Here are a few stories that have caught my eye of late, with brief commentary as apt:

In an interesting (but probably passing) change of direction, China is putting pressure on Sudan “to seek urgently the release of 29 Chinese workers held by rebels in the border state of South Kordofan.” China traditionally sees national sovereignty as sacrosanct. But now it is their ox being gored and suddenly a fixed position on questions of national sovereignty seems foolish. Hopefully they keep this incident in mind the next time one of their client states commits brutality against its own people.

The African Union was supposed to decide on its leadership this week. Instead gridlock has set in. South Africa had hoped that its Home Affairs Minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, would emerge victorious, but she has been unable to garner enough votes. As this story has developed I have been skeptical of whether or not Dlamini-Zuma could muster enough supports. Not because she is not qualified. But rather because South Africa occupies an interesting position on the continent. By virtually every measure it is the most powerful country on the continent, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. But that means that many Africans are wary of South Africa and want to push back against its pretensions to continental leadership. Or at least its pretensions to official positions of leadership. Culturally, economically, politically, and militarily the country is the de facto regional superpower.

Meanwhile Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has denounced the AU for recognizing Libya’s National Transitional Council at a recent summit. At the Harare airport, Mugabe levied accusations toward his African colleagues for being: “‘fronts’ for Western powers whose ‘criminal’ NATO bombardment of Libya helped lead to the killing of Col. Moammar Gadhafi, a former Mugabe ally.” Of course he did.

Finally, if you’re going to be anywhere near the Research Triangle in North Carolina this weekend, I’d encourage you to swing by the South East Regional Seminar in African Studies (SERSAS) and the South East Africanist Network (SEAN) Conference. The main program will take place on Saturday at the University of North Carolina’s Fedex Global Education Center. The conference theme is “Border Crossings, Migrations, and Interventions,” but panels will deviate from those themes. I’m on the panel and would love to meet any readers who might be in the area.

 

 

 

This is the first in a 3-part year in review series on war crimes around the world in 2011.

 

Ratko Mladic – Europe’s Most Wanted War Criminal

In early April Bosiljka Mladic, Ratko Mladic’s wife told the media that her husband was dead. Less than two months later he was arrested in Lazarevo in northern Serbia, ending a 16 year manhunt bringing Europe’s most wanted war criminal to trial. Mladic was the military commander responsible for the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 where 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed, and oversaw the years long siege of Sarajevo in which 10,000 civilians were killed. Mladic is currently on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague. The number of charges against Mladic was reduced from 196 to 106 this month in order to expedite justice in light of Mladic’s deteriorating physical condition.

 

Goran Hadzic – The Last Of The Big Three Falls

Goran Hadzic was also captured in northern Serbia this summer where he was rumored to have had sanctuary in an Orthodox monastery. Hadzic was president of the self-proclaimed Serbian Republic of Krajina, located in Croatia mostly along the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, from 1992-93. He was a political leader of the Serbian rebellion in Croatia beginning in 1991 that lead to the creation of Krajina. Hadzic was indicted by the ICTY for 14 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Hadzic is allegedly responsible for ethnic pogroms in Zagreb and the notorious Ovcara massacre where 250 hospital patients were rounded up from a hospital in Vukovar and mass executed at a local pig farm.  Hadzic was the last of the three war criminals (along with Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic) that the E.U. demanded be brought to justice before considering Serbian assention to the Union.

 

Radovan Karadzic – Building A Case Against Himself

Radovan Karadzic’s trial continued this year as the Bosnian Serb president got the chance to directly address witnesses against him. Karadzic, the political mastermind of the Srebrenica massacre, seemed to implicate bizarre alternative hypotheses concerning events he is being held responsible for – that at the Keraterm concentration camp instead of the hundreds reported to have been massacred, it was only one mentally deranged person that was killed presumably in self-defence; and that the emaciated Fikret Alic pictured in the iconic photograph from Keraterm was just a very skinny man. Karadzic’s former Chief of Crisis Staff, Milan Tupajic was arrested this month and charged with contempt of court for refusing to testify against his former boss.

 

Fatmir Limaj – A Second Chance For Justice

Kosovar MP Fatmir Limaj was arrested following charges by the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo that he was responsible for torture and execution of civilians in the Kleçkë detention camp, and took part in a human organs trafficking ring. He was initially released invoking immunity granted to Kosovar MPs, but a ruling by the Constitutional Court in Kosovo held that the immunity did not extend to acts taken outside of the scope of their official responsibilities and was subsequently placed under house arrest. A previously unnamed key witness against him, Agim Zogaj, was found dead in protective custody in Germany a week after the Constitutional Court’s decision. Zogaj’s death was ruled a suicide. Limaj was acquitted of war crimes charges in 1995 at the ICTY in The Hague.

 

Elderly Nazis – It’s Never Too Late To End Impunity

Former Nazis John Demjanjuk and Heinrich Boere were convicted in Germany for Holocaust related crimes. Demjanjuk served as a prison guard at Sorbibor the Polish concentration camp where 29,000 people were murdered. Heinrich Boere was a part of an assassination squad that murdered Dutch resistance figures.

 

Venezuelan Terrorist Praises Gadhafi At Sentencing Hearing

Carlos ‘The Jackal’ Sanchez was sentenced to a second life sentence in France for bombings there in the early eighties which killed 11. Sanchez has been serving a previous life sentence since 1997, and claims to be responsible for the deaths of 2,000 people in various terrorist attacks throughout the world. Sanchez offered praise of deceased Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi at his sentencing. Gadhafi sponsored much of Sanchez’s terrorist efforts.

 

Former U.S. President Under Increasing International Pressure

Former U.S. President George W. Bush canceled a visit to Switzerland amidst threats of legal action possibly being taken against him for violating the Geneva Conventions by condoning the use of torture by the U.S. military in its ‘War on Terror’. He and Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair were convicted in abenstia for the war crime of aggression at the symbolic Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia in November for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The tribunal has no enforcement power and the U.S. has not ratified the Rome Statute defining the crime of aggression as a war crime. The Rome Statute went into effect in 2002, and the U.K. ratified the Statute in 2001.

 

Zelaya Ouster ‘A Coup’ – H.T.R.C.

The Honduras Truth and Reconciliation Commission ruled that the 2009 ousting of president Manuel Zelaya was an illegal coup. The Commission was established under the auspices of the Organization of American States. Mr. Zelaya returned in May to Honduras from exile in Costa Rica. He is expected to run for president again in 2013.

Next up: War Crimes Year in Review – Asia & Oceania