Archive for August 9th, 2015

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09/08/2015

Nepal’s Earthquake – ‘Dramatic Increase in Amount of Sexual and Domestic Violence against Women Survivors’

Human Wrongs Watch

Rajani BK*, 26, was sitting in front of her house when her father came home early in the morning and started verbally abusing her mother, who was getting ready to go to work. “He was drunk, angry and started threatening to kill my mother,” says BK. She tried to intervene, and was dragged near a wall, and thought she was going to die. 

Sabitri Lamichanne, a case worker, at the multipurpose women's centre in Panchkhal on July 1,2015.

A case worker at the Kabhre multipurpose women’s center in Panchkhal, Nepal, Sabitri Lamichanne attends a programme on 1 July. The multipurpose women’s centre provides dignity kits, solar lamps, trauma counselling, information, referrals, carries out women’s safety audits and facilitates early recovery and livelihood activities. Photo: UN Women/Samir Jung Thapa.

This was not the first time BK felt physically threatened by her father.

She doesn’t remember a time when he was not abusive.

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Posted in Asia, Mother Earth, The Peoples | Leave a Comment »

09/08/2015

‘Stopgap measures to halt the flows of migrants only scratch the surface of the problem’

Human Wrongs Watch

Geneva, 7 Augusto 2015 (ILO)* — The recent loss of lives in the Mediterranean Sea is yet another reminder of the human impact of unresolved conflicts and development failures worldwide. The seeming global paralysis in the face of this on-going human tragedy is deeply disturbing.

© Italian Navy/M. Sestini | Italian Navy rescues boat filled with refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean last year. More than 2,100 people have died so far this year attempting to cross to Europe in over-crowded, flimsy vessels. | Source: UNHCR

© Italian Navy/M. Sestini | Italian Navy rescues boat filled with refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean last year. More than 2,100 people have died so far this year attempting to cross to Europe in over-crowded, flimsy vessels. | Source: UNHCR

“Stopgap measures to halt the flows of migrants only scratch the surface of the problem. We need to go deeper into the root causes that force people to put their lives in danger in order to find work and security in foreign lands,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder.

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Posted in Africa, Asia, Market Lords, Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords | Leave a Comment »

09/08/2015

How a Lizard and a Snake Beat King Coal

By Elsa Lee*

7 August 2015 – This week two major wins came out of the campaign to protect Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. But the fight is not over…

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Aerial view of the Great Barrier reef off the Whitsunday Islands. 25 Jul, 2008 © Greenpeace / Michael Amendolia

Credit: Greenpeace/Michael Amendolia

When news broke of Australia’s Federal Court overturning the approval of the Carmichael coal mine – a A$16 billion mine, rail and port project proposed for the Galilee Basin in Queensland, right on the doorstep of the Great Barrier Reef – there was rapturous applause.

But the good news didn’t stop there. The same day Australia’s biggest bank pulled the plug on Carmichael – the first bank that was involved in the project and now no longer wants to be.

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Posted in Market Lords, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples | Leave a Comment »

09/08/2015

Divide et Impera

Human Wrongs Watch

By Uri Avnery*

8 August 2015

BINYAMIN NETANYAHU is not known as a classical scholar, but even so he has adopted the Roman maxim Divide et Impera, divide and rule.

Uri Avnery

Uri Avnery

The main (and perhaps only) goal of his policy is to extend the rule of Israel, as the “Nation-State of the Jewish People”, over all of Eretz Israel, the historical land of Palestine.

This means ruling all of the West Bank and covering it with Jewish settlements, while denying any civil rights to its 2.5 million plus Arab inhabitants.

East Jerusalem, with its 300,000 Arab inhabitants, has already been formally annexed to Israel, without granting them Israeli citizenship or the right to take part in Knesset elections.

That leaves the Gaza Strip, a tiny enclave with 1.8 million plus Arab inhabitants, most of them descendents of refugees from Israel. The last thing in the world Netanyahu wants is to include these, too, in the Israeli imperium.

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Posted in Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords | Leave a Comment »

09/08/2015

Number of Refugees and Migrants Arriving in Greece Soars 750% over 2014

Human Wrongs Watch

By William Spindler

Geneva (UNHCR)* – Some 124,000 refugees and migrants had arrived in Greece by sea at the end of July this year – a staggering 750 per cent increase on the same period in 2014, the UN refugee agency detailed on 7 August 2015.

© UNHCR/A.McConnell | A group of Syrian refugees arrive on the island of Lesbos after traveling in an inflatable raft from Turkey, near Skala Sykaminias, Greece.

UNHCR said that in July alone 50,000 new arrivals were reported, 20,000 more than the previous month — an increase of almost 70 per cent — mainly to the islands of Lesvos, Chios, Kos, Samos and Leros.*

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Posted in Africa, Asia, Market Lords, Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords | Leave a Comment »

09/08/2015

‘Liberated’ Afghanistan: Record Number of Civilian Victims in One Day

Human Wrongs Watch

The United Nations on 8 August 2015 called on anti-Government elements in Afghanistan to stop targeting civilian-populated areas, after a series of attacks yesterday [Friday 7 August] killed at least 40 people, injured more than 300 and caused extensive damage to homes and property.

Members of a family sit outside their simple home in northern Afghanistan's Faryab province. Photo: UNHCR/S. Sisomsack

Members of a family sit outside their simple home in northern Afghanistan’s Faryab province. Photo: UNHCR/S. Sisomsack

This was the highest number of civilians killed and injured in one day since the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) began systematically recording civilian casualties in 2009.

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Posted in Asia, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords | Leave a Comment »

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