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Initially, Tayler traveled to the Dadaab camps to research the situation within Somalia, since it is nearly impossible to operate in that country these days. But when she arrived, she began hearing persistent reports of military recruitment. She began interviewing people and learned that recruitment was occurring openly at tea stalls and market places. She said recruiters began circulating in the inflatable camps in early October and since then, hundreds of people had been lured with promises of money and claims that the United Nations was backing the new army. "It's recruitment under false pretenses," Tayler said. "Recruiters play fast and loose with the facts and it's very easy for vulnerable people to want to believe this. "I had never seen those men around before. They told me they would employ me and give me $600 to be a military man. They told me I would be taken for training inside of Kenya and then taken to Somalia. They said I will be fighting Al Shabaab, who are slaughtering people. I said, 'No, I do not want to do that, I am a student.' I told them if I get an education I can help myself and my family instead of being sent to war and dying. But now I am regretting it -- my father cannot afford the uniform for school and the teacher always chases me from class." An elderly man told Human Rights Watch that his inflatable bouncer educated son believed he was joining a U.N. army. "So I gave him my blessing and he has my total support," the man said. Tayler said Human Rights Watch wants the Kenyan inflatable castles government and the United Nations to shut down the recruitment efforts. "We're not saying the Kenyan government should not fear the seepage [of violence]," she said. "But what we're saying is: play by the rules." Human Rights Watch has documented war crimes and human rights abuses by all sides in the Somali conflict, which has caused thousands of civilian deaths and massive displacement. | ||
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Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on Monday refused to appear at the opening day of his long-awaited trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Karadzic, who is accused of masterminding the worst massacre in pearl jewelry Europe since World War II, claimed he did not have enough time to prepare. He is representing himself. Prosecutors opened the trial by urging judges to impose a lawyer on Karadzic if he continued to refuse to cooperate. Karadzic went on trial at the U.N.-established court at The Hague in the Netherlands more than 14 years after his indictment. Among other charges against him, Karadzic is alleged to have participated in the 1995 massacre of up to 8,000 Bosnian men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995. Karadzic faces genocide charges and nine other counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats and other non-Serbian civilians during the brutal and bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The conflict introduced the phrase "ethnic cleansing" into the pearl jewelry wholesale lexicon describing war crimes, as different factions in multi-ethnic Yugoslavia sought to kill or drive out other groups. Karadzic was arrested last year after more than a decade on the run and was found to have been living in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, and practicing alternative medicine in disguise. In a letter dated Wednesday and made public Thursday, Karadzic complains that he has not been given the relevant case material on time -- and he says the volume of material would have been too much to go through even if he had received it promptly. "I ask Your Excellencies -- why and how is it possible pearl necklace that the prosecution is allowed to literally bury me under a million of pages, only to start disclosing relevant material many months after my arrest?" he writes. "Why and how is it possible that the prosecution is allowed to file its final indictment against me on the eve of the planned trial date?" Karadzic says he should not be penalized for representing himself. | ||
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No lawyer in this world could prepare defense within this period of time," he writes. "I hereby inform you that my defense is not ready for my trial that is supposed to begin as scheduled, on the 26th of October, and that therefore I shall not appear before you on that date." He promised to continue his preparations in "the most intensive way" and inform the court when he is ready. The genocide charges against him stem partly from the pearl jewelry most notorious massacre of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, once a part of Yugoslavia. More than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed at Srebrenica when ethnic Serb troops overran a U.N. "safe area" in July 1995. It was the worst European massacre since World War II. Memories of the massacre remain raw. Watch the video Video Prosecutors at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague accuse Karadzic of responsibility. "On 8 March 1995, Karadzic instructed Bosnian Serb forces under his command to create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival for the inhabitants of Srebrenica, amongst other places," the tribunal said in a statement this month. The Hague indictment also says Karadzic committed pearl jewelry wholesale genocide when forces under his command killed non-Serbs during and after attacks in more than a dozen Bosnian municipalities in the early stages of the war. Karadzic, who faces life in prison if he is convicted, denies the charges. The court cannot impose the death penalty. When he was arrested in July 2008, Karadzic had grown a large white beard and let his famous steel-gray hair grow long and turn white. He had spent more than 13 years in hiding, during which he practiced alternative medicine at a Belgrade clinic. Karadzic's arrest leaves his former military commander, Ratko Mladic, as the highest-ranking fugitive still being sought by the war crimes tribunal. Prosecutor Alan Tieger told the court in July that the case against Karadzic would take approximately 490 hours. That means prosecutors are likely to need more than a wholesale pearl jewelry year to lay out their evidence, a court spokeswoman said. The 1992-95 Bosnian war was the longest of the wars spawned by the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Backed by the government of then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, Bosnian Serb forces seized control of more than half the country and launched a campaign against the Muslim and Croat populations. Karadzic was removed from power in 1995, when the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian war barred anyone accused of war crimes from holding office. Milosevic died in 2006 while on trial at The Hague. | ||
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The human rights group Amnesty International is calling on Nigeria to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir if he attends an African Union Summit there on Thursday. Al-Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on freshwater pearl charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity relating to a five-year campaign of violence in western Sudan's Darfur region. And Nigeria, as party to the treaty that created the criminal court, is obliged to cooperate, Amnesty said. Nigerian officials could not immediately be reached for comment. "The Nigerian government has an unconditional legal obligation to arrest President Omar al-Bashir and hand him over to the ICC, should he enter Nigerian territory," the group said. "Any failure to fulfill obligations under international law and may amount to obstruction of justice." The group said Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua invited al-Bashir to attend the African Union Peace and Security Council in the capital, Abuja. The International Criminal Court issued the warrant against al-Bashir in March. It was the first ever issued for a sitting head of state by the world's only freshwater pearl jewelry permanent war crimes tribunal, based at The Hague in the Netherlands. The warrant covers five counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape. It also includes two charges of war crimes for intentionally directing attacks against civilians and for pillaging. Al-Bashir remains president and has traveled to several countries since the warrant was issued. The United Nations estimates that 300,000 people have been killed in the conflict in Darfur, and 2.5 million have been forced to flee their homes. Sudan denies the death toll is that high. The violence in Darfur erupted in 2003 after rebels began an pearl jewelry wholesale uprising against the Sudanese government. To counter the rebels, Sudanese authorities armed and cooperated with Arab militias that went from village to village in Darfur, killing, torturing and raping residents, according to the United Nations, Western governments and human rights organizations. The militias targeted civilian members of tribes from which the rebels drew strength. Eighteen heads of state are slated to attend the summit, at which South African President Thabo Mbeki is expected to submit a report on the situation in Darfur. | ||
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A former guerrilla fighter jailed for 14 years and an ex-president were headed for a runoff for the presidency of Uruguay, after neither was expected to capture more than 50 percent of the vote in Sunday's election. Jose Mujica, a former Marxist Tupamaro guerrilla who was the top vote-getter Sunday, will be challenged by Luis Alberto Lacalle, who served as pearl jewelry president from 1990-1995. The runoff will be held November 29. Both candidates predicted victory at separate rallies Sunday night. "We have ahead of us 30 days that are a fight but are not filled with hate for anyone," Mujica said at a boisterous gathering in the capital, Montevideo. With 60 percent of the vote counted, Mujica was leading with 47.4 percent of the vote to 29.2 percent for Lacalle, news reports said. Another two candidates trailed with 17.8 percent and 2.5 percent of the vote. Only the top two vote-getters advanced to the runoff. Third-place candidate Pedro Bordaberry conceded defeat, saying he called Mujica and Lacalle to congratulate them. Bordaberry told his supporters he would vote for wholesale pearl jewelry Lacalle. Speaking at his National Party headquarters, Lacalle thanked Bordaberry for his support. "We believe we are a better option for security, for certainty, for peace, for dialog," Lacalle said. Mujica had led in two polls last week, but both showed him falling short of the 50-percent-plus-one vote he needed to win outright. Known to his supporters as El Pepe, Mujica belongs to the same Broad Front Party as popular current President Tabare Vazquez Rosas. Both men are considered leftists. Lacalle is considered more conservative. Some analysts say neither Mujica nor Lacalle is pearl jewelry wholesale likely to take Uruguay down a different path. "You'd scarcely notice a difference in terms of which one of them is elected," said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a liberal Washington-based think tank. "No one expects any dramatic change in Uruguay no matter who wins," said Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based independent policy center. "Uruguayan politics is pretty stable." With little difference between the two candidates on policy, voters may look for other factors. "I believe that this election is very interesting because for the first time in the history of Uruguay in addition to political postures and programs, which always affect the outcome to a degree, the election will be affected greatly by the personal attractions and weaknesses of each candidate, which the public can clearly discern," said Uruguayan sociologist Cesar Aguiar. | ||
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