SEOUL, South Korea — Onlookers watch as a man tied up in ropes is led down a crowded pedestrian street by a woman holding a plastic assault rifle. Another man holding a megaphone explains that the re-enactment depicts a scene that has become an everyday occurrence in China. A multinational coalition of activists, calling themselves the 4-4-4 Campaign, holds this demonstration each weekend in downtown Seoul. In Chinese culture, the number 4 symbolizes death. Protester Nam Hyang Soo says the activists chose their name because Beijing’s refugee policy is killing North Koreans who try to escape their impoverished homeland. “The [...]
Editor’s Note: Today, April 9, is the five-year anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. Five years ago, about 30 kilometers West of Baghdad, just past the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison, I was part of a grisly find that left no doubt in my mind about the rights and wrongs of invading Iraq. There, nearly 1,000 political prisoners were buried in secret graves at the al-Qarah cemetery. All had died in custody. Ten to 15 corpses at a time were buried by Mohammad Moshan Mohammad, the gravedigger who told me how the dead had arrived during the three years before [...]
KOSOVO LEADER CLEARED OF WAR CRIMES CHARGES — A United Nations war crimes tribunal at the Hague acquitted former Kosovo guerilla commander and prime minister Ramush Haradinaj April 3 on charges of rape, murder and torture. The charges stemmed from the 1998 actions of Kosovo Liberation Army troops under his command against Kosovo Serbian civilians. Harandinaj, who resigned in 2005 as prime minister to voluntarily turn himself over to the court, was the most senior ethnic Albanian figure to stand trial for actions during the KLA’s battle against Serbian forces in 1998-1999. Haradinaj’s uncle, Lahi, was found guilty of mistreating [...]
