Paloma Soria, a lawyer working for the Women’s Link Worldwide NGO, which is backing Bernabeu.

Many of the women also endured being abandoned by their husbands as a result of the rapes. One of them was Maria Castro, now 59, who was with her two children – one just a baby when she was horrifically assaulted. “The soldiers ambushed me. My little girl was with me. She was very frightened and she cried, but the soldier threw me to the ground. I remember there were three of them who raped me, but I don’t know how many more because I lost consciousness. When I came to, I saw them pick up their guns and leave hurriedly for some other place. My daughter helped me by carrying her little brother, but she was still crying. She saw everything.” When Maria made it home and told her husband, he rejected her, saying that if she had come back alive, it was because she had let the soldiers rape her.

Others have faced horrific retributions from their attackers for their willingness to give evidence. “They point their fingers at us, they insult us, and some of the men who raped us now laugh at us,” one victim says. Castro breaks down as she tells how her son was murdered after she travelled to Spain to give evidence.

María Toj, 70, another victim, says the violence hasn’t stopped, but she is still determined to speak out. “They tortured me and my son. They burned everything, leaving me with nothing but my dead husband and my pain. I hope our efforts will stop this from ever happening again.”

Jacinta Guarcas, 65, lost seven of her eight children in the conflict, when they were forcibly displaced. One was killed by soldiers and the rest starved when they were forced to flee into the mountains after their crops were burnt: “First I buried my one-year-old son since I didn’t have enough milk for him because we had nothing to eat.”

The effect of the impunity for the rapes and killings can be seen in the deep scars on Guatemalan society. In 2010 alone, 685 women were killed. So far this year there have been 120 cases of rapes, torture and even dismemberment. “This trial will help open a debate about femicide, because the lack of justice actually contributes to increasing gender violence,” says Bernabeu. Only about 1% of these cases go to trial in Guatemala. “There are times when foreign or international courts are the only recourse for victims, since they can get no justice in their own country,” she says.

The lawyer will bring Patricia Sellers, the woman who succeeded in having rape defined as a weapon of war at the trials for genocide in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, to be an expert witness.

While Spain may be unable to extradite the accused, international arrest warrants at least prevent them leaving Guatemala. Pressure from Madrid has forced Guatemalan courts to start trying human rights cases from the war. They may eventually be persuaded to investigate the rapes. In the meantime, the courage of these women, who face rejection for speaking the truth, will help others who suffer rape as a weapon of war to become more visible.

“This sets a precedent for national courts around the world. Hopefully we will now see how it spreads to other countries from Spain,” says Soria. “Society puts the rape and torture of woman on a par with stealing cattle or burning crops. This must change, and these women have to stop being invisible.”

Serbian president denies Srebrenica genocide

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Bosnia, Genocide, massacre, trauma, war, War Crimes

Serbian president denies Srebrenica genocide

Serbia‘s new president has denied genocide took place in Srebrencia, contradicting the international criminal prosecution of Serbian leaders from the Yugoslav wars and angering the Muslim co-president of Bosnia.

Tomislav Nikolic, the rightwinger elected as Serbian president last month, said on Montenegrin television: “There was no genocide in Srebrenica. In Srebrenica, grave war crimes were committed by some Serbs who should be found, prosecuted and punished.

“It is very difficult to indict someone and prove before a court that an event qualifies as genocide.”

The former Serbian general Ratko Mladic is on trial in The Hague accused of genocide in Srebrenica. Bosnian Serb forces under his command slaughtered around 8,000 Muslim men and boys after capturing the town, which had been declared a safe haven by the United Nations, towards the end of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war. It was Europe’s worst atrocity since the second world war.

The Bosnian Serbs’ wartime political leader, Radovan Karadzic, is also on trial in The Hague accused of genocide.

Bakir Izetbegovic, who shares Bosnia’s presidency with a Croat and a Serb, said Nikolic’s comments were insulting to the survivors. “The denial of genocide in Srebrenica … will not pave the way for co-operation and reconciliation in the region, but on the contrary may cause fresh misunderstandings and tensions.

“By giving such statements Nikolic has clearly demonstrated that he is still not ready to face the truth about the events that took place in our recent past.”

Nikolic said he would not attend the annual commemoration of the Srebrenica massacre in July. “Don’t always ask the Serbian president if he is going to Srebrenica,” he said. “My predecessor was there and paid tribute. Why should every president do the same?”

Both the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the international court of justice (ICJ) have ruled that the Srebrenica massacre amounted to genocide.

Serbia wants to join the European Union. A spokeswoman for the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said her office would seek clarification of Nikolic’s statement but “would like to remind everyone that Srebrenica has been confirmed as genocide by both the ICTY and the ICJ. Srebrenica was the largest massacre in Europe since world war two, a crime against all of humankind. We should never forget and it should never be allowed to happen again.”

Nikolic’s win over the incumbent president, Boris Tadic, sent a chill through a region that still recalls his last spell in government – as deputy prime minister in a coalition with Serbia’s late strongman Slobodan Milosevic when Nato bombed Serbia to drive its forces out of Kosovo during a 1998-99 war.

Nikolic has split from ultra-nationalists, recasting himself as a pro-European conservative and saying he will pursue Serbia’s drive for EU membership.

Tadic oversaw the arrest and extradition of Karadzic and Mladic. He pushed an apology for the massacre through parliament and travelled to Srebrenica as part of a drive to foster reconciliation.

Tens of thousands flee ‘extreme violence’ in Congo

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Child Soldiers, Congo, Genocide, internally displaced people, massacre, mutilation, rape, Rwanda, Torture, war

Tens of thousands flee ‘extreme violence’ in Congo

Villagers and townspeople in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are facing “extreme violence” with atrocities including mass executions, abductions, mutilations and rapes being committed almost daily, according to aid workers in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

Fighting between the government army, the FARDC, and a group of mutineers led by a fugitive UN war crimes indictee, Bosco Ntaganda, has escalated since April. Armed militias including the notorious FDLR, a Rwandan rebel group based in Congo, have joined the fray in a multi-fronted battle for territory, money and power. But the violence has received relatively little international attention so far.

“The crisis in Congo is the worst it has been for years. The activity of armed groups has exploded, with militias making the most of the chaos to prey on the local population,” Samuel Dixon, Oxfam’s policy adviser in Goma, said on Wednesday. “Large areas of [North and South] Kivu are under the control of different armed groups – some villages are being terrorised from all sides, with up to five groups battling for power.

“Local people are bearing the brunt of extreme violence, facing the risk of massacre, rape, retaliation, abduction, mutilation, forced labour or extortion … In less than two months, more than 100,000 people in North Kivu have been forced to flee,” Dixon said.

Expressing alarm at the deteriorating situation, the UN refugee agency said the violence had sent tens of thousands of refugees spilling over the border into Rwanda and Uganda, while many more people were internally displaced.

Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the UNHCR, said UN agencies and the Red Cross would soon begin to distribute relief supplies. “Some of the displaced report cases of extortion, forced labour, forced recruitment of minors and beatings by armed men,” Fleming said.

Aid workers said heightened instability was making it difficult to establish the true extent of the violence and to get supplies to those most in need, who had often taken refuge in remote, inaccessible areas.

“The mutiny in North Kivu is part of a broader picture of insecurity caused by multiple armed groups and by elements of the Congolese forces. Since the FARDC has been fighting the mutiny, other armed groups active in eastern Congo have opportunistically moved into areas left vacant by the army,” an internal NGO field report seen by the Guardian stated.

“In South Kivu in early May 2012, 30 people were killed in Lumenje zone by the FDLR … During the night of 13 May, at least another 40 civilians lost their lives and 35 were injured following a brutal FDLR attack on Kamananga. This incident took place only 2kms from a Monusco base [Monusco is the name of the UN’s 20,000-strong stabilisation force in Congo].”

The report went on: “A letter left by the FDLR at the scene warned of a series of revenge attacks if the opposing group, the Raia [militia], did not stop attacking them. In the last two massacres the FDLR mutilated the dead to discourage further actions against them …

“In Mambas territory, a mai mai [militia] group reportedly raped over 70 women in the second week of May and armed clashes around Itembo allegedly led to the death of 17 civilians.”

Overall, the total number of internally displaced people in Congo is believed to be at its highest level in three years: up from 1.7 million to 2 million.

The latest upheavals follow warnings, first reported in the Guardian on 16 March, that the army’s offensive against the FDLR, launched in February, could destabilise the Kivus and have disastrous consequences. Controversially, the UN supported the offensive, arguing it was the best way to end chronic instability in the region.

The army’s plan went awry last month after President Joseph Kabila of Congo called for the arrest of Bosco Ntaganda, an ex-rebel general whose forces were supposedly integrated into the FARDC in 2009.

Ntaganda is wanted by the international criminal court for alleged war crimes, including the recruitment of child soldiers, but had appeared to be enjoying to official protection. His response to Kabila’s call for his arrest was to lead a mutiny of former officers and hundreds of their men, who have formed a new rebel group called M23.

“Civilian safety has to be the number one priority for the UN and the government army,” Dixon said. “Military action against rebels must not put local people at further risk. It is unacceptable that such widespread violence in Congo goes unstopped and under-reported. More must be done to tackle the political and underlying drivers of the conflict.”

Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict

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Bosnia, Genocide, rape, Rwanda, Sexual Violence, Torture, War Crimes

William Hague: Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict

When we think of armed conflicts, we think of battlefields, of soldiers in arms, of trenches and tanks. But wars tragically are also about civilians, particularly women and children, caught on the margins of the battlefield yet at the centre of warfare.

The grave and regrettable reality is that rape and other forms of sexual violence have been inflicted upon women as weapons of war in battlefields the world over. In Rwanda alone, it is estimated that over 300,000 women were raped during the 100 day Genocide. In Darfur, Liberia and the DRC levels of sexual violence have been extremely high too, and horrific reports are emerging of abuses in Syria.

The human cost of these crimes was brought home to me most starkly when I met women in refugee camps in Darfur who had been raped when collecting firewood to cook for their children, and survivors of Srebrenica – the worst atrocity on European soil since the end of the Second World War.

Such crimes, especially if they are not addressed or punished, affect the victims and their families as well as their communities for years to come. This feeds anger, distrust and continuous cycles of conflict. It creates long lasting enmity between peoples, and makes it hard to bring peace. Degrading the dignity of women in such a way reduces their essential role and crucial ability to help build peace and holds back development.

It is the responsibility and duty of all states to take measures necessary to put an end to impunity and prosecute those responsible. There is a strong international consensus that more needs to be done. This has been reflected in the valiant work that the UN and its agencies numerous NGOs and frontline organisations have undertaken over the last decade. But more often than not, the perpetrators of sexual and gender based committed crime in conflict or post conflict situations still get away with it. Shockingly, they are neither held to account nor deterred.

As of today there have been only around 30 convictions for up to 50,000 rapes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This kind of record sends a clear message to the past and to would-be perpetrators to be: if you commit sexual crimes in conflict you are likely to get away with it.

As a community of nations we will not succeed in preventing conflict and building sustainable peace unless we give this issue the centrality it deserves; alongside the empowerment and participation of women at every level in all societies.

Our government is determined to bring new energy and leadership to this task. We want to use Britain’s influence and diplomatic capability to rally effective international action, to help find practical ways to ensure that survivors feel confident to speak out, and regain the dignity, rights, and restitution that is their due. Only a significant increase in the number of successful prosecutions will erode and eventually demolish the culture of impunity.

A key vehicle for prosecution is strengthening national and international capability to gather and preserve evidence, on a systematic basis, in a way that means such evidence is admissible in courts, and that allows victims to speak out and demonstrate the proof of their claims.

Above all, it is essential to ensure that the survivors have access to justice and are treated with dignity throughout the justice process.

We know that the problem is complex and that there is no single solution. We know that legal action to bring perpetrators to justice is only one avenue. That, however, should not discourage us. We are determined to act.

We will form a new team of UK experts to help deal with this problem by helping states, civil society and communities to build their capacity to prevent and respond to sexual and gender based violence, by increasing the ability of national governments, law enforcement agencies, judiciaries, human rights defenders and civil society to hold perpetrators to account.

We will seek to identify those countries and places at most risk of sexual and gender based violence. We want to strengthen our support for international efforts to build up a system of early warning indicators with the UN and other like-minded partners. We will draw on and seek to develop the UK’s own early warning analysis to support this.

And we will use Britain’s Presidency of the G8, starting on 1 January 2013, to highlight the need for stronger international action to deter and prevent sexual violence in conflict. We will use these crucial seven months before our Presidency to build real momentum around this initiative and to encourage other countries to work with us on this vital issue.

International criminal court to deliver its first judgment

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Child Soldiers, DRC, Genocide, Tribunal, War Crimes

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/mar/13/international-criminal-court-first-judgment

Nearly a decade after its inception, the international criminal court is due to deliver its first judgment on Wednesday.

Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese alleged warlord, stands accused of enlisting and conscripting child soldiers.

Prosecutors allege that Lubanga, 51, sought to maintain and expand his control over the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo‘s Ituri region, home to one of the world’s most lucrative gold reserves.

Children as young as 11 were allegedly recruited from their homes and schools to take part in brutal ethnic fighting in 2002-03. They were taken to military training camps and beaten and drugged, prosecutors claim, while girls were used as sex slaves.

Lubanga, the alleged founder of the rebel group the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) and chief commander of its military wing, went on trial in January 2009. Closing arguments were heard last August. Lubanga pleaded innocent to charges of war crimes.

Wednesday’s verdict will be closely watched by global rights groups. Géraldine Mattioli-Zeltner, the international justice advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said: “Guilty or innocent, the ICC’s first verdict is a landmark moment for international justice. Leaders of countries and rebel groups should take note that crimes committed today may put them in the international dock tomorrow.”

The ICC, the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal, opened in July 2002 to prosecute the perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity.

But progress has been too slow in the eyes of critics. Lubanga, seen as a relatively “small fish” compared to the likes of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, was first transferred to the ICC headquarters at The Hague six years ago.

William Schabas, professor of international law at Middlesex University, told Reuters: “The prosecutor is woefully behind schedule. We are all relieved we got to this point.

“But the big legal judgments, of the kind we had at the Yugoslav, Rwanda and Sierra Leone tribunals, we are still waiting for from the ICC right now. The ICC has not yet done that.”

Backed by 120 countries – but not China or the US – the ICC has launched investigations in seven conflict regions, all of them African, since it opened.

Schabas criticised the lead prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, for a narrow focus. “He avoided situations where he would be likely to step on the toes of permanent members of the UN security council, from Afghanistan to Gaza to Iraq to Colombia.”

The court has no police force and relies on the support of states to deliver suspects for trial. Last December Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo became the first former head of state to appear at the ICC.

The verdict due from a three-judge bench on Wednesday is also the first at an international trial focused exclusively on the use of child soldiers.

The case will set legal precedents that could be used if the likes of Joseph Kony, the elusive leader of the Ugandan rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army, are captured and brought to justice.

Khmer Rouge jail chief gets life for his ‘factory of death’

Tags

Cambodia, Genocide, Khmer Rouge, Torture, Tribunal, War Crimes

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/khmer-rouge-jail-chief-gets-life-for-his-factory-of-death-6358883.html

Comrade Duch, the head of a notorious Khmer Rouge prison, was ordered to spend the rest of his life in jail after a tribunal ruled yesterday that he had overseen a “factory of death”.

In a decision that surprised many observers, the upper chamber of Cambodia’s genocide tribunal, which is backed by the United Nations, said the 35-year sentence the prison chief received two years ago did not match the scale and gravity of his crime.

Duch, 69, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, stood up to hear the verdict but reportedly showed no emotion.

“The penalty must be harsh to prevent similar crimes, which are undoubtedly among the worst in human history,” said Judge Kong Srim, president of the court. “The crimes of Kaing Guek Eav were of a particularly shocking and heinous character based on the number of people who were proven to have been killed.”

Duch oversaw Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, a former school that was converted into a torture and interrogation centre for members of the regime itself, who were accused of various spurious crimes. It is estimated that up to 16,000 prisoners were kept there before being sent for execution at “killing fields” on the edge of the city. Barely a dozen sent to the jail survived.

In the summer of 2010, Duch, a former maths teacher who became one of the regime’s most loyal members, was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. His 35-year sentence was immediately commuted to 19 years because of time he had already served and other reasons. That ruling drew an emotional outcry from the families and friends of his victims.

Yesterday’s decision was largely welcomed by those following the trial. Chum Mei, a former car mechanic and one of the few survivors of Tuol Sleng, or S-21, told The Independent he was still not completely happy because he felt that Duch had not sufficiently confessed his guilt. However, he added that he was pleased by the ruling.

“I am very satisfied, and so are more than 90 other civil parties,” he said. “[It] is right to give him life imprisonment because the crime he committed was so grave, and he deserves it.”

The white-haired Chum Mei, who was beaten, tortured and given electric shocks while he was in the jail, added: “We hope that the rest of the former senior Khmer Rouge leaders will get the same trial. Today really marked the end of a culture of impunity in Cambodia.”

Khmer Rouge survivor’s tale helps Cambodia confront its brutal past

Tags

Cambodia, Genocide, Khmer Rouge

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/24/khmer-rouge-survivor-film-cambodia

It took her 33 years to put pen to paper and write the screenplay that would change everything. But for Khmer Rouge survivor Khauv Sotheary, producing a film about her mother’s experience of the brutal period instead of her own has allowed the 47-year-old professor to understand her family’s past even more profoundly.

Lost Loves is Cambodia‘s first feature film about the Khmer Rouge for more than 20 years, and coincides with a key hearing at the UN-backed war crimes court. This is the first time in 30 years that the regime has been discussed so much and so openly. And that, experts say, proves that Cambodia is truly on the road to reconciliation.

“We’ve grown up far from the story [of the regime] because so much time has passed, but the memory – of the pain, the starvation, the separation – is always there,” says a soft-spoken Sotheary from a cafe in her native Phnom Penh. “Even though we live in peace now and have food on the table, we have to keep this story alive. We have to communicate it.”

Lost Loves focuses on Sotheary’s mother, who lost seven members of her family – including her father, husband and four children – during the hardline communist regime of 1975-79, which killed about 2 million people. With its all-Cambodian cast and crew, including Sotheary as the protagonist, the film premiered in 2010 at the Cambodian international film festival to a riveted audience, and last week finally appeared in city cinemas. Critics have called it “groundbreaking” and “beautiful”.

Relying heavily on traditional Cambodian drama, the film depicts everyday life under the Khmer Rouge in striking but emotionally provocative ways. In one scene, Amara, stripped of her “capitalist” identity and clad in revolutionary, communist black, drags a fellow farmer to hospital as she suffers a miscarriage from overwork in the rice paddies, her blood staining the emerald grasses where they eat, sleep and toil.

“This is the only way to really bring the story to the people here,” explains director Chhay Bora, 49, who lost two brothers at the hands of the regime and says that a documentary would have had a less profound effect. “A docu-drama actually brings you to the experience by making you feel like you’re in it. You become emotionally engaged.”

Sotheary – who survived the regime despite chronic malnutrition and a permanent state of despair – says she commends her mother for her “strength and resolve to survive what she did”.

“As a mother now, I don’t know if I’d have the same strength,” she adds.

Bora and Sotheary – both university professors – chose Cambodia’s youth as the film’s target audience and have provided discounted tickets to schools and universities to encourage students to watch it. The couple aim to screen the film in provinces beyond the capital. “Children need to see history with their eyes to understand what they read,” says Bora. “A film like this helps them understand their textbooks better.”

The film-makers are aided, in part, by a recent movement to teach the history of the genocide to students and the public at Cambodia’s most famous torture prison, S-21, or Tuol Sleng (whose former director, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, was convicted of war crimes in 2010and sentenced to 35 years in prison). Organised by the country’s leading Khmer Rouge research group, the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam), the bi-weekly lectures discuss the rise and fall of a government that considered education a disease of the elite and converted many of the country’s schools into prisons and warehouses.

While the genocide is required teaching from grades nine to 12 in Cambodia, many students doubt the extent of the atrocities committed and some teachers are loth to address the issue in class, “in part because they don’t understand the period and how to integrate it into the curriculum”, says oral historian and S-21 lecturer Farina So.

“Many parents and grandparents don’t like to discuss what happened, because it is such a painful and sensitive issue,” she says. “But if we don’t talk about it at home, and we don’t talk about it in our communities, how can kids understand the history? This is about solace, about reconciling the past with the present and future.”

DC-Cam has trained some 3,000 teachers to approach the genocide, partly through its independently funded guidebooks that encourage teachers to ask students questions such as “What would life be like today if money and free markets were abolished?” and “How has the regime affected life in Cambodia today?”.

But the organisation knows it has an uphill battle on its hands. “I believe some of what you say happened, but not everything,” says high school student Luy Srey Mech, 17, at a recent S-21 lecture. “My great-grandparents were killed during the revolution, but it was a long time ago. I guess now that I see these pictures, these videos, I start to understand it a little more.”

Youk Chhang, a leading researcher on the Khmer Rouge, says it would be easy to get discouraged by such seemingly disaffected youth – but that would be a great mistake.

“Genocide is very difficult to express in words. Forcing or expecting people to ‘believe’ it happened is unfair and perhaps too obsessed with the past,” he says, noting that the most important development to come out of this newfound dialogue is “the communication itself”.

“This dialogue that we are seeing today did not exist 15 years ago,” he says. “The tribunal has finally put the Khmer Rouge into the public sphere, creating a public debate that is nationwide. Everywhere there is shared joy, suspicion, sorrow, hope. It’s the single issue that has encouraged a culture of dialogue that has not yet existed in Cambodian society – and that means that the debate on the ground is more constructive than the debate in the court. People are finally defining and reflecting on the meaning of justice and the notion of reconciliation.”

For Sotheary and her mother, that reconciliation could not come soon enough.

Rwanda genocide report exonerates Paul Kagame

Tags

Genocide, Rwanda

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/11/rwanda-genocide-report-paul-kagame

A French investigation into the causes of the 1994 Rwandan genocide has exonerated the president, Paul Kagame, and his Tutsi allies after Paris had previously accused him of triggering the killings of 800,000 people in 100 days.

Diplomatic relations between Rwanda and France were broken off in 2006 when a French judge said that Kagame – the rebel leader at the time of the killings – had orchestrated the assassination of the Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana, to trigger the bloodshed.

After Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, Hutu extremists slaughtered Tutsis and moderate Hutus in some of the fastest mass killings ever perpetrated.

Kagame’s Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front seized power in the aftermath of the genocide.

Kagame has accused the former French president François Mitterrand’s administration of training and arming the Hutu militias responsible for the slaughter.

A team of French investigators, led by two judges, re-examined a dozen eyewitness testimonies to work out where the two missiles that brought down Habyarimana’s Dassault Falcon 50 plane were fired from in an effort to determine final responsibility. Both sides had bases near the airport.

On Tuesday, the judges presented their report to Kagame’s lawyers, who told the media they had concluded that the shots could not have come from a military base occupied by Kagame’s supporters. The findings did not specifically point the finger at the Hutus.

“Today’s findings constitute vindication for Rwanda’s long-held position on the circumstances surrounding events of April 1994”, the Rwandan foreign minister, Louise Mushikiwabo, said in a statement.

“With this scientific truth, [the judges] have slammed shut the door on the 17-year campaign to deny the genocide or blame its victims.

“It is now clear to all that the downing of the plane was a coup d’état carried by extremist Hutu elements and their advisers who controlled Kanombe barracks.”

However, Jean-Yves Dupeux, a lawyer for Habyarimana’s children, said the findings did not support the Rwandan government’s account.

“The findings cannot point the finger at the Hutu camp,” he added. “What the experts are saying is that the shots could not have been fired from Paul Kagame’s camp. That doesn’t mean it is the other side.”

An investigation by the Rwandan government in January 2010 blamed extremists within Habyarimana’s inner circle for bringing down the plane, saying the murder was designed to scuttle a planned power-sharing deal and act as a pretext for the genocide.

According to the Rwandan inquiry set up by Kagame – known as the Mutsinzi report – Rwanda armed forces stationed in the Kanombe barracks near the airport fired the surface-to-air rockets, the culmination of months of planning.

A 2006 report by the French judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere said Kagame was responsible, arranging for the plane to be shot down to trigger reprisal killings between ethnic Tutsi and Hutu and give his RPF rebels and allies grounds to take power by force.

Paris began to normalise its relations with Rwanda after Nicolas Sarkozy came to power in 2007. On a trip to Kigali in February 2010, the French president said Paris had made serious errors of judgment over the massacre and wanted to ensure that all those responsible for the slaughter were caught and punished.

On Kagame’s first state visit to France since the genocide in September, the Rwandan president emphasised that his trip was aimed at building economic and commercial ties, appearing to accept that an apology from Paris was no longer a prerequisite for restoring diplomatic ties.