Syria chastised for denying legal rights to Kangaroos

"The defendants have no chance of defending themselves."
--Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director of Human Rights Watch

An dense fog of culturally biased figurative speech blew across Syria this week when Syrians were told that their government apparently has been cracking down on dissident kangaroos, rounding them up and subjecting them to the show trials of the Supreme State Security Court.

A headline on Al-Arabiya's website [ENGLISH] proclaimed "Syria must close its kangaroo court," which shocked many unassuming Syrians because, of course, they were not aware that there were kangaroos in Syria.

The news story is based on a recently released 73-page report [Also in ENGLISH] from Human Rights Watch called "Far From Justice: Syria's Supreme State Security Court."

Said HRW's Middle East director about Syria's judicial system: "It's a kangaroo court providing judicial cover for the persecution of activists, and even ordinary citizens, by Syria's security agencies."

Incredulous Syrians responded to this news with, well, incredulity. "I didn't know we had any kangaroos," said one Syrian who asked to remain anonymous but who is in fact named Hamoudi Yousif al-Homsi. "But they can be sent to court, like us humans?! I guess I've been living in a hole."

While it's true that Mr. al-Homsi has been living in a hole, he also brings up a valid point: if this is literally about a kangaroo kerfuffle--which must be the case because there is no Arabic equivalent of kangaroo court--why is Human Rights Watch so interested?

No doubt Syrians are wondering: Where is Kangaroo Rights Watch?

The Tuque Souq is wondering: Who's this report for anyway?

Cluster Love, Not Bombs

A five-day conference in Wellington, New Zealand was held this week to organize a global effort to ban cluster bombs. The Conference on Cluster Munitions (official website) hosted representatives from more than one hundred countries and various human rights and nongovernmental organizations, as well as technical experts and survivors of cluster bomb attacks. The goal: a comprehensive treaty, by the end of 2008, to make cluster munitions illegal under international law.

(The conference circulated a sobering video press release on YouTube here.)

Canada is being represented, in a matter of speaking, by Paul Hannon, executive director of Mines Action Canada (MAC), the Canadian wing of the Geneva-based International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBM). On its website, MAC notes:

“Some governments are trying to weaken a treaty by calling for exemptions based on dubious technical fixes. The Cluster Munition Coalition, of which Mines Action Canada is a founding member, is calling for the strongest possible ban on cluster bombs.”

Canadians should take note: Canada is one of the 94 countries pledged to the 2007 Oslo Process to ban cluster bombs (not to be confused with that other Oslo Process). And it was in Ottawa, of course, that the landmark landmine (ban) treaty was signed in 1997.

The conference comes on the heels of a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, released February 17, on the use of cluster bombs during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. (Press release; full report.)

According to HRW, Israel dropped from planes or fired from ground-based Multiple Launch Rocket Systems more than 4.6 million cluster “submunitions,” including many that hit civilian areas in southern Lebanon. As many as 1 million of these did not explode on impact, and are therefore still a threat to people in the region. The report says that at least 200 civilians have been killed or maimed from tardily exploding cluster bombs since the war ended. Hezbollah also fired cluster bombs on Israel during the war, killing at least one and injuring 12.

Also according to the report: Canada is one of several countries to possess cluster bombs (the so-called “Rockeye” anti-tank bombs), although the Canadian military did announce (in 2004) a project to decommission and destroy all of these munitions in its arsenal.

However, according to HRW Canada is still one of 34 cluster-munitions producing countries.

Other links:

• The gruesome NATO (Canada, et al) clusterbombing of Serbian civilians in Niš during the 1999 Kosovo War.

• The recently launched Arabic website of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

• Landmine Action details the cleanup effort of unexploded cluster munitions in Western Sahara, used by both sides in the 1975-1988 war between Morocco and Saharawi separatists.

• A technical explanation of Cluster Bombs.