English Al Jazeera.net
By Andrew Wander
November 9, 2009
Some prisoners say conditions have deteriorated at Guantanamo Bay this year.
On the night that Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, 21-year-old Mohammed el Gharani was sitting in a segregation cell in Guantanamo Bay's high security Echo Block.
He remembers the excitement among his fellow prisoners at the prospect of an Obama presidency. "Everyone was very hopeful; people were saying he was going to change things, that he would close the prison," Gharani, who was released in June, says.
"Even the guards were telling us that if he won, things would improve for us."
They were to be disappointed. A year after Obama's election win, Al Jazeera has learnt that despite the new president's pledge to close the prison and improve the conditions of detainees held by the US military, prisoners believe that their treatment has deteriorated on his watch.
Authorities at the prison deny mistreating the inmates, but interviews with former detainees, letters from current prisoners and sworn testimony from independent medical experts who have visited the prison have painted a disturbing picture of psychological and physical abuse very much at odds with White House rhetoric on prisoner treatment.
While no-one is alleging a return to the early days of the prison, when detainees were subjected to "enhanced interrogation" techniques that are today widely regarded as torture, prisoners say day-to-day life at Guantanamo has become harder under the Obama administration.
Within days of Obama's inauguration and subsequent announcement that he would close Guantanamo, prisoners say authorities introduced new regulations and revoked previous privileges at the prison.
"They took away group recreation for prisoners in segregation, which was the only time we saw anyone," Gharani remembers. "They took away the books we had from the library. They even sprayed pepper spray into my cell while I was sleeping, so I'd wake up unable to breathe."
Gharani says he was beaten so badly by guards that he is still suffering pain today.
'Humiliating rules'
Al Jazeera has obtained letters written by those currently being held in Guantanamo that tell a similar story. In one, written in March, a prisoner, who has asked that he remains anonymous for fear of repercussions, says he is writing to "depict to what degree our conditions inside Guantanamo detention have deteriorated" since Obama took office.
"I am in the very same cell, wearing the same uniform, eating the same food, yet treated much worse compared to mid-2008," the prisoner writes. "We are unable to understand the goals of the policy of more restrictions and inflexibility."
Letters describe 'fading hopes' [GALLO/GETTY]
According to the letter, prison authorities inflict "humiliating punishments" on inmates and prisoners face "intentional mental and physical harm".
"The situation is worsening with the advent of the new management," the prisoner writes, noting, like Gharani, that the new rules were imposed in January this year. Conditions, he says, "do not fit the lowest standard of human living".
Separately, two prisoners have complained to their lawyer that their belongings, including their bedding, were removed from their cells on several occasions for no reason. Each time, they were told that the removal was a "mistake," and the belongings were returned, only to be confiscated again.
More disturbingly, the same two prisoners say that during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, their recreation time was moved to prevent them from taking part in traditional group prayer.
Using religion to punish prisoners is illegal under international law. Authorities at Guantanamo deny the prisoners are kept from practising their religion, although they concede that recreation times are sometimes moved "due to operational needs".
They say that personal belongings are not removed from cells "unless detainees misuse the items"; the prisoners categorically deny that they did so.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which monitors prisoner treatment at Guantanamo, declined to comment on specific allegations at the prison, but says that it recognises the cumulative effect low-level abuse can have on the well-being of prisoners in general.
"In some cases, a single act may amount to torture," ICRC spokesman Simon Schorno says. "In others, ill treatment may be the result of a number of methods used over time, which, taken individually and out of context, may seem harmless."
Hunger strikes
For the Guantanamo prisoners, avenues of protest against their treatment are limited and many have resorted to hunger strikes. Now there is concern that the force-feeding regime to which hunger strikers are subjected is having a detrimental effect on their mental and physical health.
Abdul Rahman Shalabi has been on hunger strike since August 2005. He has been force-fed twice a day by Guantanamo personnel, who insert a feeding tube through his nose in order to administer a liquid diet aimed at keeping him alive.
But independent doctors who have evaluated him say that the insertion of the tube has done permanent damage to his nose and throat, making inserting new feeding tubes difficult and stopping him from receiving the calories he needs.
His lawyers say that persisting with the current treatment could be doing more harm than good. Shalabi was hospitalised in March, and his weight has dropped to just 107 pounds, 30 per cent below his ideal body weight and at the threshold of major organ failure.
Doctors say force feeding methods are causing permanent damage [GALLO/GETTY]
Shalabi's lawyer, Jana Ramsey, is bringing a case aimed at forcing the government to allow medical specialists to work with Guantanamo personnel to prevent the further weight loss she says is inevitable if his current treatment persists.
"While participating in the strike, Abdul Rahman has, among other things, been overfed to the point of vomiting, had tubes inserted and removed repeatedly until his nose bled, choked until he passed out and been blasted by pepper spray more times than he can remember," she says.
"He is now dangerously underweight. We are deeply concerned that the medical staff at Guantanamo have no plan to keep Abdul Rahman from starving to death."
As part of the case, Ramsey arranged for independent medical experts to examine Shalabi at the prison over the summer. Dr Sondra Crosby, an ear, nose and throat specialist who examined him in August, said that without a change in treatment, the prisoner will die.
"Mr Shalabi has been on a hunger strike for four years, and only recently has his condition severely deteriorated," her testimony notes.
His current treatment is also having a negative impact on his mental health, experts have found. Dr Emily Keram, a psychiatrist who evaluated him in July, told the court he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and severe depression.
"Mr. Shalabi exhibits symptoms and disorders consistent with his reports of coercive interrogations and other mistreatment," she said, adding that some of this trauma occurred this year.
"The medical records do indicate that Mr. Shalabi was subjected to Forced Cell Extraction in connection with his feeding multiple times per day through the months of January and February. Mr Shalabi's psychological symptoms are consistent with the distress he reported experiencing as a result of these extractions."
Shalabi himself attributes his weight loss to his treatment at the prison.
"My weight has dropped from sadness and provocations, daily humiliations and harassments and the sickness," he says in a letter written in September. "I am a human who is being treated like an animal."
Mistreatment denied
Authorities at Guantanamo deny that hunger strikers are subject to different treatment to other prisoners and say that no-one is being mistreated.
"All allegations of abuse are fully investigated and if warranted, further action taken," says Lieutenant Commander Brook DeWalt, a military spokesman for the prison. "As with any facility of this nature, we receive many allegations and we investigate any claim, no matter what the source, and take appropriate action when warranted."
But lawyers say that efforts to raise these issues with the relevant authorities have been met with inertia.
Ahmed Ghappour, who represents Guantanamo prisoners, has lodged several requests to initiate investigations since Obama took office.
"I have requested four investigations regarding prisoner abuse just this past year," he says. "The military responded to my first request indicating that they would investigate, but have been radio silent since then."
Released after a federal court found him to be entirely innocent, Mohammed el Gharani is now adjusting to life outside prison. He says that the allegations made by current inmates match his experience of Guantanamo during the months leading up to his release.
"I recognise all of this," he says. "There are still more than 200 people in Guantanamo. Since Obama became president, less than 20 have been released. I don't know why, but he has broken his promises."
Source: Al Jazeera
Monday, November 9, 2009
Thousands Freed from Sri Lanka Camp
English Al Jazeera.net
October 23, 2009
More than 4,000 ethnic Tamils have been released from government-run detention camps in northern Sri Lanka, and allowed to return home.
The freed detainees are part of a larger group of 40,000 who have been cleared to return to former Tamil Tiger strongholds, in the largest release from the camps since the end of the civil war five months ago.
The release comes amid international criticism that authorities are not moving fast enough to clear the camps, and coincides with the publication of a US state department report detailing allegations of war crimes by both sides in the final stages of the conflict.
The detainees are being returned to their homes in the north of the country - an area that was repeatedly shelled in the final stages of government's 25 year war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or Tamil Tigers.
Following the end of the conflict in May, an estimated 270,000 minority Tamil civilians who had fled the final months of fierce fighting were forced into the detention camps.
Thousands resettled
About 15,000 people have since been resettled and government officials last month told the UN that all displaced Tamils would be allowed to return home by the end of January.
The government has said it needs to screen the detained Tamils for ties to the LTTE before they can be released, and says it needs time to clear mines and other dangers from Tamil villages.
In depth
Sri Lanka's uneasy peace
Q&A: Sri Lanka's civil war
No welfare for Sri Lanka's Tamils
UN vows to press Colombo on Tamils
Sri Lanka rejects 'execution' video
VIDEOS
Sri Lanka frees Tamil refugees
101East: After the war
Sri Lanka's "welfare camps"
Aftermath of civil war
Colombo faces resettlement pressure
Colombo pressed on refugees
Sri Lankan media war continues
But the detention has been condemned by human rights groups as an illegal form of collective punishment for Tamils following the government's victory in the war.
The United Nations and other humanitarian groups have also expressed concerns over the conditions in camps, which they say are overcrowded and prone to disease.
There have also been concerns that the imminent monsoons will cause the camps' limited sanitation systems to overflow, creating a public health crisis.
The government has said it will compensate the returning Tamils, but has not given specifics on what assistance it will offer.
"We will take steps to give you all that you lost, other than the lost lives," Basil Rajapaksa, a senior government adviser and brother of Sri Lanka's president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, told a public meeting in the village of Kathankulam.
Thursday's release of Tamil detainees comes amid calls from the US for an international investigation into potential rights violations by both sides during the final stages of the war.
In Washington, a spokesman for the US state department called on the Sri Lankan authorities to take steps to "thoroughly investigate" what he said were "credible" claims of atrocities committed by government forces and Tamil Tigers detailed in a department report.
"Ultimately, as appropriate, (they should) bring to justice those who are found guilty," Ian Kelly said following publication of the report, which was sent to congress on Wednesday.
Child soldiers
The US report contains allegations that LTTE fighters took boys and girls to join their guerrilla force, and says government forces broke a ceasefire as well as killed rebels who had agreed to surrender.
It also cites claims that government troops or government-backed paramilitaries "abducted and in some instances then killed Tamil civilians, particularly children and young men".
Returning home
Sebastianpillai Rasanayagam, a 42-year-old rice farmer, was one of a group of more than 1,000 refugees bussed home to northern Mannar district following the latest release.
His family had fled after a shell slammed into their house, killing his 8-year-old son, in February last year.
"At the camp our only relief was that we were alive," he told the Associated Press, describing and the harsh conditions, including a lack of clean water, he and other detainees had endured.
"We were worried when we will be able to return home… Hospital visits were the only times I got to go out."
Rasanayagam said he was relieved to return home to his farm, but wept as he remembered his son.
"When I go home I will miss my son more," he said.
The state department report covered the period of the final government offensive in the war from January until the end of May.
A spokesman in the office of the Sri Lankan president dismissed the report, saying that the government is "going to thoroughly investigate everything".
"We have a rule of law in this country; we have a court system in our country. We can investigate things," Lucien Karunanayake told Al Jazeera.
"The investigation process is the Sri Lankan legal process. Complaints have to be made, verified, indictments filed, arguments made in court and then decisions taken."
Karunanayake said any investigation would depend "so much on what is being said by whom and on what basis".
"The Sri Lankan government is a sovereign state," he said.
"This state must be satisfied that there is sufficient need for any such inquiry, [and] so far there is no sufficient need."
Brad Adams, Asia director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that he believed the report's claims to be "credible".
It ""should dispel any doubts that serious abuses were committed during the conflict's final months", he said.
Adams called for an independent, international investigation into the allegations, given what he said was "Sri Lanka's complete failure to investigate possible war
crimes".
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
October 23, 2009
More than 4,000 ethnic Tamils have been released from government-run detention camps in northern Sri Lanka, and allowed to return home.
The freed detainees are part of a larger group of 40,000 who have been cleared to return to former Tamil Tiger strongholds, in the largest release from the camps since the end of the civil war five months ago.
The release comes amid international criticism that authorities are not moving fast enough to clear the camps, and coincides with the publication of a US state department report detailing allegations of war crimes by both sides in the final stages of the conflict.
The detainees are being returned to their homes in the north of the country - an area that was repeatedly shelled in the final stages of government's 25 year war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or Tamil Tigers.
Following the end of the conflict in May, an estimated 270,000 minority Tamil civilians who had fled the final months of fierce fighting were forced into the detention camps.
Thousands resettled
About 15,000 people have since been resettled and government officials last month told the UN that all displaced Tamils would be allowed to return home by the end of January.
The government has said it needs to screen the detained Tamils for ties to the LTTE before they can be released, and says it needs time to clear mines and other dangers from Tamil villages.
In depth
Sri Lanka's uneasy peace
Q&A: Sri Lanka's civil war
No welfare for Sri Lanka's Tamils
UN vows to press Colombo on Tamils
Sri Lanka rejects 'execution' video
VIDEOS
Sri Lanka frees Tamil refugees
101East: After the war
Sri Lanka's "welfare camps"
Aftermath of civil war
Colombo faces resettlement pressure
Colombo pressed on refugees
Sri Lankan media war continues
But the detention has been condemned by human rights groups as an illegal form of collective punishment for Tamils following the government's victory in the war.
The United Nations and other humanitarian groups have also expressed concerns over the conditions in camps, which they say are overcrowded and prone to disease.
There have also been concerns that the imminent monsoons will cause the camps' limited sanitation systems to overflow, creating a public health crisis.
The government has said it will compensate the returning Tamils, but has not given specifics on what assistance it will offer.
"We will take steps to give you all that you lost, other than the lost lives," Basil Rajapaksa, a senior government adviser and brother of Sri Lanka's president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, told a public meeting in the village of Kathankulam.
Thursday's release of Tamil detainees comes amid calls from the US for an international investigation into potential rights violations by both sides during the final stages of the war.
In Washington, a spokesman for the US state department called on the Sri Lankan authorities to take steps to "thoroughly investigate" what he said were "credible" claims of atrocities committed by government forces and Tamil Tigers detailed in a department report.
"Ultimately, as appropriate, (they should) bring to justice those who are found guilty," Ian Kelly said following publication of the report, which was sent to congress on Wednesday.
Child soldiers
The US report contains allegations that LTTE fighters took boys and girls to join their guerrilla force, and says government forces broke a ceasefire as well as killed rebels who had agreed to surrender.
It also cites claims that government troops or government-backed paramilitaries "abducted and in some instances then killed Tamil civilians, particularly children and young men".
Returning home
Sebastianpillai Rasanayagam, a 42-year-old rice farmer, was one of a group of more than 1,000 refugees bussed home to northern Mannar district following the latest release.
His family had fled after a shell slammed into their house, killing his 8-year-old son, in February last year.
"At the camp our only relief was that we were alive," he told the Associated Press, describing and the harsh conditions, including a lack of clean water, he and other detainees had endured.
"We were worried when we will be able to return home… Hospital visits were the only times I got to go out."
Rasanayagam said he was relieved to return home to his farm, but wept as he remembered his son.
"When I go home I will miss my son more," he said.
The state department report covered the period of the final government offensive in the war from January until the end of May.
A spokesman in the office of the Sri Lankan president dismissed the report, saying that the government is "going to thoroughly investigate everything".
"We have a rule of law in this country; we have a court system in our country. We can investigate things," Lucien Karunanayake told Al Jazeera.
"The investigation process is the Sri Lankan legal process. Complaints have to be made, verified, indictments filed, arguments made in court and then decisions taken."
Karunanayake said any investigation would depend "so much on what is being said by whom and on what basis".
"The Sri Lankan government is a sovereign state," he said.
"This state must be satisfied that there is sufficient need for any such inquiry, [and] so far there is no sufficient need."
Brad Adams, Asia director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that he believed the report's claims to be "credible".
It ""should dispel any doubts that serious abuses were committed during the conflict's final months", he said.
Adams called for an independent, international investigation into the allegations, given what he said was "Sri Lanka's complete failure to investigate possible war
crimes".
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
Agony in Sri Lanka's refugee camp
BBC News | South Asia
Sunday, 24 May 2009
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spent Saturday in Sri Lanka pressing for political reconciliation and full humanitarian access for displaced people in camps, following Colombo's declaration of victory over Tamil Tigers rebels.
The BBC's UN correspondent Laura Trevelyan was travelling with Mr Ban and sent this report:
The Menik Farm camp in northern Sri Lanka has a distinctly military air for a place which is housing more than 200,000 people displaced by the fighting.
There is barbed wire everywhere, and camouflage-clad soldiers who are not at all keen on journalists speaking to those inside the camp.
As Mr Ban arrived amid a cloud of dust generated by his helicopter to see for himself the conditions in which people are living, there was an official welcome. Next came a presentation by Sri Lankan officials, about how well run the camp is.
Screening
Yet there is clearly overcrowding here. Gerson Brandao, from the UN's office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, explained that on one plot of land more than 74,000 people were living in a space designed for half that number.
It was a very sobering visit, very sad and very moving.
The Sri Lankan government will not let the mostly Tamil people here leave yet.
They are screening them to make sure they are not a security risk (i.e. Tamil Tigers who might begin to fight again).
The UN says people must be allowed to reunite with their families. Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama told me the screening process is on course and when it is over the resettlement will begin.
What about allowing agencies full access to people here, I asked Mr Bogollagama.
"You can see how much humanitarian access people are enjoying," answered. "People here were denied their basic human rights by the LTTE [Tamil Tigers]."
Malnourished patients
Mr Ban was serenaded by well turned out children waving Sri Lankan flags. The camp floor was neatly swept, there were flowers in the gardens. A huge sign welcomed Mr Ban "to our motherland".
Some of the patients in a makeshift hospital were clearly malnourished
Yet there was no disguising the agony here.
Women spoke of walking through water to escape the fighting, being shelled from both sides, by the government and the Tamil Tigers.
In a makeshift hospital Mr Ban saw elderly, malnourished patients lying on cot beds in the open air, drips attached, flies buzzing round their heads. A few looked close to death.
Mr Ban was clearly moved by what he saw, describing himself as saddened and humbled.
He praised the Sri Lankan government for the help it is providing, while saying it lacked capacity - diplomatic code that more can be done.
'Vision of hell'
From the camp we were off by helicopter once again - this time to see the conflict zone itself - by Mullaitivu.
Mr Ban was flown over the area where the rebels made their last stand
We were the first international journalists to see the scene of the final days of the fighting.
The tiny spit of land in north-eastern Sri Lanka could be a beach paradise. Instead it is like a vision of hell.
Houses have been destroyed, buses blown up, palm trees devastated, and there are craters in the beach. On the sand I saw row after row of tents.
People lived in these cramped conditions, allegedly used by the Tamil Tigers as a human shield while the Sri Lankan military closed in.
Mr Ban did not land and look around the conflict zone. As a guest of the Sri Lankan authorities, he was well aware of the risk of being used by the government to portray international support for their military victory.
So he flew over instead, looking from the safety of the sky.
Joint statement
From there, Mr Ban went on to meet President Rajapaksa. UN officials were hoping to underline with him the importance of winning the peace as well as the war, by reaching out to Tamils and giving them rights in a comprehensive political settlement.
"If issues of reconciliation and social inclusion are not dealt with, history could repeat itself," warned Mr Ban.
The two men issued a joint statement after their meeting.
On the situation in the camps, the statement said the government would continue to provide access to humanitarian agencies, which did not acknowledge that it was not quite doing that.
President Rajapaksa says he will begin talks with all parties - including the Tamils - to bring about lasting peace.
Mr Ban in his dogged way has prodded the Sri Lankan government to address the concerns about the camps and work for reconciliation. The test of his influence is whether anything here changes.
Sunday, 24 May 2009
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spent Saturday in Sri Lanka pressing for political reconciliation and full humanitarian access for displaced people in camps, following Colombo's declaration of victory over Tamil Tigers rebels.
The BBC's UN correspondent Laura Trevelyan was travelling with Mr Ban and sent this report:
The Menik Farm camp in northern Sri Lanka has a distinctly military air for a place which is housing more than 200,000 people displaced by the fighting.
There is barbed wire everywhere, and camouflage-clad soldiers who are not at all keen on journalists speaking to those inside the camp.
As Mr Ban arrived amid a cloud of dust generated by his helicopter to see for himself the conditions in which people are living, there was an official welcome. Next came a presentation by Sri Lankan officials, about how well run the camp is.
Screening
Yet there is clearly overcrowding here. Gerson Brandao, from the UN's office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, explained that on one plot of land more than 74,000 people were living in a space designed for half that number.
It was a very sobering visit, very sad and very moving.
The Sri Lankan government will not let the mostly Tamil people here leave yet.
They are screening them to make sure they are not a security risk (i.e. Tamil Tigers who might begin to fight again).
The UN says people must be allowed to reunite with their families. Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama told me the screening process is on course and when it is over the resettlement will begin.
What about allowing agencies full access to people here, I asked Mr Bogollagama.
"You can see how much humanitarian access people are enjoying," answered. "People here were denied their basic human rights by the LTTE [Tamil Tigers]."
Malnourished patients
Mr Ban was serenaded by well turned out children waving Sri Lankan flags. The camp floor was neatly swept, there were flowers in the gardens. A huge sign welcomed Mr Ban "to our motherland".
Some of the patients in a makeshift hospital were clearly malnourished
Yet there was no disguising the agony here.
Women spoke of walking through water to escape the fighting, being shelled from both sides, by the government and the Tamil Tigers.
In a makeshift hospital Mr Ban saw elderly, malnourished patients lying on cot beds in the open air, drips attached, flies buzzing round their heads. A few looked close to death.
Mr Ban was clearly moved by what he saw, describing himself as saddened and humbled.
He praised the Sri Lankan government for the help it is providing, while saying it lacked capacity - diplomatic code that more can be done.
'Vision of hell'
From the camp we were off by helicopter once again - this time to see the conflict zone itself - by Mullaitivu.
Mr Ban was flown over the area where the rebels made their last stand
We were the first international journalists to see the scene of the final days of the fighting.
The tiny spit of land in north-eastern Sri Lanka could be a beach paradise. Instead it is like a vision of hell.
Houses have been destroyed, buses blown up, palm trees devastated, and there are craters in the beach. On the sand I saw row after row of tents.
People lived in these cramped conditions, allegedly used by the Tamil Tigers as a human shield while the Sri Lankan military closed in.
Mr Ban did not land and look around the conflict zone. As a guest of the Sri Lankan authorities, he was well aware of the risk of being used by the government to portray international support for their military victory.
So he flew over instead, looking from the safety of the sky.
Joint statement
From there, Mr Ban went on to meet President Rajapaksa. UN officials were hoping to underline with him the importance of winning the peace as well as the war, by reaching out to Tamils and giving them rights in a comprehensive political settlement.
"If issues of reconciliation and social inclusion are not dealt with, history could repeat itself," warned Mr Ban.
The two men issued a joint statement after their meeting.
On the situation in the camps, the statement said the government would continue to provide access to humanitarian agencies, which did not acknowledge that it was not quite doing that.
President Rajapaksa says he will begin talks with all parties - including the Tamils - to bring about lasting peace.
Mr Ban in his dogged way has prodded the Sri Lankan government to address the concerns about the camps and work for reconciliation. The test of his influence is whether anything here changes.
Barbed wire villages raise fears of refugee concentration camps
From The TimesOnline
February 13, 2009
Jeremy Page, South Asia Correspondent
Sri Lanka was accused yesterday of planning concentration camps to hold 200,000 ethnic Tamil refugees from its northeastern conflict zone for up to three years — and seeking funding for the project from Britain.
The Sri Lankan Government says that it will open five “welfare villages” to house Tamils fleeing the 67 sq mile patch of jungle where the army has pinned down the Tamil Tiger rebels.
The ministry in charge says that the camps, in Vavuniya and Mannar districts, will have schools, banks, parks and vocational centres to help to rehabilitate up to 200,000 displaced Tamils after a 25-year civil war.
It also says that it will be compulsory for people fleeing the area to live in the camps until the army — which will guard them — has screened them, hunted down the Tigers and demined the area. The camps will be ringed with barbed wire fencing and, while those with relatives inside will be allowed to come and go after initial screening, young and/or single people will not be allowed to leave, it says.
Related Links
The barbed wire returns
Sri Lanka rejects appointment of British envoy
Fears over Sri Lanka concentration camps
It originally proposed holding them for up to three years, but after protests from the UN refugee agency now says that it hopes to resettle 80 per cent by the end of the year. “Of course, it will not be voluntary — we need to check everyone,” Rajiva Wijesinha, the Secretary of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, told The Times. “This is a situation where we’re dealing with terrorists who infiltrate civilian populations. Security has to be paramount.” He said that it was the only way to prevent Tiger suicide attacks like the one that killed 20 soldiers and eight civilians on Tuesday.
Indian and Sri Lankan Tamil MPs expressed outrage and urged the international community not to fund the camps without direct oversight and independent media access. “These are nothing but concentration camps,” said Raman Senthil, an Indian Tamil MP. “Why should they be in camps? If they are citizens they should be rehabilitated straight away.”
Mano Ganeshan, a Sri Lankan Tamil MP, said: “I don’t want to say concentration camp yet, but they’re already detention camps and military grilling stations. They should be run and monitored by the international community.” Suren Surendiran, of the British Tamils Forum, said that the camps were “like the detention centres where the Jews were held in World War Two”.
Robert Evans, a Labour MEP who has visited Sri Lanka as chairman of the European Parliament Delegation on Relations with South Asia, said: “These are not welfare camps, they are prisoner-of-war cum concentration camps.” Human Rights Watch called the camps “detention centres” and said that they violated UN guidelines on internally displaced people, which say they can only be detained or interned under exceptional circumstances. “The Sri Lankan Government has not demonstrated that such circumstances exist,” said Charu Hogg, a Human Rights Watch spokeswoman.
Amnesty International said that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights obliged Sri Lanka to refrain from arbitrarily depriving any person’s right to liberty. “The Government wants international assistance but not international standards,” said Yolanda Foster, Amnesty’s Sri Lanka expert.
President Rajapaksa said last week that the army was within days of defeating the Tigers, and rejected international calls for a ceasefire. The Government says that 32,000 civilians have fled the conflict zone in the past week and are being processed at 13 temporary camps. Amnesty describes those as “de facto detention centres” and accuses the army of taking hostages by allowing people to leave only if a relative stays behind. The Government says that Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and international aid agencies are prejudiced towards the Tigers.
For that reason, Professor Wijesinha said, the Government would limit aid groups’ access to camps and allow journalists to visit only on government tours. He said that President Rajapaksa’s office drafted the original proposal two weeks ago and circulated it to foreign embassies and aid agencies to raise funding. “There’s talk that the British will provide a couple of million pounds,” he said.
Britain’s Department for International Development denied that, saying: “Prolonging the displacement of this vulnerable group of people is not in anyone’s interests. There is no UK government money going into the camps.”
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said that the Government revised its proposal after concerns were raised over the three-year detention period. A new version was committed to resettling people as soon as possible, said Sulakshani Perera, a UNHCR spokeswoman. She said Basil Rajapaksa, the President’s brother, had said it would not be compulsory for anyone to enter the camps.
February 13, 2009
Jeremy Page, South Asia Correspondent
Sri Lanka was accused yesterday of planning concentration camps to hold 200,000 ethnic Tamil refugees from its northeastern conflict zone for up to three years — and seeking funding for the project from Britain.
The Sri Lankan Government says that it will open five “welfare villages” to house Tamils fleeing the 67 sq mile patch of jungle where the army has pinned down the Tamil Tiger rebels.
The ministry in charge says that the camps, in Vavuniya and Mannar districts, will have schools, banks, parks and vocational centres to help to rehabilitate up to 200,000 displaced Tamils after a 25-year civil war.
It also says that it will be compulsory for people fleeing the area to live in the camps until the army — which will guard them — has screened them, hunted down the Tigers and demined the area. The camps will be ringed with barbed wire fencing and, while those with relatives inside will be allowed to come and go after initial screening, young and/or single people will not be allowed to leave, it says.
Related Links
The barbed wire returns
Sri Lanka rejects appointment of British envoy
Fears over Sri Lanka concentration camps
It originally proposed holding them for up to three years, but after protests from the UN refugee agency now says that it hopes to resettle 80 per cent by the end of the year. “Of course, it will not be voluntary — we need to check everyone,” Rajiva Wijesinha, the Secretary of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, told The Times. “This is a situation where we’re dealing with terrorists who infiltrate civilian populations. Security has to be paramount.” He said that it was the only way to prevent Tiger suicide attacks like the one that killed 20 soldiers and eight civilians on Tuesday.
Indian and Sri Lankan Tamil MPs expressed outrage and urged the international community not to fund the camps without direct oversight and independent media access. “These are nothing but concentration camps,” said Raman Senthil, an Indian Tamil MP. “Why should they be in camps? If they are citizens they should be rehabilitated straight away.”
Mano Ganeshan, a Sri Lankan Tamil MP, said: “I don’t want to say concentration camp yet, but they’re already detention camps and military grilling stations. They should be run and monitored by the international community.” Suren Surendiran, of the British Tamils Forum, said that the camps were “like the detention centres where the Jews were held in World War Two”.
Robert Evans, a Labour MEP who has visited Sri Lanka as chairman of the European Parliament Delegation on Relations with South Asia, said: “These are not welfare camps, they are prisoner-of-war cum concentration camps.” Human Rights Watch called the camps “detention centres” and said that they violated UN guidelines on internally displaced people, which say they can only be detained or interned under exceptional circumstances. “The Sri Lankan Government has not demonstrated that such circumstances exist,” said Charu Hogg, a Human Rights Watch spokeswoman.
Amnesty International said that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights obliged Sri Lanka to refrain from arbitrarily depriving any person’s right to liberty. “The Government wants international assistance but not international standards,” said Yolanda Foster, Amnesty’s Sri Lanka expert.
President Rajapaksa said last week that the army was within days of defeating the Tigers, and rejected international calls for a ceasefire. The Government says that 32,000 civilians have fled the conflict zone in the past week and are being processed at 13 temporary camps. Amnesty describes those as “de facto detention centres” and accuses the army of taking hostages by allowing people to leave only if a relative stays behind. The Government says that Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and international aid agencies are prejudiced towards the Tigers.
For that reason, Professor Wijesinha said, the Government would limit aid groups’ access to camps and allow journalists to visit only on government tours. He said that President Rajapaksa’s office drafted the original proposal two weeks ago and circulated it to foreign embassies and aid agencies to raise funding. “There’s talk that the British will provide a couple of million pounds,” he said.
Britain’s Department for International Development denied that, saying: “Prolonging the displacement of this vulnerable group of people is not in anyone’s interests. There is no UK government money going into the camps.”
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said that the Government revised its proposal after concerns were raised over the three-year detention period. A new version was committed to resettling people as soon as possible, said Sulakshani Perera, a UNHCR spokeswoman. She said Basil Rajapaksa, the President’s brother, had said it would not be compulsory for anyone to enter the camps.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Concentration Camps in America
"The police state has become a work of art." —Marshall McLuhan
(The information from this article is from back when Bush was still President.)
Some nine years ago a French-Canadian reporter named Serge Monast called the ministry, desperate to speak with me personally. Mr. Monast stated he had come into possession of documents which proved the existence of a secret plan for a concentration camp system throughout North America. He sent them to me and, after a parallel investigation of my own, I became convinced the documents were authentic. Serge Monast was telling the truth. The horrible, horrible truth.
Not too long afterward, Serge Monast, a vigorous man in his 40s, died unexpectedly of a brief and mysterious illness. His friends suspected foul play, but there was no definite proof he was murdered. Just before he died, Serge wrote to tell me he would be contacting me soon to give me details of stunning new information he had discovered about the concentration camps, including a map pinpointing locations. Information which, Serge assured me, "will blow your mind."
I never received that information. Serge Monast died before he could get it to me. I made a promise back then that I would get to the bottom of this matter and report the truth to you, the dear readers of Power of Prophecy newsletter, who truly care for humanity and are concerned about the rapid growth of the Police State.
Now, after years of intensive research and investigation, I have just released my latest video, Gulag USA—Concentration Camps in America (Available in VHS or DVD). In this jaw-dropping new video, I present a mountain of new evidence and facts with many photographic materials. I encourage you to obtain a copy of this revealing and documented video. Judge the facts for yourself-and then act accordingly.
This is believed to be a U.S. government concentration camp in Arizona.
In Gulag USA, I examine and review the bloody and deadly historical record of concentration camps. Many believe the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s were the first to develop the systematic use of such camps. In fact, for over 150 years, genocidal concentration camps have been used to roundup, incarcerate, torture, and methodically massacre targeted "enemies of the state," "inferior races," or "class enemies."
"Exterminate all the brutes"
In the colonial era in Africa, the British became experts at genocide. This was justified, wrote the great liberal philosopher Herbert Spencer, insisting that "imperialism has served civilization by clearing the inferior races off the earth."
The blacks, the European conquerors concluded, were "like unto brute beasts," worthy of slavery, isolation, banishment and death. As the bloodthirsty character Kurtz, in Conrad's apocalyptic novel, Heart of Darkness, remarked, "Exterminate all the brutes."
Later, the Bolshevik Communists, international Jews under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, further refined the genocidal goals of concentration camps. While some ethnic and racial groups, such as the Kulaks, were chosen for extinction by Soviet gulag, the Communists mostly chose as their victims those whom they believed to be enemies, or "potential" enemies, of their peculiar Illuminist philosophy. In this category, enforcing section 58 of the USSR's criminal code, the Soviets rounded up people adjudged guilty of "thought crimes."
Then, of course, there were the millions who were abducted and taken away, not for anything they had said or done, but simply as a means of raising fear and terror in the hearts and minds of the remaining populace.
"What we need," raged the insane Lenin, is "more Red terror. More and more and more."
The Nazis ran dozens of concentration camps. The Soviets had thousands.
The Theory and Practice of Hell
I recently reread Eugen Kogon's thought provoking book, The Theory and Practice of Hell, which is a description of the hellishness of Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Lublin. It is obvious that Adolf Hitler and his SS Gestapo chieftain, Heinrich Himmler, simply followed the pattern of Communist Russia's busily functioning Gulag concentration camp system. Hitler was a great admirer of the methods of Stalin and the Communists, and he warmly welcomed former German Communists as new members of his Nazi party.
In a postnote to his book, Kogon even shows how, in the post World War II period, after helping to conquer the Germans, the Russians conveniently seized and kept in operation all the Nazi concentration camps. In places like Ravensbruch and Sachsenhausen, the Communists built up prisoner populations of up to 250,000 inmates per concentration camp.
In the investigative exposé book, An Eye for an Eye, Jonathan Sack, himself a Jew, sadly notes that the Soviet regime installed ruthless Communist Jews as commandants of these brutal horror camps. Their victims included forbidden "class enemies," certain categories of "intellectuals," hapless German women and children driven off their lands and out of their apartments simply because they looked "too German," and American POWs captured by the Nazis. (The Russians never released these American POWs. After the war, they either killed them or shipped them as slaves to Siberia to die of overwork and starvation.)
The Japanese, too, were busy in the 30s and 40s building concentration camps in China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. And in
Harbinger of things to come? Victims' bones of Cambodia's incredible genocide are stacked behind a monk. The Khmer Rouge communists of the 1970s learned their gruesome techniques of concentration camp "science" from a study of Stalin's and Mao's death camps.
the United States, 33rd degree Mason President Franklin D. Roosevelt, his FBI Masonic crony, J. Edgar Hoover, and other bureaucratic pals built America's own version of such gulags—"internment camps" for Japanese Americans. Japanese who refused to voluntarily climb into the crude cattle trucks to be hauled off to the camps were often beaten and forcibly hauled away in handcuffs.
Most of the American people applauded. After all, anything that insures our security from potential terrorists is a good thing, right?
The Deadly "Operation Phoenix"
In Vietnam, in the 60s and 70s, the United States really got its concentration camp program in high gear. The CIA and U.S. Army special units set up a string of torture and death camps throughout South Vietnam. The program was called "Operation Phoenix." Sometimes, entire villages and towns were targeted for extinction. My Lai was one such village, and U.S. Army Lt. William Calley and his soldiers carried out orders and wiped out hundreds of men, women and children at My Lai.
This is the carnage of Jim Jones' Peoples Temple in Guyana, South America.
Independent investigators now believe this to have been an experimental death, torture, and brainwashing camp clandestinely run by the CIA.
To cover up their atrocities, the CIA ordered an assassin team to go in and kill Jones and his followers. The Guyana coroner reported that most died of gunshot wounds, not cyanide poisoning.
Just like in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, the genocidal butchers of the U.S.A. used the best of statistical and high tech methods in their Vietnamese concentration camp program. Death quotas had to be fulfilled by village chiefs, local political bureaucrats and lower-level commanders.
As Doug Valentine points out in his powerfully documented book, The Phoenix Program, "neutralization quotas put on them meant they had to sentence so many people a month regardless. And God, if you ever saw those prisons!"
In Hostages of War, Don Luce also examines the perverse Phoenix Program, recounting its massive and unjustifiable use of torture, repression, and assassination. Most victims, he notes, were innocent, brought in only after a nosey neighbor, village gossipper, or family enemy falsely reported them to authorities as a potential threat to security. Many were accused of saying something they shouldn't have said, or of "insufficient support" for the political system.
Both Valentine and Luce say this demented brainchild system came straight out of The Company (the CIA) in Langley, Virginia. Computers were used by the thugs that ran it, and everyone in authority, from the military officials, to the U.S. Ambassador, the bureaucrats of the State Department, and the occupants of the White House, knew of Phoenix.
But—consider this—the American people knew little or nothing about Phoenix. And to this day, over three decades later, the press (CBS, NBC, ABC, Washington Post, etc.) still refuse to report the facts.
Those who scoff at the very word, "conspiracy," better rethink things. How often have you heard the faulty rhetoric, "Oh, I don't believe in conspiracies. If that was true, why don't I read about it in the newspaper or see it exposed on the TV news?"
Sure, just the way Phoenix was so courageously exposed by our bold journalists, huh?
Investigators found this rail car, equipped with shackles, parked in an isolated area on the train tracks. It appears to be designed to transport prisoners.
"Everything Must Change"
In my video, Gulag USA (Available in VHS or DVD), you will see just how close we are to that scary night when the jackbooted thugs of America's ruthless new Special Forces Gestapo will begin breaking down doors and hauling Christians and patriots off to the camps. These gulag camps are already built. They are being furnished with the most heinous of torture devices. Some will be equipped with guillotines and crematoria. Thumbscrews, cattle prods, branding irons, skull crushers, tongue clamps, and microchip implantation devices will be used in dark dungeons of torture and death.
Bush, Ashcroft, Tenet and the boys are preparing the way, conditioning the mass public, rousing fear and alarm, declaring that cell after cell of domestic and foreign terrorists are out there, "plotting more crimes of infamy." If necessary, Washington, D.C. tells us, the Constitution must be shelved. The need for the peoples' security and safety make the Bill of Rights antiquated and obsolete. Torture, also, must be made acceptable say Jewish lawyers like New York's Alan Dershowitz and associates.
During the French Revolution, as the Masonic/ Illuminist plotters ominously rounded up frightened legions of bewildered men, women, and children targeted for rape, torture, mass drownings, and the guillotine, the revolutionary leaders of the government in Paris, led by Robespierre, Voltaire, and other Illuminists, cried out "Everything now is different. Everything has changed. Liberty requires action. Carpe Diem! (Seize the day!)" Listen closely, my friends, for that same, fatal cry is being loudly cried out, even today, in the U.S.A. And the same devils are behind it.
(The information from this article is from back when Bush was still President.)
Some nine years ago a French-Canadian reporter named Serge Monast called the ministry, desperate to speak with me personally. Mr. Monast stated he had come into possession of documents which proved the existence of a secret plan for a concentration camp system throughout North America. He sent them to me and, after a parallel investigation of my own, I became convinced the documents were authentic. Serge Monast was telling the truth. The horrible, horrible truth.
Not too long afterward, Serge Monast, a vigorous man in his 40s, died unexpectedly of a brief and mysterious illness. His friends suspected foul play, but there was no definite proof he was murdered. Just before he died, Serge wrote to tell me he would be contacting me soon to give me details of stunning new information he had discovered about the concentration camps, including a map pinpointing locations. Information which, Serge assured me, "will blow your mind."
I never received that information. Serge Monast died before he could get it to me. I made a promise back then that I would get to the bottom of this matter and report the truth to you, the dear readers of Power of Prophecy newsletter, who truly care for humanity and are concerned about the rapid growth of the Police State.
Now, after years of intensive research and investigation, I have just released my latest video, Gulag USA—Concentration Camps in America (Available in VHS or DVD). In this jaw-dropping new video, I present a mountain of new evidence and facts with many photographic materials. I encourage you to obtain a copy of this revealing and documented video. Judge the facts for yourself-and then act accordingly.
This is believed to be a U.S. government concentration camp in Arizona.
In Gulag USA, I examine and review the bloody and deadly historical record of concentration camps. Many believe the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s were the first to develop the systematic use of such camps. In fact, for over 150 years, genocidal concentration camps have been used to roundup, incarcerate, torture, and methodically massacre targeted "enemies of the state," "inferior races," or "class enemies."
"Exterminate all the brutes"
In the colonial era in Africa, the British became experts at genocide. This was justified, wrote the great liberal philosopher Herbert Spencer, insisting that "imperialism has served civilization by clearing the inferior races off the earth."
The blacks, the European conquerors concluded, were "like unto brute beasts," worthy of slavery, isolation, banishment and death. As the bloodthirsty character Kurtz, in Conrad's apocalyptic novel, Heart of Darkness, remarked, "Exterminate all the brutes."
Later, the Bolshevik Communists, international Jews under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, further refined the genocidal goals of concentration camps. While some ethnic and racial groups, such as the Kulaks, were chosen for extinction by Soviet gulag, the Communists mostly chose as their victims those whom they believed to be enemies, or "potential" enemies, of their peculiar Illuminist philosophy. In this category, enforcing section 58 of the USSR's criminal code, the Soviets rounded up people adjudged guilty of "thought crimes."
Then, of course, there were the millions who were abducted and taken away, not for anything they had said or done, but simply as a means of raising fear and terror in the hearts and minds of the remaining populace.
"What we need," raged the insane Lenin, is "more Red terror. More and more and more."
The Nazis ran dozens of concentration camps. The Soviets had thousands.
The Theory and Practice of Hell
I recently reread Eugen Kogon's thought provoking book, The Theory and Practice of Hell, which is a description of the hellishness of Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Lublin. It is obvious that Adolf Hitler and his SS Gestapo chieftain, Heinrich Himmler, simply followed the pattern of Communist Russia's busily functioning Gulag concentration camp system. Hitler was a great admirer of the methods of Stalin and the Communists, and he warmly welcomed former German Communists as new members of his Nazi party.
In a postnote to his book, Kogon even shows how, in the post World War II period, after helping to conquer the Germans, the Russians conveniently seized and kept in operation all the Nazi concentration camps. In places like Ravensbruch and Sachsenhausen, the Communists built up prisoner populations of up to 250,000 inmates per concentration camp.
In the investigative exposé book, An Eye for an Eye, Jonathan Sack, himself a Jew, sadly notes that the Soviet regime installed ruthless Communist Jews as commandants of these brutal horror camps. Their victims included forbidden "class enemies," certain categories of "intellectuals," hapless German women and children driven off their lands and out of their apartments simply because they looked "too German," and American POWs captured by the Nazis. (The Russians never released these American POWs. After the war, they either killed them or shipped them as slaves to Siberia to die of overwork and starvation.)
The Japanese, too, were busy in the 30s and 40s building concentration camps in China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. And in
Harbinger of things to come? Victims' bones of Cambodia's incredible genocide are stacked behind a monk. The Khmer Rouge communists of the 1970s learned their gruesome techniques of concentration camp "science" from a study of Stalin's and Mao's death camps.
the United States, 33rd degree Mason President Franklin D. Roosevelt, his FBI Masonic crony, J. Edgar Hoover, and other bureaucratic pals built America's own version of such gulags—"internment camps" for Japanese Americans. Japanese who refused to voluntarily climb into the crude cattle trucks to be hauled off to the camps were often beaten and forcibly hauled away in handcuffs.
Most of the American people applauded. After all, anything that insures our security from potential terrorists is a good thing, right?
The Deadly "Operation Phoenix"
In Vietnam, in the 60s and 70s, the United States really got its concentration camp program in high gear. The CIA and U.S. Army special units set up a string of torture and death camps throughout South Vietnam. The program was called "Operation Phoenix." Sometimes, entire villages and towns were targeted for extinction. My Lai was one such village, and U.S. Army Lt. William Calley and his soldiers carried out orders and wiped out hundreds of men, women and children at My Lai.
This is the carnage of Jim Jones' Peoples Temple in Guyana, South America.
Independent investigators now believe this to have been an experimental death, torture, and brainwashing camp clandestinely run by the CIA.
To cover up their atrocities, the CIA ordered an assassin team to go in and kill Jones and his followers. The Guyana coroner reported that most died of gunshot wounds, not cyanide poisoning.
Just like in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, the genocidal butchers of the U.S.A. used the best of statistical and high tech methods in their Vietnamese concentration camp program. Death quotas had to be fulfilled by village chiefs, local political bureaucrats and lower-level commanders.
As Doug Valentine points out in his powerfully documented book, The Phoenix Program, "neutralization quotas put on them meant they had to sentence so many people a month regardless. And God, if you ever saw those prisons!"
In Hostages of War, Don Luce also examines the perverse Phoenix Program, recounting its massive and unjustifiable use of torture, repression, and assassination. Most victims, he notes, were innocent, brought in only after a nosey neighbor, village gossipper, or family enemy falsely reported them to authorities as a potential threat to security. Many were accused of saying something they shouldn't have said, or of "insufficient support" for the political system.
Both Valentine and Luce say this demented brainchild system came straight out of The Company (the CIA) in Langley, Virginia. Computers were used by the thugs that ran it, and everyone in authority, from the military officials, to the U.S. Ambassador, the bureaucrats of the State Department, and the occupants of the White House, knew of Phoenix.
But—consider this—the American people knew little or nothing about Phoenix. And to this day, over three decades later, the press (CBS, NBC, ABC, Washington Post, etc.) still refuse to report the facts.
Those who scoff at the very word, "conspiracy," better rethink things. How often have you heard the faulty rhetoric, "Oh, I don't believe in conspiracies. If that was true, why don't I read about it in the newspaper or see it exposed on the TV news?"
Sure, just the way Phoenix was so courageously exposed by our bold journalists, huh?
Investigators found this rail car, equipped with shackles, parked in an isolated area on the train tracks. It appears to be designed to transport prisoners.
"Everything Must Change"
In my video, Gulag USA (Available in VHS or DVD), you will see just how close we are to that scary night when the jackbooted thugs of America's ruthless new Special Forces Gestapo will begin breaking down doors and hauling Christians and patriots off to the camps. These gulag camps are already built. They are being furnished with the most heinous of torture devices. Some will be equipped with guillotines and crematoria. Thumbscrews, cattle prods, branding irons, skull crushers, tongue clamps, and microchip implantation devices will be used in dark dungeons of torture and death.
Bush, Ashcroft, Tenet and the boys are preparing the way, conditioning the mass public, rousing fear and alarm, declaring that cell after cell of domestic and foreign terrorists are out there, "plotting more crimes of infamy." If necessary, Washington, D.C. tells us, the Constitution must be shelved. The need for the peoples' security and safety make the Bill of Rights antiquated and obsolete. Torture, also, must be made acceptable say Jewish lawyers like New York's Alan Dershowitz and associates.
During the French Revolution, as the Masonic/ Illuminist plotters ominously rounded up frightened legions of bewildered men, women, and children targeted for rape, torture, mass drownings, and the guillotine, the revolutionary leaders of the government in Paris, led by Robespierre, Voltaire, and other Illuminists, cried out "Everything now is different. Everything has changed. Liberty requires action. Carpe Diem! (Seize the day!)" Listen closely, my friends, for that same, fatal cry is being loudly cried out, even today, in the U.S.A. And the same devils are behind it.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Gaza : A Death Camp ?
Saturday, 17 October 2009 13:01
Added by PT Editor Pal Tel Admin
The Palestine Telegraph
Gaza, October 17, 2009 (Pal Telegraph) - Thabet El Masri, is the Director of the Intensive Care Unit at the Shifa Hospital, a public institution in the Gaza Strip. He replies here to the questions of Silvia Cattori about the recent increase in the number of babies being born with birth defects. Gaza Israeli war crimes Israeli State terrorism Children victims
White phosphorus bombs on an UNRWA school in Beit Lahiya, January 17, 2009
Silvia Cattori: In June, you started to be concerned by an increase in the number of babies born with birth defects. We would be very interested to have your medical assessment and to know the result of the study you made of this troubling phenomenon. Can you tell us the ratio of prenatal and postnatal birth defects ten months after the attacks on Gaza in comparison with the same period in 2008, in terms of the number of cases involved?
Thabet El Masri: Yes I have been following the continuing phenomenon of babies born with a birth defect. I have calculated the number of babies with congenital defects born in July, August, and September, 2009. I have compared these three months with the same months in 2008.
Here are the figures: In July 2009, there were in Shifa Hospital 15 such cases, compared to 10 in 2008; in August 2009, there were 20 cases, compared to 10 in 2008 ; and in September 2009, 15 such babies were born, compared to 11 in 2008. The average number of births in Shifa Hospital is about 1'100 per month.
Silvia Cattori: When this report came out it caused a lot of emotion and concern. Many people immediately attributed the increase in birth defects in aborted foetuses and newborns to the Israeli army's use of white phosphorous shells. Do they have a case?
Thabet El Masri: We can suspect, but we cannot confirm, that it is the use of chemical weapons by Israel that caused this increase in birth defects.
Silvia Cattori: Are the babies with birth defects all from the refugee population subjected to Israeli shelling? Which area do the mothers come from?
Thabet El Masri: The babies suffering from birth defects come from all over the strip. But half of the women who gave birth to babies with problems come from the Jabaliya refugee camp.
Silvia Cattori: What can you do to reassure pregnant women in Gaza who are now very worried?
Thabet El Masri: Actually nothing. There is nothing we can do to guarantee that their babies will be normal. How could we prevent the presence of chemicals which can cause birth defects?
Silvia Cattori: Are there embryologists in Gaza who are able to make genetic tests?
Thabet El Masri: We are unfortunately not equipped to carry out genetic tests to see if birth defects are due to genetic factors alone and not to chemicals. In the end, it is a problem of genetics, but chemicals could well be responsible for the mutations.
Silvia Cattori: What about the international researchers who took samples in 2006 to be tested in European laboratories? Have there been any results yet?
Thabet El Masri: How can we solve this problem? If chemical factors are responsible, it is very difficult to prove. How can you prove that chemicals were at the root of the mutations? How can we be sure that the Israelis used prohibited substances?
Silvia Cattori: We understand that, as a doctor, you are deeply concerned and that, in the present desperate situation, you urgently need international support?
Thabet El Masri: Yes. I would like to suggest something that would help us, without draining our limited financial resources in genetic research, which requires a huge amount of money. Simply put, it would be extremely helpful to convince the Israelis not to repeat the chemical war of this past winter again.
Silvia Cattori: What kinds of pathologies do you observe in this summer's newborns? Can you give us some examples of the birth defects?
Thabet El Masri: You find problems of the central nervous system, hydrocephalus, anencephaly and other defects like congenital heart disease and obstructions of the digestive tract. Kidney problems are very frequent. Visible malformations are rare: the problems are usually internal.
Now you see what problems we have to face. The mothers are helpless; we have no answers for them. They know that we are all alone in this situation. They can only pray. That is the only thing left to them.
Silvia Cattori: You have no contacts outside?
Thabet El Masri: We have absolutely no contacts outside. I have given you an overview of the main problem. As I said, there is a probability that chemicals might be one cause of the upward trend in birth defects because they have increased since the assault in December and January. However, this conclusion is impossible to prove.
Interview by: Silvia Cattori
silviacattori.net/
Added by PT Editor Pal Tel Admin
The Palestine Telegraph
Gaza, October 17, 2009 (Pal Telegraph) - Thabet El Masri, is the Director of the Intensive Care Unit at the Shifa Hospital, a public institution in the Gaza Strip. He replies here to the questions of Silvia Cattori about the recent increase in the number of babies being born with birth defects. Gaza Israeli war crimes Israeli State terrorism Children victims
White phosphorus bombs on an UNRWA school in Beit Lahiya, January 17, 2009
Silvia Cattori: In June, you started to be concerned by an increase in the number of babies born with birth defects. We would be very interested to have your medical assessment and to know the result of the study you made of this troubling phenomenon. Can you tell us the ratio of prenatal and postnatal birth defects ten months after the attacks on Gaza in comparison with the same period in 2008, in terms of the number of cases involved?
Thabet El Masri: Yes I have been following the continuing phenomenon of babies born with a birth defect. I have calculated the number of babies with congenital defects born in July, August, and September, 2009. I have compared these three months with the same months in 2008.
Here are the figures: In July 2009, there were in Shifa Hospital 15 such cases, compared to 10 in 2008; in August 2009, there were 20 cases, compared to 10 in 2008 ; and in September 2009, 15 such babies were born, compared to 11 in 2008. The average number of births in Shifa Hospital is about 1'100 per month.
Silvia Cattori: When this report came out it caused a lot of emotion and concern. Many people immediately attributed the increase in birth defects in aborted foetuses and newborns to the Israeli army's use of white phosphorous shells. Do they have a case?
Thabet El Masri: We can suspect, but we cannot confirm, that it is the use of chemical weapons by Israel that caused this increase in birth defects.
Silvia Cattori: Are the babies with birth defects all from the refugee population subjected to Israeli shelling? Which area do the mothers come from?
Thabet El Masri: The babies suffering from birth defects come from all over the strip. But half of the women who gave birth to babies with problems come from the Jabaliya refugee camp.
Silvia Cattori: What can you do to reassure pregnant women in Gaza who are now very worried?
Thabet El Masri: Actually nothing. There is nothing we can do to guarantee that their babies will be normal. How could we prevent the presence of chemicals which can cause birth defects?
Silvia Cattori: Are there embryologists in Gaza who are able to make genetic tests?
Thabet El Masri: We are unfortunately not equipped to carry out genetic tests to see if birth defects are due to genetic factors alone and not to chemicals. In the end, it is a problem of genetics, but chemicals could well be responsible for the mutations.
Silvia Cattori: What about the international researchers who took samples in 2006 to be tested in European laboratories? Have there been any results yet?
Thabet El Masri: How can we solve this problem? If chemical factors are responsible, it is very difficult to prove. How can you prove that chemicals were at the root of the mutations? How can we be sure that the Israelis used prohibited substances?
Silvia Cattori: We understand that, as a doctor, you are deeply concerned and that, in the present desperate situation, you urgently need international support?
Thabet El Masri: Yes. I would like to suggest something that would help us, without draining our limited financial resources in genetic research, which requires a huge amount of money. Simply put, it would be extremely helpful to convince the Israelis not to repeat the chemical war of this past winter again.
Silvia Cattori: What kinds of pathologies do you observe in this summer's newborns? Can you give us some examples of the birth defects?
Thabet El Masri: You find problems of the central nervous system, hydrocephalus, anencephaly and other defects like congenital heart disease and obstructions of the digestive tract. Kidney problems are very frequent. Visible malformations are rare: the problems are usually internal.
Now you see what problems we have to face. The mothers are helpless; we have no answers for them. They know that we are all alone in this situation. They can only pray. That is the only thing left to them.
Silvia Cattori: You have no contacts outside?
Thabet El Masri: We have absolutely no contacts outside. I have given you an overview of the main problem. As I said, there is a probability that chemicals might be one cause of the upward trend in birth defects because they have increased since the assault in December and January. However, this conclusion is impossible to prove.
Interview by: Silvia Cattori
silviacattori.net/
Barack Obama visits Nazi concentration camp
Obama rebukes Iranian leader's Holocaust denial - trip to Nazi camp builds on totalitarianism warning.
guardian.co.uk
Kate Connolly in Berlin
Friday 5 June 2009 19.31 BST
Barack Obama visited a former Nazi concentration camp which his great-uncle helped to liberate, laid a white rose at a memorial to its victims, and described the site where 56,000 people died as the "ultimate rebuke" to Holocaust deniers.
After seeing the crematoriums, guard towers and barbed-wire fences, and a clock set at 3:15 – when the camp was liberated on 11 April 1945 – Obama said: "These sites have not lost their horror. More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage have not diminished."
Obama's visit to Buchenwald, which because of the US military's role in its liberation has had a big impact on the US understanding of the Holocaust, gave him the opportunity to revisit themes touched on in his Cairo address on Wednesday, including the need to fight totalitarian ideology. It was also a chance to underline what he described in Egypt as America's "unbreakable" bond with Israel, as well as signalling to domestic and European audiences the important role the US military has played in world history.
He also made a thinly-veiled riposte to Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has questioned the Holocaust. "To this day, there are those who insist the Holocaust never happened," Obama said. "This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts, a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history." Earlier, he told NBC the Iranian president "should make his own visit" to Buchenwald. "I have no patience for people who would deny history," he said.
Accompanied by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, Obama said the camp had made an deep impression on him since he was told stories of how his great uncle, Charlie Payne, had helped liberate a Buchenwald sub-camp, Ohrdruf, as a member of the US 89th Infantry Division. "I've heard about this place since I was a boy," he said, recounting how Payne had had a "very difficult time readjusting to civilian life" after what he saw at the camp.
The impulse for the visit, during a 20-hour stopover in Germany en route to D-Day commemorations in France, came from the Nobel prize winner Wiesel, who was one of more than 900 children liberated from Buchenwald in April 1945.
On his first return, Wiesel, 80, spoke movingly of watching his father die just days before the camp was freed. "And I thought one day I would come back and talk to him and tell him of the world which had become mine. But can I tell him the world has learnt? I am not so sure." Obama embraced him after the speech.
Obama's Uncle Charlie, now 84, has expressed surprise in interviews with the German media. "We had never talked about that ...This is a trip he chose not because of me, I'm sure, but for political reasons," he told Der Spiegel magazine.
During Obama's election campaign, he referred to a great uncle who was "part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps". When it was pointed out that the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, his advisers quickly corrected the name.
Obama said Payne had been so traumatised that "when he came home he just went up into the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months". But Payne implied Obama may have exaggerated.
guardian.co.uk
Kate Connolly in Berlin
Friday 5 June 2009 19.31 BST
Barack Obama visited a former Nazi concentration camp which his great-uncle helped to liberate, laid a white rose at a memorial to its victims, and described the site where 56,000 people died as the "ultimate rebuke" to Holocaust deniers.
After seeing the crematoriums, guard towers and barbed-wire fences, and a clock set at 3:15 – when the camp was liberated on 11 April 1945 – Obama said: "These sites have not lost their horror. More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage have not diminished."
Obama's visit to Buchenwald, which because of the US military's role in its liberation has had a big impact on the US understanding of the Holocaust, gave him the opportunity to revisit themes touched on in his Cairo address on Wednesday, including the need to fight totalitarian ideology. It was also a chance to underline what he described in Egypt as America's "unbreakable" bond with Israel, as well as signalling to domestic and European audiences the important role the US military has played in world history.
He also made a thinly-veiled riposte to Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has questioned the Holocaust. "To this day, there are those who insist the Holocaust never happened," Obama said. "This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts, a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history." Earlier, he told NBC the Iranian president "should make his own visit" to Buchenwald. "I have no patience for people who would deny history," he said.
Accompanied by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, Obama said the camp had made an deep impression on him since he was told stories of how his great uncle, Charlie Payne, had helped liberate a Buchenwald sub-camp, Ohrdruf, as a member of the US 89th Infantry Division. "I've heard about this place since I was a boy," he said, recounting how Payne had had a "very difficult time readjusting to civilian life" after what he saw at the camp.
The impulse for the visit, during a 20-hour stopover in Germany en route to D-Day commemorations in France, came from the Nobel prize winner Wiesel, who was one of more than 900 children liberated from Buchenwald in April 1945.
On his first return, Wiesel, 80, spoke movingly of watching his father die just days before the camp was freed. "And I thought one day I would come back and talk to him and tell him of the world which had become mine. But can I tell him the world has learnt? I am not so sure." Obama embraced him after the speech.
Obama's Uncle Charlie, now 84, has expressed surprise in interviews with the German media. "We had never talked about that ...This is a trip he chose not because of me, I'm sure, but for political reasons," he told Der Spiegel magazine.
During Obama's election campaign, he referred to a great uncle who was "part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps". When it was pointed out that the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, his advisers quickly corrected the name.
Obama said Payne had been so traumatised that "when he came home he just went up into the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months". But Payne implied Obama may have exaggerated.
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