Tag: InternationalNews

{{The Netherlands sought to “close a difficult chapter” with its former colony Indonesia on Thursday by publicly apologising for summary executions carried out by the Dutch army in the 1940s.}}

As children of some of the men who were massacred without trial looked on, Dutch ambassador to Indonesia Tjeerd De Zwaan offered a state apology during a ceremony at the Dutch embassy in Jakarta.

“On behalf of the Dutch government, I apologise for these excesses,” said the ambassador.

“The Dutch government hopes that this apology will help close a difficult chapter for those whose lives were impacted so directly by the violent excesses that took place between 1945 and 1949.”

He was referring to the years of the Indonesian war of independence, when the sprawling archipelago nation sought to shake off Dutch colonial rule.

The Hague had previously said sorry to the relatives of those in particular cases but it has before never offered a general apology for all summary executions.

Last month the Dutch government also announced that it would pay 20,000 euros ($26,600) to the widows of those killed.

Special attention was given at Thursday’s ceremony to the widows of men killed during a brutal campaign on Sulawesi island in central Indonesia.

The Dutch government in August compensated 10 women whose husbands were executed by its army in the “South Sulawesi Campaign” of 1946 and 1947, and their children were those present at the Jakarta ceremony.

The ambassador said he planned to fly next week to Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province, to meet the widows, who are aged between 90 and 100.

One of the worst atrocities committed by the Netherlands in Indonesia, the campaign saw Dutch troops carry out summary executions in a series of villages over three months in a bid to wipe out resistance to colonisation.

Some in Indonesia have claimed the death toll was as high as 40,000 but historical studies have put it at several thousand.

In 2011 the Dutch government also offered a public apology and compensation for victims of summary executions which took place at Rawagede, on the main island of Java.

Thousands of Indonesians were killed in the war of independence, which ended in 1949.

AFP

{{The last remaining Iranian dissidents in a camp in eastern Iraq have been transferred to a base in Baghdad pending resettlement abroad, the United Nations said on Thursday, less than two weeks after a bout of violence that killed 52 people there.}}

The dissidents belong to the Mujahadin-e-Khalq (MEK), which wants Iran’s clerical leaders overthrown, and are no longer welcome in Iraq under the Tehran-aligned, Shi’ite Muslim-led government that replaced late Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.

The MEK fought on Saddam’s side during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and was given a camp by the strongman who was toppled by the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

Earlier this month, 52 dissidents were killed in violence at Camp Ashraf, which the MEK blamed on Iraqi army and special forces acting at Tehran’s behest. Baghdad said the accusation was baseless and that it would investigate what had happened.

“The tragic events of 1st September … were a somber reminder of the necessity to conclude the final phase of the relocation process without further delay,” acting U.N. envoy to Iraq Gyorgy Busztin said in a statement.

“Resettlement outside Iraq is now the priority, and it is urgent that countries ready to host the residents come forward to accept them, providing them a safe future outside Iraq.”

Seven camp residents went missing during the violence and remain unaccounted for, the United Nations said. MEK says they were taken hostage by Iraqi forces and have been flown to Amara province from where they will be extradited to Iran.

Before the violence there were about 100 MEK Iranian exiles at Camp Ashraf. Most of its inhabitants were relocated last year to a former U.S. military base in northeastern Baghdad known as Camp Liberty, which has come under attack twice this year.

The U.S. State Department removed MEK from its list of terrorist organizations last year and the group is now seeking to recast itself as a mainstream opposition force.

The September 1 bloodshed occurred hours after a mortar bomb attack on the camp which MEK blamed on the Iraqi army. Two Iraqi security sources said that army and special forces fired on residents who had stormed a post at the camp entrance.

MEK, also known as the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran, led a guerrilla campaign against the U.S.-backed Iranian Shah during the 1970s that included attacks on American targets.

{{Diplomatic efforts to place Syria’s chemical weapons under international control intensified on Wednesday as Russia warned that a U.S. strike could unleash extremist attacks and carry the country’s bitter civil war beyond Syria’s borders.}}

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by phone, the State Department said, one day before they meet in Geneva to try to agree on a strategy to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.

The five permanent veto-wielding powers of the U.N. Security Council met in New York to discuss plans to put Syria’s chemical weapons under international control – averting a threatened U.S. military strike – as Britain, France and the United States talked about drafting a resolution.

The U.N. ambassadors of China and Russia as well as Britain, France and the United States met for about half an hour at the Russian U.N. mission. They declined comment as they left.

In a reminder of the mounting atrocities in Syria, a report by a U.N. commission of inquiry documented eight mass killings, attributing all but one to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. It said Assad’s forces almost certainly committed two massacres in May that killed up to 450 civilians.

An initial French draft Security Council resolution called for delivering an ultimatum to Assad’s government to give up its chemical weapons arsenal or face punitive measures.

But underscoring the diplomatic gulf over military action, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned against a U.S. strike on Syria, saying such action risked escalating the conflict beyond that country and unleashing terrorist attacks.

Putin, writing in the New York Times, said there were “few champions of democracy” in the 2-1/2-year-old civil war in Syria, “but there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all types battling the government.

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{{Researchers have found evidence to suggest that climate change, rather than humans, was the main factor that drove the woolly mammoth to extinction.}}

A DNA analysis shows that the number of creatures began to decrease much earlier than previously thought as the world’s climate changed.

It also shows that there was a distinct population of mammoth in Europe that died out around 30,000 years ago.

The results have published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The view many researchers had about woolly mammoths is that they were a hardy, abundant species that thrived during their time on the planet.

But according to the scientist who led the research, Dr Love Dalen of the Swedish Museum of Natural History, the study shifts that view.

“The picture that seems to be emerging is that they were a fairly dynamic species that went through local extinctions, expansions and migrations. It is quite exciting that so much was going on,” he told media.

Dr Dalen worked with researchers in London to analyse DNA samples from 300 specimens from woolly mammoths collected by themselves and other groups in earlier studies

The scientists were able to work out how many mammoths existed at any given time from the samples as well as tracing their migration patterns. They looked at the genetic diversity in their samples – the less diverse the lower the population.

They found that the species nearly went extinct 120,000 years ago when the world warmed up for a while. Numbers are thought to have dropped from several million to tens of thousands but numbers recovered as the planet entered another ice age.

The researchers also found that the decline that led to their eventual extinction began 20,000 years ago when the Ice Age was at its height, rather than 14,000 years ago when the world began to warm again as previously thought.

They speculate that it was so cold that the grass on which they fed became scarce. The decline was spurred on as the Ice Age ended, possibly because the grassland on which the creatures thrived was replaced by forests in the south and tundra in the north.

The reason they died out has been a matter of considerable scientific debate. Some have argued that humans hunted them to extinction while others have said that changes in the climate was the main factor.

A criticism of the climate extinction argument is that the world warmed well before the creatures became extinct and so that could not have been the cause.

{{French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Tuesday that France will propose a UN Security Council resolution setting out conditions for Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control and accept that they will be dismantled.}}

Fabius said the resolution – under Chapter 7 of the UN charter covering possible military and non-military action to restore peace – would warn of “extremely serious” consequences for Damascus if it breached those conditions.

“Our aim is to condemn the August 21 massacre carried out by the Damascus regime in the strongest possible terms,” he told a news conference in Paris.

“The resolution will state that Damascus must reveal and dismantle its chemical weapons stockpile and accept that it should be placed under international control.”

Fabius said that Syria will face “serious consequences” if it fails to comply with the resolution, and called for those responsible for the attacks to face trial at the International Criminal Court.

Fabius said Syria has a “considerable” stockpile of “at least 1,000 tonnes” of chemical weapons.

“France aims to eliminate the threat of chemical weapons, and to protect the Syrian people,” he said. “All options remain on the table.”

{france24}

{{ Israel is to pay more than $1 million to the family of an alleged Mossad spy who hanged himself in prison in 2010, the justice ministry has said.}}

“After negotiations, the two parties (Israel and the family) have reached an agreement whereby the state will pay 4 million shekels ($1.1 million or 842,000 euros) to the deceased’s family,” the ministry said in a statement late on Tuesday.

The family of Ben Zygier, an Australian-Israeli known as “Prisoner X,” had accused Israel of negligence in dealing with his case, according to the statement.

Zygier was found hanged in his isolation cell in Ayalon prison near Tel Aviv in December 2010 — a case Israel went to extreme lengths to cover up.

A court document released on April 25 this year said Israel’s prison service had caused Zygier’s death by failing to prevent him from committing suicide.

The document revealed details about his background and imprisonment, indicating he was suicidal and had an emotionally-charged exchange with his wife the day he was found hanged.

It also said that his cell was not properly watched by prison guards.

The justice ministry statement stressed that the deal with Zygier’s family was not an “admission of alleged wrongdoing”.

It was instead “to avoid the affair going to court, which would lead to the publication of numerous details of the case which could cause serious harm to national security.”

The reasons for Zygier’s detention were unclear, but the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said in a report in May that the 34-year-old, who was allegedly working for Israel’s foreign spy service Mossad, had unwittingly sabotaged a top secret spy operation in Lebanon.

AFP

{{Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on the Syrian government on Monday to put its arsenal of chemical weapons under international control and destroy them in an effort to avert a possible US-led military strike.}}

Speaking at a press conference, Lavrov said he had already put the proposal to Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem during talks in Moscow.

He said the plan could help Syria avoid a US-led military attack, as Congress prepares to vote on whether to support taking action in the country.

He also urged Syria to become a full member of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Moualem quickly welcomed Lavrov’s initiative, saying that the Syrian government applauded Russia for “trying to prevent an American aggression against our people”.