19 April 2023 - NPWJ News Digest on International Criminal Justice

Articles

Nicaragua: A continuum of repression and systematic human rights violations under the Ortega-Murillo government
Amnesty International , 18 Apr 2023

Five years on, far from ending its policy of repression to subdue dissenting voices and any kind of criticism, the Nicaraguan government continues to expand and reinvent it and incorporate new patterns of violations, said Amnesty International in a new report today. A cry for justice: 5 years of oppression and resistance in Nicaragua documents the human rights crisis that the country has experienced since people took to the streets to protest peacefully against reforms to the social security system on 18 April 2018. Brutal repression was the tool that President Daniel Ortega decided to use to control this social discontent, leaving more than 300 people dead, more than 2,000 injured and hundreds arbitrarily detained.

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The Yanomami are dying of malaria and malnutrition. Is it genocide?
The Washington Post, 18 Apr 2023

First came the gold miners, the community said. Then illness and disease spiked. The wounds the miners gouged into the earth collected water that attracted disease-bearing mosquitoes, community members said, and the rivers on which they rely turned from blue to the color of Coca-Cola. Supplies of lifesaving drugs ran dry, leaving the sick to die of treatable conditions. Survivors lamented losing loved ones to malaria and tuberculosis and worried their babies would meet the same ends. The Yanomami, one of the Amazon’s largest Indigenous groups, are suffering a crisis of malaria and malnutrition that their leaders say threatens their very existence.

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Montenegro Urged to Reinvestigate 1999 Killings of Kosovo Albanians
Balkan Insight, 18 Apr 2023

Montenegrin human rights organisations said on Tuesday that the Special State Prosecution to reopen its probe of the killings of six Albanian civilians from Kosovo, including two children, by Yugoslav Army troops in the village of Kaludjerski Laz on April 19, 1999. Five others were injured in the attack, which took place during NATO’s 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia, aimed at making President Slobodan Milosevic end his repression of ethnic Albanians and withdraw his forces from Kosovo. According to prosecution data, from April to May 1999, 11 more ethnic Albanians were also killed in nearby areas while they were fleeing from Kosovo during the NATO bombing. 

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After American’s Killing in Syria, F.B.I. Builds War Crimes Case Against Top Officials
The New York Times, 17 Apr 2023

For months, guards at a Syrian prison brutally tortured an American aid worker and threatened to kill her loved ones. She eventually caved to their demands, confessing to crimes she did not commit. A trial that lasted no more than a few minutes followed, and she was ordered executed in late 2016. Human rights workers and politicians were outraged when the American government stayed noticeably silent about the death of the aid worker, Layla Shweikani, 26.

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EU ambassador assaulted in Sudan amid internal violence
Politico, 17 Apr 2023

The European Union’s ambassador to Sudan was assaulted “in his own residency” Monday, according to the bloc’s top diplomat Josep Borrell, amid a violent power struggle between rival military factions. “This constitues a gross violation of the Vienna Convention [sic]. Security of diplomatic premises and staff is a primary responsibility of Sudanese authorities and an obligation under international law,” Borrell said on Twitter. [...] “Civilians in Sudan urgently need a ceasefire in order to be safe and allow space for mediation. The EU is working to persuade each side to consider humanitarian pause and to encourage dialogue". 

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Islamic movement petitions ICC over alleged genocide against Shi’ites by El-Rufai
The Guardian Nigeria, 17 Apr 2023

The Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) has urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute the Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, for alleged genocide against the Shi’ites Muslim sect in the state. Speaking to journalists, yesterday, in Abuja, the lawyer to the Islamic group, Bala Dakum, alleged that since his assumption of office in 2015, El-Rufai has engaged in acts of genocide and crimes against humanity, targeted at exterminating the Shi’ites from the state. He said: “Our clients have witnessed reigns of terror and unprovoked attacks since the infamous Zaria pogrom, wherein about a thousand innocent Shiite Muslims were killed.

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