Nearly a month after the Venezuelan president’s roundup many expect him to ride out the threats to his 11-year rule Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro and Clavel Rangel , 26 AUG 2024 Leticia Torrealba sheds tears as she speaks about the detention of her 16-year-old son who was detained during a government crackdown in response to anti-government protests. Photograph: Ariana Cubillos/AP N icolás Maduro has baptised his political crackdown Operación Tun Tun (Operation Knock Knock) after the spine-chilling visits his security forces pay their targets. But when members of Venezuela’s secret police came for Aixa Daniela Boada López, they announced their arrival with a thump not a tap. “It was about half past midnight when we heard this loud bang on the roof,” said one witness to her detention in the industrial complex of Ciudad Guayana early on 1 August. Black-clad agents from the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, Sebin, were seen smashing their way inside. They carried guns and a picture of the 19-year-old law student they had come to arrest. López was bundled into a vehicle as panicked relatives looked on. “Neighbours came out to try and protect her but they pointed their weapons at them and took the girl,” said the witness, asking to remain anonymous for fear of suffering a similar fate. Nearly a month after López’s capture, her future remains uncertain, as do those of more than 1,600 people detained during Maduro’s roundup of perceived opponents. For protesting against his widely doubted claim to have won the 28 July presidential election, López and others face charges of criminal association and terrorism that could lead to decades in jail. Venezuela’s outlook is equally unsure. “These days, fear and uncertainty are the most accurate words to describe the situation,” said Gonzalo Himiob, a writer and activist involved in documenting rights violations some compare to those committed under the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Maduro’s administration tried to draw a line under the crisis this week with the announcement from the pro-government supreme court that it had corroborated the president’s victory over his rival, Edmundo González. The court’s verdict flew in the face of growing international suspicions – even among leftwing politicians traditionally supportive of the movement created by Maduro’s mentor, Hugo Chávez – that the incumbent’s claim to victory did not stack up. “I’ve no doubt this election has been stolen,” Chile’s leftist president, Gabriel Boric, said after the court’s judgment, accusing what he called Maduro’s “dictatorship” of falsifying the result. Even Brazil and Colombia, whose leftist presidents have long-established ties to Chavismo, are refusing to recognise Maduro’s win, with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro on Saturday renewing their call for the publication of disaggregated results data at polling station level. Distrust and outright rejection of Maduro’s claim to victory are based on studies of detailed voting tallies that González’s campaign published after the government-controlled electoral court declared Maduro the winner, without offering proof. The author of one such study , Dorothy Kronick, a political scientist at University of California, Berkeley, said she was initially sceptical about the opposition’s claim that those tallies showed González had won a landslide. “If the data from the opposition campaign are true, then these results are shocking. If you believe these data, then the opposition candidate likely got more than 8m votes, maybe even 8.5m votes nationwide, which is more than Hugo Chávez got in the 2012 presidential election before a fifth, or more than a fifth of Venezuelans emigrated. So that’s incredible, right?” added Kronick, whose past work debunked electoral fraud claims that helped topple Bolivia’s leftist leader, Evo Morales, in 2019. Kronick said her investigations of Venezuela’s electronic voting system and election had led her to conclude that the opposition’s claim was almost certainly correct and that González had therefore won comfortably. Of last week’s supreme court’s ruling in Maduro’s favour, Kronick said: “I think their attitude is: ‘What are you [the opposition] going to do about it? … Knock yourself out.’” Many experts believe that that tactic could work and that Maduro will manage to ride out the latest threat to his 11-year rule, just as he survived mass protests in 2017 and the botched 2019 attempt to topple him as well as one of the worst peacetime economic meltdowns in modern history. It’s a “high probability scenario” that Maduro will start a third-term next January, said Harold Trinkunas, a Stanford University Latin America specialist who studies Venezuela’s politics and military. Maduro’s grip over the armed forces was a major part of why. But Trinkunas did not believe that Maduro’s inauguration was inevitable. A Bangladesh-style uprising, like the one that forced the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, to flee in a helicopter, could not be discounted. A gradual negotiated transition to democracy such as the one that ended Pinochet’s military regime, in 1990, was also possible. Venezuelan history offered a third possible denouement. In December 1957, its dictator, Marcos Pérez Jiménez – who, like Maduro, was notorious for unleashing his secret police on political foes – called a referendum he hoped would help extend his 10-year rule. “He stole that election, and it was widely perceived as stolen, and the next five weeks saw an increasing buildup of popular mobilisation, street protests and increasing violence,” Trinkunas recalled. “Finally, the generals under him told him he had to go.” Pérez Jiménez fled Caracas in a presidential plane nicknamed La Vaca Sagrada (The Holy Cow), and was welcomed to the Dominican Republic by its dictator, Rafael Trujillo. Some wonder whether growing pressure might force Maduro to seek shelter from an ally such as Cuba or Turkey. The US has reportedly offered him amnesty from drug trafficking charges if he steps down. But Maduro, who blames criticism of his election on a US-spawned conspiracy to overthrow his “revolution”, has offered no hint that he will go. Instead, in a sign of his determination to retain power, he has called a three-day conference in October to discuss plans for his next six-year term, which would run from 2025 to 2031. That is an agonising, though very real prospect for relatives of those jailed during Maduro’s crackdown, and for millions of Venezuelans who have fled abroad since he took office in 2013. María De Grazia, whose father was detained by secret police on 7 August, urged the international community to keep up the pressure, “not just to secure my father’s freedom, but the freedom of all Venezuela”. Américo De Grazia, a 64-year-old opposition politician, is believed to be being held in a notorious political prison and torture centre called El Helicoide . “We represent peace and they represent torture. We represent freedom and they represent dictatorship,” said María De Grazia, 30, urging the world not to forget her country. “We can’t do it on our own.” © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

September 03, 2024 1:48 PM By Dale Gavlak FILE - A member of the Babylon Brigades stands beneath a cross in the town of Khidr Ilyas, southeast of Mosul, Nov. 22, 2016. The Babylon Brigades, which identifies as a Christian militia in Iraq but has Shiite Muslim members and is closely tied to Iran, is taking over Ninevah Plains towns in the country’s Christian heartland, displacing Christian mayors and officials on behalf of Iran after Islamic State was swept out. A militia leader closely linked to Iran, Rayan al-Kildani, has removed Christian officials in the historic Christian towns of Iraq’s Ninevah Plains, said Nadine Maenza, president of the Washington-based International Religious Freedom Secretariat, who recently visited the area. Maenza told VOA al-Kildani has been working to install local leaders who agree with Iran’s vision for Iraq. The militia leader portrays himself to be a Christian. “He took over the Ninevah Council,” Maenza said. “He got his own people elected and then he started buying them off. He removed 15 mayors and directors. He replaced all with his own people. So, he basically took over the Ninevah Plains. There are no more Christian (political) leaders outside of the KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government) control.” Maenza met with some of the mayors who lost their jobs. Her organization encourages the improvement of religious freedom conditions in 40 countries worldwide, including Iraq. Maenza said local Christians hope an Iraqi Federal Court will rule on al-Kildani’s action. Writing in the Wilson Center’s MENA 360 Degree online publication, Maenza said that if al-Kildani continues his campaign, “it will remove the last independent Christian mayors outside of the Kurdistan region and have a devastating impact on the historic Syriac, Assyrian, and Chaldean Christian cities of Bartella, Qaraqosh, Tel Kef and the Yazidi homeland of Sinjar.” Maenza told VOA al-Kildani’s moves follow his success last year in having the title of patriarch removed from Patriarch Cardinal Louis Sako, the head of Iraq’s largest Christian denomination, the Chaldean Catholics. It is an ancient Eastern rite church in full communion with the Vatican. Sako accused al-Kildani of trying to take over Christian endowments and properties. Al-Kildani denies the charge and accuses Sako of the same. But Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani reinstated Sako’s title in June. Some Iraqi clerics, including Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda of Irbil, view al-Kildani favorably. The Catholic online publication, The Pillar, reports that his “diocese has received al-Kildani’s assistance in building and pastoral projects, as well as security assistance and political protection.” The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned al-Kildani in 2019 for alleged human rights abuses, including intimidation, extortion, persecution of religious minorities, and illegally seizing property. Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said al-Kildani's deal-making has raised his profile with the main political blocks running Iraq and supported by Iran. “Rayan al-Kildani has provided his support for a range of pro-Iran political forces in Iraq to get their own governance appointed and in return he got rewarded with these lower-level appointments in places that he really cared about within the Ninevah Plains,” Knights said. “A lot of the folks are angry about Rayan al-Kildani’s rise. He has very, very thin credentials to claim leadership of the Christian community in Iraq or control of their property.” Maenza called for the reinstatement of election rules in Iraq to protect the political representation of Christians, Yazidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities in parliament so only minority community members can vote for their own representation. Since 2009, Iraq has allowed all Iraqis to vote for designated minority parliamentary seats, effectively upending minority control of their own representation. This, observers say, has also encouraged the practice of vote buying from non-Christian Iraqis in the minority quota system. Al-Kildani’s party won four of the five Iraqi parliamentary seats reserved for Christians in the last election. His candidates were backed by Shiite political forces. Still, Knights urged the U.S., the European Union and the worldwide Christian community to work on tightening sanctions on al-Kildani, whether on his property abroad or by curtailing his ability to travel, as another step to rein in his — and Iran’s — growing dominance. © Copyright 2024 VOA

Sudan videos reveal ethnic hatred behind massacres The Washington Post September 9, 2024 By  Katharine Houreld Sudan’s Darfur region was the scene of a genocide two decades ago. Exclusive videos shared with The Post show the inflamed bigotry behind a new wave of killings.   Militiamen affiliated with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces celebrate near the Sudanese town of Kutum in June 2023 in the immediate aftermath of a mass killing. (Obtained by The Washington Post) Moments after the militiamen burst into the small adobe house in Sudan’s Kassab displacement camp, a woman inside began pleading for the lives of her sons. As she begged to trade her life for theirs, the paramilitary fighters clubbed her with a rifle butt, according to a passerby, who overheard the encounter and later talked with the family. Then the fighters led the five brothers away. Shortly afterward, a video showed, several men’s barefoot bodies were seen sprawled face-down in the dust, hands bound behind them, blood seeping across their clothes. Two witnesses identified the brothers’ bodies in the footage. Aftermath of an execution   Video filmed by militiamen shows people looking on as bodies of bound men lie near a displacement camp. Out of frame, gunshots ring out. (Video: Obtained by The Washington Post) The immediate aftermath of the execution-style killings last year in Kassab, and others in neighboring Kutum town in Sudan’s western Darfur region, was captured in videos that have remained unpublished until now — rare visual evidence of the slaughter routinely occurring in Sudan as its armed forces battle a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, in a conflict the United States estimates has cost about 150,000 lives. The killings of the young men who are seen in the videos were part of a massacre of at least 73 people, according to residents of Kutum and the U.N. refugee agency.    The videos underscore the vitriol of Arab militiamen affiliated with the RSF toward their ethnic Black African victims and the toll of that bigotry, which victims say is fueling much of the violence committed by that group against civilians, especially in Darfur. In one of the videos, a gunman in a white turban gloats over the sprawled, bloodstained bodies of two unidentified men: “Take pictures! This is a victory for the Arabs! This is a victory for the Arabs!” Celebrations of violence   In the aftermath of a mass killing, militiamen yell, "Victory is for the Arabs by God’s will." The RSF is accused of committing abuses along ethnic lines. (Video: Obtained by The Washington Post)   I n a third video, unseen fighters taunt another dying man, whose head lolls as crimson collects in a pool beneath him. (The video is too graphic to be included with this article.) About 70 percent of Sudanese identify as Arab, while the rest are primarily from Black African groups such as the Fur, Zaghawa and Nubians. The killings in Kassab and Kutum, which occurred in June 2023, foreshadowed other mass killings of mainly Black African civilians allegedly by the RSF in Darfurian cities such as Nyala and Geneina. The RSF has denied carrying out these atrocities, which have also been documented by Human Rights Watch. The videos from Kassab and Kutum were shared with The Washington Post as part of a joint investigation with Lighthouse Reports, Sky News and Le Monde and offer a rare glimpse at the horror unfolding in Sudan. Much of the killing has occurred out of the world’s sight. Few foreign journalists are allowed to travel to Sudan, and internet and phone connections are rare. While the military is also accused of committing abuses, including along ethnic lines, human rights groups say the RSF is responsible for the majority of the atrocities. Witness accounts and RSF propaganda videos revealed that senior RSF commanders were in the Kutum area during the killings. Ezzadin Elsafi, a senior RSF official, said the ethnic dimensions of the conflict have been blown out of proportion and that people in Kutum were now living together peacefully, overseen by an RSF commander belonging to the Fur tribe. [Genocide Watch comment: Elsafi is obviously lying.] A racist legacy Many of the survivors of the slaughter in Kassab and Kutum said their RSF attackers called African civilians “abd,” or slave, a racist insult dating to the days when Arab raiders often enslaved members of Sudan’s Black tribes. In recent decades, Sudanese Arabs have dominated the top ranks of the government and military, and grievances among minority groups have sparked several uprisings in neglected regions. Such discontent led to a previous war in Darfur, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives from 2003 to 2020. During that conflict, the RSF’s predecessor, an ethnically Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, collaborated with the military to target African rebels and their families. The attacks against African tribes were so widespread and systematic that the International Criminal Court said they amounted to genocide. Now U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that "ethnic cleansing", crimes against humanity and war crimes are happening again. [Genocide Watch Comment: It is incredible that Blinken still uses the discredited term "ethnic cleansing", a euphemism invented by Slobodan Milosevic used to deny forced displacement and genocide.] This time, the trigger for the war was a rivalry between top generals. A power-sharing arrangement between military chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the leader of the RSF, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, universally referred to Hemedti, broke down in April 2023. After fighting erupted, the former African rebels initially remained neutral, but in November, many eventually sided with the military against the RSF. Assault on the camp In better times, Kutum was known for its sweet dates, oranges and mangos. Locals water their orchards from a lazy river winding through town. About a mile outside Kutum lies the Kassab camp, home to many African families who were displaced during the previous Darfur war and never went home. Last year, local tensions spiked after the killing of a popular Arab officer, the looting of an RSF base in town and an attack on some Arab shops, all under unclear circumstances, residents said. Four days later, the RSF and allied Arab fighters poured into the area, and a day after that, they attacked Kutum and Kassab. Fearing ethnic violence, Kassab’s residents had already begun digging trenches and piling up dirt barricades, a rights activist from Kassab recalled. Like other witnesses interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals. The locals’ fears came true. The activist said he awoke to see hundreds of   uniformed RSF and Arab fighters on motorbikes and trucks fording the stream separating the camp from the town. Blocked by the barricades, the activist said, fighters circled to the west and attacked. “The intensity of the fire cut down even the trees,” he said. “We were taking shelter in the mud houses. … We moved only by crawling. … People were in a state of panic similar to the Day of Judgment.” Camp residents tried to flee, but the gunfire was too intense, the activist said. Friends died around him — shot while found hiding or while running. A farmer said he had been close enough to hear an RSF commander called Ali Rizkallah, nicknamed Savanna, address his men. “He said, ‘The slaves entered the holes as if they were rats’ — meaning us, the displaced,” said the farmer, who recognized Rizkallah because he is well known in the area. Looking for the men As the RSF and allied Arab fighters poured in from the west, they reached the door of the woman with five sons. The Suleiman family was Zaghawa, an African ethnic group that had previously fought against the Janjaweed, and the young men in the family were students, tailors and or market traders, the farmer said. The youngest was 14. The fighters asked if there were any men inside, said a relative. The woman said there weren’t, but they didn’t believe her. “I saw a young man, about 16 years old, force the door of their house and enter, with a number of soldiers behind him, calling them ‘slave Nubians.’ When they entered, I found their mother standing in front of [her sons] saying, ‘Don’t kill them, don’t kill them,’” recounted a resident of the camp who was passing by. “Moments later, I heard them saying, ‘Kill her.’” Those fighters wore RSF uniforms, the resident said. The woman was clubbed to the ground with a rifle butt, and three RSF fighters stood in front of her as the five Suleiman brothers and two others were led away, he said. Moments later, he heard shots. Then crackling. Homes, tents and piles of fodder were set ablaze. The resident said he crawled into one of the piles of hay after he was wounded, but RSF fighters set it on fire to flush him out. When he crawled out the other side, he said, a soldier shouted, “There is a slave here who wants to escape,” before igniting the tents around him. “If I stayed inside, the fire would burn me, and if I went out, I would be shot,” he recalled. Only the thought of his 2-year-old daughter gave him the courage to crawl out in another direction, he said. The United Nations reported that 54 people were killed that day in Kassab. Slaughter in the town In Kutum town itself, half a dozen residents said uniformed RSF members and Arab militiamen killed civilians and looted houses and shops belonging to non-Arabs. “They kept looting, killing and assaulting people for at least 15 days. They took everything: money, vehicles, animals and other valuables. They even collected the hens,” said one woman. Predominantly Arab neighborhoods and Arab-owned houses were spared, locals said. One man was clubbed to death in front of his wife and 2-year-old son, a resident said. Another said his 17-year-old relative was shot dead when he tried to flee after being discovered in a bathroom. A third resident said her 65-year-old relative was shot dead in front of her grandchildren as she tried to stop Arab fighters from entering her son’s room. Residents recorded 19 civilian deaths in the town. Residents identified several men as RSF commanders who had directed the attacks. None of the videos shared with The Post show those men. But an RSF propaganda video shows that Lt. Col. Ali Hamid al-Taher was present in Kutum in June 2023. He appears in one video with military soldiers captured in Kutum and in another distributing aid in the town. Five residents said Taher led the attack on Kutum. He was later killed during fighting elsewhere in Darfur. In the propaganda video about aid distribution, Taher mentions that Maj. Gen. Al Nour Al Gubba, the RSF’s commander for North Darfur, was responsible for that program in Kutum. While Gubba is not shown in any videos, three residents said they saw him in Kutum during the attack. Gubba could not be reached for comment. Appealing for protection Most of the killings occurred on a single day, but sporadic violence continued for about two weeks. Ultimately, ethnic African tribal leaders requested a meeting with the RSF, asking for protection for civilians. But the tribal leaders were met with even more animosity. One man who attended the meeting recalled that the head of the Arab delegation — a man named al-Hadi Hamid Abdel-Nabi, who was the director of education in the area and the father of two RSF officers — told the tribal leaders: “This land is not for slaves.” In an interview, Abdel-Nabi denied making that statement. Another tribal leader, from the Fur tribe, challenged Abdel-Nabi, saying all men are equal, whether they are African or Arab, the attendee said. “‘All of us are from Adam, all of us are from the Earth. All of us from Adam. God created us,’” the attendee recounted. “He would not recant his words when he was ordered to by the Janjaweed,” or RSF. “The next day they killed him,” he said.   Jon Gerberg, Meg Kelly, Bashar Deeb and Jack Sapoch contributed to this report. Support for Provan’s reporting by Freelance Investigative Reporters and Editors (FIRE). correction An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the United States estimates that the Sudan conflict has cost about 500,000 lives. The United States has estimated that 150,000 people have died. The article has been corrected. About the videos Videos included in this report were obtained by The Washington Post as part of a joint investigation with Lighthouse Reports, Sky News and Le Monde. The videos, filmed by fighters themselves, were obtained from a closed WhatsApp group. They were later verified by geolocation, fire analysis and satellite imagery. Copyright 2024 The Washington Post

By Anthony Akaeze In the last two months, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom released two major reports, each of which features an overview of the state of religion in two African countries — Eritrea and Nigeria. The reports reveal the role of state actors in perpetuating religious intolerance in both nations. Research for the Eritrea report was conducted by the Religious Freedom Institute, with Jeremy P. Barker and Ryan Zoellner as authors, while the Nigeria report was written by Michael Ardovino. According to USCIRF, “inherent in religious freedom is the right to believe or not believe as one’s conscience leads and to live out one’s beliefs openly, peacefully and without fear. Freedom of religion or belief is an expansive right that includes the freedoms of thought, conscience, expression, association and assembly.” Such principles, however, are not as they appear on paper in these two African countries located in the Eastern and Western parts of the continent. Eritrea In Eritrea, USCIRF found conditions among the most repressive in Africa. “Since gaining independence in 1993, under President Isaias Afewerki, the Eritrean state has exercised strict control over religious practice and institutions and sought to impose national values through compulsory military service,” the report states, pointing out that the government regularly violates both individual and institutional expressions of religious freedom. “A 1995 proclamation to standardize religious activities and institutions and separate religion and politics has instead been the basis for state control of and intervention in religious life,” it adds, noting “the government formally recognizes only four officially registered religious groups: the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Sunni Islam, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Eritrea.” A 2002 order requiring re-registration, the report further states, amounted to nothing as the authorities effectively closed all other organizations. Since then, the government has not granted any new registrations, thus “providing the pretext for the arrests of thousands of individuals for unsanctioned religious activities.” It’s not just religious organizations that have faced government backlash, the report adds. “In 2005, the Eritrean government ordered USAID and many other bilateral donors and international nongovernmental organizations to leave the country. The Eritrean state frequently shows hostility toward external intervention in the country, viewing it as a threat to national sovereignty and pride. In this context, there has been minimal space for direct engagement and limited success in addressing religious freedom concerns in Eritrea.” “As of 2023, Eritrea still retains the distinction of being the only country sanctioned explicitly for its violations of religious freedom.” With such a situation, the U.S. State Department in 2004 designated Eritrea as a Country of Particular Concern and has reclassified it as such every year since then. The announcement of the initial designation cited the 2002 closure of all activities outside of the recognized four religious bodies. Also noted were more than 200 religious prisoners, including people who had faced severe torture and pressure to renounce their faith: “As of 2023, Eritrea still retains the distinction of being the only country sanctioned explicitly for its violations of religious freedom.” The efforts of U.S. government and embassy officials to intervene have met with little success, the report adds: “The ability to engage substantively with Eritrea on religious freedom has been relatively limited. The annual IRF report notes that embassy officials regularly attempted to meet with religious leaders and government officials responsible for religious affairs to raise religious freedom concerns — but with mixed results, as these efforts were often blocked.” Nigeria In the case of the Nigerian government, the rhetoric of top officials in public meetings may be much different from what prevails behind closed doors and when the cameras are off. “Nigeria’s government at both the federal and state level continues to tolerate attacks by nonstate actors who justify their violence on religious grounds. Islamist and some Fulani militant groups have expressed a goal of overthrowing secular governance with the intention of enforcing a singular interpretation of Islam,” the report emphasizes. Apart from Nigeria’s military not being able, despite their effort to degrade or defeat terrorists that have continued to operate with impunity in the northern part of the country, thus making life a living hell for many residents in swaths of the vast territory, some Nigerian state governments employ blasphemy laws to persecute those they consider unreligious or whose worldview does not conform with that of the majority. “The government uses blasphemy laws to prosecute and imprison individuals perceived to have insulted religion, including Christians, Muslims and humanists,” the report explains. “It also continues to tolerate egregious violence by nonstate actors, including JAS/Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province and other extremist groups. This violence affects large numbers of Christians and Muslims in several states across Nigeria and targets both religious sites and individuals from religious minority communities.” “The government uses blasphemy laws to prosecute and imprison individuals perceived to have insulted religion, including Christians, Muslims and humanists.” This is in spite of the fact that Nigeria’s 1999 constitution prohibits the federal and state governments from adopting an official religion in a country where Muslims and Christians each make up about half the population. Curiously though, the constitution allows the use of Shari’a and traditional law courts for noncriminal proceedings at the state level but does not compel all citizens to abide by them. This enables 12 states in the country’s north, along with the Federal Capital Territory, to implement Shari’a legal frameworks with some applying Shari’a in criminal cases. The report explains: “Shari’a codes prohibit blasphemy and other offenses based on Islamic law as interpreted by each state’s high court. Shari’a courts utilize a religiously grounded penal code, including for serious criminal offenses, and specify punishments such as caning, amputation, and stoning.” The cost of this is that a number of people have paid a price for behavior or actions adjudged by government officials and courts to fall outside the tenet of Islam. Among the victims is Mubarak Bala, a humanist who in 2020 was arrested and tried in a Kano State High Court over a Facebook post considered insulting to Islam. He was subsequently sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2022. Two years after a court of appeals granted Bala’s request, the court reduced the sentence to five years. There’s also Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, a Sufi Muslim who, since 2022, has remained imprisoned for sharing audio messages deemed “insulting to the religious creed.” BNG published a story on Sharif-Aminu in December 2020 after his arrest. Incensed mobs burned down his family house. Other victims of blasphemy include Sufi Sheikh Abduljabar Nasiru Kabara, who was arrested in 2021 and sentenced to death in 2022. Kabara parted ways with his lawyer this year and remains in prison. There’s also Isma’ila Sani Isah, who was taken on blasphemy charges in 2021 and remains in prison, as well as Sufi cleric Abdulazeez Inyass, whose ordeal started in 2015 after he was arrested and slammed with blasphemy charges and faces a death sentence. © 2024 Baptist News Global. All rights reserved

By David Dzirasah Genocide is a word coined to ideologically represent the killing of a whole race or group of people. In history, we know of some famous events where huge number of people lost their lives due to ethnic or political resentment. We have the holocaust which was the extermination of European civilians, particularly the European Jews during world war two. The Germans killed between five to six million Jews. We can also talk of the ethnic cleansing that took place in Bosnia-Hersegovina where 250,000 Bosnians were killed by Serbian forces. In as much as we are tempted to believe that genocide is a thing of the past and has to do with the extermination of a particular group of the society, the fact remains the same that genocide goes on in our societies on daily bases. It is no longer the killing of a particular group of people but rather the every single individual in the society is at risk of being a victim. In our case in Ghana, there are societal failures and deliberate, systematic actions and in-actions on our part as a nation that has led, is leading and will still lead to the callous massacre of Ghanians on daily bases. Let us look at a few instances where Ghanians are being murdered by theirfellow Ghanians. Is there a day that goes by in Ghana without the media capturing deaths of Ghanians on our roads? Every single day we hear stories of people dying on our roads due to what we always like to cal‘accidents”. But the question we need to ask is that are these tragic incidents really accidents? Sometimes we hear that 30 people have died on the spot and at other times we hear that 2 people have died but the truth remains the same which is that people are losing their lives. If these incidents are accidents then how can we explain how institutions such as DVLA has been compromised to the extents that the blind, the dead and even mentally challenged people are able to acquire licenses in this country. How can we explain to the dead how the police on daily basis are busily taking bribes when they could have prevented senseless deaths on our roads? Our political elites also collude with party affiliated constructors to construct death traps that end up sending our mothers, fathers, sisters and brother to their early graves. Can we say these deaths are as a result accidents when we ourselves as drivers end up driving careless or drinking alcohol before driving and killing innocent people in this country? If this is not genocide then what is? When it comes to our health sector the situation only get worse. A country with more than 25 million people yet we cannot boast of having a robust emergency medical services. We have a situation where if one is involve in an accident or is extremely sick or needs urgent medical attention the only means of transporting the person to the hospital is via taxis. This is because for a huge country such as ours with over 25 million people we do not even have up to 400 public ambulances and the once we have are either not functioning well or are being used to carry dead bodies. People are losing their lives like animals because of this. We think as a country it is better to buy armored cars for the politicians rather than buy ambulances to save lives. The most absurd aspect of it is the fact that the president and the vice always have ambulances in their convoy ready to convey them to the hospital when the need arises. Are the politicians more important than the dying Ghanians who must take taxis to the hospitals even when they know that they will end up dying on the way? Even assuming that you are lucky to make it the hospital, chances are that you would not survive because apparently either the doctor is not around or the medical oxygen needed to keep you alive is not available. This is the systematic killing that we have brought upon ourselves as a people. We are killing ourselves on daily bases all because of our actions and in-actions. You have situations where even people actually loss their lives as a result of cholera. In this 21st century Ghanians cannot even deal with poor sanitation and to think that people are losing their lives as consequences of this ineptitude is mind boggling. Who is responsible for ensuring that every house built in this country has toilet facilities? What rational human being would build a house without a toilet? The refusal by those responsible is leading to the deaths of countless Ghanians. In addition we have sakawa, armed robbery, suicide, mob justice, corruption and many other social problems we have created ourselves that are massively sucking the lives out of Ghanians. This is genocide and it is happening on daily bases. How can we entrust the future on our children in the hands of a country that is lusting after their lives. This is a country which boast of more 70% Christians and more than% moslems yet we can see the decay all around us. The societal corruption and failure is symmetrically murdering us on daily bases. Who is responsible? Do we blame the devil who we spend all day in our churches and mosques fighting or do we blame the elites who were just like the rest of us but are now elevated and have forgotten their roots or we should all take the blame and start to do the right things? Maybe the time has come for us to stop praying to God and starting listening to what he is saying and that is for us to do the right. The time has come to put an end to the Genocide. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Ghanaweb

By Anna Grear and Burns Weston 1. INTRODUCTION The universalism at the heart of International Human Rights Law (IHRL) is, in aspiration at least, well known and much vaunted. However, the concept of universalism (quite apart from critiques of its insufficient inclusivity in both theory and practice1) suffers from a key and problematic imbalance: the concept recognizes individual and group claims to the universal enjoyment of human rights (albeit in limited fashion), but scarcely at all the imposition of meaningful corresponding obligations to honour human rights and be held accountable for their violation. This imbalance is especially troubling in the contemporary neo-liberal world order in which powerful ‘private actors’—transnational corporations (TNCs)2 —violate individual and group rights, often extensively, but with relative impunity because the state, especially the industrialized state, now often tends to diminish its historically assumed role as human rights duty-bearer par excellence to favour realpolitik corporate agendas that typically are beyond the capacity of the vast majority of human rights claimants to influence, let alone countermand.3 Human rights observance and accountability is, in any case, extremely precarious. As Douzinas puts it, the ‘age of human rights’ has been marked by ‘more violations of [human rights] principles than any of the previous and less “enlightened” epochs’.4 Thus, while human rights principles are celebrated as a globally triumphant meta-ethic5—the ‘world-wide secular religion’ (Wiesel6); ‘the essential … touchstone, the creed of humanity that surely sums up all other creeds directing human behavior’ (Gordimer7)—the last almost 75 years reveal unprecedented levels of human brutality and precarity8 and unevenly imposed risk and vulnerability9—painfully marked, it must be emphasized, by massacres, genocides and ethnic cleansings, unprecedented levels of excoriating poverty and stark inequalities between the Global North and Global South (due in no small measure to the historically rapacious colonial empires of the North). Meanwhile, messianic terrorism and climate-related instabilities (actual and projected) intensify pressures upon even the most widely recognized human rights,10 as the state increasingly imposes security measures on its own populations in response,11 while systematic and systemically produced inequalities in the foundations of world order generate food insecurity and mass privation.12 The state, it is clear, is often complicit in one or more of these radical and uneven impositions of suffering. But it is also clear that the international human rights system’s design is itself a contributory factor, providing the state with easily manipulated levels of obligation turning on the nature of the rights at stake, the identities of the alleged violator and claimed victim (including, but not limited to, their nationalities), the place of violation and other such variables. Typically, these considerations are said to be neutral as between plaintiffs and defendants. In reality, however, they tend to serve more the interests of the rich and powerful than they do the ‘ordinary’ person—often, indeed, to the harsh detriment of vast numbers of people. That these manipulable levels of state obligation can be, and often are, used to block human rights accountability for extraterritorial violations of human rights comes, therefore, as no surprise—a matter of pivotal importance in a globalized world order dominated by state/market interests. It is incontrovertible that the state, with diverse bases of power at its disposal, can not only impact significantly the rights of individuals and groups far beyond its territorial borders but also, via agile doctrinal manoeuvring, can escape legal responsibility beyond those limits, both for itself and for favoured others who, but for that manoeuvring, should be held accountable for human rights violations abroad. Unsurprisingly, in academic circles, in a growing number of national and international decision-making bodies and elsewhere in the worldwide struggle for global justice, the conviction is mounting that the logics limiting responsibility for extraterritorial human rights abuses are no longer apt—that they are, indeed, subversive of the quintessential claim that human rights are universal in character and to be treated as such whenever and wherever they are threatened or denied. Increasingly, it is being asked why national citizenship should have anything to do with limiting the enjoyment of universalhuman rights.13 The question is acute: since when and by whom has it been determined that citizen’srights are the equivalent of, or substitute for, human rights? Of course, the mounting conviction that human rights require more meaningful forms of accountability if they are to deliver on their promise of universalism faces complex forces of resistance, reflecting in part the rights-violating realities of contemporary globalization. In the contemporary international legal order there is a strong case for—indeed, an urgent necessity for—a fundamental reassessment of the conjunctions and dynamics of power among and between individuals, states, intergovernmental institutions and—crucially for present purposes—transnational corporate actors of large scale. It is a task, both theoretical and practical, that domestic courts and the international community must not be allowed to evade, particularly in this challenging age of globalized and globalizing power. The ongoing influence of TNCs and their interests in the operation of the world economy and the international legal order should now be of deep concern to anyone concerned about the poorer, disadvantaged inhabitants of our planet. In this short space, we cannot hope to capture all the conditions and permutations that bear upon the implementation of universal human rights in domestic and international decision-making settings. We can and do challenge, however, the use and implications of deploying ‘procedural’ issues to exempt powerful corporate actors from accountability for human rights abuses committed beyond a state’s recognized jurisdiction—a use made especially prominent by the 2013 US Supreme Court holding in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co14 pursuant to which, by most interpretations, foreign corporations were largely if not completely accorded immunity from US pursuit of human rights violations against foreign nationals in foreign countries. In so ruling, it seems to many, the Court closed down, prima facie at least, a much favoured strategy of international human rights litigation aimed at establishing extraterritorial human rights accountability.15 Thus we ask, what is the relationship between human rights betrayal and human rights accountability in the post-Kiobel ‘lawscape’? Has the time now arrived for the imposition of mandatory, universal human rights accountability for TNCs? We argue that it has, and not least because human rights themselves are being narrowly reinterpreted in national fora as values dependent for their meaning and realization upon a corporate global order.16 At the same time, however, given the nature of TNC juridical dominance and the ideological hegemony of neo-liberal capitalism, we remain deeply aware of the contingent nature of such a project. We hope, and argue below, that such a project might at least begin to challenge the systemic impunity enjoyed by TNCs relative to human rights abuses. Yet, in light of the inherent contingency of even mandatory universal human rights accountability (explored below), we also urge continuous critical vigilance of those forces that would seek to subvert its realization. We begin by locating TNCs and extraterritoriality in the contemporary global context. We then consider the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, the background of Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) liability, and the salience of Kiobel for the global lawscape of future TNC human rights responsibility. Together with a brief survey of different jurisdictional approaches to extraterritorial TNC human rights accountability, this stocktaking, we believe, points unerringly to the need for direct, effective TNC liability under IHRL. We realize, as just implied, that such liability is not—and cannot be—a foolproof deterrent to TNC human rights violations given the rights-evading mutations of corporate power that have significantly shaped—and continue to shape—international law itself,17 IHRL included.18 However, the establishment of direct corporate accountability for human rights abuses under IHRL would at least mark, we suggest, an important and urgently needed juridical staging post in the advancement of human rights in the contemporary world order. 2. TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND EXTRATERRITORIALITY TNCs—despite, or perhaps even because of, their identification as private sector actors19—possess immense and increasing levels of state-like power in the national and international political economies of the present world order. Propelled by the ideological ascendency of neo-liberalism, TNCs dominate virtually the entire international legal order, influencing key international institutions and gaining inordinate structural control.20 It is well known that the power of some TNCs has, for some time, exceeded the power of many states, and that such power includes a complex interaction with the neo-liberal state, particularly in the Global North, and which in any case is profoundly implicated in the genesis of such extensive degrees of TNC control. Indeed, as Woods rightly points out, state power is indispensible to the conditions of accumulation for capital and that it is the state itself that has provided the ‘conditions enabling global capital to survive and navigate the world’.21 TNCs, then, exercise immense (state-assisted) influence over the material, economic and political lives of millions of human beings, and over the life chances of other species and ecosystems generally—a reality sharply etched in the haunting tragedy of the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India where the negligence of a US company, Union Carbide, resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, the injury of hundreds of thousands of people and animals, and extensive environmental damage—injury exacerbated by state betrayal of the ‘Bhopal-violated’.22 In light of this haunting tragedy and of widespread human and environmental abuse at the hands of TNCs and other corporate actors, the need of individuals, groups and states to be able to assert extraterritorial jurisdiction to hold globally powerful corporate human rights violators to account is now incontrovertible. It is also urgent. As Baxi has observed, there is a pressing need for the tragedy of Bhopal (and of other rights-violating disasters resulting from corporate malfeasance or negligence) to provoke law into responding directly23 and for law to follow a deeply ethical impulse by offering a supportive response to the increasingly vocal social movements emerging from the ashes of such violations. Baxi puts the challenge succinctly and with great poignancy: ‘[T]he continuing movement of the Bhopal-violated beckons a new jurisprudence of human solidarity in a runaway globalizing world.’24 Whether, in domestic courts or elsewhere, IHRL will now develop as Baxi urges—and thereby help to redress the imbalances generated by ‘predatory globalization’ (to borrow from Falk25)—is precisely the question haunting this present reflection. The contemporary globalized world challenges multiple, settled assumptions of the existing Westphalian international legal order—among them, to significant degree, an almost sacred commitment to the core Westphalian principle of state-territorial sovereignty which, among other things, assumes that any particular state is capable of controlling the activities of entities operating from within its jurisdictional boundaries. The problem is, however, that the contemporary realities of globalization directly refute this assumption. Multiple powerful corporate entities are quite simply capable of operating across borders in ways that transcend the regulatory control of any one state. The fundamental discrepancy between the transnational nature of these powerful entities and the territorially limited assumptions of the traditional state-centric international human rights system has therefore provoked a growing number of scholars and others to argue that the discrepancy presents a profound impediment to effective human rights accountability in the corporate sector. Indeed, as Dine points out, multiple studies now suggest that TNCs should be subject to direct human rights and environmental duties—that is, ‘they should have responsibilities towards the planet and to stakeholders other than shareholders’.26 We share this conviction. Despite the cogency of such arguments, however, and despite the egregious nature of some of the corporate human rights violations inspiring them, TNCs are at present under no direct, formally binding human rights obligations under international law except insofar as a TNC act might constitute an international crime. Nor does international law explicitly impose obligations on home states to regulate the extraterritorial conduct of TNCs headquartered within their territory. Under IHRL, the obligation of the state is to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of individuals within its territorial jurisdiction; and though the obligation to protect includes the obligation to exercise due diligence to prevent or mitigate the acts of private actors (including corporations) from violating the human rights of individuals, this obligation, too, is limited by territorial jurisdictional limits. In short, but for some essentially voluntarist and self-monitoring standards for TNCs and other business enterprises which sometimes are held out as solutions,27 there is in IHRL an almost complete absence of any effective way of holding corporations directly accountable for human rights abuses, or of preventing such abuses or even of ensuring redress for the victims of such abuses. This lack of a clear, direct international law obligation to regulate the overseas activities of TNCs and other business enterprises is at least partially responsible for a collection of alternative legal strategies and standards intent upon corporate good behaviour: the due diligence requirements of export credit agencies, corporate and securities disclosure regulations, whistle-blowing laws, contractual duties, tort and criminal laws, sanctions legislation, and the like. However, none of these options are directed specifically at the problem of transnational corporate accountability for human rights abuse; and in any case, as we shall see, the extraterritorial dimension of state responsibility to protect human rights, even deploying such alternative strategies, remains abundantly contested—and unsatisfying. Straightforwardly put, the current situation is this: the regulation of TNCs (as well as other business enterprises) operating abroad is left largely to the legal systems of the states in which they operate, not the law of their ‘home’ state or siège social. Highly problematic, however, is the plain fact that the states in which TNCs operate are frequently developing states which, for lack of effective administrative, judicial and policing institutions and mechanisms or because of a widespread culture of corruption (frequently encouraged by TNC management), are commonly unable to regulate TNC conduct effectively or are unwilling to do so. Also problematic are complex ‘conditionality’ packages issued by international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank and favouring a trading partner from the Global North in a way that effectively lowers human rights and environmental protection standards. Indeed, the few countries in the Global South that have attempted to reject neo-liberal strictures have been effectively forced by Western funding bodies to relent.28 Further, the IMF and World Bank have most pressured precisely those marginalized societies where poverty is most rife—insisting upon such ‘structural adjustments’ as deregulation, privatization and the removal of protective policies difficult if not impossible for the affected populations to endure.29 Structural patterns and practices such as these raise troubling questions about the degree to which the IMF, World Bank and also the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and other international trade organizations have become ‘midwives’ to the neo-liberal order of power30 (the WTO rules having been extensively influenced by corporations and thus described by some as a formalization of global corporate power31). In short, there exists at present a severe accountability gap when it comes to holding corporate entities legally responsible for human rights abuses they commit or facilitate. Leaving TNC regulation to the legal systems of states in which TNCs operate is no guarantee of human rights protection whatsoever or even of respect for basic human rights standards. Mainstream strategies remain overwhelmingly voluntaristic and over-friendly to corporate interests;32 and globally, no adequate accountability structure yet exists. What is more, the accountability gap is compounded by the sheer complexity and elusiveness of the transnational corporate form itself. It is well known that corporations are fictions invented by national law, ‘legal persons’ granted a juridical existence separate from their executives and shareholders who, as a result, enjoy ‘limited liability’ shielded by a ‘corporate veil’. In the case of the TNC, however, new levels of complexity emerge. TNCs are complicated interlocking layers of corporate entities that present a structural density that makes accountability extremely difficult to construct, granting TNCs a juridical elusiveness jealously guarded by those who gain from TNC privileging in the global order. TNCs gain their immense power not only from the law’s failure to take into account the material distinctions between kinds of persons—a quintessentially disembodied conceptual excision typical of law’s constitution of juridical subjectivity33—but also from the law’s failure to ‘account [for] the reality of the accumulation of power represented by a large number of companies related by interlocking shareholdings’.34 When such corporate complexity combines with the international law doctrine of sovereign state equality and overblown assumptions about the power of the state to hold corporations to account, the problem of extraterritorial accountability emerges with a particular rigueur. The juridical complexity of the TNC and its protean ability to evade jurisdictional accountability in a complex and densely interwoven global order especially clearly limits the state’s ability to hold TNCs accountable and profoundly reduces the possibilities of redress for corporate human rights violations. In the post-Kiobellawscape, what hope, then, can still be found in the doctrine of universal jurisdiction and under the US Alien Tort Claims Act? 3. THE DOCTRINE OF UNIVERSAL JURISDICTION AND THE US ALIEN TORT CLAIMS ACT Despite the sanctity of state sovereignty under international law and consequent limitations on extraterritorial liability, it has long been recognized that certain international crimes can give rise to ‘universal jurisdiction’, that is, a grant to every state of legal authority to apply international law to certain violations of the ‘law of nations’ even if the state in question has no connection to the violation when it occurred—important for present purposes. The original—and archetypal—universal jurisdiction offence is piracy, the prime example of a violation of the law of nations.35 All states can enforce the prohibition against piracy as a matter of universal jurisdiction. In the words of eighteenth century common law scholar William Blackstone, piracy is incontestably ‘an offence against the universal law of society’.36 It is via this relatively narrow aperture of legal doctrine that human rights advocates have sought to deploy creative arguments for extraterritorial accountability. Fundamentally, universal jurisdiction operates today as it did at its origin: as an authoritative mandate to enforce existing international law against an act deemed offensive to the law of nations—an offence so profound that the offender is rendered hostis humani generis: ‘an enemy of all mankind’.37 The exercise of universal jurisdiction, it should be understood, is not the same as a state applying its own law to another state, but the limitations hindering the extraterritorial application of IHRL have led to creative approaches using national law, not IHRL, to establish liability for human rights harms extraterritorially inflicted. There exists, however, one notable albeit indirect and unique exception: when national legislation authorizes resort to ‘the law of nations’ as a source of law for decision, then human rights norms accepted as customary international law, part of the law of nations (as well as core components of IHRL), may be invoked for the rule of decision. The paradigmatic example of this exception is of course the well-known statute unique to the USA known as the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA),38 also called the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). Originally enacted during the first session of the First United States Congress as section 9 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 (establishing the Federal Judiciary) primarily to protect against piracy, it has for more than three decades been deployed by litigants to overcome the limitations burdening the extraterritorial application of universal human rights doctrines, principles and rules, beginning in 1980 when, in Filártiga v Peña-Irala,39 the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals decided—for the first time in modern times—in favour of foreign human rights claimants based on the ACTA. Since Filártiga, the USA has proved magnetically attractive to foreign litigants, although not least because of important procedural advantages in using US courts—for example, the possibility of contingency fees. Providing that ‘[t]he district courts [of the United States] shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States’, this statute, for many years after Filártiga, has been judicially interpreted to allow foreign citizens to seek civil (tort) remedies in US courts for human rights violations committed outside the US, thus enabling non-US litigants to present ‘unique substantive causes of action against [TNCs] that … breached their human rights’.40 Particularly noteworthy is the language used in the Second Circuit judgment, echoing the early development of the doctrine of universal jurisdiction in the context of piracy. The court famously stated: ‘[F]or purposes of civil liability, the torturer has become—like the pirate and slave trader before him—hostis humani generis, an enemy of all mankind.’41 Filártiga concerned, as is well known, not a corporation but a former Paraguayan police inspector general who had tortured and killed a member of the Filártiga family. But the authority that issued from Filártigawas widely celebrated among human rights activists—heralded as a ‘beacon of hope’42 by those who welcomed the ATCA’s ‘revival’ as a powerful way of challenging corporate human rights abuses. Indeed, the vast majority of TNC human rights litigation has arisen in US courts pursuant to this domestic legislation. Over time, particularly in the 1990s, numerous cases involving corporate human rights abuses began to come before the US courts, gradually evolving into an application of the universal jurisdiction doctrine enabling US courts to hold corporate actors accountable in tort for human rights abuses committed far beyond US jurisdictional borders. Perhaps predictably, however, this was a trajectory that, at the hands of more conservative ideology and politics (and therefore the appointment of more conservative jurists) was ultimately to be significantly challenged—as indeed it was in Kiobel 2010 by the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals (the same though differently composed court that decided Filártiga)—and later in Kiobel 2013 by the US Supreme Court in what many commentators have regarded as a particularly retrogressive ruling. It is to these two decisions in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co43 that we now turn. A. Kiobel in 2010: A Dead End for Human Rights Activists? The facts of Kiobel fully reflect the fundamental concerns of the litigation trend that took off under the ATCA in the 1990s against claimed TNC human rights abuses. The case exemplifies the widespread visceral sense of injustice that instances of corporate human rights violation evoke the world over. The relevant events took place in Ogoniland, Nigeria, an oil-rich region of the Niger Delta intensively exploited for its oil reserves by Shell Oil (a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell) beginning in 1956, now a location synonymous with corporate human rights violations epitomizing the ‘justice problem which arises when a repressive regime, extractable natural resources, transnational corporate interests, and a vulnerable population collide’.44 Between 1990 and 1993, in light of extensive environmental damage, including the negative health effects of gas flaring and damage wreaked by repeated oil spills (reportedly 2,976, or 2.1 million barrels from 1976 to 1991), Ogoniland residents rose up in non-violent protest. The Nigerian government, however, reacted violently. Several Ogoni leaders were murdered—nine in particular—known as the ‘Ogoni 9’ (including the now world-famous Ken Saro-Wiwa). All were arrested on trumped-up charges, brought to trial, sentenced to death, and, in 1995, executed. The trial, widely considered a travesty of justice, exposed not only the repressive nature of the Nigerian regime at the time, but the extensive and rights-violating complicity of the TNCs operating in Ogoniland—particularly Shell. Ken Saro-Wiwa’s death, deemed by many to be a judicial murder, also attracted rapid and widespread international condemnation. Several lawsuits were initiated in the USA against individuals and entities related to Royal Dutch Shell. Kiobel, brought under the ATCA, was one of them. The complaint alleged that the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (incorporated in the Netherlands), Shell Transport and Trading Company (incorporated in England), and Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (incorporated in Nigeria) aided and abetted extra-judicial killings, torture and the commission of crimes against humanity and other human rights violations by the Nigerian military. The corporate defendants, it was alleged, provided logistical support, transportation and weapons to Nigerian authorities to attack Ogoni villages and stifle opposition to Shell’s oil-excavation activities. Ogoni residents were beaten, raped, shot and/or killed during these raids. In 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa and John Kpuinen were notoriously hanged after being convicted of murder by a special tribunal in the course of which Royal Dutch Shell allegedly bribed witnesses, conspired with Nigerian authorities to orchestrate the trial, and offered to free Ken Saro-Wiwa in return for an end to [his organization’s] international protests against Shell. During the trial, members of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s family, including his elderly mother, were beaten.45 Esther Kiobel was one of the plaintiffs—her husband, Dr Barinem Kiobel, having been executed in 1995 for his non-violent protest alongside Ken Saro-Wiwa. In 2010, a majority of the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that because the scope of liability in an ATCA suit is determined by customary international law and because ‘no corporation has ever been subject to any form of liability (whether civil or criminal) under the customary international law of human rights’, corporate liability ‘is not a discernable—much less universally recognized—norm of customary international law that we may apply pursuant to [ATCA]’.46 The plaintiffs’ claims were accordingly dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The grounds for optimism about an ATCA revival vis-à-vis TNC accountability had reached, it seemed, something of a dead end. Dine, however, argues that much of the hubris surrounding the ATCA ‘revival’ was misplaced in the first place, despite its value in revealing ‘how complex extraterritorial claims are, how difficult it is to sue TNCs and the fact that no matter how ‘common sense’ the solution appears to outraged human rights and environmental activists, legal solutions remain elusive’.47 She observes that some of the claims advanced by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) concerning the ATCA at its high point were of doubtful reliability and unduly optimistic. Most of the cases were in any event settled out of court—and the settlements thus obtained under the ATCA were, for Dine, simply a way for TNCs to avoid any formal admission of liability. She writes: ‘I would argue that it is wrong to call such settlements victoriesbecause the law has not been thereby developed to cover the instances of abuse forming the substance of the claim: there is no precedent for the future.’48 In addition to being critical of the hype surrounding the ATCA as a cause célèbre for human rights progress, Dine is critical of the legislation itself. For her, the ATCA invited an excessively restrictive standard for the substantive ground of a complaint raised under it. In Kiobel, the Second Circuit Court found that only very restrictive grounds could be allowed—relying on the US Supreme Court ruling in Sosa v Alvarez-Machain,49 a precedent in which the Supreme Court held that claims must be founded on ‘a norm of international character accepted by the civilized world and defined with a specificity comparable to the features of the 18th Century paradigms we have recognized’.50 Thus, though the ATCA revival did achieve an intensification of TNC reputational risk (as well as some compensation for victims of corporate abuse), Kiobel 2010, without overruling Filártiga, but by adhering to a restrictive reading of the basis for universal jurisdiction, did appear—to some at least—to narrow the potential cause of action to eighteenth-century standards and thereby to produce something of a full stop for twenty-first century human rights activists long before the Supreme Court ruling of 2013. Dine’s view has considerable resonance when the facts are as clearly pernicious as they were in Kiobel.Unmistakably, Kiobel 2010 implicated the public–private divide that traditionally has sheltered corporate violations of human rights; a company can be held liable under the ATCA, it appears, if its activity amounts to ‘state action’ in breach of international law. But as Dine argues, Kiobel 2010 also reveals ‘the extent to which the ATCA was a thin thread on which to hang legal accountability for [TNC] violations’.51Despite the benefit of ATCA cases bringing gross corporate violations of human rights to public attention, she observes, ultimately the litigation strategy centring upon the ATCA diverted attention from the kind of fundamental reforms necessary to change legal regimes comprehensively. Diverting attention from such reforms has, moreover, proved beneficial to the violating TNCs, as human rights activists have spent energy fighting on a difficult and somewhat flimsy platform rather than concentrating on changing the rules of IHRL to establish that companies can be human rights violators and to provide mechanisms for holding them to account.52 At any rate, despite the apparent disappointment presented by Kiobel 2010, the possibility of extraterritorial liability under the ATCA has continued to inspire an industry of argument and commentary. As Wuerth recently noted, [a]fter more than thirty years of extensive high-profile litigation along with sustained academic commentary, a large and seemingly ever-growing number of basic questions about [the ATCA] remained unanswered … . As lower courts and litigants hacked their way through a thickening jungle of unresolved [ATCA] issues, clarification from Congress or the Supreme Court felt long overdue.53 That clarification was attempted in 2013 when the US Supreme Court delivered the final Kiobeljudgment.54 B. Kiobel in 2013: Confirming Disappointment? In 2013, in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co, the US Supreme Court, in a splintered decision and invoking a canon of statutory interpretation known as the ‘presumption against extraterritorial application’ (when legislation gives no clear contrary mandate), held that ‘the presumption against extraterritoriality applies to claims under the [ATCA], and that nothing in the statute rebuts that presumption’55—a conclusion reached apparently without heed to the ACTA’s express directive to apply ‘the law of nations’ (including such IHRL norms as are accepted as customary international law). At the same time, the Court suggested that claims arising from conduct outside the USA could be actionable under the ATCA ‘where the claims touch and concern the territory of the United States … with sufficient force to displace the presumption against extraterritorial application’.56 According to Weston, ‘informed observers responding to Kiobel [2013] appear generally to have agreed upon at least four implications of the Court’s reasoning’:57 (1) that foreign corporations would … be largely, if not completely, insulated from [US] ‘prosecution’ under the [ATCA] for human rights violations committed against foreign nationals in foreign countries, (2) that [US] corporations would not be so insulated, (3) that the development of litigation in Europe and elsewhere outside the United States would be affected by [Kiobel] only slightly, if at all; and (4) that the applicability of [Kiobel] to foreign natural persons, never addressed by the court, was uncertain. 58 The Supreme Court’s decision was, at least, definitive in one centrally important respect: that the presumption against extraterritoriality applies to the ATCA. On the facts presented to it, the Supreme Court held that the presumption was not overcome because the relevant conduct took place within the territory of a foreign sovereign and because the claims did not sufficiently ‘touch and concern’ US territory—the foreign defendants (Dutch Shell Petroleum) had no more than a ‘corporate presence’ in the USA. For Curran and Sloss, the decision apparently [sounded] the death knell for ‘foreign-cubed’ human rights claims under the [ATCA]—that is, cases in which foreign defendants committed human rights abuses against foreign plaintiffs in foreign countries [and that] [t]he Court’s decision overrules, sub silentio, a line of cases that originated with Filártiga v Peña-Irala.59 In the words of Ku, ‘[a]ll nine justices rejected decades of lower-court precedent and widespread scholarly opinion when they held that [the ATCA] excluded cases involving purely extraterritorial conduct, even if the alleged conduct constituted acts that are universally proscribed under international law.’60 For Ku, this amounted to nothing short of the unanimous rejection in Kiobel of universal jurisdiction, a conclusion which, while possibly overstated, drives at the importance of the decision for the hopes (misplaced hopes, Dine would argue) of human rights activists and litigants seeking to use the ATCA as a strategic route towards extraterritorial corporate human rights accountability and, ultimately, universal jurisdiction over at least gross human rights violations committed by corporations abroad. Not surprisingly, given the enormity of the stakes at hand, the issue of corporate liability attracted a range of submissions from multiple amici. The Court received statements from governments (Argentina, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA), the European Commission, NGOs, scholars and—of course—corporations. Since the Court’s central holding was that alleged corporate malfeasance must ‘touch and concern the territory of the United States’ with ‘sufficient force’ to displace the presumption against extraterritoriality, logically the Court had to address that issue directly if it was to do justice to the question of corporate liability at all. Protective of corporate functioning among other interests, one may assume, the Court reasoned that since corporations are often ‘present’ in many countries, ‘corporate presence’ alone is insufficient to displace the presumption. Perhaps from a corporate perspective, the implications of Kiobel concerning extraterritorial corporate liability may seem clear. But this would be misleading. First, the Court did not address the question of corporate liability under the ATCA directly notwithstanding that it was because of this concern that it granted certiorari in the first place. Secondly, the Court’s stated rationales for its decision—the minimization of ‘international friction’ and related separation-of-powers concerns—have been judged unpersuasive by informed legal scholars or, in any event, as insufficient to justify eliding more than three decades of established ATCA precedent. Thirdly, as Wuerth argues, the ‘opinions arguably assume the viability of [the ATCA] suits against corporations’,61 thus leaving the door open to such actions albeit in an ambivalent manner. ‘Not surprisingly’, Wuerth observes, ‘[the] ambiguities in the majority opinion have already generated spirited commentary on what Kiobel will mean for future ATS cases. The blogospheric spin is well under way.’62 There are many other aspects to the Kiobel 2013 holding. Prominently exposed and debated from a range of perspectives under the auspices of the American Journal of International Law published in 2014,63 they reflect among other things the inevitable complexities implicated by the position of the ATCA at the nexus of profoundly competitive political concerns—a fractious space between impulses of outrage concerning extraterritorial corporate human rights violations and political anxieties concerning the foreign policy costs accruing to an overly ‘interventionist’ USA in a world of ostensibly juridically equal sovereign states. In any case, Kiobel 2013 appears to have generated as much intense debate as that which preceded it. It seems, therefore, that it would be overly simplistic and premature to claim that Kiobel has definitively settled matters. Does Kiobel signal (and entrench) a disappointing death knell for such transnational human rights litigation strategies? And if it does, does it matter as much as some human rights activists and scholars appear to think? 4. ASSESSING KIOBEL AND ATCA IN GLOBAL CONTEXT First, it is not at all clear that Kiobel signals the death knell for ATCA litigation for corporate human rights abuses outside the territorial jurisdiction of the USA. Indeed, it has been argued that, despite appearances to the contrary, the 2013 judgment ‘adopts a rhetoric of caution without foreclosing litigation that fits the Filártiga model’.64 Furthermore, it is likely that the case will invite more ATCA litigation precisely because so many issues remain unresolved and because ‘what is law in Kiobel isn’t clear and what is clear in Kiobel isn’t law’.65 In short, Kiobel 2013 fails to offer solid precedent, and—additionally—breaks with precedent by forging (on dubious doctrinal grounds) a ‘new presumption’ of uncertain application. Thus, the answer to our first question—whether Kiobel signals a disappointing death knell for transnational ATCA litigation strategies—surely must be ‘not necessarily’. The door is left ajar. But as noted above, the ATCA route may be, in any case, a distraction from more direct and productive modes of corporate human rights accountability. Although we can see the symbolic, rhetorical and juridical potency of the ATCA despite its falling short of delivering meaningful corporate accountability, we share the increasingly widespread conviction that direct corporate liability for human rights violations is now overdue, especially in the light of the pervasive structural dominance of TNCs and the present-day ideological hegemony of neo-liberalism. Secondly, to assess Kiobel accurately, in particular its ambiguity relative to remedies for extraterritorial corporate human rights abuse, it is important that it and the ATCA be viewed in comparative law perspective—particularly since, as McCorquodale points out, ‘the case law in the rest of the world is unlikely to be greatly affected by the ruling’.66 McCorquodale reaches this conclusion based on his analysis of European Union (EU) regulations and civil law cases and on the fact that the vast majority of non-US TNCs are based in Europe—a fact which alone suggests that US legislation and jurisprudence are unlikely to be the last word for Europeans, least of all on so important an issue. Indeed, a range of approaches has been taken across the EU, enabling litigants to bring corporations before national courts for extraterritorial human rights violations. Like the ATCA litigation, however, these cases do not put such violations directly in human rights terms. Instead, again like the ATCA, they tend to deploy other causes of action (including tort) to drive at the harms caused. EU approaches to corporate accountability for human rights violations in the EU, McCorquodale explains, are affected by two European regulations binding on all EU Member States: first, the Brussels I Regulation which provides that ‘national courts within the EU have jurisdiction over all who are domiciled in their national jurisdiction’ (which for corporations is defined as ‘the location of a corporation’s “statutory seat”, “central administration” or “principal place of business” ’67); secondly, the Rome II Regulation that imposes a uniform rule dictating that the applicable law of a claim shall be the law of the state where the damage occurred, irrespective of where the claim is brought. The implication is that, subject to limited exceptions (which include cases where the law of the state of harm does not effectively protect human rights), the courts in the EU must apply the law of the state where the harm was caused. This means that the court hearing the case imposes neither its own law nor international law on claims that have arisen in the territory of another state—which in turn means that EU states simply do not face the anxieties implied in Kiobel relative to the principle of state sovereignty.68 Also noteworthy, as McCorquodale points out, is the UK case of Chandler v Cape,69 which, in a country with long experience in extraterritorial liability questions, establishes the principle that the law can impose upon a parent corporation a duty of care in relation to the health and safety of its subsidiary’s employees … [a ruling that suggests] an increased likelihood that UK courts will consider, in contrast to the Kiobel [2013] decision, that a parent corporation domiciled in that state has assumed a duty of care towards third parties affected by the operations of subsidiaries located elsewhere, at least where the parent corporation has developed and implemented group-wide policies and practices.70 McCorquodale emphasizes, additionally, that the UK development of a legal basis for bringing and deciding claims by victims of extraterritorial corporate human rights violations have not relied on cases under the ATCA, a fact rendering Kiobel of unlikely relevance for cases brought in the UK. On final analysis, however, and in keeping with our own, McCorquodale determines that, though the ATCA cases are largely irrelevant for the development of case law elsewhere in the world, their human rights aspect retains a submerged relevance.71 Importantly, he observes, ‘none of the violations has been cast directly in human rights terms’, but instead ‘as … a claim in tort for negligence or a breach of contract. Even a case involving the alleged torture and mistreatment of indigenous people was brought as a claim in tort for negligent management and as instigating trespass to the persons’.72 This position, like the ATCA case law itself, simply re-emphasizes the problematic nature of the gap in IHRL concerning direct corporate liability for human rights abuses. Transnational litigation strategies, whether in the USA or beyond, leave certain kinds of human rights abuses unaccounted for. Perhaps, therefore, in light of this failure, Kiobel 2013 reveals its greatest impact in a paradoxically positive way: the ATCA cases signalled that a national court was prepared at least to consider claims against corporations for violations of IHRL. By placing an apparent but ambiguous limit on ATCA-based litigation, Kiobel 2013 strengthens the rationales for paying attention to non-ATCA strategies—including non-ATCA litigation strategies. However, despite the fact that, as McCorquodale argues, ‘the strength and breadth’ of the EU cases will continue to develop and in so doing might inspire claims against US corporations outside the USA and also non-ATCA based actions in the USA, even the most promising EU litigation strategies do not address corporate human rights abuses in directly human rights terms. The problematic accountability gap in IHRL thus remains. Perhaps, then, Kiobel usefully draws attention to the limitations of litigation strategies in toto, and invites fresh engagement with a wide range of non-litigation strategies—a possibility related to Dine’s critique, noted above, of the ATCA as a distraction from more productive, system-critical modes of engagement with the central problem. A novel and imaginative litigation-related strategy that addresses directly a systemic gap highlighted for a post-Kiobel lawscape is offered by Steinitz, who proposes the establishment of an International Court of Civil Justice (ICCJ) with jurisdiction over cross-border torts.73 This solution, Steinitz suggests, would directly address what she calls the ‘problem of the missing forum’.74 Steinitz’s central argument is that an ICCJ would substantially reduce the ‘direct and hidden’ costs of transnational litigation—and thus appeal to corporations—while also producing other attractive effects such as providing a legal stabilization of expectations and the chance for corporations (in addition to being held accountable for wrongs committed by them) to pursue the enforcement of standards in their own interests (anti-corruption standards, for example). Such advantages, in Steinitz’s view, render an ICCJ more likely to prove acceptable to corporate actors and thus attract their support and cooperation. However, this proposal—welcome and imaginative as it is—still formulates human rights violations through the lens of ‘mass torts’ rather than directly in human rights terms. The strategy thus directly responds to the perceived post-Kiobel ‘loss of forum’ but leaves unanswered the fundamental gap in IHRL accountability structures that Kiobel 2013 so usefully, in our view, re-emphasizes. Various non-litigation strategies have been proposed as well. Curran and Sloss propose, for example, a legislative response drawing in part upon pending French legislation and existing German and Belgian law.75 Their proposed legislative model, they contend, balances the fractious political concerns reflected in the debate surrounding Kiobel because the statutes in Germany and Belgium and the pending legislation in France not only establishes the right of victims of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity to initiate judicial proceedings against perpetrators who commit such crimes extraterritorially, but also allow public prosecutors to block such proceedings if they consider that the case would impair the state’s foreign policy objectives. In a sense, the Curran and Sloss proposal revives the Filártigaapproach but—like that case—does not address human rights violations falling short of the level of action required to trigger universal jurisdiction. Accordingly, their approach cannot directly embrace a wide range of contemporary and important modes of corporate human rights abuse. Similarly, Nolan, Posner and Labowitz argue that courts are only one among a growing number of routes to remedy corporate human rights abuses,76 rightly arguing that ‘the role of the US and other courts is only part of an expanding set of remedies and accountability measures that are helping to shape the rules of the road for global companies with respect to human rights’.77 The authors make the case for greater enforcement of stronger labour and workplace health and safety laws and other forms of robust accountability structure in countries where TNCs operate—although also acknowledging, importantly, that this particular strategy is directly affected by ‘chronic failures in developing a governmental order based on the rule of law’.78 Other strategies listed by the authors include standard-setting by intergovernmental organizations; provisioning of resources by the World Bank; home country reporting requirements and sanctions; and voluntary multi-stakeholder initiatives. From a critical perspective, however, all such approaches would likely share fundamental systemic weaknesses. For example, standard setting, while desirable, relies upon adequate enforcement to become meaningful. Provisioning of international financial resources risks burdensome conditionality measures. Home country approaches (reporting requirements and sanctions) rely entirely for their effectiveness upon adequate degrees of commitment to human rights-based law and practice and upon relevant legal machinery to guarantee meaningful accountability. And voluntary multi-stakeholder initiatives can do much to raise awareness, but run a serious risk, as a wide range of scholarship reveals, of amounting to little more than ‘corporate blue washing’ exercises: when it comes to corporate human rights accountability, voluntarism is, we submit, an insufficiently compelling route towards corporate human rights respect.79 Favouring a national legislative solution based on her own experience of drafting Albanian company law, Dine draws upon an extended conception of enterprise liability explicitly sensitive to a wider set of legal expectations placed upon corporate entities: The maximisation of the company’s own assets, and the question of compliance with legal expectations … is conceptualised within [such] legislation as being not only in the interest of all the investors (shareholders), but also in the interest of creditors, employees and the economic system as a whole. In short, the [term] ‘interest of the company’ explicitly recognises the social embeddedness of the company and its broader social parameters.80 Dine’s legislative proposal extends traditional enterprise liability as exemplified by her drafting of the Albanian company law (especially Article 20781). The change presented by Article 207 seeks to approximate the realities that enterprise liability theory needs to address: once a TNC is recognized as an enterprise, the whole of the corporate group—not just the parent company as is currently the case—could be sued, an approach meaning that ‘some of the intractable obstacles and difficulties that dogged the ATCA could be removed’.82 One crucial advantage of Dine’s proposal is that a defeasible presumption of liability would be constructed and placed upon each and every entity composing the group making up the TNC. However, a central challenge facing Dine’s proposal is the fact that the vast majority of the most powerful states, committed as they are to neo-liberal agendas, seem unlikely to sign up to such an approach any time soon; and, until they do, the challenge of mandatory corporate accountability for human rights violations remains, therefore, unanswered. 5. TOWARDS DIRECT ACCOUNTABILITY? A CLOSER LOOK AT MANDATORY STRATEGIES AND THE NATURE OF GLOBAL CORPORATE POWER Our analysis thus far has suggested that in the post-Kiobel 2013 lawscape—just as before it—human rights are inadequately protected in the face of TNC complexity, power and global influence. The various legal strategies deployed to protect human rights by recruiting alternative legal avenues and forms of accountability are ultimately unsatisfying—even Dine’s imaginative and carefully constructed globalization-responsive national law strategy. We share, however, Dine’s fundamental conviction—the growing international conviction—that the time has now come for direct corporate answerability for human rights abuses. Indeed, pressure is now building for a meaningful intervention under the auspices of the United Nations. On 26 June 2014, at the 26th session of the UN Human Rights Council, a resolution supporting the ‘elaboration of an international legally binding instrument on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with respect to Human Rights’ was formally adopted.83 The resolution was co-sponsored by Ecuador and South Africa with support from Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela. In the final vote, 20 members of the HRC endorsed the resolution, 13 abstained and 14 voted against it. The voting pattern was entirely predictable, fully reflecting global fault-lines congruent with the Global North/Global South dynamic long witnessed within a highly uneven global economic and international legal order84—and pointing to the depth, in particular, of Global North state commitment to neo-liberal imperatives. This voting pattern, and the realities it underscores, further supports our conviction that there is a need for profound caution, already noted, concerning the nature of global corporate power and the neo-liberal ideological hegemony of the global juridical order. Even if achieved, it is by no means certain that mandatory accountability will deliver all that human rights activists and violated communities and individuals might hope for. In our view, the juridical order is simply too ideologically skewed to guarantee the kind and level of human rights justice that is so viscerally hoped for across the planet. At the same time, however, we strongly believe that direct human rights accountability would provide an important juridical advance towards fraying corporate human rights impunity. For this reason, we recommend that the struggle for mandatory forms of corporate accountability to IHRL standards remains steadfast and centrally important to global justice—the need to avoid naivety concerning their likely future in the face of inevitable, highly adaptive counter-strategies notwithstanding. How might mandatory standards fare in the face of such pressures? To answer this question, we turn to the fate of the draft UN Norms on the Responsibility of TNCs and other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights ‘the Norms'.85 The completed, but essentially voluntarist, mandate of the former UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the Issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises (SRSG), John Ruggie, emerged directly ‘out of the ashes of the controversy created by [the draft UN Norms]’.86 The draft Norms were originally adopted (unanimously) by the former Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, but their submission to the Human Rights Commission (now the Human Rights Council) ignited intense controversy—precisely because the Norms attempted to impose direct human rights obligations on corporate actors.87 This resistance must be understood in its wider juridical context. TNCs have, since the 1970s at least, successfully resisted all UN-based efforts to hold them accountable to human rights standards. For example, the earlier UN attempt to produce a universal Code of Conduct for transnationals was a notable and much lamented failure.88 Corporations are also exempted from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.89 The UN Norms—like the prospective legally binding standards that the HRC has formally undertaken to have elaborated—promised a distinctive break with the ideology of voluntarism that has persistently defeated attempts to apply human rights standards directly to global corporations,90 announcing a zero-tolerance approach to the most blatant human rights abuses and, for the first time, attempting to impose the disciplinary regimes of IHRL upon business enterprises. That they were vigorously contested—especially by business leaders and corporate representatives91—and ultimately abandoned is regrettable indeed. State complicity in the process of TNC resistance is, moreover, clearly discernible in this history: Kinley and Chambers, for example, record that when the Norms came before the UN Commission on Human Rights, at its 60th Session in 2004, ‘they encountered a frosty reception from member states already primed with the concerns of the corporate sector’.92 The Norms were put on hold at that stage by the Commission, which later (in 2005) recommended that the UN Secretary-General appoint a Special Representative to review the whole question of corporations and human rights. Eventually, Ruggie (the SRSG) concluded in his Interim Report of February 2006 that the norms should be abandoned93—a discouraging outcome for those who had fervently hoped that the Norms would prove a positive step in the development of international corporate human rights accountability. It is entirely possible—even predictable—that a similar fate will greet any new mandatory approach. It is, thus, important—crucial even—to understand that corporate contestation of future initiatives will take place within the inescapable overarching global economic context in which TNCs enjoy overwhelming ideological and systemic privilege and thus exert increasingly inordinate levels of influence. It is, therefore, likely that even if another non-voluntarist regime for the human rights accountability of corporations were to be fully established, such a regime would struggle to reverse the impacts of the existing ideological hegemony (well documented by a range of scholarship pointing to the influence of neo-liberalism and corporate power in international human rights settings94) such that interpretive distortions of human rights meanings could produce a related (and possibly parasitic) mutation in the meaning even of human rights accountability. Finally, the effectiveness of the UN Norms was further diminished by what Baxi termed their ‘dense intertexuality’.95 Their text referred to at least 56 pre-existing instruments producing a profound complexity and an extensive indeterminacy—a fact raising the spectre of future difficulties concerning the intelligibility, authoritativeness and future enforceability of mandatory standards inserted into a complex, multilayered international human rights edifice. Here we return again to a central problem that haunts this analysis: the traditionally state-centred nature of the Westphalian international legal order which limits TNC human rights accountability by virtue of the traditional state-centric orientation of IHRL—and this would remain true for any set of mandatory international human rights standards even if they were to survive with enough normative vigour to be genuinely meaningful. The state-centric nature of IHRL tends to suggest that it is ill equipped in structural and ideological terms to hold TNCs accountable for human rights abuses; and, as De Sousa Santos has argued, ‘the continuation of a state-centric logic in the field of human rights will represent a growing impediment to an efficient and morally decent human rights policy’.96 This challenge becomes even more acute in a situation where states are reconstituted as complexly complicit agents of global neo-liberal capitalism. Evans and Ayers argue that the state is now effectively an administrative unit for managing the global economy,97 whereas Panitch suggests that states should be understood as ‘the authors of a regime that defines and guarantees, through international treaties and constitutional effect, the global and domestic rights of capital’.98 There is a genuine risk that TNCs will continue to engineer international human rights norms in their own favour while still largely evading attempts to hold them liable within an IHRL framework, which is, in any case, structurally and ideologically ill suited to the task, and thus unlikely to deliver—even with the important development of a directly applicable duty—sufficiently rigorous forms of corporate human rights accountability. What such a mechanism could achieve, however, is an important contribution to the dissolution of corporate human rights impunity by introducing a direct mandatory standard that they have long resisted being imposed upon them. This, in turn, holds out a hope—albeit a contingent one—of addressing at least some of the structural disadvantages placed upon vulnerable human beings and communities by the public–private divide—a key juridical mechanism of corporate responsibility evasion that would be punctured, at last, by the direct imposition of corporate human rights accountability under IHRL—no matter how imperfectly. 6. CONCLUSION Globalization presents a pressing context in which to address the challenges of extraterritoriality and the related complexities of holding TNCs accountable for human rights abuses. Given the fact that a wide range of responses to this urgent challenge is visible beyond the USA, and given that a range of non-court options is available in both national and international law, it is arguable that the fundamental predicament in the post-Kiobel order is, in some ways, no more negative than it was beforehand. There existed, pre-Kiobel, a deeply problematic lack of direct, effective corporate accountability for extraterritorial human rights violations. And there remains, post-Kiobel, a deeply problematic lack of direct, effective corporate accountability for extraterritorial human rights violations. So, if it is right to conclude that ATCA litigation was always an over-hyped distraction standing in the way of the search for more useful alternatives, perhaps the greatest virtue of the post-Kiobelinternational order is that this, at least, is now conspicuously apparent. Hopefully the highly contingent and ambiguous ‘dead end’ presented by Kiobel offers a vital impetus for continued engagement with the various doctrinal and other issues implicated by the case. Continued engagement in what may be, thanks to Kiobel, a fresh opportunity to step beyond the current limitations of national and international legal imagination to challenge the state and corporate sensibilities of a globalized neo-liberal world order must be taken very seriously, placed high on the global agenda with all ‘the urgency of now’. Perhaps then human rights advocates and others can move towards the achievement of universal jurisdiction for human rights protection directly. However, if our analysis is correct, this alone will not be sufficient. Ongoing critical vigilance will be required. When all is said and done—and despite the importance and urgency of achieving direct corporate human rights accountability, there still is reason to doubt that the global community—even when such accountability is established—will ultimately make good on its promise to address human rights violations with true compassion and justice. Although the post-Kiobel lawscape presents an ideal space in which to make fresh efforts at achieving mandatory corporate accountability under IHRL to help counter contemporary corporate impunity, little real progress is guaranteed until the ideological hegemony currently dominating the international order is overcome. Not until then, we suspect, will the voices of the Bhopal violated for a ‘new jurisprudence of human solidarity in a runaway globalizing world’99 be truly heard. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors gratefully acknowledge Damian F Bakula, research assistant to Professor Weston, for invaluable help at the outset of this initiative. 1 See, for example, Grear, ‘“Framing the Project” of International Human Rights Law: Reflections on the Dysfunctional “Family” of the Universal Declaration’ in Gearty and Douzinas (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights Law (2012) at 17–35; Beveridge and Mullally, ‘International Human Rights Law and Body Politics’ in Bridgeman and Millns (eds), Law and Body Politics: Regulating the Female Body (1995) 240. 2 Also called ‘multinational corporations’ (MNCs). 3 See, for example, the long list of abuses and the arguments provided in Jochnick, ‘Confronting the Impunity of Non-State Actors: New Fields for the Promotion of Human Rights’ (1999) 21 Human Rights Quarterly 56. See also Baxi, ‘Market Fundamentalisms: Business Ethics at the Altar of Human Rights’ (2005) 5 Human Rights Law Review 1; Kinley and Joseph, ‘Multinational Corporations and Human Rights: Questions about Their Relationship’ (2002) 27 Alternative Law Journal 7. Additionally, for a detailed account of a contemporary example, see Kamphuis, ‘Foreign Mining, Law and the Privatization of Property: A Case Study from Peru’ (2012) 3 Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 217; and for a classic exposition of the most symbolic example of all, see Baxi, ‘Writing About Impunity and Environment: The “Silver Jubilee” of the Bhopal Catastrophe’ (2010) 1 Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 23. 4 Douzinas, The End of Human Rights (2000) at 2. 5 See Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (2001) at 53. 6 Wiesel, ‘A Tribute to Human Rights’ in Danieli, Stamatopolou and Dias (eds), The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Fifty Years and Beyond (1999), cited by Ignatieff, supra n 5 at 53. 7 Gordimer, ‘Reflections by Nobel Laureates’ in Danieli et al., supra n 6 at vii, cited by Ignatieff, supra n 5 at 53. 8 Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (2001). 9 Kirby, Vulnerability and Violence: The Impact of Globalisation (2006). 10 See Humphreys, Human Rights and Climate Change (2010); Grear and Gearty (eds), Choosing a Future: Social and Legal Aspects of Climate Change (2014). 11 US Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, February 2010, at iv, available at: www.defense.gov/QDR/QDR%20as%20of%2029JAN10%201600.pdf [last accessed 20 September 2014]. 12 De Schutter, ‘The Specter of Productivism and Food Democracy’ (2014) 2 Wisconsin Law Review 199. 13 For pertinent discussion, see, for example, Evans, ‘Citizenship and Human Rights in the Age of Globalization’ (2000) 25 Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 415. 14 Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co 133 S Ct 1659 (2013). 15 See, for example, ‘Agora: Reflections on Kiobel. Excerpts from the American Journal of International Law and AJIL Unbound' (2013) 107 American Journal of International Law 601. 16 See, for example, Evans, supra n 13. 17 Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (2005); Marks, ‘Empire’s Law’ (2003) 10 Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 449; McLean, ‘The Transnational Corporation in History: Lessons for Today?’ (2004) 79 Indiana Law Journal 363; and Gill, ‘Constitutionalizing Inequality and the Clash of Globalizations’ (2002) 4 International Studies Review 47. 18 Such is the decisive influence of TNCs on human rights discourse that Baxi has argued that the entire paradigm of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is imperilled by the development of a new paradigm of ‘trade-related, market-friendly human rights (TRMFHR)’. In fact, Baxi argues that the UDHR paradigm is ‘being steadily, but surely, supplanted’ by the new paradigm and that it ‘seeks to demote, even reverse, the notion that universal human rights are designed for the attainment of dignity and well-being of human beings and for enhancing the security and well-being of socially, economically and civilizationally vulnerable peoples and communities. The emergent paradigm insists upon the promotion and the protection of the collective human rights of global capital, in ways which “justify” corporate well-being and dignity even when it entails continuing gross and flagrant violation of human rights of actually existing human beings and communities’: see Baxi, The Future of Human Rights (2006) at 234 (emphasis added). Baxi insists that a comparative sociology of human rights reveals an appropriation by ‘global capital’ of international human rights—a situation signalling the possible semiotic displacement of the UHDR paradigm in a centrally powerful sense. 19 De Sousa Santos rightly points out that it is precisely ‘[b]ecause of their private character [that] these economic actors can commit massive violations of human rights with total impunity in different parts of the world … [and b]ecause such actors are at the core of the loss in economic national sovereignty, their actions, no matter how offensive to human rights, are unlikely to collide with consideration of national interest or security that might otherwise prompt the corrective or punitive intervention of the state’: see De Sousa Santos, Toward a New Legal Common Sense: Law, Globalization and Emancipation (2002) at 268. 20 That corporations dominate the entire global order is widely accepted by theorists of globalization as the defining phenomenon of the global age: see, for example, Shamir, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility: A Case of Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony’ in De Sousa Santos and Rodrigues-Garavito (eds), Law and Globalization from Below: Towards a Cosmopolitan Legality (2005) 92 . 21 Woods, Empire of Capital (2005) at 139. 22 Baxi, ‘Writing about Impunity and Environment: The “Silver Jubilee” of the Bhopal Catastrophe’ (2010) 1 Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 23. 23 Ibid. at 44. 24 Ibid. 25 Falk, Predatory Globalization: A Critique (1999). 26 Dine, ‘Jurisdictional Arbitrage by Multinational Companies: A National Law Solution?’ (2012) 3 Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 44 at 45. 27 See UNHRC, Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General [SRSG] on the Issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises, Business and Human Rights: Towards Operationalizing the ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework, 22 April 2009, A/HRC/11/13; UN Global Compact, available at: unglobalcompact.org [last accessed 20 September 2014]; OECD Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enteprises OECD, 25 May 2011, available at: www.oecd.org/investment-policy/oecddeclarationoninternationalinvestmentandmultinationalenterprises.htm [last accessed 22 January 2015]; OECD, OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (Edition 2011); and Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, available at: voluntaryprinciples.org [last accessed 20 September 2014]. 28 See Beck, Power in the Global Age (2005–06) at 123. 29 See Richardson, ‘Contending Liberalisms: Past and Present’ (1997) 3 European Journal of International Relations5 at 21. 30 Beck, supra n 28 at 120. 31 Nader, ‘Introduction’ in Wallach and Sforza, The WTO: Five Years of Reasons to Resist Corporate Globalization(1999) 7. 32 Simons, ‘Corporate Voluntarism and Human Rights: The Adequacy and Effectiveness of Voluntary Self-Regulation Regimes’ (2004) 59 Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations 101; Simons, ‘International Law’s Invisible Hand and the Future of Corporate Accountability for Violations of Human Rights’ (2012) 3 Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 5. 33 For an extended discussion of the implications of juridical disembodiment and its implications for the relationship between corporate legal subjects and human rights, see Grear, Re-directing Human Rights: Facing the Challenge of Corporate Legal Humanity (2010); Grear, ‘Law’s Entities: Complexity, Plasticity and Justice’ (2013) 4 Jurisprudence 76. 34 Dine, supra n 26 at 46. 35 See, for example, The Paquete Habana, The Lola 175 U.S. 677 (1900). 36 Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769) Book 4 Chapter 5, III/71, available at: lonang.com/exlibris/blackstone/bla-405.htm [last accessed 20 September 2014]. 37 A legal term of art that originated in admiralty law, such that maritime pirates and slave traders were held to be beyond legal protection, subject to arrest, prosecution, conviction and punishment by any state even if that state had not been directly attacked. Under contemporary public international law, the doctrine of universal jurisdiction now applies also to torturers and perpetrators of other crimes against humanity. 38 Section 1350 28 USC. 39 603 F 2d 876 (2d Cir 1980). 40 Joseph, Corporations and Transnational Human Rights Litigation (2004). 41 Filártiga, supra n 39 at 890. 42 Dine, supra n 26 at 52. 43 The Second Circuit ruling of 17 September 2010 is available at 621 F3d 111, 123–24 (2d Cir 2010). The Supreme Court decision 17 April 2013 is available at 133 S Ct 1659 (2013). 44 Osofsky, ‘Climate Change and Environmental Justice: Reflections on Litigation Over Oil Extraction and Rights Violations in Nigeria’ (2010) 2 Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 189 at 192. 45 Dine, supra n 26 at 54. 46 Judgment of 17 September 2010, supra n 43 at headnote. 47 Dine, supra n 26 at 53. 48 Ibid. 49 542 U.S. 692 (2004). 50 Ibid. at 725. 51 Dine, supra n 26 at 55. 52 Ibid. 53 Wuerth, ‘Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.: The Supreme Court and the Alien Tort Statute’ (2014) 107 American Journal of International Law 601 at 602. 54 Supra n 43. 55 Ibid. at 1669. 56 Ibid. 57 Weston, ‘Human Rights’ (‘International human rights in domestic courts’) in Encylopaedia Britannica Online (last updated 19 March 2014), available at: britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/275840/human-rights [last accessed 22 January 2015]. 58 Ibid. 59 Curran and Sloss, ‘Reviving Human Rights Litigation After Kiobel’ (2014) 107 American Journal of International Law 858 at 858. 60 Ku, ‘Kiobel and the Surprising Death of Universal Jurisdiction under the Alien Tort Statute’ (2014) 107 American Journal of International Law 835 at 835. 61 Wuerth, supra n 53 at 609. 62 Ibid. 63 Supra n 15. 64 Steinhardt, ‘Kiobel and the Weakening of Precedent: A Long Walk for a Short Drink’ (2014) 107 American Journal of International Law 841 at 841. 65 Ibid. 66 McCorquodale, ‘Waving Not Drowning: Kiobel Outside the United States’ (2014) 107 American Journal of International Law 846 at 846. See also Weston, supra n 57. 67 Ibid. 68 Of course, the EU approach is not without its own anxieties. From the standpoint of ensuring genuine human rights protection, relying upon the law of the state of harm can be risky. Success depends upon the sufficiency of that state’s commitment to human rights law and practice and upon the adequacy of its legal mechanisms to ensure meaningful accountability. It is possible that the EU courts would end up applying a low standard of protection. 69 [2012] EWCA (Civ) 525 (Eng). 70 McCorquodale, supra n 66 at 848. 71 Ibid. at 850 (emphasis added). 72 Ibid. See Guerrero v Monterrico Metals PLC [2009] EWHC 2475 (QB) (Eng). 73 Steinitz, ‘The Case for an International Court of Civil Justice’ (2014) 67 Stanford Law Review Online 75. 74 Ibid. at 77. 75 Curran and Sloss, supra n 59 at 859. 76 Nolan, Posner and Labowitz, ‘Beyond Kiobel: Alternative Remedies for Sustained Human Rights Protection’ (2014) American Journal of International Law Unbound e-48 at e-50. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 See, for example, Simons (2004), supra n 32. 80 Dine, supra n 26 at 65. 81 Ibid. at 62 and 66. 82 Ibid. at 67. 83 UNHRC, Elaboration of an international legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights, A/HRC/26/L.22/Rev.1, 25 June 2014. 84 Countries that supported the resolution included Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, China, Congo, Côte D’Ivoire, Cuba, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Morocco, Namibia, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, South Africa, Venezuela and Vietnam. Countries that abstained included Argentina, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, the Gabon, Kuwait, the Maldives, Mexico, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone and the United Arab Emirates. Countries that voted against the resolution included Austria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Montenegro, South Korea, Romania, Macedonia, the UK and the USA. 85 UNESCOR, Norms on the responsibilities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights (2003), E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/12/Rev.2, 26 August 2003. 86 Simons (2012), supra n 32. 87 See Kinley, Nolan and Zerial, ‘The Politics of Corporate Social Responsibility: Reflections on the United Nations Human Rights Norms for Corporations’ (2007) 25 Companies and Securities Law Journal 30 at 35. 88 For an account, see Ratner, ‘Corporations and Human Rights: A Theory of Legal Responsibility’ (2001) 111 Yale Law Journal 443 at 457–9. 89 Under its founding document, the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction only over natural persons: see Article 25 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, A/CONF.183/9, 7 July 1998, 37 ILM 999 (1998), Title I International Law and World Order: Weston’s and Carlson’s Basic Documents I.H.18 (1994–), available at: referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/international-law-and-world-order [last accessed 22 January 2015]. 90 See Egede and Wells, ‘An Annotated Bibliography of the Accountability of Multinational Corporations: A Review of International Human Rights Law’, Working Paper Series No 12, The Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (2004). See also, Monshipouri et al., ‘Multinational Corporations and the Ethics of Global Responsibility: Problems and Possibilities’ (2003) 25 Human Rights Quarterly 965; and Simons (2004), supra n 32. 91 Kinley and Chambers, ‘The UN Human Rights Norms for Corporations: The Private Implications of Public International Law’ (2006) 6 Human Rights Law Review 447 at 448–9. The authors point out, at 449, that ‘in response to the promulgation of the Norms, business leaders were quick to reiterate and highlight both the benefits that corporate enterprise bring to all societies, and their voluntary efforts to regulate the few instances where corporations are responsible for bad business practices and human rights abuses. It was on these bases that business leaders mounted critiques, not only of the Norms document itself, but also of any expansion of the concept of corporate liability for human rights responsibilities that went beyond the current model of self-regulation through codes of conduct, social responsibility policies, and the like.’ 92 Ibid. 93 Interim Report of the Secretary-General’s Special Representative on the Issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises, E/CN 4/2006/97, 22 February 2006 (‘Interim Report’). 94 See, for example, Baxi, supra n 18; Baxi, ‘Market Fundamentalisms: Business Ethics at the Altar of Human Rights’ (2005) 5 Human Rights Law Review 1; Dine and Fagan, Human Rights and Capitalism: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Globalisation (2006); Gill, ‘Globalisation, Market Civilisation and Disciplinary Neoliberalism’ (1995) 24 Millennium Journal of International Studies 399; Gill, ‘Constitutionalizing Inequality and the Clash of Globalizations’ (2002) 4 International Studies Review 47; Grear, supra n 33; and De Sousa Santos, supra n 19. 95 See Baxi, supra n 18 at 278–81. 96 De Sousa Santos, supra n 19 at 267. 97 Evans and Ayers, ‘In the Service of Power: The Global Political Economy of Citizenship and Human Rights’ (2006) (Special Issue: Citizenship and Human Rights) 10 Citizenship Studies 289 at 294. 98 Panitch, ‘Rethinking the Role of the State’ in Mittelman (ed.), Globalization: Critical Reflections (1995) at 95 (emphasis added). 99 Baxi, supra n 22 at 44. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ © 2015 The Authors \ Oxford University Press

By Cnaan Liphshiz Staff preparing the Ets Haim Jewish library in Amsterdam for a tour, May 17, 2017. (Cnaan Liphshiz) Livraria Ets Haim is the world’s oldest functioning Jewish library. As such, it is no stranger to the prospect of imminent destruction. Founded in 1616 by Jews who fled Catholic persecution in Spain and Portugal, the three-room library is adjacent to Amsterdam’s majestic Portuguese Synagogue in the Dutch capital’s center. The 30,000-volume collection mostly contains manuscripts written by people who fled the Inquisition on the Iberian Peninsula or their descendants. The oldest document is a copy of the Mishneh Torah, the code of Jewish religious law authored by Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, or Maimonides, that dates to 1282. Ets Haim’s volume is pristine but for the scars left behind by an Inquisition censor, a Jew who had converted to Christianity and singed away entire passages of the book. Ets Haim as a whole faced a similar fate — or worse — in 1940, when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and had 75 percent of its Jews murdered. Yet the Nazis left the Portuguese Synagogue intact, and instead of burning the library’s collection, they shipped the books to Germany. The collection was discovered there, with light damage, after the war. After the war, the books were returned to Amsterdam. But the Dutch Jewish community lacked the resources to preserve the collection. Library curators determined that the Ets Haim building would need to be renovated thoroughly to ensure the proper conditions, so in 1979 the books were sent to Israel. Following extensive renovations to the building, which dates to 1675, the collection returned home in 2000. And now, relying upon 21st-century technology, its custodians are determined to make the library’s works accessible to interested parties around the world. The aim, according to Ets Haim’s curator, Heide Warncke, is to ensure that the knowledge stored between its pages is never lost again. In 2014, using advanced imaging equipment, the National Library of Israel has partnered with Ets Haim to digitize its entire catalog. And now the partners will make everything available online — and for free. The Jerusalem library will include Ets Haim’s books in Ktiv, a vast international collection of digitized Hebrew manuscripts that is set to launch in August. The scans — from centuries-old stores like Ets Haim’s — are ultra high-resolution files that are resistant to digital decay. For added security, they are stored on several servers worldwide. Cataloger Ruth Peeters, center, telling visitors about the history of the Ets Haim Jewish library in Amsterdam, May 17, 2017. (Cnaan Liphshiz) “Like many Holocaust survivors have in their lives, the books of Ets Haim have demonstrated a remarkable ability to cheat death,” said Aviad Stollman, head of collections at the National Library of Israel. “But we still need to do our part to ensure this exquisite Jewish library is preserved for centuries to come.” The library is housed in a two-story wooden building with a steep, spiral staircase and two octagonal sky windows that provide diffused light. It is open to the public only a handful of times each year during guided tours that typically need to be booked in advance. (Accredited scholars may access the library year-round.) Warncke said the restrictive policy is meant to protect the books, which are at risk of being damaged by humidity and changes in temperature. The Ets Haim collection, which in 2003 was added to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage items, owes its richness to its genesis from Iberian Jews, she added. These Jewish immigrants were pioneers in philosophy, innovation, trade and medicine, she said. When they fled the Inquisition, they brought knowledge to the Netherlands on theology, astronomy (as evidenced in Ets Haim’s Hebrew-language book from the 17th century titled “Collection of Astronomical Treatises”) and medicine. One decidedly modern volume, the “Dictionary of Maritime Terms,” was published in 1780 by the translator David Franco Mendes in Amsterdam, offering entries in Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish alongside fine sketches of ship parts. Though his book is secular in essence, Mendes was a prominent member of the Jewish congregation as well as an insurance broker. Other Sephardic Jews used the relative tolerance they encountered in the Netherlands to resume the study of Jewish texts that had been largely stunted throughout Europe following the Inquisition. “The people who founded Ets Haim and helped it grow had been living under persecution for decades,” said Ruth Peeters, a senior cataloger at the library. “You can see in the books their enthusiasm about being able to reconnect with their Jewish traditions openly and resume the study of it. Ets Haim is a testament to the cultural revival they led.” A researcher working at the Ets Haim Jewish library in Amsterdam, May 17, 2017. (Cnaan Liphshiz) At times, this enthusiasm for theological debate tested the borders of acceptability even in the Netherlands, which despite being a relatively tolerant nation was also a deeply religious Christian one. One such publication was the benignly titled book “Selected Works by Various Authors.” Written in Spanish in the 17th century by Saul Levi Mortera, it contains “refutation of the gospels, acts, epistles” according to Ets Haim, and “arguments against Christianity,” according to the Israeli library. Such explosive publications were kept at Ets Haim as manuscripts and were printed rarely, Warncke said, so as to limit their distribution and avoid angering Dutch society. This culture of debate among the Jewish community, as well as its exposure to different religions and ideas that an international trading hub provided, produced heretics like the philosophers Baruch Spinoza — who was excommunicated by Jews for his atheist musings, possibly because they also offended Christians — and Uriel da Costa. There is no way of knowing for sure, but both men (who died in 1632 and 1640, respectively) may well have frequented Ets Haim to conduct their research, Warncke said. “It was, after all, the largest collection around of Jewish writings,” she said. And while there is no record of Spinoza’s activity at the library, his father had enrolled him in the Ets Haim seminary, which was Amsterdam’s first Portuguese Jewish seminary, of which the library was a part. Another controversial figure did leave an indelible mark on the library: Shabbetai Zevi, the Turkey-born Jewish eccentric who divided the Jewish world with his claim that he was the Messiah. Under duress, he converted to Islam in 1666. One of Ets Haim’s most remarkable documents is a letter sent that year to Zevi by 24 Dutch Jews who left the community over their support for Zevi’s messianic claim. In the three-page Hebrew-language document, they ask for word from their messiah and recount the story of Shabtai Raphael, who was banned from the city over his support for Shabbetai Zevi. The letter never reached the self-proclaimed messiah, probably because he had already converted to Islam when the envoy sent with it reached the Ottoman Empire. Whereas these documents are well researched, new discoveries are always being made, said Warncke. As an example, she cited a 15th-century author’s dedication to his wife – a rare tribute for a woman that reflected the progressive nature of Dutch Jewry at the time. Digitization, she said, is “one of the possibilities to make our manuscripts accessible to a bigger audience. That can lead to more knowledge. There are many secrets still to be unlocked.” ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 20Jewish Telegraphic Agency

By Cori Wielenga Rwanda has come a long way since the dark days of 1994 genocide. Shutterstock 1994 was a significant year for Africa. South Africa made a peaceful transition to democracy. But on a darker note, Rwanda experienced a tragic and violent genocide. Both countries initiated national reconciliation processes that captured the world's attention. South Africa had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC); Rwanda set up the Gacaca Community Courts. The TRC was tasked with bearing witness to, recording - and in some cases granting amnesty - to the perpetrators of crimes related to human rights violations during apartheid. The Gacaca Community Courts, based on a pre-colonial Rwandan approach to justice, were asked to establish what happened to the Tutsi during the genocide. Their job was to expedite the cases of those accused of genocide-related crimes. Both processes were meant to contribute to interpersonal and national reconciliation. But in both countries it's become clear that the road to reconciliation doesn't begin or end with commissions or trials. It's much more complex. Reconciliation goes hand in hand with many other factors and generates many difficult questions. Who needs to be reconciled with whom? Who should initiate the process? Who should facilitate it? What should it look like? How do national and interpersonal movements towards reconciliation intersect, if at all? Can you reconcile when there's no freedom? Justice? Equality? Redress? Post-apartheid South Africa South Africa's reconciliation process began with an unusual generosity of spirit on the part of those who could rightly have been classified as victims. Telling the story of what happened as truthfully as possible was the central tenet at the start of South Africa's post-1994 reconciliation journey. But early on, concern was expressed that the country was trading justice for truth. In response to those criticisms the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, an organisation that grew out of the work of the TRC, began focusing on equity and fairness as a central component to reconciliation. Through its annual "reconciliation barometer", the organisation found that economic justice has become increasingly important to South Africans. You only have to pay attention to current affairs to see the truth in this finding. The Economic Freedom Fighters - an opposition political party - are calling for land and resources to be redistributed. Students have also protested about equal access to education. What seems to be coming out clearly is that truth telling isn't enough. Social justice and equity must remain front and centre of the reconciliation agenda. The TRC was very important. But very little follow up work was done by the government. And the policies it pursued left many South Africans feeling cheated. Reflecting on Rwanda Rwanda took a different path. It focused on establishing individual perpetrators' accountability for genocide crimes. Many were unsettled by this rigorous quest. There were calls for Rwanda to mimic South Africa and take the route of amnesty in exchange for truth. That would have assumed the wounds of the violent massacre of possibly a million people in three months were identical to the wounds of apartheid. I don't want to suggest for a moment that wounds left by Rwanda's genocide were harder to heal than those left by apartheid. But it's critical to understand that they left behind different kinds of devastations. In Rwanda, once the genocide ended, the entire country had been stripped of all of its resources. Dead bodies littered the streets. Perpetrators and survivors had to start rebuilding their lives side-by-side. The compulsion for revenge was strong, and there was an urgent need to deal as quickly as possible with the relationships between individual perpetrators and survivors within their communities. The Gacaca trials took place in every community across the country and were presided over by judges from the communities. Perpetrators were identified and community members could speak out about the crimes that had been committed. Perpetrators then had to do community service which involved rebuilding roads and homes, among other things. This allowed some healing to begin. These trials have been heavily criticised by international observers, researchers and academics for not following due process and being vulnerable to manipulation. Some people were accused of crimes they never committed: when evidence was lacking, it became one person's word against another and some people were wrongly accused. Judges were not always impartial and the record of events was sometimes inaccurate. More than that, the reconciliation process has been criticised for being a top-down affair that was micromanaged by the Rwandan government. Because of this, non-governmental and religious organisations have been anxious not to criticise the government's reconciliation agenda. This has limited their impact. Rwanda is often lauded for the incredible progress it's making in terms of development. But this progress seems to have been at the expense of political freedom and citizens' participation. The question remains whether these are necessary for reconciliation to take place. Between the national and the interpersonal One of the challenges every reconciliation initiative faces is the struggle to understand where and how national and interpersonal interests intersect. Reconciliation is about restoring relationships between wounded people and communities. It also extends to the healing of entire nations. Some 23 years after apartheid ended in South Africa and Rwanda was torn apart by genocide, it's clear there has been some healing. Often, this is most visible in the interpersonal relationships between victim and perpetrator. The Forgiveness Project shares many of these stories in the South African context. In Rwandan this is evident in the way in which widows from both sides of the genocide divide work together on entrepreneurial projects or in self-help cooperatives to build a shared livelihood. In these glimpses, we're reminded that reconciliation does not begin or end with commissions or trials. It requires change and transformation at the systemic level. Governments must commit to policies and strategies that bring about greater freedom and equality. And individuals and communities must commit to the hard work of building - and rebuilding - relationships every day. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 All Africa

April 3, 2018 || By Betre Y. Getahun Ethiopia has been under a state of emergency for much of the past two years. The first state of emergency was imposed in October 2016 following a year of protests and was lifted at the end of 2017. The second one came on February 17, this year after the resignation of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. According to HRW, in 2015 alone thousands were killed and tens of thousands of protesters were detained in Oromia and the Amhara regions in connection to the protest. “Many of those who were released reported that they were tortured in detention, a long-standing problem in Ethiopia,” said the Human Rights Watch. Since Ethiopia’s government declared the new state of emergency this year, the security forces have killed dozens of people and have been criticized for failing to investigate the killings. The number of those killed since January are estimated to be more than 20 and most of them are members of the Amhara and Oromo ethnic groups, according to media reports. This has raised a concern that the situation may turn into an ethnic conflict which may end up leading the nation into a blood bath. Although the protest is spreading throughout the nation and is shaking the foundation of the regime, authorities are not showing willingness to institute political reform. This has alarmed the international community and is forcing it to take action against the regime. Concerned, the United Nations has recently called on the authorities to refrain from using force while the US congress has drafted a new bill which targets the regime. However, in spite of all this, the regime has intensified its violation of human rights, targeting Amhara and Oromo ethnic groups and their descendants, according to Minority Rights Group International. “Human rights violations against the Amhara and Oromo people are happening against a backdrop of a highly restrictive environment. Civil society activists find difficulties to reach the worst hit places to access information, and risk arrest and persecution. Equally, journalists, bloggers and other social media users have faced harassment and intimidation. Such a restricted space is a hindrance for effective dialogue, reinforces persisting human rights violations and delays justice for victims. Yet the Ethiopia government remains adamant on what is happening, and has ignored calls from the international community to constitute an independent inquiry into the use of excessive force by the security agents to quell protests.” the institution said. This nationwide protests first began in 2015 and were sparked by the government’s “city expansion plan,” which allegedly threatened the livelihoods of ethnic Oromo framers in the area. Although the government claimed that the plan benefits Oromo farmers, experts and residents opposed the plan, saying that it was part of the land-grabbing scheme of the Tigryan people. Despite the fact that the plan was an immediate cause, at the heart of the issue is a resentment of those ethnic groups who feel that they have been marginalized. What is behind the turmoil? To understand Ethiopia’s present-day turmoil, it’s key to look at two factors which are at the center of the resentment and are fueling the country’s implosion. Political Oppression and Marginalization of Minority Groups Ethiopia is the second most populous nation in Africa next to Nigeria and is home for more than 80 ethnic groups. There are also important linguistic differences among the population. Ethiopia’s constitution reorganizes the importance of the political participation of all ethnic groups in the country and guarantees their rights, which extend to self-determination. Yet the practice is completely different and contradicts the constitution and violates the rights of these ethnic groups. The country’s politics is dominated by Tigrayans, who are approximately 6 percent of the population, and others are marginalized. Although the country follows an ethnically-based federal government system, the individual states are powerless and the parties which represent each state and ethnic group in the ruling coalition, Ethiopian People Democratic From (EPRDF), are no more than puppets. The dominant party, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which represents the people of Tigray, came to power in 1991. The party’s first goal was to build “the greatest Tigray” while it was fighting with the communist regime known as Dereg, which ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1987. However, after the downfall of Dere, TPLF changed its program and orchestrated the creation of these political parties which represent their respective ethnic groups, and it then formed the coalition, EPRDF, now a tool used by the TPLF to legitimize its power and to exercise absolute control over most aspects of people’s lives: society, the government, and the military. The federal system in Ethiopia came into effect in 1994 and was said to have been designed to protect and empower ethnic minorities. However, it has practically provided nothing for minorities and so has failed to change their situation. The regime in Ethiopia explicitly interferes with the rights of disadvantaged ethnic groups and has been a source of contention for decades. The country started to feel the tension since TPLF came to power in 1991. And this tension has got intensity over time, and caused the ongoing political turmoil. Monopolization of the Economic and Exploitation The TPLF exercises absolute control not only over the politics but also the economy. The party controls significant portions of the economy through its own companies and affiliate business institutions. It has exploited the country’s resources and built a business empire which makes billions of dollars of profit by further marginalizing other minority groups. According to Rene Lefort, a well-known observer, the public and para-public companies that are affiliated with TPLF control two-thirds of the country’s economy. On top of that, land-grabbing has become a fashion in recent times and has disappointed many ethnic groups whose livelihood relies heavily on their land. The regime not only steals land from these marginalized groups and gives it to its own affiliates and supporters, but also sells it to foreign companies. Authorities say these large scale land transfers are part of the development plan of the country. However, human right groups that oppose the practice argue that this not only violates the rights of minority groups but also destroys their livelihood. The Human Right Watch stated in its report that this large scale land transfer and subsequent displacement results only in poverty and hunger. The Oakland institute has reported that a land equivalent of an area nearly the size of France was forcefully taken from farmers and indigenous people and given to foreign investors for agricultural purposes in the past few years. According to these reports, thousands were displaced in the past few years to make way for the illegal transactions, and those who resisted the authorities were intimidated, arrested, tortured and killed. Many observers argue that the people of Ethiopia were left with no other option, but protest. They believe that unless the regime makes real and complete political reform which meet the need of Ethiopians who are currently so oppressed and marginalized, the protest wouldn’t stop. © 2018 Africa.com

The culture of the Lacandons in the Mexican jungle is dying out. In an interview, photographer Martin Engelmann and journalist and filmmaker Katja Döhne talk about how rapidly the lives of the descendants of the Maya are changing. Maya Lacandons in Mexico (Photo Credit: Martin Engelmann) Interview Conducted By Anna Behrend March 28, 2018 01:17 PM Adventurous travel, unforgettable encounters, anecdotes and impressions from foreign countries: In the Hörweite podcast series , SPIEGEL ONLINE reporters talk about their reporting trips around the globe (in German). In this edition, filmmaker Katja Döhne and photographer Martin Engelmann talk about their journey to the Mexican jungle. Here, you can read an abridged, English-language version of the interview. SPIEGEL ONLINE : Martin, you have been visiting and photographing the Lacandon people for many years. They are descendants of the Maya who had long lived in the Mexican jungle without contact with the outside world. And you, Katja, accompanied Martin and made a film about his work. How did you become aware of the Lacandons and what did you find so fascinating that made you want to report about them? Martin Engelmann : For me, the journey began almost 10 years ago. I had traveled in Mexico many times and was personally very interested in the Mayan culture. I visited the archaeological sites and then traveled through the rainforests in the state of Chiapas. When I happened upon the villages of the Lacandons there, I realized that there is still a lot of authentic life to be found in the traditional sense. And that was where my interest was suddenly awakened. Spiegel Online : And what does traditional life there look like? Martin Engelmann : The traditional aspect mainly relates to the faith of the Lacandons. Most of the Maya were Christianized by the Spanish conquerors during the conquest. But the Lacandons have managed to preserve their faith for many centuries, and they were only Christianized in modern times. Katja Döhne : They were very much opposed to it at first, fleeing into the jungle and running away from the conquerors to avoid being Christianized. Spiegel Online : Then they lived without contact with the outside world for a long time. But now this contact has been established. When and how did it happen? Martin Engelmann : They have been in contact with the outside world for over a hundred years now. You have to imagine that they were inundated with all kinds of impressions in this short period, and that their lives have changed considerably as a result. Of course, they now have access to television, telephones and cars, and yet a small part of their old traditional life has been preserved, especially when it comes to faith. Journalists Katja Döhne and Martin Engelmann (Photo Credit: Martin Engelmann) Spiegel Online : Is Lacandon a collective term for all descendants of the Maya or does it only refer to a distinct group? Katja Döhne : It's a distinct group. I believe there are 6 million people in Central America with Mayan ancestors. But they have all somehow modified their faith, so that it now contains many Christian influences. They all speak Spanish, and so on. The Lacandons are this one group that resisted Christianization and lived in isolation in the jungle until a little over a century ago. Spiegel Online : How many Lacandons are there? And do they all live in one village? Martin Engelmann : They live in several villages and some now also live in cities. But I would say there are about 500 to 700 Mayan Lacandons in total. Spiegel Online : Katja, how did you get involved in the project? Katja Döhne : I have traveled to Mexico many times. It's probably my favorite country. I had heard of the Lacandons but I never really knew how to approach the subject. I got to know Martin through mutual acquaintances. And when he told me what he was doing, I thought: What a stroke of luck -- a German-speaking person who is already documenting the life of the Lacandons anyway. That could be my way in to finally get to meet them. It was really great. Spiegel Online : What do the Lacandon villages look like these days? Martin Engelmann : When you enter the villages of the Mayan Lacandons today, it looks like any other Mexican village you might find anywhere in the forests. But when the people are out in the woods, working in their cornfields or fishing on the lake in their canoes, then life is more like it used to be before. Katja Döhne : It's also interesting to see how the path to the Lacandons has changed over the years. The villages are in the jungle and to get there you drive to Palenque, the nearest city. From there you continue in a colectivo, the small vans that serve as public transportation in the area. The trip took us about three-and-a-half hours. You make fast progress at the beginning because the road is paved, but that wasn't the case just a few years ago. Martin Engelmann : Yes, the road has gradually been improved and paved in places. Six or seven years ago, it took five or six hours to cover the same distance in a colectivo. And I think it will soon be possible to cover the whole distance in one-and-a-half to two hours. Spiegel Online : And what sort of work do the people there do in the middle of the jungle? What does their everyday life look like? Martin Engelmann : People's everyday lives are very varied, of course. They still work in their cornfields. There are now attempts to establish a tourism industry of sorts, but it's been difficult so far because of the relatively long distance to the nearest larger towns. Fishing in the lake and working in the cornfields are common activities. Many of these cornfields are relatively remote, tucked away in the woods. Sometimes you have to walk through the rainforest for an hour or more to get there. Many Lacandons now also work in normal jobs in other villages. Some run grocery stores, small shops where you can get almost everything. Katja Döhne : There's an unbelievable number of shops in this village, certainly almost 10. That's apparently the business idea there: to buy things in the next bigger town and then sell them in the village. Spiegel Online : What's in these shops? Do they sell traditional food, for example? Katja Döhne : Corn is the staple food of the Maya, who make it into tortillas. Tortillas are available in many varieties, as is the case all over Mexico. But it's even more apparent in the village. There is now a small restaurant there, which serves tortillas in all variations, rolled, filled or covered in sauce. At first, we tried to order various things, but in the end, we simply ate the same dish all the time, so-called synchronisadas, because all the dishes on the menu looked the same anyway. These shops actually sell all the things you would find in a convenience store, including cigarettes -- but no alcohol. That's only available in the neighboring village. Spiegel Online : Why? Martin Engelmann : They didn't want it for a long time. It was a decision made by the village council. You can now order beer in the restaurant, but that wasn't possible for a long time. Spiegel Online: Is it part of the Lacandon culture to not drink alcohol? Martin Engelmann : On the contrary, balche, the drink of the gods, is a traditional Lacandon beverage. The fermented, bark-based drink used to be prepared by shamans. It has an intoxicating effect. So, alcohol is not unknown. Katja Döhne : And we've heard that it has also become a problem. Martin Engelmann : I think the problem is simply that there have been extreme upheavals in these villages within a short time. Think about it: They lived untouched in the rainforest for many centuries and then, within a hundred years, they got everything we have developed over many centuries. When you look at the development process that has taken place in such a short time, it isn't surprising that people often have trouble dealing with it. I believe many were simply overwhelmed and, just as in our latitudes, alcohol can become a problem. Katja Döhne : Another one of the changes is that the Lacandons now receive subsidies from the Mexican government for protecting the rainforest. They simply get money for the fact that this forest is there and they are not growing anything in it. One day we wanted to do an interview with Don Antonio, a shaman, but you could tell that he was distracted and completely beside himself. He had just heard the news that the Mexican government would pay even more subsidies if they stopped cultivating their cornfields. The village was totally in favor, and Don Antonio was distraught, because corn plays a central role in the Lacandon culture. Spiegel Online : Can you talk a little more about Don Antonio? He seems to be a very interesting character. Katja Döhne : Yes, an extremely interesting character. What I find most impressive about Don Antonio is his charisma. He has such a soft voice and is a very sweet man. I don't think he could hurt a fly. But the main thing about him is that he is the last shaman, the last wise man in the village, the last one who knows the songs and prayers, which are really very long. He couldn't find anyone willing to study with him. Many young people are put off by the many obligations a shaman has. Don Antonio said that the hardest part for him is that as a shaman, he has to hold a ceremony before he can sleep with his wife. We may see this as amusing, but these are actually things that hardly anyone wants to deal with today. Maya Lacandon shaman Don Antonio (Photo Credit: Martin Engelmann) Spiegel Online : How did you communicate with the people there? Martin Engelmann : When I first went there, it was a huge problem for me that I couldn't speak the language of the people, the Maya Lacandon. Many people speak Spanish, and so do I, but you can only get so far with Spanish. Fortunately, I later met the Italian anthropologist Alice Balsanelli, who spends many months every year with the Lacandons and speaks the language perfectly. She has accompanied me on my travels from time to time and has been my ticket into this world. Spiegel Online : Were you welcomed with open arms by the people there -- despite your cameras and video cameras? Katja Döhne: We were definitely welcomed with open arms. Alice had already given them some advance notice about what we wanted to do. It was all discussed with the village council. Martin Engelmann : The important thing, especially with a project like this, is to clarify everything at a relatively early stage. It all has to be done very carefully. There is now a friendly relationship with many people, partly because the project has been going on for so many years. Every year I brought pictures from the previous year as a present. We developed a good relationship over time, and when we showed up wanting to film that year, their arms were wide-open... Katja Döhne : Well, until we got the drones out. When we flew them over the village, everyone was suddenly in turmoil and you could see Lacandons running around with radios and waving wildly. They were completely unnerved. Of course, we felt very bad and we quickly packed up the drone again. We were then summoned to the village council, where we had to explain what the drone was. Martin Engelmann : It wasn't part of the plan, either. Before that, we had only used the drone to film and photograph uninhabited areas. On that day, it was a coincidence that it happened to fly over the village. We were actually planning to have a conversation about it in the following days, during which we would show the drone to the people and explain that we had them with us. The whole thing was a little unfortunate. Spiegel Online : What was the most remarkable experience you had on this trip? Katja Döhne : The thing that made the biggest impression on me and shocked me was something that happened during our first encounter. I was waiting for Martin at the bus station in Chetumal, a town a little further north of Palenque, but the bus didn't arrive. First it was supposed to be a half-hour late, then an hour. And then they said the bus had been in an accident. Martin is better able to explain what happened in the end. Martin Engelmann : The bus crashed into a car on the way from Playa del Carmen to Chetumal. But it was actually a setup. The car was apparently deliberately steered into the bus, which, of course, forced the bus to stop. There were armed people in the car, who then tried to get on the bus. The only reason they couldn't do that was because the doors were jammed by the impact. Fortunately, the police arrived at the scene of the accident relatively quickly and nothing happened. But it was a shocking incident. Spiegel Online : Was there also a positive experience that you particularly like to recall? Martin Engelmann : Among the most beautiful experiences were the tours we did with the Lacandons into the rainforests. There are beautiful lagoons in this magnificent rainforest called the Selva Lacandona. We also made several canoe trips with one of the Lacandons, Juanito and his son. They took us to a burial site for the Lacandon Maya, where we saw human skeletons, ceramics, sacrificial vessels and other things. It was a big surprise, because I had never seen this place before, despite my long stays in the area. And I'm sure we only saw it because we were with Alice, who is on such good terms with the people. Learning from the Lacandons: "An appreciation of nature that we no longer have in our part of the world" (Photo Credit: Martin Engelmann) Spiegel Online : Can we perhaps learn something from the Lacandons? Katja Döhne : Yes, undoubtedly a lot. For example, I find their relationship with nature fascinating. If they cut down a tree to build one of their traditional canoes, for example, there is a ceremony and they give thanks for the tree. This is an appreciation of nature that we no longer have in our part of the world. Martin Engelmann : I agree. I also find the Lacandons' relationship with time very interesting. In contrast to the Western world, where everything is getting faster and faster, their approach is complete deceleration. Don Antonio, the shaman, told us that many Lacandons don't even know exactly how old they are. He said that it doesn't really make much sense to count the years of one's life. So relatively little importance is attached to that, and I thought it was a nice experience to be in a place where time does not play a major role. Spiegel Online : Perhaps we Europeans also have a somewhat idealized, romantic view of the former life of the Lacandons in the jungle. But isn't that view arrogant in a way? Martin Engelmann : That's definitely true. People have a right to change, especially if they want it themselves. This means you just have to accept certain things as they are. And it's not as if everything was good before. For example, they now have access to medical care. Many Lacandons, especially older ones, tell us that they are happy to be able to get more medication. Many things have also changed for the better. And just as it is with us: Everything moves forward and nothing stands still. Katja Döhne: Dealing with these issues is really not that easy. When writing texts for my film as well as the visual story, I sometimes thought long and hard to make sure I avoided using words that could have a pejorative effect. But I also think the special aspect is not only that the Lacandons now live differently than before, but how quickly that happened. I think that's a particular thing and something worth talking about. Martin Engelmann : Absolutely! I believe the things that are happening in these villages not only say something about the Mayan Lacandons, but about all of us. They underscore how quickly changes take hold in our own society. So, in a sense it's like holding up a mirror to ourselves. This means that when you study the Lacandon culture, you also learn something about what happens to yourself. (c) 2018 Der Spiegel http://www.spiegel.de/international/tomorrow/reporter-podcast-visiting-the-last-of-the-mayans-in-mexico-a-1192901.html

QUETTA: Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar Friday said Hazara killings in Quetta were akin to “genocide”. The top court judge made these remarks while heading a two-member bench that resumed the hearing of the suo motu taken on the target killings of members of the Hazara community at the apex court’s Quetta Registry. “We do not have words to condemn the incidents of Hazara killings,” said the two-member bench headed by the chief justice and comprising Justice Ijazul Ahsan during a hearing. On May 2, the CJP had taken suo motu notice of Hazara killings and had sought a report from the Balochistan government, Levies, police and the Interior Ministry. “For me the targeted killing of Hazaras in Quetta is ethnic cleansing and that’s why I have taken suo motu,” the CJP explained. Counsel for the Hazara community, Advocate Iftikhar Ali, said, “We are facing a personal and financial loss. Members of the Hazara community are not being given admission to universities and people have sold their businesses.” Ali added, “Some members of the community were forced to migrate to Australia. Security from 15 of our leaders has been withdrawn.” However, Quetta DIG denied taking back the security. To this, Justice Nisar remarked that a committee had been formed to look into the matter. Advocate Iftikhar Ali told the court, “Hazaras are being killed for the last 20 years.” Responding to the statement, the chief justice asked the Balochistan IG if a report had been prepared on the targeted killings. Ansari then presented a report to the two-member bench. The report stated that in the last six years, 399 Hazaras were killed in various incidents of terrorism, adding that the highest number of Hazaras – 208 – were killed in 2013. The Balochistan IG told the court, “One hundred and six security personnel have been killed since 2012 in targeted killings in the province.” Further sharing details, the Balochistan IG said, “Nineteen people from minority communities have been killed since 2012 and 20 settlers have been killed in the same period.” Ansari added, “Nine members of Hazara community have been targeted in Balochistan in the last four months, while 28 personnel have been martyred so far in various incidents across the province this year.” To this, the CJP asked Balochistan IG Moazzam Jah Ansari and agencies to submit the measures that can be taken to protect the Hazara community. The hearing was then adjourned until after Eid. A string of successive incidents of targeted killings spread a wave of terror among citizens of Quetta last month. As a result, members of the Hazara community began protesting against the continued spate of killings against the minority community. The protesters had demanded an immediate end to targeted killings and arrest of those involved. (c) 2018 The Daily Times https://dailytimes.com.pk/239008/hazara-killings-tantamount-to-genocide/

By Bess Connolly Martell A Cambodian official’s secret order to inform “the safety official in Kook Ta Nop base and all [local] Vietnamese and Chinese officials and all Vietnamese people” of the order “to round up all the Vietnamese people to be soldiers, to build the base to fight the enemies, to capture the land” for the Cambodian king. Letter written on the 1st day of the waning moon of the 7th month of the lunar calendar, “the year of the Rooster, 26,” probably Buddhist Year 2426 (1883-84). April 2018 marked the 20th anniversary of the death of Pol Pot, the leader of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, the regime that is responsible for the genocide that in four years took the lives of over 1.5 million people. The genocide is today known as one of the worst human tragedies of the last century. This year, Pol Pot’s deputy, along with his regime’s head of state, will be judged by a UN-backed tribunal for genocide against Cambodia’s Vietnamese and Muslim ethnic minorities. The perpetrators have been tried using archives of the Santebal, the Khmer Rouge secret police. These archives were discovered in 1996 by Yale’s Cambodian Genocide Program, led by historian Ben Kiernan and his team of researchers. The archives found in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, says Kiernan, the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History, comprise about 100,000 pages of documents produced by the Khmer Rouge secret police from 1975 to 1979. “Yale played an important part in accumulating the evidence we found in the archives of the Khmer Rouge security ministry,” says Kiernan, who came to Yale in 1990 to teach Southeast Asian history. In 1995-97, Kiernan won $1.5 million in grants from the U.S. State Department to run a historical investigation of the crimes of the Pol Pot regime. The grant funded the establishment of large databases that are still available online at Yale. Kiernan had founded the Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale in 1994 to study these acts of genocide and to help determine who was responsible. In 1996 Yale University Press published his book, “The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979.” “Yale has been very supportive of all of my work, and I’m very grateful for that. It has been terrific to have this base of academic and institutional support from the Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies as well as the Department of History,” says Kiernan. Kiernan is also the author of the award-winning book “Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur,” and, most recently, “Việt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present.” The Yale scholar, who likens his work as a historian to that of a detective, recently travelled to the south of France to research his forthcoming book on the history of Cambodia from the Ice Age to the present. There he uncovered rare 19th-century Cambodian-language texts while working in the French colonial archives in Aix-en-Provence. Found in a police file, the documents are captured anti-French rebel communications from the mid-1880s. “Their significance,” says Kiernan, “lies mainly in the fact that so few 19th-century Cambodian-language texts survive.” For the whole of the 19th century, apart from several well-known chronicles and long poems, only about 30 documents in Cambodian survive, explains Kiernan. Each of them is handwritten; there was no printing during that time in Cambodia. “So far I’ve found about 10 in archives in Paris and 15 in Aix en Provence. Altogether about 25 documents for the whole of the 19th century in the Cambodian language,” says Kiernan. Many others held in Cambodian libraries were destroyed under the Khmer Rouge regime. Some of the documents that Kiernan uncovered are dated 1883-1884, the Buddhist year 2426 or, the year of the Rooster “26,” explains Kiernan. They were written on palm leaf or rice paper, following a Convention held in 1884 when the French had forced Cambodia’s reigning king to give up some of his power. The documents foretold of a rebellion that was being planned against the French Protectorate over Cambodia. Of this discovery, says Kiernan, one of the things that intrigued him most is that the rebellion that took place in 1885 and 1886 was organized in the shadows, undercover, behind the scenes, and not only by the king. “I think that this means there was a lot more grass roots organizing that took place during the 19th century in Cambodia,” says the Yale scholar. Kiernan suspects that these documents raise new questions for scholars about the nature of government in traditional Cambodia. Further research on the entire series of documents will entail arranging them in chronological order by the Buddhist dating system that Cambodians used during that period, ascertaining if the authors are the same, and tracking the progress of rebel planning. Mr Thavro Phim, a former Research Associate at the Cambodian Genocide Program, is collaborating with Kiernan in studying the documents. Kiernan says the next steps in writing his book include returning to Cambodia’s early history. “I’ve written a chapter on the emergence of agriculture after the Ice Age: the earliest signs of human activity, and the beginnings of farming and the agricultural civilization in Cambodia. I now need to take that story from the prehistory to the history,” he said. Because so few historical documents survived the Khmer Rouge’s reign in Cambodia, Kiernan plans to upload all these rare documents to a Yale website and make them available to other researchers for further study. (c) 2018 Yale News https://news.yale.edu/2018/05/16/yale-scholar-cambodia-uncovers-19th-century-khmer-language-documents