Thursday, November 19, 2009

HURRICANE IKE AFTERMATH

Ike victims say they feel pressure to leave trailers.

By HARVEY RICE
Copyright 2009
Houston Chronicle
Nov. 17, 2009


GALVESTON — Alida and Tom Duggan are fighting contractors, their insurance company and the bank in a struggle to rebuild their home in Bayou Vista, destroyed by Hurricane Ike.

“Our life has been a nightmare in hell the last year,” Alida Duggan said.

The trailer in Galveston furnished by the Federal Emergency Management Agency was one of the few strokes of luck for the Duggans. Now they are in danger of losing it as FEMA winds down its temporary housing program.

Residents at FEMA trailer sites in Galveston and High Island say caseworkers are pressuring them — sometimes aggressively — to move out of the trailers and into apartments even though the temporary housing program doesn't end until March 12.

A nonprofit group working with Ike victims says FEMA caseworkers are failing to advise trailer residents of all the available assistance, and another says FEMA pressured a disabled couple to move.

Residents feel they are being treated like deadbeats, said Yvonne VanZandt, who lives with her husband, Mike, in FEMA's High Island trailer park.

“We're not beach bums. We're gainfully employed,” she said. “They act like we're living the American dream up here.”

More than 3,700 Ike victims were in FEMA trailers at the height of the temporary housing program in Ike-ravaged Texas counties. That number has since dwindled to about 1,300 households.

In Galveston County, 472 FEMA trailers remain: 33 in commercial trailer parks, 388 in front of private homes and 51 in the two FEMA sites in Galveston and High Island.

Five FEMA trailer residents interviewed by the Houston Chronicle complained that FEMA caseworkers threatened to expel them from their trailers if they failed to accept the first apartment that became available. All five are hoping to rebuild their homes and are reluctant to sign a lease that they might have to break. The Duggans are making mortgage payments on their destroyed house and want to avoid the financial strain of adding rent payments.

Clark Stevens, spokesman at FEMA's Washington office, did not directly address the question of whether FEMA caseworkers were pressuring trailer residents, saying only that caseworkers were obligated to inform residents about all available assistance programs.

Dian Groh, a case manager for Boat People SOS, said she intervened to keep FEMA from forcing out a disabled couple in San Leon. FEMA wanted the couple, both unable to walk without assistance, out of their FEMA trailer before an access ramp could be installed in their repaired manufactured home, she said.

“Their goal was to get them out and get them out fast,” Groh said about FEMA.

‘This is … very frightening'
Some FEMA caseworkers — but not all of them — are polite and sympathetic, the trailer residents say.

John and Rebecca Sealy, who live in FEMA's High Island trailer community, have dubbed one case worker the “Jersey Devil” because of her aggressive attitude.

“She had to be the most rude, crude, unsociable human being I have ever talked to on the phone,” said Yvonne VanZandt, the Sealys' neighbor, about one caseworker.

VanZandt said she and her husband are being badgered by caseworkers even though they have signed a contract with a builder and could have their home rebuilt by the trailer program's March 12 deadline. She said caseworkers told her they would photograph her property to see if work was being done.

Stevens, the FEMA spokesman, said, “Any inappropriate behavior by caseworkers is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.” He said FEMA caseworkers work closely with each resident to help them develop a long-term housing plan tailored to their situation.

But FEMA caseworkers are not telling trailer residents about all the help available because they are not working closely enough with FEMA-funded nonprofit agencies that are also advising hurricane victims, said Joe Higgs, Gulf Coast Interfaith organizer.

“This is getting very frightening to people who are already traumatized,” Higgs said.

FEMA spokeswoman Patricia Brach said that five “letters of revocation” asking tenants to leave have been sent so far. Tenants have 60 days to correct the problem and can appeal their expulsion.

Extensions unlikely
After Hurricane Katrina, the 18-month temporary housing program was extended three times in Louisiana at the request of state and local governments, but that is unlikely to happen in Texas. Galveston County and Galveston city officials say they won't request an extension because they want the trailers out before the next hurricane season begins June 1.

Kemah, which has about a half dozen FEMA trailers on private property, wants them out of the city by the end of the year, City Administrator R.J. Kerber Jr. said. FEMA had to get permission from local governments to put trailers in the flood plain, and Kemah set the Dec. 31 deadline when it gave permission, Kerber said.

harvey.rice@chron.com

FEMA plans to establish emergency 'base camps' for 300 to 2,000 people

By Jacob Goodwin, Editor-in-Chief
GSN Government Security News
Published June 10th, 2009


FEMA is planning to award a contract to a logistics and management company that could establish and operate one or two "base camps" that could provide food, shelter and basic needs to approximately 300-2,000 people in each camp, in the event that the president declares a disaster or emergency anywhere in the continental U.S.

The chosen vendor must be capable of opening one or two base camps within 72 hours of receiving its task order, in case of an emergency, such as a hurricane, flood, earthquake, cyclone, tornado, blizzard, avalanche, tsunami or act of terrorism, according to a Request For Information (RFI) issued by FEMA on June 3.

"The contractor shall house all authorized camp occupants with tents or modular units, equip tents and other facilities with air conditioning and heating (HVAC) and leveled plywood floors (or equivalent) as well as provide bedding, meal services, kitchen, dining hall, limited recreation facilities, operations center, medical unit, refrigerated trucks, shower units, hand wash units, potable (drinking) water, water purification and manifold distribution systems, toilets, on-site manifold distribution of black and grey water and associated on-site sanitation systems, complete laundry service, industrial generators, and light towers," said FEMA's special notice.

The camps would operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the vendor would be expected to provide the "multi-disciplined personnel" to operate all the required services.

"Whenever practical, displaced citizens will be given the first opportunities for employment within the camp, assuming skills and capabilities are pertinent for the open positions," says the RFI.

The federal government would furnish the land for the site of the base camp, as well as security for the camp.

The contractor will provide a check-in facility at the entrance to the base camp which should function in accordance with the formats spelled out in the National Incident Management System (NIMS), says the FEMA document. The contractor will also provide photo identification cards for all camp occupants, which will be used to access lodging, base camp facilities, meals and laundry services.

The vendor will also provide "fencing and barricades around the perimeter of the base camp," it adds.

Prospective vendors are requested to provide their capabilities information to FEMA by June 17.

Why are children kept in concentration camps, asks Prof. Peter Schalk

TamilNet
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
By Peter Schalk


Stating that a list of details of children ranging from 1 month to 18 years, within the internment camps in Vavuniyaa, was being composed by concerned western academics and rights activists, Prof. Peter Schalk, of Uppsala University, Sweden, on Tuesday said out of 1,200 names they have composed 1,082 were orphans. The information is documented by human rights’ organisations in the field in August/September 2009. "The list gives unfortunately only a part of the total number of children in all concentration camps," he said adding that the list could be ordered from him. "The list makes it possible to follow up the fate of each child over time and makes denials by the Government of killings through neglect of children impossible," he said in a note sent to TamilNet.

"More than 250,000 humans are kept in concentration camps for 'screening' by the Government of Sri Lanka, allegedly to discover 'terrorists'. The question arises why children are kept there, even babies."

Professor Peter Schalk is long connected to Sri Lankan affairs, Buddhism and Tamil Studies and has contributed a number of scholarly publications.

Full text of the note follows:

Children in Sri Lanka’s Concentration Camps

More than 250 000 humans are kept in concentration camps for “screening” by the Government of Sri Lanka, allegedly to discover “terrorists”. The question arises why children are kept there, even babies. These Concentration camps are called “welfare camps” by the Sri Lankan Government.

I refer to the latest report by Human Rights Watch from October 10, 2009:

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/10/09/sri-lanka-tensions-mount-camp-conditions-deteriorate

It is in agreement with other international human rights organisations’ reports. In addition, I refer to the EU Commission’s report with an evaluation of Sri Lanka on 19 October 2009: http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2009/october/tradoc_145141.pdf

The following information is documented by human rights’ organisations in the field in August/September 2009. Names of the children have been left out here. The list makes it possible to follow up the fate of each child over time and makes denials by the Government of killings through neglect of children impossible. The list can be ordered from me. The world has an eye on every child listed. The list gives unfortunately only a part of the total number of children in all concentration camps.

1.Total number of children on the list: 1200
2.Names of the concentration camps and the number of children: Vavuniya Anantha Kumarasami Camp: 118; Vavuniya Arunachchala Camp: 65; Vavuniya Kathirkamar Camp: 8; Vavuniya Sheriliana: 50; Vavuniya Ulukkulam Camp: 959
3.Age of the children: Youngest: 1month. Oldest: 18 years.
4.Number under 5 years: 308
5.Girls: 536 Boys: 664
6.Orphans: 1082

The following is an eye witness report with special regard to children from a prisoner in a concentration camp. The prisoners managed to get free in August 2009. The whole report was published in October 2009 (http://www.tamilnet.com/img/publish/2009/10/Living_in_Menik_Farm.pdf), but the section on children was slightly revised for this message by the former prisoner who rightly prefers to be anonymous.

"I was interned in the ---- camp of Menik Farm----. During those four months in the camp, it is the condition of the children at the camp that I found most depressing. I was too timid to go around collecting statistics though it would have been easy to collect statistics because of the proximity of the people crowded within a small area. However, I observed carefully and was overwhelmed by the wasting away of the children.

"Newborn babies are sent to the camp conditions, which are unsuitable for adults, just few days after being born. Toddlers play in the filthy area right in front of the toilets. I have never seen flies and mosquitoes in such numbers in my life. While eating, one hand is fully occupied with chasing the flies; a practice that children will not adopt thus consuming food contaminated by flies that come straight from the toilets very nearby. Children of well off families who appeared well cared for on arrival at the camp were visibly wasting away during the stay in the camp. The contributory factors were poor diet, the hostile weather, and continuous illness.

"Majority of the children including infants did not have milk (powder) except an occasional packet handed out by some charity. Once a father of a seven month old baby came begging for some sugar to put in the plain tea (black tea) to be given to his seven month old baby because the mother did not have enough breast milk and the baby was hungry. Plain tea had become the regular diet for this baby.

"The diet was most definitely inadequate for the children despite some nutritional supplement that were distributed. There was no milk, meat or vegetable in their diet. Sometimes soya bean was given but they were of rotten quality and children would hardly eat them.

"Illness among children was pandemic and it wasted them. Small injuries became infected and caused problems. Vomiting, fever or diarrhea seemed a natural condition in most children. Measures of malnutrition maybe a standard way of measuring worst affected children but it does not capture the general condition of children wasting away. When a child runs a fever most parents worry a lot fearing Hepatitis-A infection.

"The queues are very long at the OPD clinics inside the camp and the doctors work at break neck speed. I have seen a doctor writing a prescription to a 12 year old boy without finding out what is wrong with the boy. The medicines that are dispensed are arranged in a table and the total list of medicines consists of around 30 different medicines. The medicine dispensers too work with breakneck speed in dispensing them. Once an educated mother told me that she visited the doctor for treatment for her baby as well as for herself. The medicine dispensers mixed up the medicines and gave the baby what should have been given to the mother. Since the mother had some awareness of the medications she spotted it. Most mothers in the camp who do not have such awareness would have given the adult medicine to the baby. God only knows how many babies, children and even adults died due such medical negligence. Who is there in the camp to watch, monitor and investigate? Deaths are just that, deaths and no investigations are done as to the cause of it.

"Patients often queue up for doctors for hours even before the doctors arrive from outside. No one in the OPD clinic will know when the doctors are likely to arrive. One just waits around taking one’s chances. For all this the level of sickness among inmates is far higher than among the population at large and it is obvious.

"Take the eight tent group where I was staying. Five of the tents out of the eight had children under 10. One child died; one became seriously ill and taken away to Vavuniya hospital and all the other children had frequent fever, vomiting and diarrhoea. The children were wasting away and it was visibly obvious. Some of the children had persistent skin disease despite several visits to the doctors and treatment. Four of the children contracted Hepatitis A and the parents were told by the doctors to just take good care of them and give lots of fruits because the hospitals had no medicine. Fruits were very expensive in the camp. There is a native treatment for HepatitisA involving a plant named “Keelkainelli” in Tamil. Even to get this plant was a struggle because it meant someone has to bring it from outside and handover to the inmates at the meeting spot as described later.

"People young and old suddenly dying after a few days of fever is a common occurrence. All of us were left puzzled as to the cause and no one gave any explanation. All of us without exception have suffered diarrhoea at least once and most of us many times.

"I used to keep telling myself during the stay in the camp how lucky I was that I do not have any young children under my care. The unhygienic living, especially the play area and the continuous illness is an ordeal for the young mothers. Even thinking about the condition of newborns and their mothers who are sent back to the camp conditions soon after birth is an ordeal. Perhaps the most telling scenes of the camp conditions and the health service can be found by visiting the OPD clinics and observing young mothers with very sick babies waiting for long time in queues with tears trickling down their face.

"Children went to makeshift schools staffed by teachers who were also interned in the camp. Many teachers have lamented how they can teach while living under such conditions. The school is made up of sheds with uneven floor covered with tarpaulin. The children cannot even place their books on the uneven floor to write. They have to keep the soft cover books on their knees to write.

"Most of the young children have to carry very heavy buckets of water to assist their parents who are also struggling to care for the children often as a single parent. The little bodies bent like a question mark under the weight surely would have done permanent damage.

"If we can tolerate the incarceration of the entire population of young children from a community which is clearly leading to long term damage to their development, how does this measure up in any of the international humanitarian/human rights laws? Can the long term damage done to them be measured and judged?"

Concentration Camps in Sri Lanka Hold 250,000 Families

By Alan Gray
For NewsBlaze
Nov 18, 2009


The government of Sri Lanka has imprisoned over a quarter million men, women and children, since the end of the 33 year civil war.

A humanitarian crisis is unfolding due to the deteriorating living conditions for the families held in the Sri Lankan government internment camps.

The Sri Lankan government interned approximately 280,000 innocent civilian survivors, about 10-percent of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in May of this year.

To control press coverage and suppress a public outcry for the inhumane treatment of the surviving Sri Lankan Tamil civilians, the government barred media from the camps.

In addition, the government has limited access to the camps to International NGOs, including the International Red Cross and organizations associated with the UN.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

UGANDA: "Mount Elgon Eviction Has Reduced Us to Beggars"

IPS News
By Wambi Michael

Mary Yeko: "Where we were, the air is fresh, we had water, we had medicinal plants."

Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

MOUNT ELGON, Uganda, Nov 13 (IPS) - "We have been reduced to begging from relatives and to migrate to urban areas where life is not safe. We were living in the mountain for more than 200 years. Transferring us means burying us, completely. We want to stay in our area and develop."

These are the words of Mejje Christopher, a former parish chief who now lives as a squatter in Kisitu, almost 30 km from Kapchorwa district in eastern Uganda. He finds it hard to cope with life in the lowlands after his people, the Benet, were evicted from land apparently earmarked for reforestation in the Mount Elgon National Park.

Controversy has surrounded the reforestation project in the park which is jointly run by the Netherlands-based FACE Foundation and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and was started with a view to generating carbon credits. FACE Foundation has denied that the eviction of the Benet is connected to its project with the UWA.

There are over 1,000 evicted Benet living in a temporary settlement at Kisitu. Christopher laments that, "where we are now, even the maize takes a long time to mature. The majority of the people are illiterate, especially the women. To cope with new farming methods is not easy.

"Children are forced to weed gardens in other parts of Kapchorwa to earn a living. Sometimes, women risk going into the park at night to get firewood and bamboo," he reveals. "Even the cows that we used to graze in the mountains are not allowed there. Some have died. We did not have hospitals but we managed to survive because of the cool weather."

Christopher is adamant that the Benet can contribute to conservation. "We can do it. After all, we the indigenous people have indigenous knowledge which, when integrated with the modern knowledge, can conserve the mountain, we are sure."

Moses Kiptala, the treasurer of the Benet Lobby Group, is critical of the kinds of trees being planted. "They talk about conserving the mountain and the water catchment areas but we know that in this mountain there are trees that grow better while conserving water catchment areas. Some of the trees they are planting here have traditionally not grown here."

According to him, the eviction "is seriously affecting us because there is no food and people are not allowed to get firewood, bamboo and medicines to treat ailments. The schools were destroyed. The people have been declared landless; they cannot go back to their original land.

"When we were evicted last year, some of us decided to go and live in bushes and caves and others went to live with relatives. The situation is not good. We were not allowed to flee with our belongings. Our houses and crops were razed. We survived with help from non-governmental organisations but they have since stopped the assistance."

Parents complain that their children cannot go to school. They improvised a temporary tin-roof structure. It has no benches and can only accommodate lower primary pupils. Those children in upper primary school have to relocate or drop out.

Mary Yeko, a mother of seven, tells IPS her children can no longer go to school because they have to walk a long distance to the district headquarters. Speaking through an interpreter, Yeko indicates that she and her husband cannot afford the good schools in the area because they are not government-owned.

She and her children are getting frequent attacks of malaria and other diseases that they did not suffer from before. "When you go up where we were (in Mount Elgon), the air is fresh, we had water, we had medicinal plants which can treat many diseases that cannot be treated by the muzungu (white person).

"Now, we cannot go to get the medicine up there because the rangers will not allow us to pass over the park boundary," she complains.

According to Uganda’s state minister for tourism, Serapio Rukundo, there have been some instances of what he calls "maladministration" but, overall, communities are benefitting from the tree planting because the Uganda Wildlife Authority carries out conservation projects that involves the remuneration of some community members.

A UWA warden in the Mount Elgon Park, Richard Matanda, insists that the tree planting has benefited communities. "People got jobs, uniforms and gumboots. The idea is that most of the labour should come from the areas next to the boundaries of the park."

According to him, communities evicted from the park were due to get a percentage of money made from the tree planting.

But Timothy Byakola, an activist with Uganda’s Climate and Development Initiatives, retorts that there is a lot of hostility between the communities and Uganda Wildlife Authority park rangers. "The jobs they promise people don’t pay enough. We have talked to some of the people who said they are almost giving free labour.

"People complain that that the project has taken away the little that local communities had. For example, women can’t get firewood for cooking."

Byakola believes "no carbon credits" have been sold from the Mount Elgon project because people destroy the trees before they mature in protest to having been evicted. "Because of hostility, people sneak over park boundaries in the night and uproot the newly planted saplings," he argues.

Between Jan and Jul 2009, three national forestry staff members -- Richard Kalemera, Alfred Ezati and Emmanuel Assiimwe – were allegedly murdered by people who had been evicted from forest reserves. In another case, a man, a pregnant woman and their three–year-old son were burn to ash in Buikwe Central Uganda.

A driver working for the National Forestry Authority, Ambrose Tibarimu, was attacked by a mob with machetes who set ablaze his and other vehicles. (END/2009)

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Scholars discuss Catholic Church's role in Holocaust

By David A. Schwartz
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
November 4, 2009



Pope Pius XII has been called "Hitler's Pope" for his passivity and complicity in the Holocaust. Yet he was eulogized by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and praised by Nobel scientist Albert Einstein and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower.

Pope John Paul II was lauded for his efforts in healing the rift between Jews and the Vatican. But scholars have questioned whether John Paul went far enough a decade ago in recognizing the roll of the Catholic Church when he published "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah."

And Benedict XVI, the current Pope, has been criticized for returning a Holocaust-denying, excommunicated bishop to the papal fold and for being insensitive to the feelings of Jews.

Kevin Madigan, a history professor at the Harvard Divinity School, discussed the rolls the Popes and the Catholic Church played in the Holocaust in a lecture last Sunday on "The Vatican and the Final Solution." Madigan spoke to about 30 scholars at the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations conference at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

In a remarkably candid discussion after his lecture, Madigan and two other scholars criticized the three Popes and the Catholic Church.

Rabbi Alan Brill, a professor at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., blasted the Vatican for not making a "full confession" and expressing regret directly to Jews.

"[Pope Benedict] understands the Holocaust even if he doesn't get the Jewish memory of the Holocaust," Brill said. If Benedict seeks reconciliation, he said, the painful history of the Holocaust needs to be addressed.

Kevin Spicer, a Catholic priest and associate professor at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass. said the Catholic Church doesn't understand the German effort to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

The Church must recognize its complicity in the propagation and dissemination of Christian anti-Semitism, Spicer said. Its century-old role in the Holocaust "damaged the cause of Jewish-Christian relations and dialogue."

Pope John Paul II understood through his Jewish friends what Jews went through in the Holocaust, Spicer said. And he was "moving toward recognizing the Covenant of Abraham."

Benedict, Spicer said, finds it impossible to use the words "Holocaust, Catholic Church, Jews and anti-Semitism in the same sentence."

Madigan said, "The Christian appropriation of the Holocaust is embarrassing to many of us." He said Auschwitz was "planted on the ground that was cultivated by Christians."

Hungary's Jews were the last in Europe to be sent to the gas chambers and Pope Pius XII knew in 1944 that Germany was going to lose the war, Madigan said. If Pius had protested, "more than 800,000 Hungarian Jews could have been saved."

As for Golda Meir praising Pope Pius XII, she was "historically naïve or politically motivated or both," Madigan said.

Holocaust survivor Ana Kan, 80, of Boynton Beach said the Catholic Church helped her family during World War II by hiding her and her parents and brother in the Vatican for 10 days before they were sent to Spain.

"Some of this I do not know," said Barbara Little, 58, of Boca Raton, who is Catholic. Pius "behaved reprehensively during the war," Little said.

Loretta Weinberger, who lives in Delray Beach and spends part of the year in Israel, said the Pope won't admit the role the Catholic Church played in the Holocaust. "I think the Jews should stop expecting an apology," Weinberger said. "They're not going to get one."

Copyright © 2009, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

US: Federal Court Prosecution of 9/11 Suspects a Victory for Justice

November 13, 2009

US Attorney General Eric Holder speaks at a news conference in Washington on November 13, 2009.

© 2009 Reuters


The Obama administration recognized that a trial of this historic importance belongs in a fair and time-tested justice system. The military commissions at Guantanamo are simply not up to the task.

Joanne Mariner, Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program director.(New York) - The Obama administration's decision to prosecute the September 11 suspects in federal court represents an important step forward for justice, Human Rights Watch said today. Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that five of the suspects facing pending military commission charges at Guantanamo would be transferred for federal trial in the United States.

"The Obama administration recognized that a trial of this historic importance belongs in a fair and time-tested justice system," said Joanne Mariner, Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program director at Human Rights Watch. "The military commissions at Guantanamo are simply not up to the task."

Unlike the deeply flawed military commission proceedings, the federal civilian courts can give the defendants a fair and credible trial, one that will be recognized as such internationally. Their use will also send a clear message that terrorists are criminals rather than soldiers in an armed conflict.

Human Rights Watch said that the importance of the 9/11 trial to America's reputation in the fight against terrorism cannot be overestimated. These historic proceedings must be fair - and be perceived as fair - and their verdicts must be viewed as credible. By moving them to federal court and out of the ad hoc, chaotic, and discredited military commissions at Guantanamo, the administration has taken a crucial step toward ensuring that the results of the trial will be recognized as legitimate.

Over 150 defendants have been convicted on terrorism charges in US federal courts since 2001. The military commissions have only tried three cases during the same period.

Human Rights Watch said that today's announcement to transfer five cases to federal courts was diminished by the administration's decision to keep other pending cases before military commissions, providing substandard justice. While the recently enacted Military Commissions Act of 2009 significantly improves upon the Bush administration's system of military commissions, it still departs in fundamental ways from the fair trial procedures used in US federal courts and courts martial. Human Rights Watch said that any trial before the revised system of military commissions will carry the stigma of Guantanamo.

The cases remaining before military commissions include that of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was 15 years old in 2002 when he allegedly threw the grenade that killed US Army Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer and wounded two others. The US government has refused to acknowledge his status as a child or to apply universally recognized standards of juvenile justice in his case.

No international tribunal since Nuremberg has prosecuted a child for alleged war crimes. The United Nations committee that monitors the rights of children found that the United States has held alleged child soldiers at Guantanamo without giving due account of their status as children and concluded that the "conduct of criminal proceedings against children within the military justice system should be avoided."

"Why would the Obama administration attempt to revive discredited military commissions by trying a child soldier?" Mariner said. "They should not be trying anyone before military commissions."

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four alleged co-conspirators were held for years without charge or trial in the custody of the Central Intelligence Agency, and were not transferred to Guantanamo until September 2006. The five men were charged before the military commissions in February 2008.

Human Rights Watch called on the Obama administration to prosecute in federal court all the detainees at Guantanamo accused of terrorism and other crimes.

Members of al Qaeda seek to be acknowledged as soldiers rather than denigrated as criminals, Human Rights Watch said. Putting them on trial in military commissions would have reinforced that view, handing al Qaeda an enormous propaganda victory. Trial in federal court will deny them the status of warrior.

Judge William Young underscored this point in the 2003 trial of the "shoe bomber," Richard Reid. As Judge Young said at the defendant's sentencing, "You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. . . To give you that reference, to call you a soldier, gives you far too much stature."

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Concentration Camps in America

(NOTE FROM KAREN: This was first published several years ago.)

"The police state has become a work of art." — Marshall McLuhan


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.

(There) 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.

(There is also) 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 (a) rail car, equipped with shackles, parked in an isolated area on (some) train tracks. It (appeared) 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 10, 2009

Abu Ghraib appeal centers on confusion at prison

By Associated Press
October 15, 2009, 12:18AM
DAVID DISHNEAU, Associated Press


WASHINGTON — A soldier who was photographed giving a smiling "thumbs-up" beside a pyramid of naked Abu Ghraib detainees should have her criminal conviction overturned because parading prisoners in the nude was apparently U.S.Army policy, her lawyer told the military's highest court Wednesday.

Defense attorney Frank J. Spinner also told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces it was like "a fraternity-type prank" when former Army Spc. Sabrina D. Harman helped place a hooded detainee atop a box with electrical wires in his hands.

Prosecutor Army Capt. Stephanie Cooper countered that any reasonable observer would conclude that such conduct was abusive. She dismissed Spinner's claims that Harman and other military police soldiers were ill-trained as prison guards and confused about what was permitted at the prison in Iraq.

"It doesn't take any special training to know that it's wrong to put a hooded detainee on top of a box, put wires in his hands and tell him he'll be electrocuted if he falls off the box," Cooper said.

"There is no question," she added, "that this kind of conduct could have, and most likely did, cause mental suffering to the detainee."

The five judges could decide within several months whether to overturn any of Harman's convictions on six counts of maltreatment, conspiracy to maltreat and dereliction of duty.

Harman, 32, served about three months of a six-month prison sentence after her conviction in 2005. She also was reduced in rank to private and faces a bad-conduct discharge unless her appeal succeeds.

Before the 45-minute hearing began, Harman said one of her objectives is "hopefully to get all our lives back together." She was referring to the 11 soldiers convicted of crimes at Abu Ghraib and to all others whose reputations were tarnished by the scandal.

The prison west of Baghdad became the center of a global scandal in 2004 after photos were released showing U.S. soldiers sexually humiliating inmates. Outrage over the pictures fueled support for the insurgency as well as anti-American sentiment among Iraqis.

Wednesday's oral arguments focused on incidents in November 2003 that produced the scandal's most notorious images: the pile of naked prisoners and the hooded detainee standing atop a box.

Spinner argued that the photographs lack context. He said military commanders planted "seeds of confusion" by allowing detainees to be paraded naked with women's underwear on their heads to soften them up for interrogation.

"It appears to have been Army policy to engage in those acts," Spinner said. He referred to testimony suggesting that's what military intelligence wanted.

"People read and see into those pictures, I would maintain, more than would really be there," Spinner said.

But Cooper said the detainees could only have been forced into such situations.

"No reasonable detainee would want to be abused and want pictures to record that humiliating conduct," she said.

Harman is the second Abu Ghraib defendant whose case has reached the military high court. Lawyers for former Army dog handler Sgt. Michael Smith presented oral arguments last week.

Harman was accompanied at the hearing by former Spc. Megan Ambuhl Graner, who was discharged from the Army after pleading guilty to failing to prevent or report maltreatment. Graner said she hopes a successful appeal by Harman will bolster the defense of her husband, former Cpl. Charles Graner Jr., who is serving a 10-year sentence as the alleged ringleader of the abuse.

Abu Ghraib US prison guards were scapegoats for Bush, lawyers claim

From The Times Online
May 2, 2009
Tim Reid in Washington

Charles Graner plans to appeal against his conviction for abusing prisoners.


Prison guards jailed for abusing inmates at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq are planning to appeal against their convictions on the ground that recently released CIA torture memos prove that they were scapegoats for the Bush Administration.

The photographs of prisoner abuse at the Baghdad jail in 2004 sparked worldwide outrage but the previous administration, from President Bush down, blamed the incident on a few low-ranking "bad apples" who were acting on their own.

The decision by President Obama to release the memos showed that the harsh interrogation tactics were approved and authorised at the highest levels of the White House.

Some of the guards who were convicted of abuse want to return to court and argue that the previous administration sanctioned the abuse but withheld its role from their trials.

The latest reaction to the released memos came as it emerged that the two psychologists hired by the CIA to craft the techniques that were used on terror suspects were paid $1,000 (&673) a day. Neither had carried out nor overseen an interrogation.

Twelve guards at Abu Ghraib were convicted on charges related to the abuse, which included attaching leads to naked prisoners, terrifying them with dogs, beatings and slamming them into walls. The wall-slamming was a technique authorised by Justice Department officials at the time, who also said that the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding was not considered to be torture.

Charles Gittins, a lawyer who represents Charles Graner, the ringleader of the guards who is serving a ten-year sentence, said that the memos proved his long-held contention that Graner and the other defendants, including his former lover Lynndie England, could never have invented tactics such as stress positions and the use of dogs on their own.

"Once the pictures came out, the senior officials involved in the decision-making, they knew. They knew they had to have a cover story. It was the 'bad apples' led by Charles Graner," Mr Gittins told The Washington Post.

Ms England, a poorly educated Army reservist, was pictured holding a dog leash attached to a naked detainee, and also pointing at another being forced to masturbate. She was convicted in September 2005 of abusing prisoners and one count of an indecent act. She was sentenced to three years in a military prison and was paroled after 521 days. Shortly after leaving Iraq she gave birth to a son fathered by Graner. She lives in her home state of West Virginia.

Mr Gittins said the refusal by the Bush Administration to acknowledge that it had authorised such techniques during the trials of the prison guards "and the judges" refusal to call senior administration officials to testify � undermined their defences.

Mr Gittins wants to take the case of Graner, who is halfway through his sentence, to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces to argue that top Bush Administration officials kept their complicity from the defence.

Gary Myers, a lawyer who represented Ivan L "Chip" Frederick on the abuse charges, said that he was going to try to use the memos to have his client's dishonourable discharge removed from his record.

"What we know is that we had at the time a rogue government that created an environment where this sort of conduct was condoned, if not encouraged," he said.

He added, however, that relying on illegal opinions or orders would probably not be a defence.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Guantanamo conditions 'deteriorate'

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

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.

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.

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.

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/

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.

Sri Lanka: concentration camps or welfare centres ?

13 August, by Padraig Colman
Le Monde diplomatique


Now that the war is over we are getting very contradictory reports on the situation in Sri Lanka. On 8 August Amnesty International criticised the Sri Lanka government for forcibly confining internally displaced people (IDPs) in camps. Meanwhile the Centre for Policy Alternatives has presented a petition to the government saying that 300,000 civilians are being detained illegally. The former chief justice Sarath Silva fears that the continuing confinement of Tamils could cause a new war.

Sections of the Tamil diaspora have described the camps as being part of a genocidal agenda. The government calls the camps “welfare centres”. Critics call them “concentration camps”.

A group of volunteers summarised their observations after visiting the camps. They said that:

many families have relatives to go to but are kept in the camps;
families are separated in different zones;
the camps are administered by armed military personnel;
and they concluded that aid agencies should be able to talk to the displaced.

The editor of The Hindu, N Ram, described Menik Farm: “Conditions in these camps are much better than has been depicted, without visiting the camps, in western media reports. Moreover, they are visibly better than conditions in Sri Lankan refugee camps in India, which are still mostly inaccessible to journalists, researchers, and other outsiders.” This is not to say that Menik Farm is a Club Mediterranée, but it isn’t Belsen either. I was surprised to read that in April, before the war was over, banks had set up ATMs in the camps. The Sri Lankan government is meeting basic needs, including education for schoolchildren and vocational training for youths.

However, the Tamil News says that according to “reliable sources”, foreigners are being misled by being shown the better facilities.

Laurent Sury, head of mission for Médecins Sans Frontières, observes that "with such a large number of people concentrated together, there is always the risk of waterborne disease with the rains." The World Health Organisation says no large outbreaks of disease have been reported so far, although there is a risk of malaria and diarrhoea, and now there are worries about skin diseases.

Meanwhile an Indian medical team arrived in Sri Lanka on 10 March and set up a hospital in Pulmoddai in the Trincomalee district to receive IDPs being brought by Red Cross ships from the areas held by the LTTE. India now feels that conditions have improved sufficiently to withdraw by the end of August.

Security concerns
Adnan Khan, country director of the World Food Programme, confirms that “food supplies have never been affected by access restrictions.” He said his people were able to move freely within the camps.

One of the reasons given for holding people in the camps and restricting access was to weed out hard-core LTTE fighters. Interhamwe infiltration and intimidation was a serious problem in the camps housing Rwandan refugees in Goma. There have been reports of LTTE posters appearing in the Sri Lankan camps.

The army is finding large stores of weapons, ammunition and explosives hidden by the LTTE and expects to recover more. Vavuniya District Tamil National Alliance MP, S Kishor, said he was aware that around 50,000 IDPs have escaped from welfare camps by paying money to police and army personnel. Defence chief Gotabhaya Rajapaksa warned this could be a part of a strategy to revive the LTTE.

Many of us living in Sri Lanka feared that, despite the defeat of the LTTE, children traveling to school on buses or people buying food in markets would continue to be maimed and killed. A friend who was often vehement in her criticism of the president said: “I thank the president for finishing off the LTTE, who did nothing for the Tamils here. They represented the Tamils overseas. I thank the president because we do not hear of any deaths anymore due to bombs. What a relief that is to those of us who live here.”

Resettlement
The government says it will take at least six months to make the areas from which IDPs fled habitable again. The LTTE littered the area with land mines. India has already sent de-mining experts and the UK has promised £500,000 to the Mines Advisory Group.

Houses need to be rebuilt and other facilities provided: the LTTE controlled the area but neglected the infrastructure. The government plans to resettle at least 80% of those in the camps by the end of the year and rehabilitate over 10,000 ex-LTTE cadres and thousands of families who had direct contacts with the LTTE.

The UNHCR described a previous resettlement of 2,231 to seven villages in the Musali division in the southern part of Mannar district, which at one time was controlled by the LTTE: “The government has applied good practices in IDP return...The process was carried out in safety and dignity.”

On 9 June, 2,120 Tamils and Muslims were re-settled. At the end of June, some 9,000 people aged 60 or more were allowed to leave the camps and join their relatives. On 5 August, 1,100 people boarded 70 buses to return to Jaffna, Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Ampara in areas where de-mining, reconstruction of roads, supply of electricity and water were already completed. "I’m happy to go back to my own house. I never thought that we would be able to resettle in such a short period,” P Sundaralingam told Reuters in Jaffna.

The Canadian minister Bev Oda was encouraged by what she saw in the camps. “This is not an ideal situation,” she said but “I would say that in partnership with international organisations, the government of Sri Lanka is making very good efforts to meet the basic needs.’’ The Tamil journalist DB Jeyaraj writes: “I ask readers not to engage in ethnic-orientated recrimination about the IDP plight. Please see those caught up in a humanitarian tragedy as human beings and not as ethnic beings.”

Source Reveals 36 Chinese Concentration Camps

Sujiatun is merely one of 36 concentration camps for Falun Gong in China.

By an individual who identifies himself as a veteran military doctor
Special to The Epoch Times


[Editors' Note: This report is a compilation of information provided by an individual who identifies himself as a veteran military doctor in Shenyang military zone in Shenyang, Liaoning province, China. The Epoch Times has only added headings. The Epoch Times encourages more people to give us inside information about Sujiatun Concentration Camp or other similar camps imprisoning Falun Gong practitioners. The Epoch Times will be discreet and careful about your personal safety.]

I am a senior military doctor in the logistics service in the army in Shenyang military zone. For safety's sake, I will not disclose my identity for now. The reports from outside China about Sujiatun Concentration Camp imprisoning Falun Gong practitioners are true, although some of the details are incorrect. The so-called underground Sujiatun Concentration Camp does exist. Organ harvesting is routine there. It is also a common practice to cremate dead or even living Falun Gong practitioners.

Ashes Given to Families Came from Animals or Other Bodies in the Crematorium:

As many state regulations have stipulated, the top level of each provincial government has the authority to establish "recycling organizations" to process felons in the military zone under its jurisdiction. This practice is warranted by a legal document that the Chinese Communist Party's Central Military Commission established as early as 1962. This practice has never stopped to this day. According to the regulations in the document, death-penalty prisoners and felons may be processed according to the development needs of the state or of socialism. During the Great Cultural Revolution, the most extreme way to process these prisoners was to use their bodies for food. The second-most extreme way was to use them as slave labor for engineering or production work.

After a 1984 amendment, it became legal to harvest organs from felons. The police and judicial departments perform organ harvesting on living prisoners before cremating their bodies. Sometimes, they will injure the prisoners in a show execution before they perform organ harvesting on the injured prisoners. They then cremate their bodies.

Since 1992, such a practice has become public. Due to the development of many related businesses, human bodies have become profitable raw materials. Living human beings, as well as dead bodies, have become industrial raw materials.

Many crematoriums in China do not actually cremate the bodies after they receive them. Instead, these bodies are transferred elsewhere through secret tunnels. In many cases, the ashes given to the families of executed prisoners came from animals or from other people's bodies. Some of the bodies given to the families were even ancient Chinese people or victims of WWII. The actual bodies are sold at high prices to many different types of state-owned factories as raw materials for different products via many different channels. Nearly all the large crematoriums in China are engaged in such underground businesses.

The Hospital in Sujiatun Is Only One of 36 Similar Concentration Camps All Over China:

The Chinese Communist Party has openly declared Falun Gong to be the "class enemies," turning Falun Gong practitioners into the target of its most severe suppression. In other words, the Chinese Communist Party has declared Falun Gong practitioners to be felons. The so-called hospitals in Sujiatun are but one of 36 similar concentration camps all over China. At present, the majority of detained Falun Gong practitioners are in prisons, forced labor camps, and detention centers. They are transferred elsewhere on a large scale only when special occasions call for it. Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning provinces imprison the largest number of Falun Gong practitioners. The concentration camp in Jiutai Area, Jilin Province is the 5th-largest camp imprisoning Falun Gong practitioners in China. This camp alone detains over 14,000 Falun Gong practitioners.


Jilin Concentration Camp, Codenamed 672-S, Imprisons over 120,000 People:

Based on information I have access to, the largest concentration camp is in Jilin Province. This concentration camp, codenamed 672-S, imprisons over 120,000 people. A large number of Falun Gong practitioners, felons, and prisoners of conscience from all over China are there, but I do not know its address.


More Than 10,000 People Detained in Sujiatun Concentration Camp in Early 2005:

In the so-called underground concentration camp of the Sujiatun District Hospital, there were indeed over 10,000 people kept there in early 2005, but at the present time, the number of detainees there is maintained at 600-750. Many detainees have been transferred to other concentration camps.


5,000 People Can Be Transferred in 24 hours by Covert Rail Routes:

It takes no more than a day to transfer 5,000 people in a closed freight train on a special route. I have witnessed a specially dispatched freight train transferring over 7,000 people in one trip from Tianjin to the Jilin area. It ran at night, guarded by the Chinese army. Everyone on the train was handcuffed to specially designed handrails on top of the ceiling like rotisserie chickens.

You Won't Find Any Evidence Even if You Enter Sujiatun to Investigate:

It is useless to enter Sujiatun trying to investigate the concentration camp because it is easy to transfer several thousand people.

CCP's Top Ranks Name Falun Gong Practitioners "Class Enemies," Useful Only to Generate Income:

One must understand that based on the latest decisions by the Chinese Communist Party's top level: The Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee agreed to treat Falun Gong practitioners as "class enemies" and to handle them in any economically beneficial manner without having to report to higher authorities. In other words, Falun Gong practitioners, like many actual felons in China, are no longer regarded as human beings, but as raw materials for commercial products. They have become commodities.

This is as much as I can tell you.